Swann's Way

declaiming aloud, as though he had actually received her letter.

The very next day, her letter came. She wrote that the Verdurins and
their friends had expressed a desire to be present at these performances
of Wagner, and that, if he would be so good as to send her the money,
she would be able at last, after going so often to their house, to have
the pleasure of entertaining the Verdurins in hers. Of him she said not
a word; it was to be taken for granted that their presence at Bayreuth
would be a bar to his.

Then that annihilating answer, every word of which he had carefully
rehearsed overnight, without venturing to hope that it could ever be
used, he had the satisfaction of having it conveyed to her. Alas! he
felt only too certain that with the money which she had, or could easily
procure, she would be able, all the same, to take a house at Bayreuth,
since she wished to do so, she who was incapable of distinguishing
between Bach and Clapisson. Let her take it, then; she would have to
live in it more frugally, that was all. No means (as there would have
been if he had replied by sending her several thousand-franc notes) of
organising, each evening, in her hired castle, those exquisite little