Page 394 - swanns-way

ternoon to an exhibition of the work of another artist, also a
friend of Mme. Verdurin, who had recently died, and Swann
wished to find out from him (for he valued his discrimina-
tion) whether there had really been anything more in this
later work than the virtuosity which had struck people so
forcibly in his earlier exhibitions.
‘From that point of view it was extraordinary, but it did
not seem to me to be a form of art which you could call ‘el-
evated,’’ said Swann with a smile.
‘Elevated... to the height of an Institute!’ interrupted Cot-
tard, raising his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table
burst out laughing.
‘What did I tell you?’ said Mme. Verdurin to Forcheville.
‘It’s simply impossible to be serious with him. When you
least expect it, out he comes with a joke.’
But she observed that Swann, and Swann alone, had not
unbent. For one thing he was none too well pleased with
Cottard for having secured a laugh at his expense in front
of Forcheville. But the painter, instead of replying in a way
that might have interested Swann, as he would probably
have done had they been alone together, preferred to win
the easy admiration of the rest by exercising his wit upon
the talent of their dead friend.
‘I went up to one of them,’ he began, ‘just to see how it
was done; I stuck my nose into it. Yes, I don’t think! Impos-
sible to say whether it was done with glue, with soap, with
sealing-wax, with sunshine, with leaven, with excrem...’
‘And one make twelve!’ shouted the Doctor, wittily, but
just too late, for no one saw the point of his interruption.

394 Swann’s Way