I tell you that you are a
piece of perfection."
"Just as you like," replied Odette, in an affected tone, and then went on:
"You know I'm not fishing for compliments."
"Very well; bring your friend, if he's nice."
Now there was no connection whatsoever between the 'little nucleus' and
the society which Swann frequented, and a purely worldly man would have
thought it hardly worth his while, when occupying so exceptional a
position in the world, to seek an introduction to the Verdurins. But Swann
was so ardent a lover that, once he had got to know almost all the women
of the aristocracy, once they had taught him all that there was to learn,
he had ceased to regard those naturalisation papers, almost a patent of
nobility, which the Faubourg Saint-Germain had bestowed upon him, save as
a sort of negotiable bond, a letter of credit with no intrinsic value,
which allowed him to improvise a status for himself in some little hole in
the country, or in some obscure quarter of Paris, where the good-looking
daughter of a local squire or solicitor had taken his fancy. For at such
times desire, or love itself, would revive in him a feeling of vanity from
which he was now quite free in his everyday life, although it was, no
doubt, the same feeling which had originally prompted him towards that
career as a man of fashion in which he had squandered his intellectual
gifts upon frivolous amusements, and had made use of his erudition in
matters of art only to advise society ladies what pictures to buy and how
to decorate their houses; and this vanity it was which made him eager to
shine, in the sight of any fair unknown who had captivated him for the
moment, with a brilliance which the name of Swann by itself did not emit.
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