Page 402 - swanns-way

a corridor a ‘collidor’!
‘You’d need to pay me a lot of money before I’d let any of
that lot set foot inside my house,’ Mme. Verdurin conclud-
ed, gazing imperially down on Swann.
She could scarcely have expected him to capitulate so
completely as to echo the holy simplicity of the pianist’s
aunt, who at once exclaimed: ‘To think of that, now! What
surprises me is that they can get anybody to go near them;
I’m sure I should be afraid; one can’t be too careful. How
can people be so common as to go running after them?’
But he might, at least, have replied, like Forcheville:
‘Gad, she’s a duchess; there are still plenty of people who are
impressed by that sort of thing,’ which would at least have
permitted Mme. Verdurin the final retort, ‘And a lot of good
may it do them!’ Instead of which, Swann merely smiled, in
a manner which shewed, quite clearly, that he could not, of
course, take such an absurd suggestion seriously. M. Verdu-
rin, who was still casting furtive and intermittent glances at
his wife, could see with regret, and could understand only
too well that she was now inflamed with the passion of a
Grand Inquisitor who cannot succeed in stamping out a
heresy; and so, in the hope of bringing Swann round to a
retractation (for the courage of one’s opinions is always a
form of calculating cowardice in the eyes of the ‘other side’),
he broke in:
‘Tell us frankly, now, what you think of them yourself.
We shan’t repeat it to them, you may be sure.’
To which Swann answered: ‘Why, I’m not in the least
afraid of the Duchess (if it is of the La Trémoïlles that you’re

402 Swann’s Way