filled with an enormous and unbreakable mass
which pressed on the inner walls of his consciousness until he was fain
to burst asunder; for Odette had said casually, watching him with a
malicious smile: "Forcheville is going for a fine trip at Whitsuntide.
He's going to Egypt!" and Swann had at once understood that this meant:
"I am going to Egypt at Whitsuntide with Forcheville." And, in fact,
if, a few days later, Swann began: "About that trip that you told me you
were going to take with Forcheville," she would answer carelessly: "Yes,
my dear boy, we're starting on the 19th; we'll send you a 'view' of the
Pyramids." Then he was determined to know whether she was Forcheville's
mistress, to ask her point-blank, to insist upon her telling him. He
knew that there were some perjuries which, being so superstitious, she
would not commit, and besides, the fear, which had hitherto restrained
his curiosity, of making Odette angry if he questioned her, of making
himself odious, had ceased to exist now that he had lost all hope of
ever being loved by her.

One day he received an anonymous letter which told him that Odette had
been the mistress of countless men (several of whom it named, among
them Forcheville, M. de Breaute and the painter) and women, and that she
frequented houses of ill-fame. He was tormented by the discovery that
there was to be numbered among his friends a creature capable of
sending him such a letter (for certain details betrayed in the writer a
familiarity with his private life). He wondered who it could be. But he
had never had any suspicion with regard to the unknown actions of other
people, those which had no visible connection with what they said.
And when he wanted to know whether it was rather beneath the apparent
character of M. de Charlus, or of M. des Laumes, or of M. d'Orsan that
he must place the untravelled region in which this ignoble action might
have had its birth; as none of these men had ever, in conversation
with Swann, suggested that he approved of anonymous letters, and as
everything that they had ever said to him implied that they strongly
disapproved, he saw no further reason for associating this infamy with
the character of any one of them more than with the rest. M. de Charlus
was somewhat inclined to eccentricity, but he was fundamentally good and
kind; M. des Laumes was a trifle dry, but wholesome and straight. As for
M. d'Orsan, Swann had never met anyone who, even in the most depr