Page 300 - swanns-way

Vision fugitive...; In matters such as this ‘Tis best to close
one’s eyes.
A few months later, if my grandfather asked Swann’s new
friend ‘What about Swann? Do you still see as much of him
as ever?’ the other’s face would lengthen: ‘Never mention
his name to me again!’
‘But I thought that you were such friends...’
He had been intimate in this way for several months
with some cousins of my grandmother, dining almost every
evening at their house. Suddenly, and without any warn-
ing, he ceased to appear. They supposed him to be ill, and
the lady of the house was going to send to inquire for him
when, in her kitchen, she found a letter in his hand, which
her cook had left by accident in the housekeeping book. In
this he announced that he was leaving Paris and would not
be able to come to the house again. The cook had been his
mistress, and at the moment of breaking off relations she
was the only one of the household whom he had thought it
necessary to inform.
But when his mistress for the time being was a woman in
society, or at least one whose birth was not so lowly, nor her
position so irregular that he was unable to arrange for her
reception in ‘society,’ then for her sake he would return to it,
but only to the particular orbit in which she moved or into
which he had drawn her. ‘No good depending on Swann
for this evening,’ people would say; ‘don’t you remember,
it’s his American’s night at the Opera?’ He would secure in-
vitations for her to the most exclusive drawing-rooms, to
those houses where he himself went regularly, for weekly

300 Swann’s Way