ars before they were married," tried to prompt Swann
to beg him to continue the story, by interjecting "Isn't that so, M.
Swann?" in the martial accents which one uses in order to get down to
the level of an unintelligent rustic or to put the 'fear of God' into
a trooper, Swann cut his story short, to the intense fury of their
hostess, by begging to be excused for taking so little interest in
Blanche of Castile, as he had something that he wished to ask the
painter. He, it appeared, had been that afternoon to an exhibition of
the work of another artist, also a friend of Mme. Verdurin, who had
recently died, and Swann wished to find out from him (for he valued
his discrimination) whether there had really been anything more in this
later work than the virtuosity which had struck people so forcibly in
his earlier exhibitions.

"From that point of view it was extraordinary, but it did not seem to me
to be a form of art which you could call 'elevated,'" said Swann with a
smile.

"Elevated... to the height of an Institute!" interrupted Cottard,
raising his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table burst out
laughing.

"What did I tell you?" said Mme. Verdurin to Forcheville. "It's simply
impossible to be serious with him. When you least expect it, out he
comes with a joke."

But she observed that Swann, and Swann alone, had not unbent. For one
thing he was none too well pleased with Cottard for having secured a
laugh at his expense in front of Forcheville. But the painter, instead
of replying in a way that might have interested Swann, as he would
probably have done had they been alone together, preferred to win the
easy admiration of the rest by exercising his wit upon the talent of
their dead friend.

"I went up to one of them," he began, "just to see how it was done; I
stuck my nose into it. Yes, I don't think! Impossible to say whether
it was done with glue, with soap, with sealing-wax, with sunshine, with
leaven, with excrem..."

"And one make twelve!" shouted the Doctor, wittily, but just too late,
for no one saw the point of his interruption.

"It looks as though it were done with nothing at all," resumed the
painter. "No more chance of discovering the trick than there is in the
'Night Watch,' or the 'Regents,' and it's even bigger work than either
Rembrandt or Hals ever did. It's all there,--and yet, no, I'll take my
oath it isn't."

Then, just as singers who have reached the highest note in their
compass,