Page 477 - swanns-way

in consequence), if one were to judge it from the point of
view of Swann, who would doubtless have considered that
Odette failed to understand him, just as a morphinomaniac
or a consumptive, each persuaded that he has been thrown
back, one by some outside event, at the moment when he
was just going to shake himself free from his inveterate hab-
it, the other by an accidental indisposition at the moment
when he was just going to be finally cured, feels himself to
be misunderstood by the doctor who does not attach the
same importance to these pretended contingencies, mere
disguises, according to him, assumed, so as to be percep-
tible by his patients, by the vice of one and the morbid state
of the other, which in reality have never ceased to weigh
heavily and incurably upon them while they were nursing
their dreams of normality and health. And, as a matter of
fact, Swann’s love had reached that stage at which the phy-
sician and (in the case of certain affections) the boldest of
surgeons ask themselves whether to deprive a patient of his
vice or to rid him of his malady is still reasonable, or indeed
possible.
Certainly, of the extent of this love Swann had no di-
rect knowledge. When he sought to measure it, it happened
sometimes that he found it diminished, shrunken almost
to nothing; for instance, the very moderate liking, amount-
ing almost to dislike, which, in the days before he was in
love with Odette, he had felt for her expressive features,
her faded complexion, returned on certain days. ‘Really, I
am making distinct headway,’ he would tell himself on the
morrow, ‘when I come to think it over carefully, I find out

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