Page 484 - swanns-way

should like to speak to you about her,’ he went on, ‘you, who
know what a woman supreme above all women, what an
adorable being, what an angel Odette is. But you know, also,
what life is in Paris. Everyone doesn’t see Odette in the light
in which you and I have been Privileged to see her. And so
there are people who think that I am behaving rather fool-
ishly; she won’t even allow me to meet her out of doors, at
the theatre. Now you, in whom she has such enormous con-
fidence, couldn’t you say a few words for me to her, just to
assure her that she exaggerate the harm which my bowing
to her in the street might do her?’
My uncle advised Swann not to see Odette for some days,
after which she would love him all the more; he advised
Odette to let Swann meet he; everywhere, and as often as he
pleased. A few days later Odette told Swann that she had
just had a rude awakening; she had discovered that my un-
cle was the same as other men; he had tried to take her by
assault. She calmed Swann, who, at first, was for rushing out
to challenge my uncle to a duel, but he refused to shake
hands with him when they met again. He regretted this
rupture all the more because he had hoped, if he had met
my uncle Adolphe again sometimes and had contrived to
talk things over with him in strict confidence, to be able to
get him to throw a light on certain rumours with regard to
the life that Odette had led, in the old days, at Nice. For my
uncle Adolphe used to spend the winter there, and Swann
thought that it might indeed have been there, perhaps, that
he had first known Odette. The few words which some one
had let fall, in his hearing, about a man who, it appeared,

484 Swann’s Way