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young pianist sat down to play, never failed to delight the
audience, as though each of them were witnessing it for the
first time, as a proof of the seductive originality of the ‘Mis-
tress’ as she was styled, and of the acute sensitiveness of her
musical ‘ear.’ Those nearest to her would attract the atten-
tion of the rest, who were smoking or playing cards at the
other end of the room, by their cries of ‘Hear, hear!’ which,
as in Parliamentary debates, shewed that something worth
listening to was being said. And next day they would com-
miserate with those who had been prevented from coming
that evening, and would assure them that the ‘little scene’
had never been so amusingly done.
‘Well, all right, then,’ said M. Verdurin, ‘he can play just
the andante.’
‘Just the andante! How you do go on,’ cried his wife. ‘As
if it weren’t ‘just the andante’ that breaks every bone in my
body. The ‘Master’ is really too priceless! Just as though, ‘in
the Ninth,’ he said ‘we need only have the finale,’ or ‘just the
overture’ of the Meistersinger.’
The Doctor, however, urged Mme. Verdurin to let the pi-
anist play, not because he supposed her to be malingering
when she spoke of the distressing effects that music always
had upon her, for he recognised the existence of certain
neurasthenic states—but from his habit, common to many
doctors, of at once relaxing the strict letter of a prescription
as soon as it appeared to jeopardise, what seemed to him
far more important, the success of some social gathering
at which he was present, and of which the patient whom
he had urged for once to forget her dyspepsia or headache

318 Swann’s Way