"M. Vinteuil is not the only one who has nice neighbours," cried my aunt
Celine in a voice which seemed loud because she was so timid, and seemed
forced because she had been planning the little speech for so long;
darting, as she spoke, what she called a 'significant glance' at Swann.
And my aunt Flora, who realised that this veiled utterance was Celine's
way of thanking Swann intelligibly for the Asti, looked at him with a
blend of congratulation and irony, either just, because she wished to
underline her sister's little epigram, or because she envied Swann his
having inspired it, or merely because she imagined that he was
embarrassed, and could not help having a little fun at his expense.

"I think it would be worth while," Flora went on, "to have this old
gentleman to dinner. When you get him upon Maubant or Mme. Materna he will
talk for hours on end."

"That must be delightful," sighed my grandfather, in whose mind nature had
unfortunately forgotten to include any capacity whatsoever for becoming
passionately interested in the co-operative movement among the ladies of
Sweden or in the methods employed by Maubant to get up his parts, just as
it had forgotten to endow my grandmother's two sisters with a grain of
that precious salt which one has oneself to 'add to taste' in order to
extract any savour from a narrative of the private life of Mole or of the
Comte de Paris.

"I say!" exclaimed Swann to my grandfather, "what I was going to tell you
has more to do than you might think with what you were asking me just now,
for in some respects there has been very little change. I came across a
passage in Saint-Simon this morning which would have amused you. It is in
the volume which covers his mission to Spain; not one of the best, little
more in fact than a journal, but at least it is a journal wonderfully well