For then the creature in whose company we are seeking amusement at
the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided, that is the
creature whom we shall henceforward love. It is not necessary that she
should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or even as much as others.
All that is necessary is that our taste for her should become exclusive.
And that condition is fulfilled so soon as--in the moment when she has
failed to meet us--for the pleasure which we were on the point of enjoying
in her charming company is abruptly substituted an anxious torturing
desire, whose object is the creature herself, an irrational, absurd
desire, which the laws of civilised society make it impossible to satisfy
and difficult to assuage--the insensate, agonising desire to possess her.
Swann made Remi drive him to such restaurants as were still open; it was
the sole hypothesis, now, of that happiness which he had contemplated so
calmly; he no longer concealed his agitation, the price he set upon their
meeting, and promised, in case of success, to reward his coachman, as
though, by inspiring in him a will to triumph which would reinforce his
own, he could bring it to pass, by a miracle, that Odette--assuming that
she had long since gone home to bed,--might yet be found seated in some
restaurant on the boulevards.
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