Page 304 - swanns-way

him, that her really considerable beauty was not of the kind
which he spontaneously admired. It must be remarked that
Odette’s face appeared thinner and more prominent than it
actually was, because her forehead and the upper part of her
cheeks, a single and almost plane surface, were covered by
the masses of hair which women wore at that period, drawn
forward in a fringe, raised in crimped waves and falling in
stray locks over her ears; while as for her figure, and she was
admirably built, it was impossible to make out its continu-
ity (on account of the fashion then prevailing, and in spite
of her being one of the best-dressed women in Paris) for
the corset, jetting forwards in an arch, as though over an
imaginary stomach, and ending in a sharp point, beneath
which bulged out the balloon of her double skirts, gave a
woman, that year, the appearance of being composed of dif-
ferent sections badly fitted together; to such an extent did
the frills, the flounces, the inner bodice follow, in complete
independence, controlled only by the fancy of their design-
er or the rigidity of their material, the line which led them
to the knots of ribbon, falls of lace, fringes of vertically
hanging jet, or carried them along the bust, but nowhere
attached themselves to the living creature, who, according
as the architecture of their fripperies drew them towards or
away from her own, found herself either strait-laced to suf-
focation or else completely buried.
But, after Odette had left him, Swann would think with
a smile of her telling him how the time would drag until
he allowed her to come again; he remembered the anxious,
timid way in which she had once begged him that it might

304 Swann’s Way