confirmed later on by his marriage with a woman of the worst class, you
might almost say a 'fast' woman, whom, to do him justice, he never
attempted to introduce to us, for he continued to come to us alone, though
he came more and more seldom; but from whom they thought they could
establish, on the assumption that he had found her there, the circle,
unknown to them, in which he ordinarily moved.

But on one occasion my grandfather read in a newspaper that M. Swann was
one of the most faithful attendants at the Sunday luncheons given by the
Duc de X----, whose father and uncle had been among our most prominent
statesmen in the reign of Louis Philippe. Now my grandfather was curious
to learn all the little details which might help him to take a mental
share in the private lives of men like Mole, the Due Pasquier, or the Duc
de Broglie. He was delighted to find that Swann associated with people who
had known them. My great-aunt, however, interpreted this piece of news in
a sense discreditable to Swann; for anyone who chose his associates
outside the caste in which he had been born and bred, outside his 'proper
station,' was condemned to utter degradation in her eyes. It seemed to her
that such a one abdicated all claim to enjoy the fruits of those friendly
relations with people of good position which prudent parents cultivate and
store up for their children's benefit, for my great-aunt had actually
ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer we had known because he had married a
'Highness' and had thereby stepped down--in her eyes--from the respectable
position of a lawyer's son to that of those adventurers, upstart footmen
or stable-boys mostly, to whom we read that queens have sometimes shewn
their favours. She objected, therefore, to my grandfather's plan of
questioning Swann, when next he came to dine with us, about these people
whose friendship with him we had discovered. On the other hand, my
grandmother's two sisters, elderly spinsters who shared her nobility of
character but lacked her intelligence, declared that they could not