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irresistible force; and when at length she was ready, and, Plunging into
her mirror a last glance strained and brightened by her anxiety to look
well, smeared a little salve on her lips, fixed a stray loci of hair
over her brow, and called for her cloak of sky-blue silk with golden
tassels, Swann would be looking so wretched that she would be unable to
restrain a gesture of impatience as she flung at him: "So that is how
you thank me for keeping you here till the last minute! And I thought
I was being so nice to you. Well, I shall know better another time!"
Sometime... at the risk of annoying her, he made up his mind that he
would find out where she had gone, and even dreamed of a defensive
alliance with Forcheville, who might perhaps have been able to tell him.
But anyhow, when he knew with whom she was spending the evening, it
was very seldom that he could not discover, among all his innumerable
acquaintance, some one who knew--if only indirectly--the man with
whom she had gone out, and could easily obtain this or that piece of
information about him. And while he was writing to one of his friends,
asking him to try to get a little light thrown upon some point or other,
he would feel a sense of relief on ceasing to vex himself with questions
to which there was no answer and transferring to some one else the
strain of interrogation. It is true that Swann was little the wiser for
such information as he did receive. To know a thing does not enable us,
always, to prevent its happening, but after all the things that we know
we do hold, if not in our hands, at any rate in our minds, where we can
dispose of them as we choose, which gives us the illusion of a sort of
power to control them. He was quite happy whenever M. de Charlus was
with Odette. He knew that between M. de Charlus and her nothing untoward
could ever happen, that when M. de Charlus went anywhere with her, it
was out of friendship for himself, and that he would make no difficulty
about telling him everything that she had done. Sometimes she had
declared so emphatically to Swann that it was impossible for him to see
her on a particular evening, she seemed to be looking forward so keenly
to some outing, that Swann attached a very real importance to the fact
that M. de Charlus was free to accompany her. Next day, without daring
to put many questions to M. de Charlus, he would force him, by appearing
not quite to understand his first answers, to give him more, afte