One day he received an anonymous letter which told him that Odette had
been the mistress of countless men (several of whom it named, among them
Forcheville, M. de Breaute and the painter) and women, and that she
frequented houses of ill-fame. He was tormented by the discovery that
there was to be numbered among his friends a creature capable of sending
him such a letter (for certain details betrayed in the writer a
familiarity with his private life). He wondered who it could be. But he
had never had any suspicion with regard to the unknown actions of other
people, those which had no visible connection with what they said. And
when he wanted to know whether it was rather beneath the apparent
character of M. de Charlus, or of M. des Laumes, or of M. d'Orsan that he
must place the untravelled region in which this ignoble action might have
had its birth; as none of these men had ever, in conversation with Swann,
suggested that he approved of anonymous letters, and as everything that
they had ever said to him implied that they strongly disapproved, he saw
no further reason for associating this infamy with the character of any
one of them more than with the rest.
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