te to the physical distance
between them, whenever he heard that Odette had returned to Paris, he
could not rest without seeing her. Once, when they had gone away, as
everyone thought, for a month only, either they succumbed to a series
of temptations, or else M. Verdurin had cunningly arranged everything
beforehand, to please his wife, and disclosed his plans to the
'faithful' only as time went on; anyhow, from Algiers they flitted to
Tunis; then to Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor. They had been
absent for nearly a year, and Swann felt perfectly at ease and almost
happy. Albeit M. Verdurin had endeavoured to persuade the pianist and
Dr. Cottard that their respective aunt and patients had no need of them,
and that, in any event, it was most rash to allow Mme. Cottard to return
to Paris, where, Mme. Verdurin assured him, a revolution had just broken
out, he was obliged to grant them their liberty at Constantinople. And
the painter came home with them. One day, shortly after the return of
these four travellers, Swann, seeing an omnibus approach him, labelled
'Luxembourg,' and having some business there, had jumped on to it and
had found himself sitting opposite Mme. Cottard, who was paying a round
of visits to people whose 'day' it was, in full review order, with a
plume in her hat, a silk dress, a muff, an umbrella (which do for a
parasol if the rain kept off), a card-case, and a pair of white gloves
fresh from the cleaners. Wearing these badges of rank, she would,
in fine weather, go on foot from one house to another in the same
neighbourhood, but when she had to proceed to another district, would
make use of a transfer-ticket on the omnibus. For the first minute or
two, until the natural courtesy of the woman broke through the starched
surface of the doctor's-wife, not being certain, either, whether
she ought to mention the Verdurins before Swann, she produced, quite
naturally, in her slow and awkward, but not unattractive voice, which,
every now and then, was completely drowned by the rattling of the
omnibus, topics selected from those which she had picked up and would
repeat in each of the score of houses up the stairs of which she
clambered in the course of an afternoon.

"I needn't ask you, M. Swann, whether a man so much in the movement as
yourself has been to the Mirlitons, to see the portrait by Machard that
the whole of Paris is running after. Well, and what do you think of it?
Whose camp are you in,