I have cured them, I may tell you, and not only this time. For I have stayed quite close to here before, a place I discovered and got for a mere song, a very different style of house from their Raspelicre. I can shew you it if we go for a drive together. But I admit that even here the air is invigorating. Still, I don’t want to say too much about it, the whole of Paris would begin to take a fancy to my little corner. That has always been my luck. Anyhow, give your cousin my message. We shall put you in two nice rooms looking over the valley, you ought to see it in the morning, with the sun shining on the mist! By the way, who is this Robert de Saint-Loup of whom you were speaking?” she said with a troubled air, for she had heard that I was to pay him a visit at Doncières, and was afraid that he might make me fail her.
“Why not bring him here instead, if he’s not a bore. I have heard of him from Morel; I fancy he’s one of his greatest friends,” said Mme. Verdurin with entire want of truth, for Saint-Loup and Morel were not even aware of one another’s existence. But having heard that Saint-Loup knew M. de Charlus, she supposed that it was through the violinist, and wished to appear to know all about them. “He’s not taking up medicine, by any chance, or literature? You know, if you want any help about examinations, Cottard can do anything, and I make what use of him I please. As for the Academy later on, for I suppose he’s not old enough yet, I have several notes in my pocket. Your friend would find himself on friendly soil here, and it might amuse him perhaps to see over the house. Life’s not very exciting at Doncières.
But you shall do just what you please, then you can arrange what you think best,” she concluded, without insisting, so as not to appear to be trying to know people of noble birth, and because she always maintained that the system by which she governed the faithful, to wit despotism, was named liberty. “Why, what’s the matter with you,” she said, at the sight of M. Verdurin who, with gestures of impatience, was making for the wooden terrace that ran along the side of the drawing-room above the valley, like a man who is bursting with rage and must have fresh air. “Has Saniette been annoying you again?
But you know what an idiot he is, you have to resign yourself to him, don’t work yourself up into such a state. I dislike this sort of thing,” she said to me, “because it is bad for him, it sends the blood to his head. But I must say that one would need the patience of an angel at times to put up with Saniette, and one must always remember that it is a charity to have him in the house. For my part I must admit that he’s so gloriously silly, I can’t help enjoying him. I dare say you heard what he said after dinner: ‘I can’t play whist, but I can the piano.’ Isn’t it superb? It is positively colossal, and incidentally quite untrue, for he knows nothing at all about either. But my husband, beneath his rough exterior, is very sensitive, very kind-hearted, and Saniette’s self-centred way of always thinking about the effect he is going to make drives him crazy. Come, dear, calm yourself, you know Cottard told you that it was bad for your liver.
And it is I that will have to bear the brunt of it all,” said Mme. Verdurin. “To-morrow Saniette will come back all nerves and tears. Poor man, he is very ill indeed. Still, that is no reason why he should kill other people. Besides, even at times when he is in pain, when one would like to be sorry for him, his silliness hardens one’s heart. He is really too stupid. You have only to tell him quite politely that these scenes make you both ill, and he is not to come again, since that’s what he’s most afraid of, it will have a soothing effect on his nerves,” Mme. Verdurin whispered to her husband.
One could barely make out the sea from the windows on the right. But those on the other side shewed the valley, now shrouded in a snowy cloak of moonlight. Now and again one heard the voices of Morel and Cottard. “You have a trump?” “Yes.” “Ah! You’re in luck, you are,” said M. de Cambremer to Morel, in answer to his question, for he had seen that the doctor’s hand was full of trumps. “Here comes the lady of diamonds,” said the doctor. “That’s a trump, you know? My trick. But there isn’t a Sorbonne any longer,” said the doctor to M. de Cambremer; “there’s only the University of Paris.” M. de Cambremer confessed his inability to understand why the doctor made this remark to him. “I thought you were talking about the Sorbonne,” replied the doctor.
“I heard you say: tu nous la sors bonne,” he added, with a wink, to shew that this was meant for a pun. “Just wait a moment,” he said, pointing to his adversary, “I have a Trafalgar in store for him.” And the prospect must have been excellent for the doctor, for in his joy his shoulders began to shake rapturously with laughter, which in his family, in the ‘breed’ of the Cottards, was an almost zoological sign of satisfaction. In the previous generation the gesture of rubbing the hands together as though one were soaping them used to accompany this movement. Cottard himself had originally employed both forms simultaneously, but one fine day, nobody ever knew by whose intervention, wifely, professorial perhaps, the rubbing of the hands had disappeared. The doctor even at dominoes, when he got his adversary on the run, and made him take the double six, which was to him the keenest of pleasures, contented himself with shaking his shoulders.
And when—which was as seldom as possible—he went down to his native village for a few days, and met his first cousin, who was still at the hand-rubbing stage, he would say to Mme. Cottard on his return: “I thought poor René very common.” “Have you the little dee-ar?” he said, turning to Morel. “No? Then I play this old David.” “Then you have five, you have won!” “That’s a great victory, Doctor,” said the Marquis. “A Pyrrhic victory,” said Cottard, turning to face the Marquis and looking at him over his glasses to judge the effect of his remark. “If there is still time,” he said to Morel, “I give you your revenge. It is my deal. Ah! no, here come the carriages, it will have to be Friday, and I shall shew you a trick you don’t see every day.” M. and Mme. Verdurin accompanied us to the door.
The Mistress was especially coaxing with Saniette so as to make certain of his returning next time. “But you don’t look to me as if you were properly wrapped up, my boy,” said M. Verdurin, whose age allowed him to address me in this paternal tone. “One would say the weather had changed.” These words filled me with joy, as though the profoundly hidden life, the uprising of different combinations which they implied in nature, hinted at other changes, these occurring in my own life, and created fresh possibilities in it. Merely by opening the door upon the park, before leaving, one felt that a different ‘weather’ had, at that mo-merit, taken possession of the scene; cooling breezes, one of the joys of summer, were rising in the fir plantation (where long ago Mme. de Cambremer had dreamed of Chopin) and almost imperceptibly, in caressing coils, capricious eddies, were beginning their gentle nocturnes.
I declined the rug which, on subsequent evenings, I was to accept when Albertine was with me, more to preserve the secrecy of my pleasure than to avoid the risk of cold. A vain search was made for the Norwegian philosopher. Had he been seized by a colic? Had he been afraid of missing the train? Had an aeroplane come to fetch him? Had he been carried aloft in an Assumption? In any case he had vanished without anyone’s noticing his departure, like a god. “You are unwise,” M. de Cambremer said to me, “it’s as cold as charity.” “Why charity?” the doctor inquired. “Beware of choking,” the Marquis went on. “My sister never goes out at night.
However, she is in a pretty bad state at present. In any case you oughtn’t to stand about bare-headed, put your tile on at once.” “They are not frigorifie chokings,” said Cottard sententiously. “Oh, indeed!” M. de Cambremer bowed. “Of course, if that’s your opinion….” “Opinions of the press!” said the doctor, smiling round his glasses. M. de Cambremer laughed, but, feeling certain that he was in the right, insisted: “All the same,” he said, “whenever
