Page 408 - swanns-way

account let Swann hear about it. He spoils everything, don’t
you know. I don’t mean to say that you’re not to come to
dinner too, of course; we hope to see you very often. Now
that the warm weather’s coming, we’re going to have dinner
out of doors whenever we can. That won’t bore you, will it,
a quiet little dinner, now and then, in the Bois? Splendid,
splendid, that will be quite delightful. ...
‘Aren’t you going to do any work this evening, I say?’ she
screamed suddenly to the little pianist, seeing an oppor-
tunity for displaying, before a ‘newcomer’ of Forcheville’s
importance, at once her unfailing wit and her despotic pow-
er over the ‘faithful.’
‘M. de Forcheville was just going to say something
dreadful about you,’ Mme. Cottard warned her husband as
he reappeared in the room. And he, still following up the
idea of Forcheville’s noble birth, which had obsessed him all
through dinner, began again with: ‘I am treating a Baron-
ess just now, Baroness Putbus; weren’t there some Putbuses
in the Crusades? Anyhow they’ve got a lake in Pomera-
nia that’s ten times the size of the Place de la Concorde. I
am treating her for dry arthritis; she’s a charming woman.
Mme. Verdurin knows her too, I believe.’
Which enabled Forcheville, a moment later, finding him-
self alone with Mme. Cottard, to complete his favourable
verdict on her husband with: ‘He’s an interesting man, too;
you can see that he knows some good people. Gad! but they
get to know a lot of things, those doctors.’
‘D’you want me to play the phrase from the sonata for M.
Swann?’ asked the pianist.

408 Swann’s Way