s, nowadays, in illness, are there? I didn't know that.... Oh,
you do make me laugh!" she screamed, suddenly, burying her face in her
hands. "And here was I, poor thing, talking quite seriously, and never
seeing that you were pulling my leg."

As for M. Verdurin, finding it rather a strain to start laughing again
over so small a matter, he was content with puffing out a cloud of smoke
from his pipe, while he reflected sadly that he could never again hope
to keep pace with his wife in her Atalanta-flights across the field of
mirth.

"D'you know; we like your friend so very much," said Mme. Verdurin,
later, when Odette was bidding her good night. "He is so unaffected,
quite charming. If they're all like that, the friends you want to bring
here, by all means bring them."

M. Verdurin remarked that Swann had failed, all the same, to appreciate
the pianist's aunt.

"I dare say he felt a little strange, poor man," suggested Mme.
Verdurin. "You can't expect him to catch the tone of the house the first
time he comes; like Cottard, who has been one of our little 'clan' now
for years. The first time doesn't count; it's just for looking round and
finding out things. Odette, he understands all right, he's to join us
to-morrow at the Chatelet. Perhaps you might call for him and bring
him." "No, he doesn't want that."

"Oh, very well; just as you like. Provided he doesn't fail us at the
last moment."

Greatly to Mme. Verdurin's surprise, he never failed them. He would go
to meet them, no matter where, at restaurants outside Paris (not that
they went there much at first, for the season had not yet begun), and
more frequently at the play, in which Mme. Verdurin delighted. One
evening, when they were dining at home, he heard her complain that she
had not one of those permits which would save her the trouble of waiting
at doors and standing in crowds, and say how useful it would be to them
at first-nights, and gala performances at the Opera, and what a nuisance
it had been, not having one, on the day of Gambetta's funeral. Swann
never spoke of his distinguished friends, but only of such as might be
regarded as detrimental, whom, therefore, he thought it snobbish, and
in not very good taste to conceal; while he frequented the Faubourg
Saint-Germain he had come to include, in the latter class, all his
friends in the official world of the Third Republic, and so broke in,
without thinking: "I'll see to that, all right. You shall have