use was gradually
filled with a collection of foot-warmers, cushions, clocks, screens,
barometers and vases, a constant repetition and a boundless incongruity
of useless but indestructible objects.

From this lofty perch she would take her spirited part in the
conversation of the 'faithful,' and would revel in all their fun; but,
since the accident to her jaw, she had abandoned the effort involved in
real hilarity, and had substituted a kind of symbolical dumb-show which
signified, without endangering or even fatiguing her in any way, that
she was 'laughing until she cried.' At the least witticism aimed by any
of the circle against a 'bore,' or against a former member of the circle
who was now relegated to the limbo of 'bores'--and to the utter despair
of M. Verdurin, who had always made out that he was just as easily
amused as his wife, but who, since his laughter was the 'real thing,'
was out of breath in a moment, and so was overtaken and vanquished
by her device of a feigned but continuous hilarity--she would utter a
shrill cry, shut tight her little bird-like eyes, which were beginning
to be clouded over by a cataract, and quickly, as though she had only
just time to avoid some indecent sight or to parry a mortal blow,
burying her face in her hands, which completely engulfed it, and
prevented her from seeing anything at all, she would appear to be
struggling to suppress, to eradicate a laugh which, were she to give
way to it, must inevitably leave her inanimate. So, stupefied with
the gaiety of the 'faithful,' drunken with comradeship, scandal and
asseveration, Mme. Verdurin, perched on her high seat like a cage-bird
whose biscuit has been steeped in mulled wine, would sit aloft and sob
with fellow-feeling.

Meanwhile M. Verdurin, after first asking Swann's permission to light
his pipe ("No ceremony here, you understand; we're all pals!"), went and
begged the young musician to sit down at the piano.

"Leave him alone; don't bother him; he hasn't come here to be
tormented," cried Mme. Verdurin. "I won't have him tormented."

"But why on earth should it bother him?" rejoined M. Verdurin. "I'm sure
M. Swann has never heard the sonata in F sharp which we discovered; he
is going to play us the pianoforte arrangement."

"No, no, no, not my sonata!" she screamed, "I don't want to be made to
cry until I get a cold in the head, and neuralgia all down my face, like
last time; thanks very much, I don't intend to repeat t