He never misses a week, from one year's end to
another. He is my daughter's greatest friend. They go about together, and
look at old towns and cathedrals and castles."
As I was still completely ignorant of the different grades in the social
hierarchy, the fact that my father found it impossible for us to see
anything of Swann's wife and daughter had, for a long time, had the
contrary effect of making me imagine them as separated from us by an
enormous gulf, which greatly enhanced their dignity and importance in my
eyes. I was sorry that my mother did not dye her hair and redden her lips,
as I had heard our neighbour, Mme. Sazerat, say that Mme. Swann did, to
gratify not her husband but M. de Charlus; and I felt that, to her, we
must be an object of scorn, which distressed me particularly on account of
the daughter, such a pretty little girl, as I had heard, and one of whom I
used often to dream, always imagining her with the same features and
appearance, which I bestowed upon her quite arbitrarily, but with a
charming effect. But from this afternoon, when I had learned that Mile.
Swann was a creature living in such rare and fortunate circumstances,
bathed, as in her natural element, in such a sea of privilege that, if she
should ask her parents whether anyone were coming to dinner, she would be
answered in those two syllables, radiant with celestial light, would hear
the name of that golden guest who was to her no more than an old friend of
her family, Bergotte; that for her the intimate conversation at table,
corresponding to what my great-aunt's conversation was for me, would be
the words of Bergotte upon all those subjects which he had not been able
to take up in his writings, and on which I would fain have heard him utter
oracles; and that, above all, when she went to visit other towns, he would
be walking by her side, unrecognised and glorious, like the gods who came
down, of old, from heaven to dwell among mortal men: then I realised both
the rare worth of a creature such as Mile.
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