had always, hitherto, judged so lightly,
had dismissed, indeed, with a laugh, should have become as serious to
him as a disease which might easily prove fatal. He knew any number
of women whom he could ask to keep an eye on Odette, but how was he to
expect them to adjust themselves to his new point of view, and not to
remain at that which for so long had been his own, which had always
guided him in his voluptuous existence; not to say to him with a smile:
"You jealous monster, wanting to rob other people of their pleasure!"
By what trap-door, suddenly lowered, had he (who had never found, in the
old days, in his love for Odette, any but the most refined of pleasures)
been precipitated into this new circle of hell from which he could not
see how he was ever to escape. Poor Odette! He wished her no harm. She
was but half to blame. Had he not been told that it was her own mother
who had sold her, when she was still little more than a child, at Nice,
to a wealthy Englishman? But what an agonising truth was now contained
for him in those lines of Alfred de Vigny's _Journal d'un Poete_ which
he had previously read without emotion: "When one feels oneself smitten
by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself, 'What are 'her
surroundings? What has been her life?' All one's future happiness lies
in the answer." Swann was astonished that such simple phrases, spelt
over in his mind as, "I've heard that tale before," or "I knew quite
well what she was after," could cause him so much pain. But he realised
that what he had mistaken for simple phrases were indeed parts of the
panoply which held and could inflict on him the anguish that he had felt
while Odette was telling her story. For it was the same anguish that he
now was feeling afresh. It was no good, his knowing now,--indeed, it
was no good, as time went on, his having partly forgotten and altogether
forgiven the offence--whenever he repeated her words his old anguish
refashioned him as he had been before Odette began to speak: ignorant,
trustful; his merciless jealousy placed him once again, so that he might
be effectively wounded by Odette's admission, in the position of a man
who does not yet know the truth; and after several months this old story
would still dumbfounder him, like a sudden revelation. He marvelled
at the terrible recreative power of his memory. It was only by the
weakening of that generative force, whose fecundity diminishes as age
creeps over one, that he