id them (asking
himself at the end of each month whether, seeing that he had perhaps
exhausted her patience, and had certainly gone rather often to see her,
it would be enough if he sent her four thousand francs), and for each
visit he found a pretext, a present that he had to bring her, some
information which she required, M. de Charlus, whom he had met actually
going to her house, and who had insisted upon Swann's accompanying him.
And, failing any excuse, he would beg M. de Charlus to go to her
at once, and to tell her, as though spontaneously, in the course of
conversation, that he had just remembered something that he had to say
to Swann, and would she please send a message to Swann's house asking
him to come to her then and there; but as a rule Swann waited at home
in vain, and M. de Charlus informed him, later in the evening, that his
device had not proved successful. With the result that, if she was now
frequently away from Paris, even when she was there he scarcely saw her;
that she who, when she was in love with him, used to say, "I am always
free" and "What can it matter to me, what other people think?" now,
whenever he wanted to see her, appealed to the proprieties or pleaded
some engagement. When he spoke of going to a charity entertainment, or a
private view, or a first-night at which she was to be present, she would
expostulate that he wished to advertise their relations in public, that
he was treating her like a woman off the streets. Things came to such a
pitch that, in an effort to save himself from being altogether forbidden
to meet her anywhere, Swann, remembering that she knew and was deeply
attached to my great-uncle Adolphe, whose friend he himself also
had been, went one day to see him in his little flat in the Rue
de Bellechasse, to ask him to use his influence with Odette. As it
happened, she invariably adopted, when she spoke to Swann about my
uncle, a poetical tone, saying: "Ah, he! He is not in the least
like you; it is an exquisite thing, a great, a beautiful thing, his
friendship for me. He's not the sort of man who would have so little
consideration for me as to let himself be seen with me everywhere in
public." This was embarrassing for Swann, who did not know quite to what
rhetorical pitch he should screw himself up in speaking of Odette to my
uncle. He began by alluding to her excellence, _a priori_, the axiom
of her seraphic super-humanity, the revelation of her inexpressible
virtues,