She was not at Prevost's; he must search for her, then, in every
restaurant upon the boulevards. To save time, while he went in one
direction, he sent in the other his coachman Remi (Rizzo's Doge Loredan)
for whom he presently--after a fruitless search--found himself waiting at
the spot where the carriage was to meet him. It did not appear, and Swann
tantalised himself with alternate pictures of the approaching moment, as
one in which Remi would say to him: "Sir, the lady is there," or as one in
which Remi would say to him: "Sir, the lady was not in any of the cafes."
And so he saw himself faced by the close of his evening--a thing uniform,
and yet bifurcated by the intervening accident which would either put an
end to his agony by discovering Odette, or would oblige him to abandon any
hope of finding her that night, to accept the necessity of returning home
without having seen her.
The coachman returned; but, as he drew up opposite him, Swann asked, not
"Did you find the lady?" but "Remind me, to-morrow, to order in some more
firewood. I am sure we must be running short." Perhaps he had persuaded
himself that, if Remi had at last found Odette in some cafe, where she was
waiting for him still, then his night of misery was already obliterated by
the realisation, begun already in his mind, of a night of joy, and that
there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness
already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his
grasp again.
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