In matters such as this
'Tis best to close one's eyes.

A few months later, if my grandfather asked Swann's new friend "What
about Swann? Do you still see as much of him as ever?" the other's face
would lengthen: "Never mention his name to me again!"

"But I thought that you were such friends..."

He had been intimate in this way for several months with some cousins
of my grandmother, dining almost every evening at their house. Suddenly,
and without any warning, he ceased to appear. They supposed him to be
ill, and the lady of the house was going to send to inquire for him
when, in her kitchen, she found a letter in his hand, which her cook had
left by accident in the housekeeping book. In this he announced that he
was leaving Paris and would not be able to come to the house again. The
cook had been his mistress, and at the moment of breaking off relations
she was the only one of the household whom he had thought it necessary
to inform.

But when his mistress for the time being was a woman in society, or at
least one whose birth was not so lowly, nor her position so irregular
that he was unable to arrange for her reception in 'society,' then for
her sake he would return to it, but only to the particular orbit in
which she moved or into which he had drawn her. "No good depending on
Swann for this evening," people would say; "don't you remember, it's his
American's night at the Opera?" He would secure invitations for her to
the most exclusive drawing-rooms, to those houses where he himself
went regularly, for weekly dinners or for poker; every evening, after
a slight 'wave' imparted to his stiffly brushed red locks had tempered
with a certain softness the ardour of his bold green eyes, he would
select a flower for his buttonhole and set out to meet his mistress at
the house of one or other of the women of his circle; and then, thinking
of the affection and admiration which the fashionable folk, whom he
always treated exactly as he pleased, would, when he met them there,
lavish upon him in the presence of the woman whom he loved, he would
find a fresh charm in that worldly existence of which he had grown
weary, but whose substance, pervaded and warmly coloured by the
flickering light which he had slipped into its midst, seemed to him
beautiful and rare, now that he had incorporated in it a fresh love.

But while each of these attachments, each of these flirtations had been
the realisation, more or less complete,