But, at the sound of the word Guermantes, I saw in the middle of each of
our friend's blue eyes a little brown dimple appear, as though they had
been stabbed by some invisible pin-point, while the rest of his pupils,
reacting from the shock, received and secreted the azure overflow. His
fringed eyelids darkened, and drooped. His mouth, which had been stiffened
and seared with bitter lines, was the first to recover, and smiled, while
his eyes still seemed full of pain, like the eyes of a good-looking martyr
whose body bristles with arrows.
"No, I do not know them," he said, but instead of uttering so simple a
piece of information, a reply in which there was so little that could
astonish me, in the natural and conversational tone which would have
befitted it, he recited it with a separate stress upon each word, leaning
forward, bowing his head, with at once the vehemence which a man gives, so
as to be believed, to a highly improbable statement (as though the fact
that he did not know the Guermantes could be due only to some strange
accident of fortune) and with the emphasis of a man who, finding himself
unable to keep silence about what is to him a painful situation, chooses
to proclaim it aloud, so as to convince his hearers that the confession he
is making is one that causes him no embarrassment, but is easy, agreeable,
spontaneous, that the situation in question, in this case the absence of
relations with the Guermantes family, might very well have been not forced
upon, but actually designed by Legrandin himself, might arise from some
family tradition, some moral principle or mystical vow which expressly
forbade his seeking their society.
Pages:
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245