ir interest grew, however, when, the day before Swann was to dine
with us, and when he had made them a special present of a case of Asti,
my great-aunt, who had in her hand a copy of the _Figaro_ in which to
the name of a picture then on view in a Corot exhibition were added the
words, "from the collection of M. Charles Swann," asked: "Did you see
that Swann is 'mentioned' in the _Figaro_?"

"But I have always told you," said my grandmother, "that he had plenty
of taste."

"You would, of course," retorted my great-aunt, "say anything just to
seem different from _us_." For, knowing that my grandmother never agreed
with her, and not being quite confident that it was her own opinion
which the rest of us invariably endorsed, she wished to extort from us
a wholesale condemnation of my grandmother's views, against which she
hoped to force us into solidarity with her own.

But we sat silent. My grandmother's sisters having expressed a desire
to mention to Swann this reference to him in the _Figaro_, my great-aunt
dissuaded them. Whenever she saw in others an advantage, however
trivial, which she herself lacked, she would persuade herself that it
was no advantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to
have to envy them.

"I don't think that would please him at all; I know very well, I should
hate to see my name printed like that, as large as life, in the paper,
and I shouldn't feel at all flattered if anyone spoke to me about it."

She did not, however, put any very great pressure upon my grandmother's
sisters, for they, in their horror of vulgarity, had brought to such a
fine art the concealment of a personal allusion in a wealth of ingenious
circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person
to whom it was addressed. As for my mother, her only thought was of
managing to induce my father to consent to speak to Swann, not of his
wife, but of his daughter, whom he worshipped, and for whose sake it was
understood that he had ultimately made his unfortunate marriage.

"You need only say a word; just ask him how she is. It must be so very
hard for him."

My father, however, was annoyed: "No, no; you have the most absurd
ideas. It would be utterly ridiculous."

But the only one of us in whom the prospect of Swann's arrival gave
rise to an unhappy foreboding was myself. And that was because on the
evenings when there were visitors, or just M. Swann in the house, Mamma
did not come up to my roo