Page 646 - swanns-way

its outlines engraved upon my heart by a clean and killing
stab—a matchless victoria, built rather high, and hinting,
through the extreme modernity of its appointments, at the
forms of an earlier day, deep down in which lay negligently
back Mme. Swann, her hair, now quite pale with one grey
lock, girt with a narrow band of flowers, usually violets,
from which floated down long veils, a lilac parasol in her
hand, on her lips an ambiguous smile in which I read only
the benign condescension of Majesty, though it was pre-
eminently the enticing smile of the courtesan, which she
graciously bestowed upon the men who bowed to her. That
smile was, in reality, saying to one: ‘Oh yes, I do remember,
quite well; it was wonderful!’ to another: ‘How I should have
loved to! We were unfortunate!’, to a third: ‘Yes, if you like! I
must just keep in the line for a minute, then as soon as I can
I will break away.’ When strangers passed she still allowed
to linger about her lips a lazy smile, as though she expected
or remembered some friend, which made them say: ‘What
a lovely woman!’. And for certain men only she had a sour,
strained, shy, cold smile which meant: ‘Yes, you old goat,
I know that you’ve got a tongue like a viper, that you can’t
keep quiet for a moment. But do you suppose that I care what
you say?’ Coquelin passed, talking, in a group of listening
friends, and with a sweeping wave of his hand bade a theat-
rical good day to the people in the carriages. But I thought
only of Mme. Swann, and pretended to have not yet seen
her, for I knew that, when she reached the pigeon-shooting
ground, she would tell her coachman to ‘break away’ and to
stop the carriage, so that she might come back on foot. And

646 Swann’s Way