to stay in the room there by her side, despite the winter, in the glowing flesh tints of their nudity, as though it were already spring. By reason of the muffling of all sound in the carpets, and of the remoteness of her cosy retreat, the lady of the house, not being apprised of your entry as she is to-day, would continue to read almost until you were standing before her chair, which enhanced still further that sense of the romantic, that charm of a sort of secret discovery, which we find to-day in the memory of those gowns, already out of fashion even then, which Mme. Swann was perhaps alone in not having discarded, and which give us the feeling that the woman who wore them must have been the heroine of a novel because most of us have scarcely set eyes on them outside the pages of certain of Henry Gréville’s tales. Odette had, at this time, in her drawing-room, when winter began, chrysanthemums of enormous size and of a variety of colours such as Swann, in the old days, certainly never saw in her drawing-room in the Rue La Pérouse. My admiration for them—when I went to pay Mme. Swann one of those melancholy visits during which, prompted by my sorrow, I discovered in her all the mystical poetry of her character as the mother of that Gilberte to whom she would say on the morrow: “Your friend came to see me yesterday,”—sprang, no doubt, from my sense that, rose-pale like the Louis XIV silk that covered her chairs, snow white like her crêpe-de-Chine wrapper, or of a metallic red like her samovar, they superimposed upon the decoration of the room another, a supplementary scheme of decoration, as rich, as delicate in its colouring, but one which was alive and would last for a few days only. But I was touched to find that these chrysanthemums appeared less ephemeral than, one might almost say, lasting, when I compared them with the tones, as pink, as coppery, which the setting sun so gorgeously displays amid the mists of a November afternoon, and which, after seeing them, before I had entered the house, fade from the sky, I found again inside, prolonged, transposed on to the flaming palette of the flowers. Like the fires caught and fixed by a great colourist from the impermanence of the atmosphere and the sun, so that they should enter and adorn a human dwelling, they invited me, those chrysanthemums, to put away all my sorrows and to taste with a greedy rapture during that “tea-time” the too fleeting joys of November, of which they set ablaze all around me the intimate and mystical glory. Alas, it was not in the conversations to which I must listen that I could hope to attain to that glory; they had but little in common with it. Even with Mme. Cottard, and although it was growing late, Mme. Swann would assume her most caressing manner to say: “Oh, no, it’s not late, really; you mustn’t look at the clock; that’s not the right time; it’s stopped; you can’t possibly have anything else to do now, why be in such a hurry?” as she pressed a final tartlet upon the Professor’s wife, who was gripping her card-case in readiness for flight.

“One simply can’t tear oneself away from this house!” observed Mme. Bontemps to Mme. Swann, while Mme. Cottard, in her astonishment at hearing her own thought put into words, exclaimed: “Why, that’s just what I always say myself, what I tell my own little judge, in the court of conscience!” winning the applause of the gentlemen from the Jockey Club, who had been profuse in their salutations, as though confounded at such an honour’s being done them, when Mme. Swann had introduced them to this common and by no means attractive little woman, who kept herself, when confronted with Odette’s brilliant friends, in reserve, if not on what she herself called “the defensive”, for she always used stately language to describe the simplest happenings. “I should never have suspected it,” was Mme. Swann’s comment, “three Wednesdays running you’ve played me false.” “That’s quite true, Odette; it’s simply ages, it’s an eternity since I saw you last. You see, I plead guilty; but I must tell you,” she went on with a vague suggestion of outraged modesty, for although a doctor’s wife she would never have dared to speak without periphrasis of rheumatism or of a chill on the kidneys, “that I have had a lot of little troubles. As we all have, I dare say. And besides that I’ve had a crisis among my masculine domestics. I’m sure, I’m no more imbued with a sense of my own authority than most ladies; still I’ve been obliged, just to make an example you know, to give my Vatel notice; I believe he was looking out anyhow for a more remunerative place. But his departure nearly brought about the resignation of my entire ministry. My own maid refused to stay in the house a moment longer; oh, we have had some Homeric scenes. However I held fast to the reins through thick and thin; the whole affair’s been a perfect lesson, which won’t be lost on me, I can tell you. I’m afraid I’m boring you with all these stories about servants, but you know as well as I do what a business it is when one is obliged to set about rearranging one’s household.

“Aren’t we to see anything of your delicious child?” she wound up. “No, my delicious child is dining with a friend,” replied Mme. Swann, and then, turning to me: “I believe she’s written to you, asking you to come and see her to-morrow. And your babies?” she went on to Mme. Cottard. I breathed a sigh of relief. These words by which Mme. Swann proved to me that I could see Gilberte whenever I chose gave me precisely the comfort which I had come to seek, and which at that time made my visits to Mme. Swann so necessary. “No, I’m afraid not; I shall write to her, anyhow, this evening. Gilberte and I never seem to see one another now,” I added, pretending to attribute our separation to some mysterious agency, which gave me a further illusion of being in love, supported as well by the affectionate way in which I spoke of Gilberte and she of me. “You know, she’s simply devoted to you,” said Mme. Swann. “Really, you won’t come to-morrow?” Suddenly my heart rose on wings; the thought had just struck me—”After all, why shouldn’t I, since it’s her own mother who suggests it?” But with the thought I fell back into my old depression. I was afraid now lest, when she saw me again, Gilberte might think that my indifference of late had been feigned, and it seemed wiser to prolong our separation. During these asides Mme. Bontemps had been complaining of the insufferable dulness of politicians’ wives, for she pretended to find everyone too deadly or too stupid for words, and to deplore her husband’s official position. “Do you mean to say you can shake hands with fifty doctors’ wives, like that, one after the other?” she exclaimed to Mme. Cottard, who, unlike her, was full of the kindest feelings for everybody and of determination to do her duty in every respect. “Ah! you’re a law-abiding woman! You see, in my case, at the Ministry, don’t you know, I simply have to keep it up, of course. It’s too much for me, I can tell you; you know what those officials’ wives are like, it’s all I can do not to put my tongue out at them. And my niece Albertine is just like me. You really wouldn’t believe the impudence that girl has. Last week, on my ‘day’, I had the wife of the Under Secretary of State for Finance, who told us that she knew nothing at all about cooking. ‘But surely, ma’am,’ my niece chipped in with her most winning smile, ‘you ought to know everything about it, after all the dishes your father had to wash.'” “Oh, I do love that story; I think it’s simply exquisite!” cried Mme. Swann. “But certainly on the Doctor’s consultation days you should make a point of being ‘at home’, among your flowers and books and all your pretty things,” she urged Mme. Cottard. “Straight out like that! Bang! Right in the face; bang! She made no bones about it, I can tell you! And she’d never said a word to me about it, the little wretch; she’s as cunning as a monkey. You are lucky to be able to control yourself; I do envy people who can hide what is in their minds.” “But I’ve no need to do that, Mme. Bontemps, I’m not so hard to please,” Mme. Cottard gently expostulated. “For one thing, I’m not in such a privileged position,” she went on, slightly raising her voice as was her custom, as though she were underlining the point of her remark, whenever she slipped into the conversation any of those delicate courtesies, those skilful flatteries which won her the admiration and assisted the career of her husband. “And besides I’m only too glad to do anything that can be of use to the Professor.”

“But, my dear, it isn’t what one’s glad to do; it’s what one is able to do! I expect you’re not nervous. Do you know, whenever I see the War Minister’s wife making faces, I start copying her at once. It’s a dreadful thing