Beyond a doubt, the august words
of the Florentine refer to the Verdurins! When one comes to think of it,
surely people 'in society' (and, though one may find fault with them now
and then, still, after all they are a very different matter from that
gang of blackmailers) shew a profound sagacity in refusing to know
them, or even to dirty the tips of their fingers with them. What a sound
intuition there is in that '_Noli me tangere_' motto of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain."

He had long since emerged from the paths and avenues of the Bois, he had
almost reached his own house, and still, for he had not yet thrown off
the intoxication of grief, or his whim of insincerity, but was ever more
and more exhilarated by the false intonation, the artificial sonority
of his own voice, he continued to perorate aloud in the silence of the
night: "People 'in society' have their failings, as no one knows better
than I; but, after all, they are people to whom some things, at least,
are impossible. So-and-so" (a fashionable woman whom he had known)
"was far from being perfect, but, after all, one did find in her a
fundamental delicacy, a loyalty in her conduct which made her, whatever
happened, incapable of a felony, which fixes a vast gulf between her and
an old hag like Verdurin. Verdurin! What a name! Oh, there's something
complete about them, something almost fine in their trueness to type;
they're the most perfect specimens of their disgusting class! Thank God,
it was high time that I stopped condescending to promiscuous intercourse
with such infamy, such dung."

But, just as the virtues which he had still attributed, an hour or so
earlier, to the Verdurins, would not have sufficed, even although the
Verdurins had actually possessed them, if they had not also favoured
and protected his love, to excite Swann to that state of intoxication
in which he waxed tender over their magnanimity, an intoxication which,
even when disseminated through the medium of other persons, could
have come to him from Odette alone;--so the immorality (had it really
existed) which he now found in the Verdurins would have been powerless,
if they had not invited Odette with Forcheville and without him, to
unstop the vials of his wrath and to make him scarify their 'infamy.'
Doubtless Swann's voice shewed a finer perspicacity than his own when it
refused to utter those words full of disgust at the Verdurins and their
circle, and of joy at his having shaken himself