Page 309 - swanns-way

secure the fullest information upon it.
As regards figures of speech, he was insatiable in his
thirst for knowledge, for often imagining them to have a
more definite meaning than was actually the case, he would
want to know what, exactly, was intended by those which he
most frequently heard used: ‘devilish pretty,’ ‘blue blood,’
‘a cat and dog life,’ ‘a day of reckoning,’ ‘a queen of fash-
ion, ‘to give a free hand,’ ‘to be at a deadlock,’ and so forth;
and in what particular circumstances he himself might
make use of them in conversation. Failing these, he would
adorn it with puns and other ‘plays upon words’ which he
had learned by rote. As for the names of strangers which
were uttered in his hearing, he used merely to repeat them
to himself in a questioning tone, which, he thought, would
suffice to furnish him with explanations for which he would
not ostensibly seek.
As the critical faculty, on the universal application of
which he prided himself, was, in reality, completely lack-
ing, that refinement of good breeding which consists in
assuring some one whom you are obliging in any way, with-
out expecting to be believed, that it is really yourself that
is obliged to him, was wasted on Cottard, who took every-
thing that he heard in its literal sense. However blind she
may have been to his faults, Mme. Verdurin was genuinely
annoyed, though she still continued to regard him as bril-
liantly clever, when, after she had invited him to see and
hear Sarah Bernhardt from a stage box, and had said po-
litely: ‘It is very good of you to have come, Doctor, especially
as I’m sure you must often have heard Sarah Bernhardt; and

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