Page 395 - swanns-way

‘It looks as though it were done with nothing at all,’ re-
sumed the painter. ‘No more chance of discovering the trick
than there is in the ‘Night Watch,’ or the ‘Regents,’ and it’s
even bigger work than either Rembrandt or Hals ever did.
It’s all there,—and yet, no, I’ll take my oath it isn’t.’
Then, just as singers who have reached the highest note
in their compass, proceed to hum the rest of the air in fal-
setto, he had to be satisfied with murmuring, smiling the
while, as if, after all, there had been something irresistibly
amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting: ‘It smells all
right; it makes your head go round; it catches your breath;
you feel ticklish all over—and not the faintest clue to how
it’s done. The man’s a sorcerer; the thing’s a conjuring-trick,
it’s a miracle,’ bursting outright into laughter, ‘it’s dishon-
est!’ Then stopping, solemnly raising his head, pitching his
voice on a double-bass note which he struggled to bring into
harmony, he concluded, ‘And it’s so loyal!’
Except at the moment when he had called it ‘bigger than
the ‘Night Watch,’’ a blasphemy which had called forth an
instant protest from Mme. Verdurin, who regarded the
‘Night Watch’ as the supreme masterpiece of the universe
(conjointly with the ‘Ninth’ and the ‘Samothrace’), and at
the word ‘excrement,’ which had made Forcheville throw a
sweeping glance round the table to see whether it was ‘all
right,’ before he allowed his lips to curve in a prudish and
conciliatory smile, all the party (save Swann) had kept their
fascinated and adoring eyes fixed upon the painter.
‘I do so love him when he goes up in the air like that!’
cried Mme. Verdurin, the moment that he had finished,

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