Page 506 - swanns-way

Swann now found himself packed, there was nothing (even
to the monocle which many of them wore, and which, pre-
viously, would, at the most, have enabled Swann to say that
so-and-so wore a monocle) which, no longer restricted to
the general connotation of a habit, the same in all of them,
did not now strike him with a sense of individuality in each.
Perhaps because he did not regard General de Froberville
and the Marquis de Bréaute, who were talking together just
inside the door, as anything more than two figures in a pic-
ture, whereas they were the old and useful friends who had
put him up for the Jockey Club and had supported him in
duels, the General’s monocle, stuck like a shell-splinter in
his common, scarred, victorious, overbearing face, in the
middle of a forehead which it left half-blinded, like the sin-
gle-eyed flashing front of the Cyclops, appeared to Swann as
a monstrous wound which it might have been glorious to re-
ceive but which it was certainly not decent to expose, while
that which M. de Bréaute wore, as a festive badge, with his
pearl-grey gloves, his crush hat and white tie, substituting it
for the familiar pair of glasses (as Swann himself did) when
he went out to places, bore, glued to its other side, like a
specimen prepared on a slide for the microscope, an infini-
tesimal gaze that swarmed with friendly feeling and never
ceased to twinkle at the loftiness of ceilings, the delightful-
ness of parties, the interestingness of programmes and the
excellence of refreshments.
‘Hallo! you here! why, it’s ages since I’ve seen you,’ the
General greeted Swann and, noticing the look of strain on
his face and concluding that it was perhaps a serious illness

506 Swann’s Way