to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave
a ball the other night, and all the smart people in Paris were there.
I should have loved to go! but you had to shew your invitation at the
door, and I couldn't get one anywhere. After all, I'm just as glad,
now, that I didn't go; I should have been killed in the crush, and seen
nothing. Still, just to be able to say one had been to Herbinger's ball.
You know how vain I am! However, you may be quite certain that half the
people who tell you they were there are telling stories.... But I am
surprised that you weren't there, a regular 'tip-topper' like you."

Swann made no attempt, however, to modify this conception of fashion;
feeling that his own came no nearer to the truth, was just as fatuous,
devoid of all importance, he saw no advantage to be gained by imparting
it to his mistress, with the result that, after a few months, she ceased
to take any interest in the people to whose houses he went, except
when they were the means of his obtaining tickets for the paddock at
race-meetings or first-nights at the theatre. She hoped that he would
continue to cultivate such profitable acquaintances, but she had come to
regard them as less smart since the day when she had passed the Marquise
de Villeparisis in the street, wearing a black serge dress and a bonnet
with strings.

"But she looks like a pew-opener, like an old charwoman, darling! That a
marquise! Goodness knows I'm not a marquise, but you'd have to pay me
a lot of money before you'd get me to go about Paris rigged out like
that!"

Nor could she understand Swann's continuing to live in his house on the
Quai d'Orleans, which, though she dared not tell him so, she considered
unworthy of him.

It was true that she claimed to be fond of 'antiques,' and used to
assume a rapturous and knowing air when she confessed how she loved
to spend the whole day 'rummaging' in second-hand shops, hunting for
'bric-a-brac,' and things of the 'right date.' Although it was a point
of honour, to which she obstinately clung, as though obeying some old
family custom, that she should never answer any questions, never give
any account of what she did during the daytime, she spoke to Swann once
about a friend to whose house she had been invited, and had found that
everything in it was 'of the period.' Swann could not get her to tell
him what 'period' it was. Only after thinking the matter over she
replied that it was 'mediaeval'; by which she mean