Page 330 - swanns-way

‘I know some one, quite well, called Vinteuil,’ said
Swann, thinking of the old music-master at Combray who
had taught my grandmother’s sisters.
‘Perhaps that’s the man!’ cried Mme. Verdurin.
‘Oh, no!’ Swann burst out laughing. ‘If you had ever seen
him for a moment you wouldn’t put the question.’
‘Then to put the question is to solve the problem?’ the
Doctor suggested.
‘But it may well be some relative,’ Swann went on. ‘That
would be bad enough; but, after all, there is no reason why
a genius shouldn’t have a cousin who is a silly old fool. And
if that should be so, I swear there’s no known or unknown
form of torture I wouldn’t undergo to get the old fool to in-
troduce me to the man who composed the sonata; starting
with the torture of the old fool’s company, which would be
ghastly.’
The painter understood that Vinteuil was seriously ill at
the moment, and that Dr. Potain despaired of his life.
‘What!’ cried Mme. Verdurin, ‘Do people still call in Po-
tain?’
‘Ah! Mme. Verdurin,’ Cottard simpered, ‘you forget that
you are speaking of one of my colleagues—I should say, one
of my masters.’
The painter had heard, somewhere, that Vinteuil was
threatened with the loss of his reason. And he insisted that
signs of this could be detected in certain passages in the so-
nata. This remark did not strike Swann as ridiculous; rather,
it puzzled him. For, since a purely musical work contains
none of those logical sequences, the interruption or confu-

330 Swann’s Way