Swann felt that he had always been understood, and (with delicacy)
loved, it was M. d'Orsan. Yes, but the life he led; it could hardly be
called honourable. Swann regretted that he had never taken any notice
of those rumours, that he himself had admitted, jestingly, that he had
never felt so keen a sense of sympathy, or of respect, as when he was
in thoroughly 'detrimental' society. "It is not for nothing," he now
assured himself, "that when people pass judgment upon their neighbour,
their finding is based upon his actions. It is those alone that are
significant, and not at all what we say or what we think. Charlus and
des Laumes may have this or that fault, but they are men of honour.
Orsan, perhaps, has not the same faults, but he is not a man of honour.
He may have acted dishonourably once again." Then he suspected Remi,
who, it was true, could only have inspired the letter, but he now felt
himself, for a moment, to be on the right track. To begin with, Loredan
had his own reasons for wishing harm to Odette. And then, how were we
not to suppose that our servants, living in a situation inferior to our
own, adding to our fortunes and to our frailties imaginary riches and
vices for which they at once envied and despised us, should not find
themselves led by fate to act in a manner abhorrent to people of our own
class? He also suspected my grandfather. On every occasion when Swann
had asked him to do him any service, had he not invariably declined?
Besides, with his ideas of middle-class respectability, he might have
thought that he was acting for Swann's good. He suspected, in turn,
Bergotte, the painter, the Verdurins; paused for a moment to admire
once again the wisdom of people in society, who refused to mix in the
artistic circles in which such things were possible, were, perhaps, even
openly avowed, as excellent jokes; but then he recalled the marks of
honesty that were to be observed in those Bohemians, and contrasted them
with the life of expedients, often bordering on fraudulence, to which
the want of money, the craving for luxury, the corrupting influence of
their pleasures often drove members of the aristocracy. In a word, this
anonymous letter proved that he himself knew a human being capable of
the most infamous conduct, but he could see no reason why that infamy
should lurk in the depths--which no strange eye might explore--of
the warm heart rather than the cold, the artist's rather than the
business-man's,