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By Root 1551 0

for the same reason, but Swann, having acquired from the aristocracy that eternal Donjuanism which, in treating with two women of no importance, makes each of them believe that it is she alone who is seriously loved, had spoken to Mme Bontemps of the Duchesse de Vendôme as of a person with whom it was essential for her to dine. “Yes, we’re having the Princess here with the Cottards,” said Mme Swann a few weeks later. “My husband thinks that we might get something quite amusing out of the conjunction.” For if she had retained from the “little nucleus” certain habits dear to Mme Verdurin, such as that of shouting things aloud so as to be heard by all the faithful, she made use, at the same time, of certain expressions, such as “conjunction,” which were dear to the Guermantes circle, of which she was thus undergoing the attraction, unconsciously and at a distance, as the sea is swayed by the moon, though without being drawn perceptibly closer to it. “Yes, the Cottards and the Duchesse de Vendôme. Don’t you think that might be rather fun?” asked Swann.

“I think it will go very badly, and can only lead to a lot of bother. People oughtn’t to play with fire,” snapped Mme Bontemps, furious. She and her husband, and also the Prince d’Agrigente, were, as it happened, invited to this dinner, which Mme Bontemps and Cottard had each two alternative ways of describing, according to whom they were addressing. To some Mme Bontemps for her part, and Cottard for his, would say casually, when asked who else had been of the party: “Only the Prince d’Agrigente; it was very intimate.” But there were others who might, alas, be better informed (once, indeed, someone had challenged Cottard with: “But weren’t the Bontemps there too?” “Oh, I forgot them,” Cottard had blushingly admitted to the tactless questioner whom he ever afterwards classified among the mischief-makers). For these the Bontemps and the Cottards had each adopted, without any mutual arrangement, a version the framework of which was identical for both parties, their own names being interchanged. “Let me see,” Cottard would say, “there were our host and hostess, the Duc and Duchesse de Vendôme—” (with a self-satisfied smile) “Professor and Mme Cottard, the Prince d’Agrigente, and, upon my soul, heaven only knows how they got there, for they were like fish out of water, M. and Mme Bontemps!” Mme Bontemps would recite exactly the same “piece,” only it was M. and Mme Bontemps who were named with self-satisfied emphasis between the Duchesse de Vendôme and the Prince d’Agrigente, while the scurvy lot, whom she wound up by accusing of having invited themselves, and who completely spoiled the picture, were the Cottards.

When he had been paying social calls Swann would often come home with little time to spare before dinner. At that point in the evening, around six o’clock, when in the old days he used to feel so wretched, he no longer asked himself what Odette might be about, and was hardly at all concerned to hear that she had people with her or had gone out. He recalled at times that he had once, years ago, tried to read through its envelope a letter addressed by Odette to Forcheville. But this memory was not pleasing to him, and rather than plumb the depths of shame that he felt in it he preferred to indulge in a little grimace, twisting up the corners of his mouth and adding, if need be, a shake of the head which signified “What do I care about it?” True, he considered now that the hypothesis on which he had often dwelt at that time, according to which it was his jealous imagination alone that blackened what was in reality the innocent life of Odette—that this hypothesis (which after all was beneficent, since, so long as his amorous malady had lasted, it had diminished his sufferings by making them seem imaginary) was not the correct one, that it was his jealousy that had seen things in the correct light, and that if Odette had loved him more than he supposed, she had also deceived him more. Formerly, while his sufferings were still keen, he had vowed that, as soon as he had ceased