Page 33 - swanns-way

methods which the said doctors are apt to bring with them
into their everyday life among the sane, either from force of
professional habit or because they think the whole world a
trifle mad.
Their interest grew, however, when, the day before Swann
was to dine with us, and when he had made them a spe-
cial present of a case of Asti, my great-aunt, who had in her
hand a copy of the Figaro in which to the name of a picture
then on view in a Corot exhibition were added the words,
‘from the collection of M. Charles Swann,’ asked: ‘Did you
see that Swann is ‘mentioned’ in the Figaro?’
‘But I have always told you,’ said my grandmother, ‘that
he had plenty of taste.’
‘You would, of course,’ retorted my great-aunt, ‘say any-
thing just to seem different from us.’ For, knowing that my
grandmother never agreed with her, and not being quite
confident that it was her own opinion which the rest of us
invariably endorsed, she wished to extort from us a whole-
sale condemnation of my grandmother’s views, against
which she hoped to force us into solidarity with her own.
But we sat silent. My grandmother’s sisters having ex-
pressed a desire to mention to Swann this reference to him
in the Figaro, my great-aunt dissuaded them. Whenever
she saw in others an advantage, however trivial, which she
herself lacked, she would persuade herself that it was no ad-
vantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to
have to envy them.
‘I don’t think that would please him at all; I know very
well, I should hate to see my name printed like that, as large

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