s amusements, and had
made use of his erudition in matters of art only to advise society
ladies what pictures to buy and how to decorate their houses; and this
vanity it was which made him eager to shine, in the sight of any fair
unknown who had captivated him for the moment, with a brilliance which
the name of Swann by itself did not emit. And he was most eager when the
fair unknown was in humble circumstances. Just as it is not by other
men of intelligence that an intelligent man is afraid of being thought
a fool, so it is not by the great gentleman but by boors and 'bounders'
that a man of fashion is afraid of finding his social value underrated.
Three-fourths of the mental ingenuity displayed, of the social
falsehoods scattered broadcast ever since the world began by people
whose importance they have served only to diminish, have been aimed at
inferiors. And Swann, who behaved quite simply and was at his ease when
with a duchess, would tremble^ for fear of being despised, and would
instantly begin to pose, were he to meet her grace's maid.

Unlike so many people, who, either from lack of energy or else from a
resigned sense of the obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur
to remain moored like houseboats to a certain point on the bank of the
stream of life, abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them
above and below that point, that degree in life in which they will
remain fixed until the day of their death, and are content, in the
end, to describe as pleasures, for want of any better, those mediocre
distractions, that just not intolerable tedium which is enclosed there
with them; Swann would endeavour not to find charm and beauty in the
women with whom he must pass time, but to pass his time among women whom
he had already found to be beautiful and charming. And these were, as
often as not, women whose beauty was of a distinctly 'common' type, for
the physical qualities which attracted him instinctively, and without
reason, were the direct opposite of those that he admired in the women
painted or sculptured by his favourite masters. Depth of character, or
a melancholy expression on a woman's face would freeze his senses, which
would, however, immediately melt at the sight of healthy, abundant, rosy
human flesh.

If on his travels he met a family whom it would have been more correct
for him to make no attempt to know, but among whom a woman caught his
eye, adorned with a special charm that was new