Page 47 - swanns-way

Françoise—the good-natured intermediary who by a single
word has made supportable, human, almost propitious the
inconceivable, infernal scene of gaiety in the thick of which
we had been imagining swarms of enemies, perverse and
seductive, beguiling away from us, even making laugh at
us, the woman whom we love. If we are to judge of them by
him, this relative who has accosted us and who is himself
an initiate in those cruel mysteries, then the other guests
cannot be so very demoniacal. Those inaccessible and tor-
turing hours into which she had gone to taste of unknown
pleasures—behold, a breach in the wall, and we are through
it. Behold, one of the moments whose series will go to make
up their sum, a moment as genuine as the rest, if not actu-
ally more important to ourself because our mistress is more
intensely a part of it; we picture it to ourselves, we possess
it, we intervene upon it, almost we have created it: namely,
the moment in which he goes to tell her that we are waiting
there below. And very probably the other moments of the
party will not be essentially different, will contain nothing
else so exquisite or so well able to make us suffer, since this
kind friend has assured us that ‘Of course, she will be de-
lighted to come down! It will be far more amusing for her
to talk to you than to be bored up there.’ Alas! Swann had
learned by experience that the good intentions of a third
party are powerless to control a woman who is annoyed to
find herself pursued even into a ball-room by a man whom
she does not love. Too often, the kind friend comes down
again alone.
My mother did not appear, but with no attempt to safe-

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