In Search of Lost Time, Volume II_ Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust [51]
the old Swann had ceased not only to be discreet when he spoke of his acquaintance, but particular when it came to choosing it. How was it that Mme Bontemps, so common, so ill-natured, failed to exasperate him? How could he possibly describe her as attractive? The memory of the Guermantes set must, one would suppose, have prevented him; in fact it encouraged him. There was certainly among the Guermantes, as compared with the great majority of groups in society, a degree of taste, even refined taste, but also a snobbishness from which there arose the possibility of a momentary interruption in the exercise of that taste. In the case of someone who was not indispensable to their circle, of a Minister of Foreign Affairs, a slightly pompous Republican, or an Academician who talked too much, their taste would be brought to bear heavily against him; Swann would condole with Mme de Guermantes on having had to sit next to such people at dinner at one of the embassies; and they would a thousand times rather have a man of fashion, that is to say a man of the Guermantes kind, good for nothing, but endowed with the wit of the Guermantes, someone who belonged to the same clique. Only, a Grand Duchess, a Princess of the Blood, should she dine often with Mme de Guermantes, would soon find herself enrolled in that clique also, without having any right to be there, without being at all so endowed. But with the naïvety of society people, from the moment they had her in their houses they went out of their way to find her agreeable, since they were unable to say to themselves that it was because she was agreeable that they invited her. Swann, coming to the rescue of Mme de Guermantes, would say to her after the Highness had gone: “After all, she’s not such a bad sort; really, she has quite a sense of humour. I don’t suppose for a moment she has mastered the Critique of Pure Reason; still, she’s not unpleasant.” “Oh, I do so entirely agree with you!” the Duchess would reply. “Besides, she was a little shy: you’ll see that she can be charming.” “She is certainly a great deal less boring than Mme X” (the wife of the talkative Academician, who was in fact a remarkable woman) “who quotes twenty volumes at you.” “Oh, but there’s no comparison.” The faculty of saying such things as these, and of saying them sincerely, Swann had acquired from the Duchess, and had never lost. He made use of it now with reference to the people who came to his house. He went out of his way to discern and to admire in them the qualities that every human being will display if we examine him with a prejudice in his favour and not with the distaste of the nice-minded; he extolled the merits of Mme Bontemps as he had once extolled those of the Princesse de Parme, who must have been excluded from the Guermantes set if there had not been privileged terms of admission for certain Highnesses, and if, when they too presented themselves for election, the only consideration had been wit and a certain charm. We have seen already, moreover, that Swann had always an inclination (which he was now putting into practice merely in a more lasting fashion) to exchange his social position for another which, in certain circumstances, might suit him better. It is only people incapable of dissecting what at first sight appears indivisible in their perception who believe that one’s position is an integral part of one’s person. One and the same man, taken at successive points in his life, will be found to breathe, on different rungs of the social ladder, in atmospheres that do not of necessity become more and more refined; whenever, in any period of our existence, we form or re-form associations with a certain circle, and feel cherished and at ease in it, we begin quite naturally to cling to it by putting down human roots.
Where Mme Bontemps was concerned, I believe also that Swann, in speaking of her with so much emphasis, was not sorry to think that my parents would hear that she had been to see his wife. To tell the truth, in our house the names of the people whom Mme Swann was gradually getting