Page 137 - swanns-way

only fairly rhythmical, but has also what is in my eyes the
supreme merit of meaning absolutely nothing. One is
La blanche Oloossone et la blanche Camire,
and the other
La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë.
They were submitted to my judgment, as evidence for the
defence of the two runagates, in an article by my very dear
master Father Lecomte, who is found pleasing in the sight
of the immortal gods. By which token, here is a book which
I have not the time, just now, to read, a book recommend-
ed, it would seem, by that colossal fellow. He regards, or so
they tell me, its author, one Bergotte, Esquire, as a subtle
scribe, more subtle, indeed, than any beast of the field; and,
albeit he exhibits on occasion a critical pacifism, a tender-
ness in suffering fools, for which it is impossible to account,
and hard to make allowance, still his word has weight with
me as it were the Delphic Oracle. Read you then this lyri-
cal prose, and, if the Titanic master-builder of rhythm who
composed Bhagavat and the Lévrier de Magnus speaks not
falsely, then, by Apollo, you may taste, even you, my mas-
ter, the ambrosial joys of Olympus.’ It was in an ostensible
vein of sarcasm that he had asked me to call him, and that
he himself called me, ‘my master.’ But, as a matter of fact,
we each derived a certain amount of satisfaction from the
mannerism, being still at the age in which one believes that
one gives a thing real existence by giving it a name.
Unfortunately I was not able to set at rest, by further
talks with Bloch, in which I might have insisted upon an
explanation, the doubts he had engendered in me when he

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