Page 460 - swanns-way

and hardened until they assumed the indestructibility of a
truth so indubitable that, if some friend happened to tell
him that he had come by the same train and had not seen
Odette, Swann would have been convinced that it was his
friend who had made a mistake as to the day or hour, since
his version did not agree with the words uttered by Odette.
These words had never appeared to him false except when,
before hearing them, he had suspected that they were going
to be. For him to believe that she was lying, an anticipatory
suspicion was indispensable. It was also, however, sufficient.
Given that, everything that Odette might say appeared to
him suspect. Did she mention a name: it was obviously that
of one of her lovers; once this supposition had taken shape,
he would spend weeks in tormenting himself; on one occa-
sion he even approached a firm of ‘inquiry agents’ to find
out the address and the occupation of the unknown rival
who would give him no peace until he could be proved to
have gone abroad, and who (he ultimately learned) was an
uncle of Odette, and had been dead for twenty years.
Although she would not allow him, as a rule, to meet
her at public gatherings, saying that people would talk, it
happened occasionally that, at an evening party to which
he and she had each been invited—at Forcheville’s, at the
painter’s, or at a charity ball given in one of the Ministries—
he found himself in the same room with her. He could see
her, but dared not remain for fear of annoying her by seem-
ing to be spying upon the pleasures which she tasted in
other company, pleasures which—while he drove home in
utter loneliness, and went to bed, as anxiously as I myself

460 Swann’s Way