Page 533 - swanns-way

friends of her new family, whenever anyone was presented
to her, she assumed that he must be one of them, and think-
ing that she would shew her tact by appearing to have heard
‘such a lot about him’ since her marriage, she would hold
out her hand with an air of hesitation which was meant as
a proof at once of the inculcated reserve which she had to
overcome and of the spontaneous friendliness which suc-
cessfully overcame it. And so her parents-in-law, whom she
still regarded as the most eminent pair in France, declared
that she was an angel; all the more that they preferred to
appear, in marrying her to their son, to have yielded to the
attraction rather of her natural charm than of her consider-
able fortune.
‘It’s easy to see that you’re a musician heart and soul,
Madame,’ said the General, alluding to the incident of the
candle.
Meanwhile the concert had begun again, and Swann saw
that he could not now go before the end of the new num-
ber. He suffered greatly from being shut up among all these
people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded him all
the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love, incapa-
ble, had they known of it, of taking any interest, or of doing
more than smile at it as at some childish joke, or deplore it
as an act of insanity, they made it appear to him in the as-
pect of a subjective state which existed for himself alone,
whose reality there was nothing external to confirm; he suf-
fered overwhelmingly, to the point at which even the sound
of the instruments made him want to cry, from having to
prolong his exile in this place to which Odette would never

533