Page 639 - swanns-way

threading through the crowd his supernatural form, Swann
had gone to buy an umbrella. Among the events of the day,
great and small, but all equally unimportant, that one alone
aroused in me those peculiar vibrations by which my love
for Gilberte was invariably stirred. My father complained
that I took no interest in anything, because I did not lis-
ten while he was speaking of the political developments that
might follow the visit of King Theo-dosius, at that moment
in France as the nation’s guest and (it was hinted) ally. And
yet how intensely interested I was to know whether Swann
had been wearing his hooded cape!
‘Did you speak to him?’ I asked.
‘Why, of course I did,’ answered my mother, who always
seemed afraid lest, were she to admit that we were not on
the warmest of terms with Swann, people would seek to rec-
oncile us more than she cared for, in view of the existence
of Mme. Swann, whom she did not wish to know. ‘It was he
who came up and spoke to me. I hadn’t seen him.’
‘Then you haven’t quarrelled?’
‘Quarrelled? What on earth made you think that we had
quarrelled?’ she briskly parried, as though I had cast doubt
on the fiction of her friendly relations with Swann, and was
planning an attempt to ‘bring them together.’
‘He might be cross with you for never asking him here.’
‘One isn’t obliged to ask everyone to one’s house, you
know; has he ever asked me to his? I don’t know his wife.’
‘But he used often to come, at Combray.’
‘I should think he did! He used to come at Combray, and
now, in Paris, he has something better to do, and so have I.

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