Page 447 - swanns-way

cite Swann to that state of intoxication in which he waxed
tender over their magnanimity, an intoxication which, even
when disseminated through the medium of other persons,
could have come to him from Odette alone;—so the im-
morality (had it really existed) which he now found in the
Verdurins would have been powerless, if they had not in-
vited Odette with Forcheville and without him, to unstop
the vials of his wrath and to make him scarify their ‘in-
famy.’ Doubtless Swann’s voice shewed a finer perspicacity
than his own when it refused to utter those words full of
disgust at the Verdurins and their circle, and of joy at his
having shaken himself free of it, save in an artificial and
rhetorical tone, and as though his words had been chosen
rather to appease his anger than to express his thoughts.
The latter, in fact, while he abandoned himself to invective,
were probably, though he did not know it, occupied with a
wholly different matter, for once he had reached his house,
no sooner had he closed the front-door behind him than
he suddenly struck his forehead, and, making his servant
open the door again, dashed out into the street shouting, in
a voice which, this time, was quite natural; ‘I believe I have
found a way of getting invited to the dinner at Chatou to-
morrow!’ But it must have been a bad way, for M. Swann
was not invited; Dr. Cottard, who, having been summoned
to attend a serious case in the country, had not seen the
Verdurins for some days, and had been prevented from ap-
pearing at Chatou, said, on the evening after this dinner, as
he sat down to table at their house:
‘Why, aren’t we going to see M. Swann this evening?

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