But the only one of us for whom Swann’s arrival became the object of painful preoccupation was me. It was just that on nights when visitors were there, or simply Monsieur Swann, Maman wouldn’t come up to my room. I’d eat before everyone else, and afterward I’d go sit at the table until eight, when it was expected I’d go upstairs; I’d have to carry this precious, fragile kiss, which Maman usually gave me in my bed when I fell asleep, from the dining room to my own room and hold on to it the whole time I undressed, without its sweetness breaking, without its volatile essence dispersing and evaporating, and, on those very evenings when I’d have needed to receive it with far greater care, I had to seize it, I had to steal it suddenly, publicly, without even the time and presence of mind necessary to pay what I was doing the attention that maniacs do when they try not to think of anything else while they close a door, so that, when pathological uncertainty comes over them again, they can victoriously fight it off with the memory of the moment when they closed it.

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They were more interested when the day before Swann was due to come to dinner, and he’d personally had a case of Asti sent to them, my aunt—holding an issue of Figaro where beside the name of a painting in an exhibition of Corot were these words: “From the collection of Monsieur Charles Swann”—said to us, “Did you see that Swann has a credit in Figaro?”—“Well, I always told you he has a great deal of taste,” said my grandmother.

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But one day, my grandfather read in a paper that Monsieur Swann was among the most frequent Sunday luncheon guests at the home of the Duke of X——, whose father and uncle had been leading statesmen of Louis-Philippe’s reign. Now, my grandfather was curious about all the little facts that could help him understand the private world of men such as Molé, or the Duke Pasquier, or the Duke of Broglie.

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Now, the remark about Swann didn’t elevate him in my great aunt’s mind, but rather lowered Madame de Villeparisis. It seemed that the consideration we granted the lady, on account of my grandmother, obliged her to do nothing that would make her unworthy, and she’d failed in this duty by knowing of Swann’s existence, by allowing some family members to keep company with him. “How on earth would she know Swann?

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Yet one day when my grandmother went to ask a favor from a lady she’d known at Sacred Heart (with whom, because of our concept of castes, she hadn’t wanted to maintain a connection, despite their mutual sympathy), the Marquise de Villeparisis, of the well-known Bouillon family, the lady said to her: “I believe you often see Monsieur Swann, who is a great friend of my nephew and niece the des Laumes.

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We wouldn’t hesitate to send to him anytime we needed a recipe for sauce gribiche or pineapple salad for fancy dinners we didn’t invite him to, not thinking him prestigious enough company to be useful to acquaintances visiting for the first time. If the conversation turned to the princes of the House of France: “People we’ll never know, and you’ll never know, and we don’t need them, do we,” said my great aunt to Swann, who’d perhaps have in his pocket a letter from Twickenham; she’d make him wheel out the piano and turn the pages on evenings when my grandmother’s sister sang, treating this being, elsewhere so sought-after, with the naive roughness of a child who handles a fine collectible no more carefully than an object from a dime store.

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So, my great aunt took things cavalierly with him. Since she believed he must be flattered by our invitations, she found it only natural that in summer he never came to see us without having in hand a basket of peaches or raspberries from his garden, and that from each of his trips to Italy he brought me photographs of master works of art. ☙ Aussi, ma grand’tante en usait-elle cavalièrement avec lui.

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One day when he came to see us in Paris after dinner, excusing himself for his formal attire, Françoise, after he left, said according to the coachman, Swann had dined “at the home of a princess.”—”Sure, a princess of the demimonde!” said my aunt, shrugging her shoulders without looking up from her knitting, serenely ironic. ☙ Un jour qu’il était venu nous voir à Paris après dîner en s’excusant d’être en habit, Françoise ayant, après son départ, dit tenir du cocher qu’il avait dîné «chez une princesse»,—«Oui, chez une princesse du demi-monde!

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But suppose my great aunt had been told that this Swann—who as the son of Swann was eminently qualified to be received by all the “belle bourgeoisie,” by the most esteemed bureaucrats and lawmakers of Paris (a privilege he apparently rather squandered)—had, as if in secret, an entirely different life; that after leaving our house in Paris, saying he was heading home to sleep, he’d scarcely get round the corner before setting off again and delivering himself to a salon that no broker or broker’s associate had ever set eyes on; to my aunt it would have seemed as extraordinary as for a more literate lady to think of being personally linked to Aristaeus, to understand that after having a chat with her, he’d dive down to the depths of the realms of Thetis, an empire hidden from mortal eyes where Virgil shows him received with open arms; or, to stick to an image more likely to come to her mind, as she’d seen it painted on our Combray petits-fours plates—to have hosted a dinner for Ali-Baba, who, once he finds himself alone, will enter the dazzling cave of unsuspected treasures.

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Our ignorance of this brilliant worldly life Swann led apparently arose in part from the reserve and discretion of his character, but also from the bourgeoisie back then having a somewhat Hindu idea of society, considering it composed of distinct castes, so everyone from birth found themselves placed in the rank their parents occupied, and nothing, apart from the accident of an exceptional career or an unhoped-for marriage, could gain someone entry to a superior class.

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