always in a physical way, so that they might appear more inescapable and more profound. Now, if one spoke to her of Vinteuil’s music, her favourite, she would remain unmoved, as though she expected to derive no emotion from it. But after looking at you for a few moments with a fixed, almost abstracted gaze, she would answer you in a sharp, matter of fact, scarcely civil tone (as though she had said to you: “I don’t in the least mind your smoking, but it’s because of the carpet; it’s a very fine one—not that that matters either—but it’s highly inflammable, I’m dreadfully afraid of fire, and I shouldn’t like to see you all roasted because someone had carelessly dropped a lighted cigarette end on it”), not professing any admiration, but coldly expressing her regret that something of his was being played that evening: “I have nothing against Vinteuil; to my mind, he’s the greatest composer of the age. Only, I can never listen to that sort of stuff without weeping all the time” (there was not the slightest suggestion of pathos in the way she said “weeping;” she would have used precisely the same tone for “sleeping;” certain slandermongers used indeed to insist that the latter verb would have been more applicable, though no one could ever be certain, for she listened to the music with her face buried in her hands, and certain snoring sounds might after all have been sobs). “I don’t mind weeping, not in the least; only I get the most appalling sniffles afterwards. It stuffs up my mucous membrane, and forty-eight hours later I look like an old drunk. I have to inhale for days on end to get my vocal cords functioning. However, one of Cottard’s pupils …” “Oh, by the way, I never offered you my condolences: he was carried off very quickly, poor fellow!” “Ah, yes, there we are, he died, as everyone has to. He’d killed enough people for it to be his turn to have a bit of his own medicine.13 Anyhow, I was saying that one of his pupils, a delightful creature, has been treating me for it. He goes by quite an original rule: ‘Prevention is better than cure.’ And he greases my nose before the music begins. The effect is radical. I can weep like all the mothers who ever lost a child, and not a trace of a cold. Sometimes a little conjunctivitis, that’s all. It’s completely efficacious. Otherwise I could never have gone on listening to Vinteuil. I was just going from one bronchial attack to another.”
I could not refrain from mentioning Mlle Vinteuil. “Isn’t the composer’s daughter to be here,” I asked Mme Verdurin, “with one of her friends?”
“No, I’ve just had a telegram,” Mme Verdurin said evasively, “they were obliged to remain in the country.”
I had a momentary hope that there might never have been any question of their coming and that Mme Verdurin had announced the presence of these representatives of the composer only in order to make a favourable impression on the performers and their audience.
“What, so they didn’t even come to the rehearsal this afternoon?” said the Baron with feigned curiosity, anxious to appear not to have seen Charlie.
The latter came up to greet me. I whispered a question in his ear about Mlle Vinteuil’s non-appearance; he seemed to me to know little or nothing about the matter. I signed to him to keep his voice down and told him we would talk again later. He bowed, and assured me that he would be entirely at my disposal. I observed that he was far more polite, far more respectful, than he had been in the past. I spoke warmly of him—since he might perhaps be able to help me to clear up my suspicions—to M. de Charlus who replied: “He only does what he should: there would be no point in his living among respectable people if he didn’t learn good manners.” These, according to M. de Charlus, were the old manners of France, without a hint of British stiffness. Thus when Charlie, returning from a tour in the provinces or abroad, arrived in his travelling suit at the Baron’s, the latter, if there were not too many people present, would kiss him without ceremony on both cheeks, perhaps a little in order to banish by