s." As he spoke I
noticed, what had often struck me before in his conversations with
my grandmother's sisters, that whenever he spoke of serious matters,
whenever he used an expression which seemed to imply a definite opinion
upon some important subject, he would take care to isolate, to sterilise
it by using a special intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he
had put the phrase or word between inverted commas, and was anxious
to disclaim any personal responsibility for it; as who should say "the
'hierarchy,' don't you know, as silly people call it." But then, if it
was so absurd, why did he say the 'hierarchy'? A moment later he went
on: "Her acting will give you as noble an inspiration as any masterpiece
of art in the world, as--oh, I don't know--" and he began to laugh,
"shall we say the Queens of Chartres?" Until then I had supposed that
his horror of having to give a serious opinion was something Parisian
and refined, in contrast to the provincial dogmatism of my grandmother's
sisters; and I had imagined also that it was characteristic of the
mental attitude towards life of the circle in which Swann moved,
where, by a natural reaction from the 'lyrical' enthusiasms of earlier
generations, an excessive importance was given to small and precise
facts, formerly regarded as vulgar, and anything in the nature of
'phrase-making' was banned. But now I found myself slightly shocked
by this attitude which Swann invariably adopted when face to face with
generalities. He appeared unwilling to risk even having an opinion, and
to be at his ease only when he could furnish, with meticulous accuracy,
some precise but unimportant detail. But in so doing he did not take
into account that even here he was giving an opinion, holding a brief
(as they say) for something, that the accuracy of his details had an
importance of its own. I thought again of the dinner that night, when I
had been so unhappy because Mamma would not be coming up to my room, and
when he had dismissed the balls given by the Princesse de Leon as being
of no importance. And yet it was to just that sort of amusement that he
was devoting his life. For what other kind of existence did he reserve
the duties of saying in all seriousness what he thought about things,
of formulating judgments which he would not put between inverted commas;
and when would he cease to give himself up to occupations of which at
the same, time he made out that they were absurd? I noticed,