Well, with anyone else
he's not the same man, he's not in the least witty, you have to drag the
words out of him, he's even boring."
"That's strange," remarked Forcheville with fitting astonishment.
A sort of wit like Brichot's would have been regarded as out-and-out
stupidity by the people among whom Swann had spent his early life, for all
that it is quite compatible with real intelligence. And the intelligence
of the Professor's vigorous and well-nourished brain might easily have
been envied by many of the people in society who seemed witty enough to
Swann. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into him their likes
and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained to their ordinary
social existence, including that annex to social existence which belongs,
strictly speaking, to the domain of intelligence, namely, conversation,
that Swann could not see anything in Brichot's pleasantries; to him they
were merely pedantic, vulgar, and disgustingly coarse. He was shocked,
too, being accustomed to good manners, by the rude, almost barrack-room
tone which this student-in-arms adopted, no matter to whom he was
speaking.
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