Page 419 - swanns-way

trained and twined by the gardener’s skilful hand, there ran
all about his table currant-bush and rose.
After dinner, if he had an early appointment in the Bois
or at Saint-Cloud, he would rise from table and leave the
house so abruptly—especially if it threatened to rain, and
so to scatter the ‘faithful’ before their normal time—that
on one occasion the Princesse des Laumes (at whose house
dinner had been so late that Swann had left before the cof-
fee came in, to join the Verdurins on the Island in the Bois)
observed:
‘Really, if Swann were thirty years older, and had diabe-
tes, there might be some excuse for his running away like
that. He seems to look upon us all as a joke.’
He persuaded himself that the spring-time charm, which
he could not go down to Combray to enjoy, he would find at
least on the He des Cygnes or at Saint-Cloud. But as he could
think only of Odette, he would return home not knowing
even if he had tasted the fragrance of the young leaves, or
if the moon had been shining. He would be welcomed by
the little phrase from the sonata, played in the garden on
the restaurant piano. If there was none in the garden, the
Verdurins would have taken immense pains to have a piano
brought out either from a private room or from the restau-
rant itself; not because Swann was now restored to favour;
far from it. But the idea of arranging an ingenious form of
entertainment for some one, even for some one whom they
disliked, would stimulate them, during the time spent in its
preparation, to a momentary sense of cordiality and affec-
tion. Now and then he would remind himself that another

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