Page 551 - swanns-way

understood that this meant: ‘I am going to Egypt at Whit-
suntide with Forcheville.’ And, in fact, if, a few days later,
Swann began: ‘About that trip that you told me you were
going to take with Forcheville,’ she would answer careless-
ly: ‘Yes, my dear boy, we’re starting on the l9th; we’ll send
you a ‘view’ of the Pyramids.’ Then he was determined to
know whether she was Forcheville’s mistress, to ask her
point-blank, to insist upon her telling him. He knew that
there were some perjuries which, being so superstitious, she
would not commit, and besides, the fear, which had hith-
erto restrained his curiosity, of making Odette angry if he
questioned her, of making himself odious, had ceased to ex-
ist now that he had lost all hope of ever being loved by her.
One day he received an anonymous letter which told him
that Odette had been the mistress of countless men (several
of whom it named, among them Forcheville, M. de Bréauté
and the painter) and women, and that she frequented hous-
es of ill-fame. He was tormented by the discovery that there
was to be numbered among his friends a creature capable of
sending him such a letter (for certain details betrayed in the
writer a familiarity with his private life). He wondered who
it could be. But he had never had any suspicion with regard
to the unknown actions of other people, those which had no
visible connection with what they said. And when he want-
ed to know whether it was rather beneath the apparent
character of M. de Charlus, or of M. des Laumes, or of M.
d’Orsan that he must place the untravelled region in which
this ignoble action might have had its birth; as none of these
men had ever, in conversation with Swann, suggested that

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