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By Root 1713 0

a woman had deigned not to ignore their existence, and had chosen on their account a dress of a brighter, thinner fabric, suggesting to me, by a splaying at the collar and sleeves, the moist warmness of the throat and wrists that they exposed—in a word, had taken for them all the pains of a great lady who, having gaily condescended to pay a visit to common folk in the country, and whom everyone, even the most plebeian, knows, yet makes a point of donning for the occasion suitably pastoral attire. On her arrival I would greet Mme Swann, and she would stop me and say (in English) “Good morning” with a smile. We would walk a little way together. And I realised that it was for herself that she obeyed these canons in accordance with which she dressed, as though yielding to a superior wisdom of which she herself was the high priestess: for if it should happen that, feeling too warm, she threw open or even took off altogether and gave me to carry the jacket which she had intended to keep buttoned up, I would discover in the blouse beneath it a thousand details of execution which had had every chance of remaining unobserved, like those parts of an orchestral score to which the composer has devoted infinite labour although they may never reach the ears of the public: or, in the sleeves of the jacket that lay folded across my arm I would see, and would lengthily gaze at, for my own pleasure or from affection for its wearer, some exquisite detail, a deliciously tinted strap, a lining of mauve satinette which, ordinarily concealed from every eye, was yet just as delicately fashioned as the outer parts, like those Gothic carvings on a cathedral, hidden on the inside of a balustrade eighty feet from the ground, as perfect as the bas-reliefs over the main porch, and yet never seen by any living man until, happening to pass that way upon his travels, an artist obtains leave to climb up there among them, to stroll in the open air, overlooking the whole town, between the soaring towers.

What enhanced this impression that Mme Swann walked in the Avenue du Bois as though along the paths of her own garden, was—for people ignorant of her habit of taking a “constitutional”—the fact that she had come there on foot, without any carriage following, she whom, once May had begun, they were accustomed to see, behind the most brilliant “turn-out,” the smartest liveries in Paris, indolently and majestically seated, like a goddess, in the balmy open air of an immense victoria on eight springs. On foot, Mme Swann had the appearance—especially when her step was slowed by the heat of the sun—of having yielded to curiosity, of committing an elegant breach of the rules of protocol, like those crowned heads who, without consulting anyone, accompanied by the slightly scandalised admiration of a suite which dares not venture any criticism, step out of their boxes during a gala performance and visit the lobby of the theatre, mingling for a moment or two with the rest of the audience. So between Mme Swann and themselves the crowd felt that there existed those barriers of a certain kind of opulence which seem to them the most insurmountable of all. The Faubourg Saint-Germain may have its barriers too, but these are less telling to the eyes and imagination of the “down-and-out.” These latter, in the presence of an aristocratic lady who is simpler, more easily mistaken for an ordinary middle-class woman, less remote from the people, will not feel the same sense of inequality, almost of unworthiness, as they do before a Mme Swann. Of course women of this sort are not themselves dazed, as the crowd are, by the splendour in which they are surrounded; they have ceased to pay any attention to it, but only because they have grown used to it, that is to say have come to look upon it more and more as natural and necessary, to judge their fellow creatures according as they are more or less initiated into these luxurious ways: so that (the grandeur which they allow themselves to display or discover in others being wholly material, easily verified, slowly acquired, the lack