” At that moment one heard the voice of the said Professor who, at an awkward point in the game, was saying as he looked at his cards: “This is where Greek meets Greek.” “Why, yes, to be sure, he is a professor,” said M. Verdurin. “What! Professor Cottard! You’re sure you’re not mistaken! You’re certain it’s the same man! The one who lives in the Rue du Bac!” “Yes, his address is 43, Rue du Bac. You know him?” “But everybody knows Professor Cottard. He’s a leading light. It’s as though you asked me if I knew Bouffe de Saint-Blaise or Courtois-Suffit. I could see when I heard him speak that he was not an ordinary person. That’s why I took the liberty of asking you.” “Well then, what shall I play, trumps?” asked Cottard. Then abruptly, with a vulgarity which would have been irritating even in heroic circumstances, as when a soldier uses a coarse expression to convey his contempt for death, but became doubly stupid in the safe pastime of a game of cards, Cottard, deciding to play a trump, assumed a sombre, death-defying air and flung down his card as though it were his life, with the exclamation: “There it is, and be damned to it!” It was not the right card to play, but he had a consolation. In a deep armchair in the middle of the room, Mme Cottard, yielding to the effect, which she always found irresistible, of a good dinner, had succumbed after vain efforts to the vast if gentle slumbers that were overpowering her. In vain did she sit up now and then, and smile, either in self-mockery or from fear of leaving unanswered some polite remark that might have been addressed to her, she sank back, in spite of herself, into the clutches of the implacable and delicious malady. More than the noise, what awakened her thus, for an instant only, was the glance (which, in her wifely affection, she could see even when her eyes were shut, and anticipated, for the same scene occurred every evening and haunted her dreams like the thought of the hour at which one will have to rise), the glance with which the Professor drew the attention of those present to his wife’s slumbers. To begin with, he merely looked at her and smiled, for if as a doctor he disapproved of this habit of falling asleep after dinner (or at least gave this scientific reason for getting angry later on, though it is not certain whether it was a determining reason, so many and diverse were the views that he held on the subject), as an all-powerful and teasing husband he was delighted to be able to make fun of his wife, to half-waken her only at first, so that she might fall asleep again and he have the pleasure of waking her anew.
By this time, Mme Cottard was sound asleep. “Now then, Léontine, you’re snoring,” the Professor called to her. “I’m listening to Mme Swann, my dear,” Mme Cottard replied faintly, and dropped back into her lethargy. “It’s absolute madness,” exclaimed Cottard, “she’ll be telling us presently that she wasn’t asleep. She’s like the patients who come to a consultation and insist that they never sleep at all.” “They imagine it, perhaps,” said M. de Cambremer with a laugh. But the doctor enjoyed contradicting no less than teasing, and would on no account allow a layman to talk medicine to him. “One doesn’t imagine that one can’t sleep,” he promulgated in a dogmatic tone. “Ah!” replied the Marquis with a respectful bow, such as Cottard at one time would have made. “It’s easy to see,” Cottard went on, “that you’ve never administered, as I have, as much as two grains of trional without succeeding in provoking somnolence.” “Quite so, quite so,” replied the Marquis, laughing with a superior air, “I’ve never taken trional, or any of those drugs which soon cease to have any effect but ruin your stomach. When a man has been out shooting all night, like me, in the forest of Chantepie, I can assure you he doesn’t need any trional to make him sleep.” “It’s only fools who say that,” replied the Professor. “Trional frequently has a remarkable effect on the tonicity of the nerves. You mention trional, have you any idea what it is?” “Well . . . I’ve heard people say that