[Footnote 12: Mr. Hussey, whose essay by his kindness and Mr. Filson Young’s I have been enabled to repeat from the _Saturday Review_, has, like Mr. Birrell, authorised the substitution of my version for the original text of these two quotations from _A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs_.—C.K.S.M.] And if again it be thought that this association of the music with the critic’s sentiment may have vitiated his judgment, I can only point to the exquisite sensibility of these passages, where music is brought to the touchstone of life, and human experience, in its turn, is elucidated in terms of music. Indeed, this “Proust” shows himself preternaturally sensitive both to musical sounds and to unorganised noises, so that he instinctively registers the pitch of a voice; so that the wall, when rapped by his grandmother, at once assumes for him the resonance of a drum, and her triple knock takes its place automatically in a symphonic scheme; so that the vision of M. de Charlus making somewhat embarrassed conversation with a new acquaintance immediately brings to his mind “those questioning phrases of Beethoven, indefinitely repeated at equal intervals, and destined, after a superabundant wealth of preparation, to introduce a new _motif_, a change of key, or a recapitulation”; and so that the old reprobate’s sudden descent from high dudgeon to docility suggests the performance of “a symphony played through without a break, when a graceful _Scherzo_ of idyllic loveliness follows upon the thunders of the first movement.” We cannot but regret, then, that this Sonata, which, after reading what “Proust” has to say of it, we seem to know as well as we know César Franck’s or the “Kreutzer,” and which has made a profound impression on persons so different in temperament as Charles Swann and Mme. Verdurin (who could not hear it without crying till she got neuralgia all down her face), should have suffered such neglect at the hands of concert-artists, whose only excuse is, presumably, to throw the blame upon the equal neglect of the publishers. DYNELEY HUSSEY. XVI _THE LITTLE PHRASE_ My only excuse for contributing anything to this collection is that it provides an opportunity to give some information. Readers may want to know whether the Sonata to which Proust refers in _Du Côté de chez Swann_ as being played at Mme. de Saint-Euverte’s party was wholly an invention of Proust’s, or whether his refined and tortuous dithyrambs on the subject were inspired by an actual Sonata which the dullest may purchase at a Paris shop. Well, the answer to this hypothetical question, like all real answers to all genuine questions, is “Yes” and “No.” For the Ayes there is the statement by Proust in a letter to a friend printed in the memorial number of the _Nouvelle Revue Française_:[13] “La petite phrase de cette Sonate ... est ... la phrase charmante mais enfin médiocre d’une sonate pour piano et violon de Saint-Saëns....”