Page 39 - swanns-way

read in these days, morning, noon and night.’
‘I do not agree with you: there are some days when I find
reading the papers very pleasant indeed!’ my aunt Flora
broke in, to show Swann that she had read the note about
his Corot in the Figaro.
‘Yes,’ aunt Céline went one better. ‘When they write
about things or people in whom we are interested.’
‘I don’t deny it,’ answered Swann in some bewilder-
ment. ‘The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces
us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other ev-
ery day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give
us anything that is of real importance. Suppose that, every
morning, when we tore the wrapper off our paper with fe-
vered hands, a transmutation were to take place, and we were
to find inside it—oh! I don’t know; shall we say Pascal’s Pen-
sées?’ He articulated the title with an ironic emphasis so as
not to appear pedantic. ‘And then, in the gilt and tooled vol-
umes which we open once in ten years,’ he went on, shewing
that contempt for the things of this world which some men
of the world like to affect, ‘we should read that the Queen
of the Hellenes had arrived at Cannes, or that the Prin-
cesse de Léon had given a fancy dress ball. In that way we
should arrive at the right proportion between ‘information’
and ‘publicity.’’ But at once regretting that he had allowed
himself to speak, even in jest, of serious matters, he added
ironically: ‘We are having a most entertaining conversation;
I cannot think why we climb to these lofty summits,’ and
then, turning to my grandfather: ‘Well, Saint-Simon tells
how Maulevrier had had the audacity to offer his hand to

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