Page 483 - swanns-way

and M. de Charlus informed him, later in the evening, that
his device had not proved successful. With the result that,
if she was now frequently away from Paris, even when she
was there he scarcely saw her; that she who, when she was in
love with him, used to say, ‘I am always free’ and ‘What can
it matter to me, what other people think?’ now, whenever
he wanted to see her, appealed to the proprieties or pleaded
some engagement. When he spoke of going to a charity en-
tertainment, or a private view, or a first-night at which she
was to be present, she would expostulate that he wished to
advertise their relations in public, that he was treating her
like a woman off the streets. Things came to such a pitch
that, in an effort to save himself from being altogether for-
bidden to meet her anywhere, Swann, remembering that
she knew and was deeply attached to my great-uncle Adol-
phe, whose friend he himself also had been, went one day to
see him in his little flat in the Rue de Bellechasse, to ask him
to use his influence with Odette. As it happened, she invari-
ably adopted, when she spoke to Swann about my uncle, a
poetical tone, saying: ‘Ah, he! He is not in the least like you;
it is an exquisite thing, a great, a beautiful thing, his friend-
ship for me. He’s not the sort of man who would have so
little consideration for me as to let himself be seen with me
everywhere in public.’ This was embarrassing for Swann,
who did not know quite to what rhetorical pitch he should
screw himself up in speaking of Odette to my uncle. He be-
gan by alluding to her excellence, a priori, the axiom of her
seraphic super-humanity, the revelation of her inexpressible
virtues, no conception of which could possibly be formed. ‘I

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