Page 514 - swanns-way

the performance. She had been taught in her girlhood to
fondle and cherish those long-necked, sinuous creatures,
the phrases of Chopin, so free, so flexible, so tactile, which
begin by seeking their ultimate resting-place somewhere
beyond and far wide of the direction in which they start-
ed, the point which one might have expected them to reach,
phrases which divert themselves in those fantastic bypaths
only to return more deliberately—with a more premeditated
reaction, with more precision, as on a crystal bowl which, if
you strike it, will ring and throb until you cry aloud in an-
guish—to clutch at one’s heart.
Brought up in a provincial household with few friends
or visitors, hardly ever invited to a ball, she had fuddled
her mind, in the solitude of her old manor-house, over set-
ting the pace, now crawling-slow, now passionate, whirling,
breathless, for all those imaginary waltzing couples, gather-
ing them like flowers, leaving the ball-room for a moment
to listen, where the wind sighed among the pine-trees, on
the shore of the lake, and seeing of a sudden advancing
towards her, more different from anything one had ever
dreamed of than earthly lovers are, a slender young man,
whose voice was resonant and strange and false, in white
gloves. But nowadays the old-fashioned beauty of this music
seemed to have become a trifle stale. Having forfeited, some
years back, the esteem of ‘really musical’ people, it had lost
its distinction and its charm, and even those whose taste
was frankly bad had ceased to find in it more than a mod-
erate pleasure to which they hardly liked to confess. Mme.
de Cambremer cast a furtive glance behind her. She knew

514 Swann’s Way