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By Root 1549 0

regarded as being marvellously intelligent, but as a matter of fact his ideas boiled down to two or three, extremely limited. Bored with his reputation for whimsicality, he had taken it into his head to show that he was a practical, down-to-earth person, whence a triumphant affectation of fake precision, of fake common sense, aggravated by his having no memory and a fund of information that was always inaccurate. The movements of his head, his neck and his limbs would have been graceful if he had still been nine years old, with golden curls, a wide lace collar and red leather bootees. Having arrived at Graincourt station in the company of Cottard and Brichot with time to spare, he and Cottard had left Brichot in the waiting-room and had gone for a stroll. When Cottard proposed to turn back, Ski had replied: “But there’s no hurry. It isn’t the local train today, it’s the departmental train.” Delighted by the effect that this refinement of accuracy produced upon Cottard, he added, with reference to himself: “Yes, because Ski loves the arts, because he models in clay, people think he’s not practical. Nobody knows this line better than I do.” Nevertheless, when they had turned back towards the station, Cottard, all of a sudden catching sight of the smoke of the approaching train, had let out a bellow and exclaimed: “We shall have to run like the wind.” And they had in fact arrived with not a moment to spare, the distinction between local and departmental trains having never existed except in the mind of Ski.

“But isn’t the Princess on the train?” came in ringing tones from Brichot, whose huge spectacles, glittering like the reflectors that throat specialists attach to their foreheads to see into their patients’ larynxes, seemed to have taken their life from the Professor’s eyes, and, possibly because of the effort he made to adjust his sight to them, seemed themselves to be looking, even at the most trivial moments, with sustained attention and extraordinary fixity. Brichot’s malady, as it gradually deprived him of his sight, had revealed to him the beauties of that sense, just as, frequently, we have to make up our minds to part with some object, to make a present of it for instance, in order to study it, regret it, admire it.

“No, no, the Princess went over to Maineville with some of Mme Verdurin’s guests who were taking the Paris train. It isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that Mme Verdurin, who had some business at Saint-Mars, may be with her! In that case, she’ll be coming with us, and we shall all travel together, which will be delightful. We shall have to keep our eyes skinned at Maineville and see what we shall see! Ah, well, never mind—we certainly came very near to missing the bus. When I saw the train I was flabbergasted. That’s what you call arriving at the psychological moment. What if we’d missed the train and Mme Verdurin had seen the carriages come back without us? You can just picture it,” added the doctor, who had not yet recovered from his excitement. “I must say we really are having quite a jaunt. Eh, Brichot, what have you to say about our little escapade?” inquired the doctor with a note of pride.

“Upon my soul,” replied Brichot, “why, yes, if you’d found the train gone, that would have taken the gilt off the trumpets, as Villemain, our late professor of eloquence, would have said.”

But I, engrossed from the very first by these people whom I did not know, was suddenly reminded of what Cottard had said to me in the ballroom of the little casino, and, as though it were possible for an invisible link to join an organ to the images of one’s memory, the image of Albertine pressing her breasts against Andrée’s brought a terrible pain to my heart. This pain did not last: the idea of Albertine’s having relations with women seemed no longer possible since the occasion, forty-eight hours earlier, when the advances she had made to Saint-Loup had excited in me a new jealousy which had made me forget the old. I was innocent enough to believe that one taste necessarily excludes another.

At Harambouville, as