In Search Of Lost Time. Volumes 1 to 7. Marcel Proust

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ supreme masterpiece of the universe (conjointly with the ‘Ninth’ and the ‘Samothrace’), and at the word “excrement,” which had made Forcheville throw a sweeping glance round the table to see whether it was ‘all right,’ before he allowed his lips to curve in a prudish and conciliatory smile, all the party (save Swann) had kept their fascinated and adoring eyes fixed upon the painter.

      “I do so love him when he goes up in the air like that!” cried Mme. Verdurin, the moment that he had finished, enraptured that the table-talk should have proved so entertaining on the very night that Forcheville was dining with them for the first time. “Hallo, you!” she turned to her husband, “what’s the matter with you, sitting there gaping like a great animal? You know, though, don’t you,” she apologised for him to the painter, “that he can talk quite well when he chooses; anybody would think it was the first time he had ever listened to you. If you had only seen him while you were speaking; he was just drinking it all in. And to-morrow he will tell us everything you said, without missing a word.”

      “No, really, I’m not joking!” protested the painter, enchanted by the success of his speech. “You all look as if you thought I was pulling your legs, that it was just a trick. I’ll take you to see the show, and then you can say whether I’ve been exaggerating; I’ll bet you anything you like, you’ll come away more ‘up in the air’ than I am!”

      “But we don’t suppose for a moment that you’re exaggerating; we only want you to go on with your dinner, and my husband too. Give M. Biche some more sole, can’t you see his has got cold? We’re not in any hurry; you’re dashing round as if the house was on fire. Wait a little; don’t serve the salad just yet.”

      Mme. Cottard, who was a shy woman and spoke but seldom, was not lacking, for all that, in self-assurance when a happy inspiration put the right word in her mouth. She felt that it would be well received; the thought gave her confidence, and what she was doing was done with the object not so much of shining herself, as of helping her husband on in his career. And so she did not allow the word ‘salad,’ which Mme. Verdurin had just uttered, to pass unchallenged.

      “It’s not a Japanese salad, is it?” she whispered, turning towards Odette.

      And then, in her joy and confusion at the combination of neatness and daring which there had been in making so discreet and yet so unmistakable an allusion to the new and brilliantly successful play by Dumas, she broke down in a charming, girlish laugh, not very loud, but so irresistible that it was some time before she could control it.

      “Who is that lady? She seems devilish clever,” said Forcheville.

      “No, it is not. But we will have one for you if you will all come to dinner on Friday.”

      “You will think me dreadfully provincial, sir,” said Mme. Cottard to Swann, “but, do you know, I haven’t been yet to this famous Francillon that everybody’s talking about. The Doctor has been (I remember now, he told me what a very great pleasure it had been to him to spend the evening with you there) and I must confess, I don’t see much sense in spending money on seats for him to take me, when he’s seen the play already. Of course an evening at the Théâtre-Français is never wasted, really; the acting’s so good there always; but we have some very nice friends,” (Mme. Cottard would hardly ever utter a proper name, but restricted herself to “some friends of ours” or “one of my friends,” as being more ‘distinguished,’ speaking in an affected tone and with all the importance of a person who need give names only when she chooses) “who often have a box, and are kind enough to take us to all the new pieces that are worth going to, and so I’m certain to see this Francillon sooner or later, and then I shall know what to think. But I do feel such a fool about it, I must confess, for, whenever I pay a call anywhere, I find everybody talking—it’s only natural—about that wretched Japanese salad. Really and truly, one’s beginning to get just a little tired of hearing about it,” she went on, seeing that Swann seemed less interested than she had hoped in so burning a topic. “I must admit, though, that it’s sometimes quite amusing, the way they joke about it: I’ve got a friend, now, who is most original, though she’s really a beautiful woman, most popular in society, goes everywhere, and she tells me that she got her cook to make one of these Japanese salads, putting in everything that young M. Dumas says you’re to put in, in the play. Then she asked just a few friends to come and taste it. I was not among the favoured few, I’m sorry to say. But she told us all about it on her next ‘day’; it seems it was quite horrible, she made us all laugh till we cried. I don’t know; perhaps it was the way she told it,” Mme. Cottard added doubtfully, seeing that Swann still looked grave.

      And, imagining that it was, perhaps, because he had not been amused by Francillon: “Well, I daresay I shall be disappointed with it, after all. I don’t suppose it’s as good as the piece Mme. de Crécy worships, Serge Panine. There’s a play, if you like; so deep, makes you think! But just fancy giving a receipt for a salad on the stage of the Théâtre-Français! Now, Serge Panine—! But then, it’s like everything that comes from the pen of M. Georges Ohnet, it’s so well written. I wonder if you know the Maître des Forges, which I like even better than Serge Panine.”

      “Pardon me,” said Swann with polite irony, “but I can assure you that my want of admiration is almost equally divided between those masterpieces.”

      “Really, now; that’s very interesting. And what don’t you like about them? Won’t you ever change your mind? Perhaps you think he’s a little too sad. Well, well, what I always say is, one should never argue about plays or novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things, and what may be horrible to you is, perhaps, just what I like best.”

      She was interrupted by Forcheville’s addressing Swann. What had happened was that, while Mme. Cottard was discussing Francillon, Forcheville had been expressing to Mme. Verdurin his admiration for what he called the “little speech” of the painter. “Your friend has such a flow of language, such a memory!” he had said to her when the painter had come to a standstill, “I’ve seldom seen anything like it. He’d make a first-rate preacher. By Jove, I wish I was like that. What with him and M. Bréchot you’ve drawn two lucky numbers to-night; though I’m not so sure that, simply as a speaker, this one doesn’t knock spots off the Professor. It comes more naturally with him, less like reading from a book. Of course, the way he goes on, he does use some words that are a bit realistic, and all that; but that’s quite the thing nowadays; anyhow, it’s not often I’ve seen a man hold the floor as cleverly as that, ‘hold the spittoon,’ as we used to say in the regiment, where, by the way, we had a man he rather reminds me of. You could take anything you liked—I don’t know what—this glass, say; and he’d talk away about it for hours; no, not this glass; that’s a silly thing to say, I’m sorry; but something a little bigger, like the battle of Waterloo, or anything of that sort, he’d tell you things you simply wouldn’t believe. Why, Swann was in the regiment then; he must have known him.”

      “Do you see much of M. Swann?” asked Mme. Verdurin.

      “Oh dear, no!” he answered, and then, thinking that if he made himself pleasant to Swann he might find favour with Odette, he decided to take this opportunity of flattering him by speaking of his fashionable friends, but speaking as a man of the world himself, in a tone of good-natured criticism, and not as though he were congratulating Swann upon some undeserved good fortune: “Isn’t that so, Swann? I never see anything of you, do I?—But then, where on earth is one to see him? The creature spends all his time shut up with the La Trémoïlles, with the Laumes and all that lot!” The imputation would have been false at any time, and was all the more so, now that for at least a year Swann had given up going to almost any house but the Verdurins’. But the mere names of families whom the Verdurins did not know were received by them in a reproachful silence. M. Verdurin, dreading the painful impression which the mention of these ‘bores,’ especially when flung at her in this tactless fashion, СКАЧАТЬ