Swann sent him away; he preferred to walk, and it was on foot, through the
Bois, that he came home. He talked to himself, aloud, and in the same
slightly affected tone which he had been used to adopt when describing the
charms of the 'little nucleus' and extolling the magnanimity of the
Verdurins. But just as the conversation, the smiles, the kisses of Odette
became as odious to him as he had once found them charming, if they were
diverted to others than himself, so the Verdurins' drawing-room, which,
not an hour before, had still seemed to him amusing, inspired with a
genuine feeling for art and even with a sort of moral aristocracy, now
that it was another than himself whom Odette was going to meet there, to
love there without restraint, laid bare to him all its absurdities, its
stupidity, its shame.
He drew a fanciful picture, at which he shuddered in disgust, of the party
next evening at Chatou. "Imagine going to Chatou, of all places! Like a
lot of drapers after closing time! Upon my word, these people are sublime
in their smugness; they can't really exist; they must all have come out of
one of Labiche's plays!"
The Cottards would be there; possibly Brichot.
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