Ah, with what joy would he, on the other hand, have raced up
the dark, evil-smelling, breakneck flights to the little dressmaker's, in
whose attic he would so gladly have paid the price of a weekly stage-box
at the Opera for the right to spend the evening there when Odette came,
and other days too, for the privilege of talking about her, of living
among people whom she was in the habit of seeing when he was not there,
and who, on that account, seemed to keep secret among themselves some part
of the life of his mistress more real, more inaccessible and more
mysterious than anything that he knew. Whereas upon that pestilential,
enviable staircase to the old dressmaker's, since there was no other, no
service stair in the building, one saw in the evening outside every door
an empty, unwashed milk-can set out, in readiness for the morning round,
upon the door-mat; on the despicable, enormous staircase which Swann was
at that moment climbing, on either side of him, at different levels,
before each anfractuosity made in its walls by the window of the porter's
lodge or the entrance to a set of rooms, representing the departments of
indoor service which they controlled, and doing homage for them to the
guests, a gate-keeper, a major-domo, a steward (worthy men who spent the
rest of the week in semi-independence in their own domains, dined there by
themselves like small shopkeepers, and might to-morrow lapse to the
plebeian service of some successful doctor or industrial magnate),
scrupulous in carrying out to the letter all the instructions that had
been heaped upon them before they were allowed to don the brilliant livery
which they wore only at long intervals, and in which they did not feel
altogether at their ease, stood each in the arcade of his doorway, their
splendid pomp tempered by a democratic good-fellowship, like saints in
their niches, and a gigantic usher, dressed Swiss Guard fashion, like the
beadle in a church, struck the pavement with his staff as each fresh
arrival passed him.
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