Page 366 - swanns-way

had, one day, risen on the horizon of his mind and since
then had shed upon the world that mysterious light in which
he saw it bathed. If he arrived after the hour at which Odette
sent her servants to bed, before ringing the bell at the gate of
her little garden, he would go round first into the other
street, over which, at the ground-level, among the windows
(all exactly alike, but darkened) of the adjoining houses,
shone the solitary lighted window of her room. He would
rap upon the pane, and she would hear the signal, and an-
swer, before running to meet him at the gate. He would find,
lying open on the piano, some of her favourite music, the
Valse des Roses, the Pauvre Fou of Tagliafico (which, ac-
cording to the instructions embodied in her will, was to be
played at her funeral); but he would ask her, instead, to give
him the little phrase from Vinteuil’s sonata. It was true that
Odette played vilely, but often the fairest impression that re-
mains in our minds of a favourite air is one which has arisen
out of a jumble of wrong notes struck by unskilful fingers
upon a tuneless piano. The little phrase was associated still,
in Swann’s mind, with his love for Odette. He felt clearly
that this love was something to which there were no corre-
sponding external signs, whose meaning could not be
proved by any but himself; he realised, too, that Odette’s
qualities were not such as to justify his setting so high a val-
ue on the hours he spent in her company. And often, when
the cold government of reason stood unchallenged, he
would readily have ceased to sacrifice so many of his intel-
lectual and social interests to this imaginary pleasure. But
the little phrase, as soon as it struck his ear, had the power

366 Swann’s Way