Page 545 - swanns-way

The violinist seemed to wish to charm, to tame, to woo, to
win it. Already it had passed into his soul, already the lit-
tle phrase which it evoked shook like a medium’s the body
of the violinist, ‘possessed’ indeed. Swann knew that the
phrase was going to speak to him once again. And his per-
sonality was now so divided that the strain of waiting for
the imminent moment when he would find himself face to
face, once more, with the phrase, convulsed him in one of
those sobs which a fine line of poetry or a piece of alarm-
ing news will wring from us, not when we are alone, but
when we repeat one or the other to a friend, in whom we
see ourselves reflected, like a third person, whose probable
emotion softens him. It reappeared, but this time to remain
poised in the air, and to sport there for a moment only, as
though immobile, and shortly to expire. And so Swann lost
nothing of the precious time for which it lingered. It was
still there, like an iridescent bubble that floats for a while
unbroken. As a rainbow, when its brightness fades, seems
to subside, then soars again and, before it is extinguished,
is glorified with greater splendour than it has ever shewn;
so to the two colours which the phrase had hitherto al-
lowed to appear it added others now, chords shot with every
hue in the prism, and made them sing. Swann dared not
move, and would have liked to compel all the other people
in the room to remain still also, as if the slightest move-
ment might embarrass the magic presence, supernatural,
delicious, frail, that would so easily vanish. But no one, as
it happened, dreamed of speaking. The ineffable utterance
of one solitary man, absent, perhaps dead (Swann did not

545