Verdurin; but his heart was frantically
beating, he felt that he now hated Odette, he would gladly have crushed
those eyes which, a moment ago, he had loved so dearly, have torn the
blood into those lifeless cheeks. He continued to climb with Mme.
Verdurin, that is to say that each step took him farther from Odette, who
was going downhill, and in the other direction. A second passed and it was
many hours since she had left him. The painter remarked to Swann that
Napoleon III had eclipsed himself immediately after Odette. "They had
obviously arranged it between them," he added; "they must have agreed to
meet at the foot of the cliff, but they wouldn't say good-bye together; it
might have looked odd. She is his mistress." The strange young man burst
into tears. Swann endeavoured to console him. "After all, she is quite
right," he said to the young man, drying his eyes for him and taking off
the fez to make him feel more at ease. "I've advised her to do that,
myself, a dozen times. Why be so distressed? He was obviously the man to
understand her." So Swann reasoned with himself, for the young man whom he
had failed, at first, to identify, was himself also; like certain
novelists, he had distributed his own personality between two characters,
him who was the 'first person' in the dream, and another whom he saw
before him, capped with a fez.
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