Page 445 - swanns-way

at an end,’ he concluded, as though this sacred mission to
tear Odette away from an atmosphere of sarcasms dated
from longer than a few minutes ago, as though he had not
undertaken it only since it had occurred to him that those
sarcasms might, perchance, be directed at himself, and
might have the effect of detaching Odette from him.
He could see the pianist sitting down to play the Moon-
light Sonata, and the grimaces of Mme. Verdurin, in
terrified anticipation of the wrecking of her nerves by
Beethoven’s music. ‘Idiot, liar!’ he shouted, ‘and a creature
like that imagines that she’s fond of Art!’ She would say to
Odette, after deftly insinuating a few words of praise for
Forcheville, as she had so often done for himself: ‘You can
make room for M. de Forcheville there, can’t you, Odette?’...
‘“In the dark!’ Codfish! Pander!’ ... ‘Pander’ was the name
he applied also to the music which would invite them to sit
in silence, to dream together, to gaze in each other’s eyes, to
feel for each other’s hands. He felt that there was much to be
said, after all, for a sternly censorous attitude towards the
arts, such as Plato adopted, and Bossuet, and the old school
of education in France.
In a word, the life which they led at the Verdurins’, which
he had so often described as ‘genuine,’ seemed to him now
the worst possible form of life, and their ‘little nucleus’ the
most degraded class of society. ‘It really is,’ he repeated, ‘be-
neath the lowest rung of the social ladder, the nethermost
circle of Dante. Beyond a doubt, the august words of the
Florentine refer to the Verdurins! When one comes to think
of it, surely people ‘in society’ (and, though one may find

445