both men sincerely, could easily find excuses for these
without having either the courage or the hypocrisy to applaud them,
Forcheville, on the other hand, was on an intellectual level which
permitted him to be stupified, amazed by the invective (without in the
least understanding what it all was about), and to be frankly delighted
by the wit. And the very first dinner at the Verdurins' at which
Forcheville was present threw a glaring light upon all the differences
between them, made his qualities start into prominence and precipitated
the disgrace of Swann.

There was, at this dinner, besides the usual party, a professor from
the Sorbonne, one Brichot, who had met M. and Mme. Verdurin at a
watering-place somewhere, and, if his duties at the university and his
other works of scholarship had not left him with very little time
to spare, would gladly have come to them more often. For he had that
curiosity, that superstitious outlook on life, which, combined with a
certain amount of scepticism with regard to the object of their studies,
earn for men of intelligence, whatever their profession, for doctors
who do not believe in medicine, for schoolmasters who do not believe in
Latin exercises, the reputation of having broad, brilliant, and indeed
superior minds. He affected, when at Mme. Verdurin's, to choose his
illustrations from among the most topical subjects of the day, when he
spoke of philosophy or history, principally because he regarded those
sciences as no more, really, than a preparation for life itself, and
imagined that he was seeing put into practice by the 'little clan'
what hitherto he had known only from books; and also, perhaps,
because, having had drilled into him as a boy, and having unconsciously
preserved, a feeling of reverence for certain subjects, he thought that
he was casting aside the scholar's gown when he ventured to treat those
subjects with a conversational licence, which seemed so to him only
because the folds of the gown still clung.

Early in the course of the dinner, when M. de Forcheville, seated on the
right of Mme. Verdurin, who, in the 'newcomer's' honour, had taken great
pains with her toilet, observed to her: "Quite original, that white
dress," the Doctor, who had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was
he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a "de," and was
on the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as
to come into closer contact with hi