At home, meanwhile, we had no longer any illusions as to M. Legrandin, and
our relations with him had become much more distant. Mamma would be
greatly delighted whenever she caught him red-handed in the sin, which he
continued to call the unpardonable sin, of snobbery. As for my father, he
found it difficult to take Legrandin's airs in so light, in so detached a
spirit; and when there was some talk, one year, of sending me to spend the
long summer holidays at Balbec with my grandmother, he said: "I must, most
certainly, tell Legrandin that you are going to Balbec, to see whether he
will offer you an introduction to his sister. He probably doesn't remember
telling us that she lived within a mile of the place."
My grandmother, who held that, when one went to the seaside, one ought to
be on the beach from morning to night, to taste the salt breezes, and that
one should not know anyone in the place, because calls and parties and
excursions were so much time stolen from what belonged, by rights, to the
sea-air, begged him on no account to speak to Legrandin of our plans; for
already, in her mind's eye, she could see his sister, Mme.
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