Out of delicacy Swann never sought to introduce his wife to any of his
friends, and continued to visit them alone; at our house she was never
spoken about, but my mother, who understood the passionate tenderness he
felt for the daughter that he had had with this woman before they were
married and who he had recognized (she was slightly younger than me),
often begged my father, on the days when Swann came to dine with us, to
say a few words to him about his little one: "You would make him so happy,
I'm sure of it. It must all be so painful for him."
"You are being absurd, that would be ridiculous", my father replied.
Mama, fearing that she might annoy him, did not insist further. But as for
me, as I was always at the door of the drawing-room looking out for the
moment when I could go in and say goodnight to my mother, I was well aware
that every time Swann arrived early and when Mama received him alone as
she waited for my father and my grandparents to come down, the first thing
she said to him, because there was not a soul on earth to whom she did not
try to bring a little pleasure, was: "Well, Monsieur Swann, tell me about
your daughter; she must be very pretty now. Does she love the arts as much
as her Papa? I'm sure you have already tried to educate her tastes and
have her brought up amongst beautiful things."
And Swann, delighted and moved, told her that she already knew every
style of architecture. "But now she especially wants to go and look at
cathedrals. She knows Reims and Chartres even better because my wife has
relatives there and they spend a few weeks there every year. So I have had
to promise a trip to Bourges next year if she is very good." But from
moment to moment he stopped speaking and smoothed down first one side and
then the other of his short trimmed hair with his hand. But then when the
rest of the family came down, Mama was obliged to change the subject, but
from this constraint she drew an added act of delicacy, like the great
poets for whom the tyranny of rhyme impels them to discover even greater
beauties: "We'll talk about her again when we are on our own. It's not
that it wouldn't be of interest to everybody else, but all the same you
have to be a mother to really understand. I'm sure that mine would agree
with me."
Passage removed from Swann, NAF 16754 5v-6r uncorrected
proofs.