"You would, of course," retorted my great-aunt, "say anything just to seem
different from _us_." For, knowing that my grandmother never agreed with
her, and not being quite confident that it was her own opinion which the
rest of us invariably endorsed, she wished to extort from us a wholesale
condemnation of my grandmother's views, against which she hoped to force
us into solidarity with her own.

But we sat silent. My grandmother's sisters having expressed a desire to
mention to Swann this reference to him in the _Figaro_, my great-aunt
dissuaded them. Whenever she saw in others an advantage, however trivial,
which she herself lacked, she would persuade herself that it was no
advantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to have to envy
them.

"I don't think that would please him at all; I know very well, I should
hate to see my name printed like that, as large as life, in the paper, and
I shouldn't feel at all flattered if anyone spoke to me about it."

She did not, however, put any very great pressure upon my grandmother's
sisters, for they, in their horror of vulgarity, had brought to such a
fine art the concealment of a personal allusion in a wealth of ingenious
circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person to
whom it was addressed. As for my mother, her only thought was of managing
to induce my father to consent to speak to Swann, not of his wife, but of
his daughter, whom he worshipped, and for whose sake it was understood
that he had ultimately made his unfortunate marriage.

"You need only say a word; just ask him how she is. It must be so very
hard for him."