e words, "two or three times," nothing
more than a few words, words uttered in the air, at a distance, could so
lacerate a man's heart, as if they had actually pierced it, could sicken
a man, like a poison that he had drunk. Instinctively Swann thought of
the remark that he had heard at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's: "I have never
seen anything to beat it since the table-turning." The agony that he now
suffered in no way resembled what he had supposed. Not only because, in
the hours when he most entirely mistrusted her, he had rarely imagined
such a culmination of evil, but because, even when he did imagine that
offence, it remained vague, uncertain, was not clothed in the particular
horror which had escaped with the words "perhaps two or three times,"
was not armed with that specific cruelty, as different from anything
that he had known as a new malady by which one is attacked for the first
time. And yet this Odette, from whom all this evil sprang, was no less
dear to him, was, on the contrary, more precious, as if, in proportion
as his sufferings increased, there increased at the same time the price
of the sedative, of the antidote which this woman alone possessed. He
wished to pay her more attention, as one attends to a disease which
one discovers, suddenly, to have grown more serious. He wished that
the horrible thing which, she had told him, she had done "two or three
times" might be prevented from occurring again. To ensure that, he must
watch over Odette. People often say that, by pointing out to a man the
faults of his mistress, you succeed only in strengthening his attachment
to her, because he does not believe you; yet how much more so if he
does! But, Swann asked himself, how could he manage to protect her? He
might perhaps be able to preserve her from the contamination of any
one woman, but there were hundreds of other women; and he realised how
insane had been his ambition when he had begun (on the evening when
he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins') to desire the
possession--as if that were ever possible--of another person. Happily
for Swann, beneath the mass of suffering which had invaded his soul like
a conquering horde of barbarians, there lay a natural foundation, older,
more placid, and silently laborious, like the cells of an injured organ
which at once set to work to repair the damaged tissues, or the muscles
of a paralysed limb which tend to recover their former movements. These
older, these autoch