Page 384 - swanns-way

Odette, the sight of Odette, conversation with Odette, an
inestimable boon which the Verdurins, by inviting him
to their house, bestowed on Swann, he was happier in the
little ‘nucleus’ than anywhere else, and tried to find some
genuine merit in each of its members, imagining that his
tastes would lead him to frequent their society for the rest
of his life. Never daring to whisper to himself, lest he should
doubt the truth of the suggestion, that he would always be
in love with Odette, at least when he tried to suppose that
he would always go to the Verdurins’ (a proposition which,
a priori, raised fewer fundamental objections on the part of
his intelligence), he saw himself for the future continuing
to meet Odette every evening; that did not, perhaps, come
quite to the same thing as his being permanently in love
with her, but for the moment while he was in love with her,
to feel that he would not, one day, cease to see her was all
that he could ask. ‘What a charming atmosphere!’ he said to
himself. ‘How entirely genuine life is to these people! They
are far more intelligent, far more artistic, surely, than the
people one knows. Mme. Verdurin, in spite of a few trifling
exaggerations which are rather absurd, has a sincere love of
painting and music! What a passion for works of art, what
anxiety to give pleasure to artists! Her ideas about some
of the people one knows are not quite right, but then their
ideas about artistic circles are altogether wrong! Possibly I
make no great intellectual demands upon conversation, but
I am perfectly happy talking to Cottard, although he does
trot out those idiotic puns. And as for the painter, if he is
rather unpleasantly affected when he tries to be paradoxi-

384 Swann’s Way