Of course he would never have admitted
all or any of this in the poetical language which my family and I so much
admired. And if I asked him, "Do you know the Guermantes family?"
Legrandin the talker would reply, "No, I have never cared to know them."
But unfortunately the talker was now subordinated to another Legrandin,
whom he kept carefully hidden in his breast, whom he would never
consciously exhibit, because this other could tell stories about our own
Legrandin and about his snobbishness which would have ruined his
reputation for ever; and this other Legrandin had replied to me already in
that wounded look, that stiffened smile, the undue gravity of his tone in
uttering those few words, in the thousand arrows by which our own
Legrandin had instantaneously been stabbed and sickened, like a Saint
Sebastian of snobbery:
"Oh, how you hurt me! No, I do not know the Guermantes family. Do not
remind me of the great sorrow of my life." And since this other, this
irrepressible, dominant, despotic Legrandin, if he lacked our Legrandin's
charming vocabulary, shewed an infinitely greater promptness in expressing
himself, by means of what are called 'reflexes,' it followed that, when
Legrandin the talker attempted to silence him, he would already have
spoken, and it would be useless for our friend to deplore the bad
impression which the revelations of his _alter ego_ must have caused,
since he could do no more now than endeavour to mitigate them.
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