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By Root 1865 0

lips being sealed, no answer would ever come. The death of others is like a journey one might oneself make, when, already sixty miles out of Paris, one remembers that one has left two dozen handkerchiefs behind, forgotten to leave a key with the cook, to say good-bye to one’s uncle, to ask the name of the town where the old fountain is that you want to see. While all these oversights which assail you, and which you relate aloud and purely for form’s sake to your travelling companion, are getting as sole response a blank disregard from the seat opposite, the name of the station, called out by the guard, only takes you further away from henceforth impossible realisations, so much so that you cease to think about irremediable omissions, and you unpack your lunch and exchange papers and magazines.

“No,” Brichot went on, “it wasn’t here that Swann used to meet his future wife, or rather it was here only in the very latest period, after the fire that partially destroyed Mme Verdurin’s former home.”

Unfortunately, in my fear of displaying before the eyes of Brichot a luxury which seemed to me out of place, since the professor had no share in it, I had alighted too hastily from the carriage and the driver had not understood the words I had flung at him over my shoulder in order that I might be well clear of the carriage before Brichot caught sight of me. The consequence was that the driver drew alongside us and asked me whether he was to call for me later. I answered hurriedly in the affirmative and intensified all the more my respectful attentions to the professor who had come by omnibus.

“Ah! so you were in a carriage,” he said gravely.

“Only by the purest accident. I never take one as a rule. I always travel by omnibus or on foot. However, it may perhaps earn me the great honour of taking you home tonight if you will oblige me by consenting to travel in that rattle-trap. We shall be packed rather tight. But you are always so kind to me.”

Alas, in making him this offer, I am depriving myself of nothing, I reflected, since in any case I shall be obliged to go home because of Albertine. Her presence in my house, at an hour when nobody could possibly call to see her, allowed me to dispose as freely of my time as I had that afternoon, when I knew that she was on her way back from the Trocadéro and I was in no hurry to see her again. But at the same time, as also that afternoon, I felt that I had a woman in the house and that on returning home I would not taste the fortifying thrill of solitude.

“I heartily accept,” replied Brichot. “At the period to which you allude, our friends occupied a magnificent ground-floor apartment in the Rue Montalivet with an entresol and a garden behind, less sumptuous of course, and yet to my mind preferable to the old Venetian Embassy.”

Brichot informed me that this evening there was to be at the “Quai Conti” (thus it was that the faithful spoke of the Verdurin salon since it had been transferred to that address) a great musical “jamboree” organised by M. de Charlus. He went on to say that in the old days to which I had referred, the little nucleus had been different and its tone not at all the same, not only because the faithful had then been younger. He told me of elaborate practical jokes played by Elstir (what he called “pure buffooneries”), as for instance one day when the painter, having pretended to “defect” at the last moment, had come disguised as an extra waiter and, as he handed round the dishes, murmured ribald remarks in the ear of the extremely prudish Baroness Putbus, who was crimson with anger and alarm; then, disappearing before the end of dinner, he had had a hip-bath carried into the drawing-room, out of which, when the party left the dinner-table, he had emerged stark naked uttering fearful oaths; and also of supper parties to which the guests came in paper costumes designed, cut out and painted by Elstir, which were veritable masterpieces, Brichot having worn on one occasion that of a nobleman of the court of Charles VII, with long pointed shoes, and another time that of Napoleon