Page 508 - swanns-way

fragment of the glass wall of his aquarium, a part intended
to suggest the whole which recalled to Swann, a fervent ad-
mirer of Giotto’s Vices and Virtues at Padua, that Injustice
by whose side a leafy bough evokes the idea of the forests
that enshroud his secret lair.
Swann had gone forward into the room, under pressure
from Mme. de Saint-Euverte and in order to listen to an aria
from Orfeo which was being rendered on the flute, and had
taken up a position in a corner from which, unfortunately,
his horizon was bounded by two ladies of ‘uncertain’ age,
seated side by side, the Marquise de Cambremer and the
Vicomtesse de Franquetot, who, because they were cousins,
used to spend their time at parties in wandering through the
rooms, each clutching her bag and followed by her daughter,
hunting for one another like people at a railway station, and
could never be at rest until they had reserved, by marking
them with their fans or handkerchiefs, two adjacent chairs;
Mme. de Cambremer, since she knew scarcely anyone, being
all the more glad of a companion, while Mme. de Franque-
tot, who, on the contrary, was extremely popular, thought
it effective and original to shew all her fine friends that she
preferred to their company that of an obscure country cous-
in with whom she had childish memories in common. Filled
with ironical melancholy, Swann watched them as they lis-
tened to the pianoforte inter, mezzo (Liszt’s ‘Saint Francis
preaching to the birds’) which came after the flute, and fol-
lowed the virtuoso in his dizzy flight; Mme. de Franquetot
anxiously, her eyes starting from her head, as though the
keys over which his fingers skipped with such agility were

508 Swann’s Way