Page 299 - swanns-way

ties which, in wholly different respects, it offered to my own,
how, when he used to write to my grandfather (though not
at the time we are now considering, for it was about the date
of my own birth that Swann’s great ‘affair’ began, and made
a long interruption in his amatory practices) the latter, rec-
ognising his friend’s handwriting on the envelope, would
exclaim: ‘Here is Swann asking for something; on guard!’
And, either from distrust or from the unconscious spirit of
devilry which urges us to offer a thing only to those who do
not want it, my grandparents would meet with an obstinate
refusal the most easily satisfied of his prayers, as when he
begged them for an introduction to a girl who dined with
us every Sunday, and whom they were obliged, whenever
Swann mentioned her, to pretend that they no longer saw,
although they would be wondering, all through the week,
whom they could invite to meet her, and often failed, in the
end, to find anyone, sooner than make a sign to him who
would so gladly have accepted.
Occasionally a couple of my grandparents’ acquaintance,
who had been complaining for some time that they never
saw Swann now, would announce with satisfaction, and
perhaps with a slight inclination to make my grandparents
envious of them, that he had suddenly become as charming
as he could possibly be, and was never out of their house.
My grandfather would not care to shatter their pleasant il-
lusion, but would look at my grandmother, as he hummed
the air of:
What is this mystery? I cannot understand it;
or of:

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