peasant who is
engaged in taking its life. And when Mme. Verdurin's carriage had moved
on, and Swann's took its place, his coachman, catching sight of his
face, asked whether he was unwell, or had heard bad news.

Swann sent him away; he preferred to walk, and it was on foot, through
the Bois, that he came home. He talked to himself, aloud, and in
the same slightly affected tone which he had been used to adopt
when describing the charms of the 'little nucleus' and extolling the
magnanimity of the Verdurins. But just as the conversation, the smiles,
the kisses of Odette became as odious to him as he had once found
them charming, if they were diverted to others than himself, so the
Verdurins' drawing-room, which, not an hour before, had still seemed
to him amusing, inspired with a genuine feeling for art and even with
a sort of moral aristocracy, now that it was another than himself whom
Odette was going to meet there, to love there without restraint, laid
bare to him all its absurdities, its stupidity, its shame.

He drew a fanciful picture, at which he shuddered in disgust, of the
party next evening at Chatou. "Imagine going to Chatou, of all places!
Like a lot of drapers after closing time! Upon my word, these people are
sublime in their smugness; they can't really exist; they must all have
come out of one of Labiche's plays!"

The Cottards would be there; possibly Brichot. "Could anything be more
grotesque than the lives of these little creatures, hanging on to one
another like that. They'd imagine they were utterly lost, upon my soul
they would, if they didn't all meet again to-morrow at _Chatou_!"
Alas! there would be the painter there also, the painter who enjoyed
match-making, who would invite Forcheville to come with Odette to his
studio. He could see Odette, in a dress far too smart for the country,
"for she is so vulgar in that way, and, poor little thing, she is such a
fool!"

He could hear the jokes that Mme. Verdurin would make after dinner,
jokes which, whoever the 'bore' might be at whom they were aimed,
had always amused him because he could watch Odette laughing at them,
laughing with him, her laughter almost a part of his. Now he felt that
it was possibly at him that they would make Odette laugh. "What a fetid
form of humour!" he exclaimed, twisting his mouth into an expression of
disgust so violent that he could feel the muscles of his throat stiffen
against his collar. "How, in God's name, can a