Page 450 - swanns-way

warned you at the decisive hour in which I felt that I was
going to pass judgment on you, one of those stern judg-
ments which love cannot long resist. You see, your Nuit de
Cléopâtre (what a title!) has no bearing on the point. What I
must know is whether you are indeed one of those creatures
in the lowest grade of mentality and even of charm, one of
those contemptible creatures who are incapable of forego-
ing a pleasure. For if you are such, how could anyone love
you, for you are not even a person, a definite, imperfect, but
at least perceptible entity. You are a formless water that will
trickle down any slope that it may come upon, a fish devoid
of memory, incapable of thought, which all its life long in
its aquarium will continue to dash itself, a hundred times
a day, against a wall of glass, always mistaking it for water.
Do you realise that your answer will have the effect—I do
not say of making me cease from that moment to love you,
that goes without saying, but of making you less attractive
to my eyes when I realise that you are not a person, that
you are beneath everything in the world and have not the
intelligence to raise yourself one inch higher? Obviously, I
should have preferred to ask you, as though it had been a
matter of little or no importance, to give up your Nuit de
Cléopâtre (since you compel me to sully my lips with so ab-
ject a name), in the hope that you would go to it none the
less. But, since I had resolved to weigh you in the balance, to
make so grave an issue depend upon your answer, I consid-
ered it more honourable to give you due warning.’
Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emo-
tion and uncertainty. Although the meaning of his tirade

450 Swann’s Way