Page 172 - swanns-way

a compliment that, when she came to see him, he must play
her something of his own. M. Vinteuil would have liked
nothing better, but he carried politeness and consideration
for others to so fine a point, always putting himself in their
place, that he was afraid of boring them, or of appearing
egotistical, if he carried out, or even allowed them to sus-
pect what were his own desires. On the day when my parents
had gone to pay him a visit, I had accompanied them, but
they had allowed me to remain outside, and as M. Vinteuil’s
house, Montjouvain, stood on a site actually hollowed out
from a steep hill covered with shrubs, among which I took
cover, I had found myself on a level with his drawing-room,
upstairs, and only a few feet away from its window. When
a servant came in to tell him that my parents had arrived,
I had seen M. Vinteuil run to the piano and lay out a sheet
of music so as to catch the eye. But as soon as they entered
the room he had snatched it away and hidden it in a cor-
ner. He was afraid, no doubt, of letting them suppose that
he was glad to see them only because it gave him a chance
of playing them some of his compositions. And every time
that my mother, in the course of her visit, had returned to
the subject of his playing, he had hurriedly protested: ‘I can-
not think who put that on the piano; it is not the proper
place for it at all,’ and had turned the conversation aside to
other topics, simply because those were of less interest to
himself.
His one and only passion was for his daughter, and she,
with her somewhat boyish appearance, looked so robust
that it was hard to restrain a smile when one saw the pre-

172 Swann’s Way