Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [159]
“Well, you know what it is really,” said Mme Verdurin modestly, “they feel at ease here. They can talk about whatever they like, and the conversation goes off like fireworks. Now Brichot, this evening, is nothing. I’ve seen him, don’t you know, when he’s been in my house, simply dazzling; you’d want to go on your knees to him. Well, anywhere else he’s not the same man, he’s not in the least witty, you have to drag the words out of him, he’s even boring.”
“That’s strange,” remarked Forcheville with fitting astonishment.
A sort of wit like Brichot’s would have been regarded as out-and-out stupidity by the people among whom Swann had spent his early life, for all that it is quite compatible with real intelligence. And the intelligence of the Professor’s vigorous and well-nourished brain might easily have been envied by many of the people in society who seemed witty enough to Swann. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into him their likes and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained to social life, including that adjunct to social life which belongs, strictly speaking, to the domain of intelligence, namely, conversation, that Swann could not but find Brichot’s pleasantries pedantic, vulgar and nauseating. He was shocked, too, being accustomed to good manners, by the rude, almost barrack-room tone the pugnacious academic adopted no matter to whom he was speaking. Finally, perhaps, he had lost some of his tolerance that evening when he saw the cordiality displayed by Mme Verdurin towards this Forcheville fellow whom it had been Odette’s unaccountable idea to bring to the house. Somewhat embarrassed vis-à-vis Swann, she asked him on her arrival: “What do you think of my guest?”
And he, suddenly realising for the first time that Forcheville, whom he had known for years, could actually attract a woman and was quite a good-looking man, replied: “Unspeakable!” It did not occur to him to be jealous of Odette, but he did not feel quite so happy as usual, and when Brichot, having begun to tell them the story of Blanche of Castile’s mother who, according to him, “had been with Henry Plantagenet for years before they were married,” tried to prompt Swann to beg him to continue the story by interjecting “Isn’t that so, M. Swann?” in the martial accents people use in order to put themselves on a level with a country bumpkin or to put the fear of God into a trooper, Swann cut his story short, to the intense fury of their hostess, by begging to be excused for taking so little interest in Blanche of Castile, as he had something that he wished to ask the painter. The latter, it appeared, had been that afternoon to an exhibition of the work of another artist, also a friend of Mme Verdurin, who had recently died, and Swann wished to find out from him (for he valued his discrimination) whether there had really been anything more in these last works than the virtuosity which had struck people so forcibly in his earlier exhibitions.
“From that point of view it was remarkable, but it did not seem to me to be a form of art which you could call ‘elevated,’ ” said Swann with a smile.
“Elevated … to the purple,” interrupted Cottard, raising his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table burst out laughing.
“What did I tell you?” said Mme Verdurin to Forcheville. “It’s simply impossible to be serious with him. When you least expect it, out he comes with some piece of foolery.”
But she observed that Swann alone had not unbent. For one thing he was none too pleased with Cottard for having secured a laugh at his expense in front of Forcheville. But the painter, instead of replying in a way that might have interested Swann, as he would probably have done had they been alone together, preferred to win the easy admiration of the rest with a witty dissertation on the talent of the deceased master.
“I went up to one of them,” he began, “just to see how it was done. I stuck my nose