In Search of Lost Time

Italy and Sicily. If you were to come with us, just think what a difference it would make! I’m not thinking only of the pleasure of seeing you, but imagine, after all you’ve told me so often about the remains of the Norman Conquest and of ancient history, imagine what a trip like that would become if you came with us! I mean to say that even Basin⁠—what am I saying, Gilbert⁠—would benefit by it, because I feel that even his claims to the throne of Naples and all that sort of thing would interest me if they were explained by you in old romanesque churches in little villages perched on hills like primitive paintings. But now we’re going to look at your photograph. Open the envelope,” said the Duchess to a footman. “Please, Oriane, not this evening; you can look at it tomorrow,” implored the Duke, who had already been making signs of alarm to me on seeing the huge size of the photograph. “But I like to look at it with Charles,” said the Duchess, with a smile at once artificially concupiscent and psychologically subtle, for in her desire to be friendly to Swann she spoke of the pleasure which she would have in looking at the photograph as though it were the pleasure an invalid feels he would find in eating an orange, or as though she had managed to combine an escapade with her friends with giving information to a biographer as to some of her favourite pursuits. “All right, he will come again to see you, on purpose,” declared the Duke, to whom his wife was obliged to yield. “You can spend three hours in front of it, if that amuses you,” he added ironically. “But where are you going to stick a toy of those dimensions?” “Why, in my room, of course. I like to have it before my eyes.” “Oh, just as you please; if it’s in your room, probably I shall never see it,” said the Duke, without thinking of the revelation he was thus blindly making of the negative character of his conjugal relations. “Very well, you will undo it with the greatest care,” Mme. de Guermantes told the servant, multiplying her instructions out of politeness to Swann. “And see that you don’t crumple the envelope, either.” “So even the envelope has got to be respected!” the Duke murmured to me, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “But, Swann,” he added, “I, who am only a poor married man and thoroughly prosaic, what I wonder at is how on earth you managed to find an envelope that size. Where did you pick it up?” “Oh, at the photographer’s; they’re always sending out things like that. But the man is a fool, for I see he’s written on it ‘The Duchesse de Guermantes,’ without putting ‘Madame.’ ” “I’ll forgive him for that,” said the Duchesse carelessly; then, seeming to be struck by a sudden idea which enlivened her, checked a faint smile; but at once returning to Swann: “Well, you don’t say whether you’re coming to Italy with us?” “Madame, I am really afraid that it will not be possible.” “Indeed! Mme. de Montmorency is more fortunate. You went with her to Venice and Vicenza. She told me that with you one saw things one would never see otherwise, things no one had ever thought of mentioning before, that you showed her things she had never dreamed of, and that even in the well-known things she had been able to appreciate details which without you she might have passed by a dozen times without ever noticing. Obviously, she has been more highly favoured than we are to be.⁠ ⁠… You will take the big envelope from M. Swann’s photograph,” she said to the servant, “and you will hand it in, from me, this evening at half past ten at Mme. la Comtesse Molé’s.” Swann laughed. “I should like to know, all the same,” Mme. de Guermantes asked him, “how, ten months before the time, you can tell that a thing will be impossible.” “My dear Duchess, I will tell you if you insist upon it, but, first of all, you can see that I am very ill.” “Yes, my little Charles, I don’t think you look at all well. I’m not pleased with your colour, but I’m not asking you to come with me next week, I ask you to come in ten months. In ten months one has time to get oneself cured, you know.” At this point a footman came in to say that the carriage was at the door. “Come, Oriane, to horse,” said the Duke, already pawing the ground with impatience as though he were himself one of the horses that stood waiting outside. “Very well, give me in one word the reason why you can’t come to Italy,” the Duchess put it to Swann as she rose to say goodbye to us. “But, my dear friend, it’s because I shall then have been dead for several months. According to the doctors I consulted last winter, the thing I’ve got⁠—which may, for that matter, carry me off at any moment⁠—won’t in any case leave me more than three or four months to live, and even that is a generous estimate,” replied Swann with a smile, while the footman opened the glazed door of the hall to let the Duchess out. “What’s that you say?” cried the Duchess, stopping for a moment on her way to the carriage, and raising her fine eyes, their melancholy blue clouded by uncertainty. Placed for the first time in her life between two duties as incompatible as getting into her carriage to go out to dinner and showing pity for a man who was about to die, she could find nothing in the code of conventions that indicated the right line to follow, and, not knowing which to choose, felt it better to make a show of not believing that the latter alternative need be seriously