Page 378 - swanns-way

saw no advantage to be gained by imparting it to his mis-
tress, with the result that, after a few months, she ceased to
take any interest in the people to whose houses he went, ex-
cept when they were the means of his obtaining tickets for
the paddock at race-meetings or first-nights at the theatre.
She hoped that he would continue to cultivate such profit-
able acquaintances, but she had come to regard them as less
smart since the day when she had passed the Marquise de
Villeparisis in the street, wearing a black serge dress and a
bonnet with strings.
‘But she looks like a pew-opener, like an old charwoman,
darling! That a marquise! Goodness knows I’m not a mar-
quise, but you’d have to pay me a lot of money before you’d
get me to go about Paris rigged out like that!’
Nor could she understand Swann’s continuing to live in
his house on the Quai d’Orléans, which, though she dared
not tell him so, she considered unworthy of him.
It was true that she claimed to be fond of ‘antiques,’ and
used to assume a rapturous and knowing air when she con-
fessed how she loved to spend the whole day ‘rummaging’ in
second-hand shops, hunting for ‘bric-à-brac,’ and things of
the ‘right date.’ Although it was a point of honour, to which
she obstinately clung, as though obeying some old family
custom, that she should never answer any questions, never
give any account of what she did during the daytime, she
spoke to Swann once about a friend to whose house she had
been invited, and had found that everything in it was ‘of
the period.’ Swann could not get her to tell him what ‘pe-
riod’ it was. Only after thinking the matter over she replied

378 Swann’s Way