Within a Budding Grove

MADAME SWANN AT HOME


My mother, when it was a question of our having M. de Norpois to dinner
for the first time, having expressed her regret that Professor Cottard
was away from home, and that she herself had quite ceased to see
anything of Swann, since either of these might have helped to entertain
the old Ambassador, my father replied that so eminent a guest, so
distinguished a man of science as Cottard could never be out of place at
a dinner-table, but that Swann, with his ostentation, his habit of
crying aloud from the house-tops the name of everyone that he knew,
however slightly, was an impossible vulgarian whom the Marquis de
Norpois would be sure to dismiss as--to use his own epithet--a
"pestilent" fellow. Now, this attitude on my father's part may be felt to
require a few words of explanation, inasmuch as some of us, no doubt,
remember a Cottard of distinct mediocrity and a Swann by whom modesty
and discretion, in all his social relations, were carried to the utmost
refinement of delicacy. But in his case, what had happened was that, to
the original "young Swann" and also to the Swann of the Jockey Club, our
old friend had added a fresh personality (which was not to be his last)