"What!" cried Mme. Verdurin, "Do people still call in Potain?"
"Ah! Mme. Verdurin," Cottard simpered, "you forget that you are speaking
of one of my colleagues--I should say, one of my masters."
The painter had heard, somewhere, that Vinteuil was threatened with
the loss of his reason. And he insisted that signs of this could be
detected in certain passages in the sonata. This remark did not strike
Swann as ridiculous; rather, it puzzled him. For, since a purely musical
work contains none of those logical sequences, the interruption or
confusion of which, in spoken or written language, is a proof of insanity,
so insanity diagnosed in a sonata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as
the insanity of a dog or a horse, although instances may be observed of
these.
"Don't speak to me about 'your masters'; you know ten times as much as he
does!" Mme. Verdurin answered Dr. Cottard, in the tone of a woman who has
the courage of her convictions, and is quite ready to stand up to anyone
who disagrees with her. "Anyhow, you don't kill your patients!"
"But, Madame, he is in the Academy." The Doctor smiled with bitter irony.
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