grandin had replied to me already in that wounded look, that
stiffened smile, the undue gravity of his tone in uttering those
few words, in the thousand arrows by which our own Legrandin had
instantaneously been stabbed and sickened, like a Saint Sebastian of
snobbery:

"Oh, how you hurt me! No, I do not know the Guermantes family. Do not
remind me of the great sorrow of my life." And since this other,
this irrepressible, dominant, despotic Legrandin, if he lacked our
Legrandin's charming vocabulary, shewed an infinitely greater promptness
in expressing himself, by means of what are called 'reflexes,' it
followed that, when Legrandin the talker attempted to silence him, he
would already have spoken, and it would be useless for our friend to
deplore the bad impression which the revelations of his _alter ego_ must
have caused, since he could do no more now than endeavour to mitigate
them.

This was not to say that M. Legrandin was anything but sincere when he
inveighed against snobs. He could not (from his own knowledge, at least)
be aware that he was one also, since it is only with the passions of
others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to find out
about our own can be no more than what other people have shewn us. Upon
ourselves they react but indirectly, through our imagination, which
substitutes for our actual, primary motives other, secondary motives,
less stark and therefore more decent. Never had Legrandin's snobbishness
impelled him to make a habit of visiting a duchess as such. Instead, it
would set his imagination to make that duchess appear, in Legrandin's
eyes, endowed with all the graces. He would be drawn towards the
duchess, assuring himself the while that he was yielding to the
attractions of her mind, and her other virtues, which the vile race of
snobs could never understand. Only his fellow-snobs knew that he was
of their number, for, owing to their inability to appreciate the
intervening efforts of his imagination, they saw in close juxtaposition
the social activities of Legrandin and their primary cause.

At home, meanwhile, we had no longer any illusions as to M. Legrandin,
and our relations with him had become much more distant. Mamma would be
greatly delighted whenever she caught him red-handed in the sin, which
he continued to call the unpardonable sin, of snobbery. As for my
father, he found it difficult to take Legrandin's airs in so light, in
so detached a spirit; and when th