that is, he passed his hand across his forehead, dried his eyes, and wiped
his glasses. And he could never be consoled for the loss of his wife, but
used to say to my grandfather, during the two years for which he survived
her, "It's a funny thing, now; I very often think of my poor wife, but I
cannot think of her very much at any one time." "Often, but a little at a
time, like poor old Swann," became one of my grandfather's favourite
phrases, which he would apply to all kinds of things. And I should have
assumed that this father of Swann's had been a monster if my grandfather,
whom I regarded as a better judge than myself, and whose word was my law
and often led me in the long run to pardon offences which I should have
been inclined to condemn, had not gone on to exclaim, "But, after all, he
had a heart of gold."

For many years, albeit--and especially before his marriage--M. Swann the
younger came often to see them at Combray, my great-aunt and grandparents
never suspected that he had entirely ceased to live in the kind of society
which his family had frequented, or that, under the sort of incognito
which the name of Swann gave him among us, they were harbouring--with the
complete innocence of a family of honest innkeepers who have in their
midst some distinguished highwayman and never know it--one of the smartest
members of the Jockey Club, a particular friend of the Comte de Paris and
of the Prince of Wales, and one of the men most sought after in the
aristocratic world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

Our utter ignorance of the brilliant part which Swann was playing in the
world of fashion was, of course, due in part to his own reserve and
discretion, but also to the fact that middle-class people in those days
took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist
of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself
called to that station in life which his parents already occupied, and