Page 391 - swanns-way

Verdurin.
‘What are you to say of a scientist like that?’ she asked
Forcheville. ‘You can’t talk seriously to him for two minutes
on end. Is that the sort of thing you tell them at your hos-
pital?’ she went on, turning to the Doctor. ‘They must have
some pretty lively times there, if that’s the case. I can see
that I shall have to get taken in as a patient!’
‘I think I heard the Doctor speak of that wicked old hum-
bug, Blanche of Castile, if I may so express myself. Am I not
right, Madame?’ Brichot appealed to Mme. Verdurin, who,
swooning with merriment, her eyes tightly closed, had bur-
ied her face in her two hands, from between which, now and
then, escaped a muffled scream.
‘Good gracious, Madame, I would not dream of shock-
ing the reverent-minded, if there are any such around this
table, sub rosa... I recognise, moreover, that our ineffable
and Athenian—oh, how infinitely Athenian—Republic is
capable of honouring, in the person of that obscurantist
old she-Capet, the first of our chiefs of police. Yes, indeed,
my dear host, yes, indeed!’ he repeated in his ringing voice,
which sounded a separate note for each syllable, in reply to
a protest by M. Verdurin. ‘The Chronicle of Saint Denis,
and the authenticity of its information is beyond question,
leaves us no room for doubt on that point. No one could
be more fitly chosen as Patron by a secularising proletariat
than that mother of a Saint, who let him see some pretty
fishy saints besides, as Suger says, and other great St. Ber-
nards of the sort; for with her it was a case of taking just
what you pleased.’

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