As Bergotte lived in the same neighbourhood as my parents, we left the house together; in the carriage he spoke to me of my health. “Our friends were telling me that you had been ill. I am very sorry. And yet, after all, I am not too sorry, because I can see quite well that you are able to enjoy the pleasures of the mind, and they are probably what mean most to you, as to everyone who has known them.”
Alas, what he was saying, how little, I felt, did it apply to myself, whom all reasoning, however exalted it might be, left cold, who was happy only in moments of pure idleness, when I was comfortable and well; I felt how purely material was everything that I desired in life, and how easily I could dispense with the intellect. As I made no distinction among my pleasures between those that came to me from different sources, of varying depth and permanence, I was thinking, when the moment came to answer him, that I should have liked an existence in which I was on intimate terms with the Duchesse de Guermantes, and often came across, as in the old tollhouse in the Champs-Élysées, a chilly smell that would remind me of Combray. But in this ideal existence which I dared not confide to him the pleasures of the mind found no place.
“No, sir, the pleasures of the mind count for very little with me; it is not them that I seek after; indeed I don’t even know that I have ever tasted them.”
“You really think not?” he replied. “Well, it may be, no, wait a minute now, yes, after all that must be what you like best, I can see it now dearly, I am certain of it.”
As certainly, he did not succeed in convincing me; and yet I was already feeling happier, less restricted. After what M. de Norpois had said to me, I had regarded my moments of dreaming, of enthusiasm, of self-confidence as purely subjective and barren of truth. But according to Bergotte, who appeared to understand my case, it seemed that it was quite the contrary, that the symptom I ought to disregard was, in fact, my doubts, my disgust with myself. Moreover, what he had said about M. de Norpois took most of the sting out of a sentence from which I had supposed that no appeal was possible.
“Are you being properly looked after?” Bergotte asked me. “Who is treating you?” I told him that I had seen, and should probably go on seeing Cottard. “But that’s not at all the sort of man you want!” he told me. “I know nothing about him as a doctor. But I’ve met him at Mme. Swann’s. The man’s an imbecile. Even supposing that that doesn’t prevent his being a good doctor, which I hesitate to believe, it does prevent his being a good doctor for artists, for men of intelligence. People like you must have suitable doctors, I would almost go so far as to say treatment and medicines specially adapted to themselves. Cottard will bore you, and that alone will prevent his treatment from having any effect. Besides, the proper course of treatment cannot possibly be the same for you as for any Tom, Dick or Harry. Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect. They need at least a doctor who understands their disease. How do you expect that Cottard should be able to treat you; he has made allowances for the difficulty of digesting sauces, for gastric trouble, but he has made no allowance for the effect of reading Shakespeare. So that his calculations are inaccurate in your case, the balance is upset; you see, always the little bottle-imp bobbing up again. He will find that you have a dilated stomach; he has no need to examine you for it, since he has it already in his eye. You can see it there, reflected in his glasses.” This manner of speaking tired me greatly; I said to myself, with the stupidity of common sense: “There is no more any dilated stomach reflected in Professor Cottard’s glasses than there are inanities stored behind the white waistcoat of M. de Norpois.” “I should recommend you, instead,” went on Bergotte, “to consult Dr. du Boulbon, who is quite an intelligent man.” “He is a great admirer of your books,” I replied. I saw that Bergotte knew this, and I decided that kindred spirits soon come together, that one has few really “unknown friends.” What Bergotte had said to me with respect to Cottard impressed me, While running contrary to everything that I myself believed. I was in no way disturbed by finding my doctor a bore; I expected of him that, thanks to an art the laws of which were beyond me, he should pronounce on the subject of my health an infallible oracle, after consultation of my entrails. And I did not at all require that, with the aid of an intellect, in which I easily outstripped him, he should seek to understand my intellect, which I pictured to myself merely as a means, of no importance in itself, of trying to attain to certain external verities. I doubted greatly whether intellectual people required a different form of hygiene from imbeciles, and I was quite prepared to submit myself to the latter kind. “I’ll tell you who does need a good doctor, and that is our friend Swann,” said Bergotte. And on my
