free of it, save in an
artificial and rhetorical tone, and as though his words had been chosen
rather to appease his anger than to express his thoughts. The latter, in
fact, while he abandoned himself to invective, were probably, though he
did not know it, occupied with a wholly different matter, for once he
had reached his house, no sooner had he closed the front-door behind him
than he suddenly struck his forehead, and, making his servant open the
door again, dashed out into the street shouting, in a voice which,
this time, was quite natural; "I believe I have found a way of getting
invited to the dinner at Chatou to-morrow!" But it must have been a
bad way, for M. Swann was not invited; Dr. Cottard, who, having been
summoned to attend a serious case in the country, had not seen the
Verdurins for some days, and had been prevented from appearing at
Chatou, said, on the evening after this dinner, as he sat down to table
at their house:

"Why, aren't we going to see M. Swann this evening? He is quite what you
might call a personal friend..." "I sincerely trust that we sha'n't!"
cried Mme. Verdurin. "Heaven preserve us from him; he's too deadly for
words, a stupid, ill-bred boor."

On hearing these words Cottard exhibited an intense astonishment blended
with entire submission, as though in the face of a scientific truth
which contradicted everything that he had previously believed, but was
supported by an irresistible weight of evidence; with timorous
emotion he bowed his head over his plate, and merely replied:
"Oh--oh--oh--oh--oh!" traversing, in an orderly retirement of his
forces, into the depths of his being, along a descending scale, the
whole compass of his voice. After which there was no more talk of Swann
at the Verdurins'.

*****

And so that drawing-room which had brought Swann and Odette together
became an obstacle in the way of their meeting. She no longer said to
him, as she had said in the early days of their love: "We shall meet,
anyhow, to-morrow evening; there's a supper-party at the Verdurins',"
but "We sha'n't be able to meet to-morrow evening; there's a
supper-party at the Verdurins'." Or else the Verdurins were taking her
to the Opera-Comique, to see _Une Nuit de Cleopatre_, and Swann could
read in her eyes that terror lest he should ask her not to go, which,
but a little time before, he could not have refrained from greeting
with a kiss as it flitted across the face of his mistress, but wh