But I must tell you what he's told me
about their house; it's quite enough. Can you imagine it, all their
furniture is 'Empire'!"
"But, my dear Princess, that's only natural; it belonged to their
grandparents."
"I don't quite say it didn't, but that doesn't make it any less ugly. I
quite understand that people can't always have nice things, but at least
they needn't have things that are merely grotesque. What do you say? I can
think of nothing more devastating, more utterly smug than that hideous
style--cabinets covered all over with swans' heads, like bath-taps!"
"But I believe, all the same, that they've got some lovely things; why,
they must have that famous mosaic table on which the Treaty of..."
"Oh, I don't deny, they may have things that are interesting enough from
the historic point of view. But things like that can't, ever, be beautiful
... because they're simply horrible! I've got things like that myself,
that came to Basin from the Montesquious. Only, they're up in the attics
at Guermantes, where nobody ever sees them. But, after all, that's not the
point, I would fly to see them, with Basin; I would even go to see them
among all their sphinxes and brasses, if I knew them, but--I don't know
them! D'you know, I was always taught, when I was a little girl, that it
was not polite to call on people one didn't know.
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