Page 296 - swanns-way

they have served only to diminish, have been aimed at infe-
riors. And Swann, who behaved quite simply and was at his
ease when with a duchess, would tremble^ for fear of be-
ing despised, and would instantly begin to pose, were he to
meet her grace’s maid.
Unlike so many people, who, either from lack of ener-
gy or else from a resigned sense of the obligation laid upon
them by their social grandeur to remain moored like house-
boats to a certain point on the bank of the stream of life,
abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them above
and below that point, that degree in life in which they will
remain fixed until the day of their death, and are content,
in the end, to describe as pleasures, for want of any better,
those mediocre distractions, that just not intolerable tedium
which is enclosed there with them; Swann would endeavour
not to find charm and beauty in the women with whom he
must pass time, but to pass his time among women whom he
had already found to be beautiful and charming. And these
were, as often as not, women whose beauty was of a distinct-
ly ‘common’ type, for the physical qualities which attracted
him instinctively, and without reason, were the direct op-
posite of those that he admired in the women painted or
sculptured by his favourite masters. Depth of character, or a
melancholy expression on a woman’s face would freeze his
senses, which would, however, immediately melt at the sight
of healthy, abundant, rosy human flesh.
If on his travels he met a family whom it would have
been more correct for him to make no attempt to know,
but among whom a woman caught his eye, adorned with

296 Swann’s Way