Page 587 - swanns-way

ing him where they were to meet that evening, or next day.
He dared not ask, he would have liked to follow her, he was
obliged, without turning back in her direction, to answer
with a smile some question by Mme. Verdurin; but his heart
was frantically beating, he felt that he now hated Odette, he
would gladly have crushed those eyes which, a moment ago,
he had loved so dearly, have torn the blood into those lifeless
cheeks. He continued to climb with Mme. Verdurin, that is
to say that each step took him farther from Odette, who was
going downhill, and in the other direction. A second passed
and it was many hours since she had left him. The painter
remarked to Swann that Napoleon III had eclipsed himself
immediately after Odette. ‘They had obviously arranged it
between them,’ he added; ‘they must have agreed to meet at
the foot of the cliff, but they wouldn’t say good-bye together;
it might have looked odd. She is his mistress.’ The strange
young man burst into tears. Swann endeavoured to console
him. ‘After all, she is quite right,’ he said to the young man,
drying his eyes for him and taking off the fez to make him
feel more at ease. ‘I’ve advised her to do that, myself, a dozen
times. Why be so distressed? He was obviously the man to
understand her.’ So Swann reasoned with himself, for the
young man whom he had failed, at first, to identify, was
himself also; like certain novelists, he had distributed his
own personality between two characters, him who was the
‘first person’ in the dream, and another whom he saw before
him, capped with a fez.
As for Napoleon III, it was to Forcheville that some
vague association of ideas, then a certain modification of

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