"Come along; you can caress them later; now it is you that are going to be
caressed, caressed in the ear; you'll like that, I think. Here's the young
gentleman who will take charge of that."
After the pianist had played, Swann felt and shewed more interest in him
than in any of the other guests, for the following reason:
The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music played
on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the material
quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a
source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the violin-part,
delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole, he had suddenly
perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of
sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent, level, and
breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea,
silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at a given
moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a
name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to
collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony--he knew not
which--that had just been played, and had opened and expanded his soul,
just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of
evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils.
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