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By Root 1880 0

had not been genuinely indifferent to the death of the Princess, would she, in order to explain why she was entertaining, have gone so far as to accuse herself of a far more serious fault? This was to forget that Mme Verdurin would have had to admit, at the same time as confessing her grief, that she had not had the strength of mind to forgo a pleasure; whereas the indifference of the friend was something more shocking, more immoral, but less humiliating and consequently easier to confess than the frivolity of the hostess. In matters of crime, where there is danger for the culprit, it is self-interest that dictates confessions; where the offence incurs no penalty, it is self-esteem. Whether it was that, doubtless finding rather hackneyed the excuse of people who, in order not to allow a bereavement to interrupt their life of pleasure, go about saying that it seems to them futile to wear on their sleeves a grief which they feel in their hearts, she preferred to imitate those intelligent culprits who are repelled by the clichés of innocence and whose defence—a partial admission, though they do not know it—consists in saying that they would see no harm in doing what they are accused of doing, although, as it happens, they have had no occasion to do it, or whether, having adopted the theory of indifference in order to explain her conduct, she found, once she had started on the downward slope of her unnatural feeling, that there was some originality in having felt it, a rare perspicacity in having managed to diagnose it, and a certain “nerve” in proclaiming it, Mme Verdurin kept dwelling upon her want of grief, not without something of the complacent pride of a paradoxical psychologist and daring dramatist.

“Yes, it’s very odd,” she said, “it made scarcely any impression on me. Of course, I don’t mean to say that I wouldn’t rather she were still alive, she wasn’t a bad person.”

“Yes she was,” put in M. Verdurin.

“Ah! he doesn’t approve of her because he thought I was doing myself harm by having her here, but he’s rather pig-headed about that.”

“Do me the justice to admit,” said M. Verdurin, “that I never approved of the association. I always told you that she had a bad reputation.”

“But I’ve never heard a thing against her,” protested Saniette.

“What!” exclaimed Mme. Verdurin, “everybody knew; bad isn’t the word, it was shameful, degrading. No, but it has nothing to do with that. I couldn’t myself explain what I feel. I didn’t dislike her, but she meant so little to me that when we heard that she was seriously ill my husband himself was quite surprised and said: ‘Anyone would think you didn’t mind.’ Why, earlier this evening he offered to put off the rehearsal, and I insisted upon having it because I should have thought it a farce to show a grief which I don’t feel.”

She said this because she felt that it had an intriguing smack of the “independent theatre,” and was at the same time singularly convenient; for avowed insensitivity or immorality simplifies life as much as does easy virtue; it converts reprehensible actions, for which one no longer need seek excuses, into a duty imposed by sincerity. And the faithful listened to Mme Verdurin’s words with the mixture of admiration and uneasiness which certain cruelly realistic and painfully observant plays used at one time to cause; and while they marvelled to see their beloved Mistress display her rectitude and independence in a new form, more than one of them, although he assured himself that after all it would not be the same thing, thought of his own death, and wondered whether, on the day it occurred, they would drop a tear or give a party at the Quai Conti.

“I’m very glad for my guests’ sake that the evening hasn’t been cancelled,” said M. de Charlus, not realising that in expressing himself thus he was offending Mme Verdurin.

Meanwhile I was struck, as was everybody who approached Mme Verdurin that evening, by a far from pleasant odour of rhino-gomenol. This was how it came about. We know that Mme Verdurin never expressed her artistic emotions in a mental but