Page 466 - swanns-way

Verdurins’.
At such times Swann detested her. ‘But I’ve been a fool,
too,’ he would argue. ‘I’m paying for other men’s pleasures
with my money. All the same, she’d better take care, and not
pull the string too often, for I might very well stop giving
her anything at all. At any rate, we’d better knock off sup-
plementary favours for the time being. To think that, only
yesterday, when she said she would like to go to Bayreuth for
the season, I was such an ass as to offer to take one of those
jolly little places the King of Bavaria has there, for the two
of us. However she didn’t seem particularly keen; she hasn’t
said yes or no yet. Let’s hope that she’ll refuse. Good God!
Think of listening to Wagner for a fortnight on end with
her, who takes about as much interest in music as a fish does
in little apples; it will be fun!’ And his hatred, like his love,
needing to manifest itself in action, he amused himself with
urging his evil imaginings further and further, because,
thanks to the perfidies with which he charged Odette, he
detested her still more, and would be able, if it turned out—
as he tried to convince himself—that she was indeed guilty
of them, to take the opportunity of punishing her, emptying
upon her the overflowing vials of his wrath. In this way, he
went so far as to suppose that he was going to receive a let-
ter from her, in which she would ask him for money to take
the house at Bayreuth, but with the warning that he was not
to come there himself, as she had promised Forcheville and
the Verdurins to invite them. Oh, how he would have loved
it, had it been conceivable that she would have that audac-
ity. What joy he would have in refusing, in drawing up that

466 Swann’s Way