Just imagine, I could not make
that idiot Froberville see that there was anything funny about the name
Cambremer. Do agree that life is a dreadful business. It's only when I
see you that I stop feeling bored."
Which was probably not true. But Swann and the Princess had the same way
of looking at the little things of life--the effect, if not the cause of
which was a close analogy between their modes of expression and even of
pronunciation. This similarity was not striking because no two things
could have been more unlike than their voices. But if one took the trouble
to imagine Swann's utterances divested of the sonority that enwrapped
them, of the moustache from under which they emerged, one found that they
were the same phrases, the same inflexions, that they had the 'tone' of
the Guermantes set. On important matters, Swann and the Princess had not
an idea in common. But since Swann had become so melancholy, and was
always in that trembling condition which precedes a flood of tears, he had
the same need to speak about his grief that a murderer has to tell some
one about his crime. And when he heard the Princess say that life was a
dreadful business, he felt as much comforted as if she had spoken to him
of Odette.
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