to her hands) resembled two masks in a theatre, each
representing Comedy, but in a different way.

M. Verdurin had been wiser than he knew in not taking his pipe out of
his mouth, for Cottard, having occasion to leave the room for a moment,
murmured a witty euphemism which he had recently acquired and repeated
now whenever he had to go to the place in question: "I must just go and
see the Duc d'Aumale for a minute," so drolly, that M. Verdurin's cough
began all over again.

"Now, then, take your pipe out of your mouth; can't you see, you'll
choke if you try to bottle up your laughter like that," counselled Mme.
Verdurin, as she came round with a tray of liqueurs.

"What a delightful man your husband is; he has the wit of a dozen!"
declared Forcheville to Mme. Cottard. "Thank you, thank you, an old
soldier like me can never say 'No' to a drink."

"M. de Forcheville thinks Odette charming," M. Verdurin told his wife.

"Why, do you know, she wants so much to meet you again some day at
luncheon. We must arrange it, but don't on any account let Swann hear
about it. He spoils everything, don't you know. I don't mean to say that
you're not to come to dinner too, of course; we hope to see you very
often. Now that the warm weather's coming, we're going to have dinner
out of doors whenever we can. That won't bore you, will it, a quiet
little dinner, now and then, in the Bois? Splendid, splendid, that will
be quite delightful....

"Aren't you going to do any work this evening, I say?" she screamed
suddenly to the little pianist, seeing an opportunity for displaying,
before a 'newcomer' of Forcheville's importance, at once her unfailing
wit and her despotic power over the 'faithful.'

"M. de Forcheville was just going to say something dreadful about you,"
Mme. Cottard warned her husband as he reappeared in the room. And he,
still following up the idea of Forcheville's noble birth, which had
obsessed him all through dinner, began again with: "I am treating a
Baroness just now, Baroness Putbus; weren't there some Putbuses in the
Crusades? Anyhow they've got a lake in Pomerania that's ten times the
size of the Place de la Concorde. I am treating her for dry arthritis;
she's a charming woman. Mme. Verdurin knows her too, I believe."

Which enabled Forcheville, a moment later, finding himself alone with
Mme. Cottard, to complete his favourable verdict on her husband with:
"He's an interesting man, too; you can see that he knows