aise for the house,
which overlooked some gardens, and in which Mme. de Villeparisis had
advised her to rent a flat; and also for a repairing tailor and his
daughter, who kept a little shop in the courtyard, into which she had
gone to ask them to put a stitch in her skirt, which she had torn on the
staircase. My grandmother had found these people perfectly charming: the
girl, she said, was a jewel, and the tailor a most distinguished man,
the finest she had ever seen. For in her eyes distinction was a thing
wholly independent of social position. She was in ecstasies over some
answer the tailor had made, saying to Mamma:

"Sevigne would not have said it better!" and, by way of contrast, of a
nephew of Mme. de Villeparisis whom she had met at the house:

"My dear, he is so common!"

Now, the effect of that remark about Swann had been, not to raise him
in my great-aunt's estimation, but to lower Mme. de Villeparisis. It
appeared that the deference which, on my grandmother's authority, we
owed to Mme. de Villeparisis imposed on her the reciprocal obligation to
do nothing that would render her less worthy of our regard, and that
she had failed in her duty in becoming aware of Swann's existence and
in allowing members of her family to associate with him. "How should
she know Swann? A lady who, you always made out, was related to Marshal
MacMahon!" This view of Swann's social atmosphere which prevailed in my
family seemed to be confirmed later on by his marriage with a woman of
the worst class, you might almost say a 'fast' woman, whom, to do him
justice, he never attempted to introduce to us, for he continued to come
to us alone, though he came more and more seldom; but from whom they
thought they could establish, on the assumption that he had found her
there, the circle, unknown to them, in which he ordinarily moved.

But on one occasion my grandfather read in a newspaper that M. Swann was
one of the most faithful attendants at the Sunday luncheons given by the
Duc de X----, whose father and uncle had been among our most prominent
statesmen in the reign of Louis Philippe. Now my grandfather was curious
to learn all the little details which might help him to take a mental
share in the private lives of men like Mole, the Due Pasquier, or the
Duc de Broglie. He was delighted to find that Swann associated with
people who had known them. My great-aunt, however, interpreted this
piece of news in a sense discreditable to Swann;