Page 297 - swanns-way

a special charm that was new to him, to remain on his
‘high horse’ and to cheat the desire that she had kindled
in him, to substitute a pleasure different from that which
he might have tasted in her company by writing to invite
one of his former mistresses to come and join him, would
have seemed to him as cowardly an abdication in the face
of life, as stupid a renunciation of a new form of happiness
as if, instead of visiting the country where he was, he had
shut himself up in his own rooms and looked at ‘views’ of
Paris. He did not immure himself in the solid structure of
his social relations, but had made of them, so as to be able
to set it up afresh upon new foundations wherever a woman
might take his fancy, one of those collapsible tents which
explorers carry about with them. Any part of it which was
not portable or could not be adapted to some fresh pleasure
he would discard as valueless, however enviable it might
appear to others. How often had his credit with a duchess,
built up of the yearly accumulation of her desire to do him
some favour for which she had never found an opportunity,
been squandered in a moment by his calling upon her, in
an indiscreetly worded message, for a recommendation by
telegraph which would put him in touch at once with one
of her agents whose daughter he had noticed in the coun-
try, just as a starving man might barter a diamond for a
crust of bread. Indeed, when it was too late, he would laugh
at himself for it, for there was in his nature, redeemed by
many rare refinements, an element of clownishness. Then
he belonged to that class of intelligent men who have led a
life of idleness, and who seek consolation and, perhaps, an

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