And yet, you never know; he seems to
believe in her intelligence. I don't know whether you heard the way he
lectured her the other evening about Vinteuil's sonata. I am devoted to
Odette, but really--to expound theories of aesthetic to her--the man must
be a prize idiot."
"Look here, I won't have you saying nasty things about Odette," broke in
Mme. Verdurin in her 'spoiled child' manner. "She is charming."
"There's no reason why she shouldn't be charming; we are not saying
anything nasty about her, only that she is not the embodiment of either
virtue or intellect. After all," he turned to the painter, "does it matter
so very much whether she is virtuous or not? You can't tell; she might be
a great deal less charming if she were."
On the landing Swann had run into the Verdurins' butler, who had been
somewhere else a moment earlier, when he arrived, and who had been asked
by Odette to tell Swann (but that was at least an hour ago) that she would
probably stop to drink a cup of chocolate at Prevost's on her way home.
Swann set off at once for Prevost's, but every few yards his carriage was
held up by others, or by people crossing the street, loathsome obstacles
each of which he would gladly have crushed beneath his wheels, were it not
that a policeman fumbling with a note-book would delay him even longer
than the actual passage of the pedestrian.
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