Page 40 - swanns-way

his sons. You remember how he says of Maulevrier, ‘Nev-
er did I find in that coarse bottle anything but ill-humour,
boorishness, and folly.’’
‘Coarse or not, I know bottles in which there is some-
thing very different!’ said Flora briskly, feeling bound to
thank Swann as well as her sister, since the present of Asti
had been addressed to them both. Céline began to laugh.
Swann was puzzled, but went on: ‘‘I cannot say wheth-
er it was his ignorance or a trap,’ writes Saint-Simon; ‘he
wished to give his hand to my children. I noticed it in time
to prevent him.’’
My grandfather was already in ecstasies over ‘ignorance
or a trap,’ but Miss Céline—the name of Saint-Simon, a
‘man of letters,’ having arrested the complete paralysis of
her sense of hearing—had grown angry.
‘What! You admire that, do you? Well, it is clever enough!
But what is the point of it? Does he mean that one man isn’t
as good as another? What difference can it make wheth-
er he is a duke or a groom so long as he is intelligent and
good? He had a fine way of bringing up his children, your
Saint-Simon, if he didn’t teach them to shake hands with all
honest men. Really and truly, it’s abominable. And you dare
to quote it!’
And my grandfather, utterly depressed, realising how
futile it would be for him, against this opposition, to at-
tempt to get Swann to tell him the stories which would have
amused him, murmured to my mother: ‘Just tell me again
that line of yours which always comforts me so much on
these occasions. Oh, yes:

40 Swann’s Way