The Little Phrase
One evening Jean returned home without
having seen her. It was the third time. So she did not go there
any more. Perhaps he would never see her again. He could not let
himself lose all hope of ever knowing who she was. Perhaps she
was late, perhaps she was going to come, perhaps she was there at
this very moment. He took a carriage and had it take him to the
corner of rue Saint-Dominique. His heart was pounding the whole
time. It was her. He recognized her little hat. But in the next
moment the little hat turned into the head-dress of an old lady,
then the bonnet of a young girl, both of whom had for a moment
taken on the desired form like images in the sky. And soon every
woman, old or young, appeared before him: someone else. He turned
back, but the whole time he was saying to himself: at this very
moment she must be going to rue de Bac, the Concorde bridge, and
made the driver go back again. He would have liked to have taken
two carriages, three, four, so as to be able to go to all the
places where she might be at the same time. The single thought
that she could be there came like a dreadful turn of the key in
the movement of his heart. And it began to beat still faster.
She could have been seeing one of her friends
home. He gave her ten minutes to reach the Concorde bridge. His
heart trembled with anxiety and faintness. All of a sudden he was
startled to hear a loud voice close by exclaim: "Yes,
somebody told me so. Without mentioning any names, it's
Eugène." It was a gentleman walking by between two others,
laughing. He would have liked to have beaten out of the man what
he had meant by that and repeated to himself with disgust:
"Without mentioning any names, it's Eugène." He was
like a man in a fever and was bumped unintentionally by a
passer-by. Shock changed to fury. And the invalid will gladly
rain down blows of the fist onto the one who has caused his
discomfort. Finally he had to give up. He went back home. And
when he closed behind him the doors to the stairs that she had
never climbed, when his man-servant cheerfully opened the door
for him, gave him a letter on which he recognized Réveillon's
handwriting, when they came to tell him that dinner was served,
he felt that his deception now being complete, he would have to
resign himself to accomplishing various actions over the course
of dull and melancholy days that he would be forced to spend, one
after the other, far away from her.
In the evening he had to dress to attend a
soirée at a salon where he knew that nobody knew her. He
arrived, chamber music was being played, he seated himself in a
corner. And as he felt the effects of his weakened heart, the
sounds of the violin and piano made him feel a little ill. He did
not yet know what was being played even though it seemed familiar
to him. Suddenly, as the violin was carried up it remained all at
once on a single note as if in a moment of anticipation: the
anticipation continued, but the violin sang stronger and
stronger, as if unable to contain itself, beginning to perceive
what was about to come, expending all its energies to reach the
moment when it was to appear. Then Jean recognized Saint-Saëns'
1st sonata for piano and violin and conscious of what was to
come, he felt his heart become agitated. And indeed the expected
phrase appealed directly to him. It was not, properly speaking,
the musicians who were playing it. It was the phrase itself, an
invisible and mysterious creature which existed in reality, close
by him, but hidden, there beside him without him feeling it, and
wanting to speak to him this evening, which was obliged, because
these were the magic rites that must be fulfilled in order that
it may reveal itself, to yield to all its incantations, to pass
through all its incantations. Just then when the violin trilled
on a single note that awaited it, Jean's anxiety in some way
shared in it. But by then it was already sure that it was going
to be able to speak to him. Perhaps it did not know for certain
if he had already had a presentiment of it, but it was sure that
when it was here, he would suddenly hold up his head, not take
his eyes off it, listen to it. But he had recognized it an
instant before it appeared. And at its very first word, conscious
for the first time in this empty and useless world in which he
had felt lost since this evening, of a mysterious and invisible
creature there beside him, like the idea of another who
understood him and was speaking to him, he bowed his head, full
of emotion, and his eyes welled with tears. But still it spoke.
And wiping the tears of his sadness with its gentle hand,
bestirring him and leading him along the dusty paths of past
sorrows, and showing him the future with a smile, it spoke. And
it told him everything it had to say. And the whole time he felt
it there, quite real, appealing to him alone, telling him
everything it had to say, for him, without the knowledge of all
those who were fulfilling the rites necessary for it to appear.
Then having finished the important things it had to say and the
rites that followed upon its appearance, the reprise of the first
phrases of the violin, alluding to it as if pronouncing its name
in different successive languages, took place. And among all
these strangers feeling the little phrase and the thought of the
woman he loved close to his heart, making a gesture of placing
his lips on them both and pressing them gently to his heart, Jean
vowed to them his eternal love.
From the manuscript of Jean Santeuil. An early version of the episode in which Swann hears Vinteuil's "little phrase".