single incident apart from all those
smiles directed towards himself; namely, her walking abroad beneath a
Rembrandt hat, with a bunch of violets in her bosom.

Except when he asked her for Vinteuil's little phrase instead of the
_Valse des Roses_, Swann made no effort to induce her to play the things
that he himself preferred, nor, in literature any more than in music, to
correct the manifold errors of her taste. He fully realised that she was
not intelligent. When she said how much she would like him to tell her
about the great poets, she had imagined that she would suddenly get
to know whole pages of romantic and heroic verse, in the style of the
Vicomte de Borelli, only even more moving. As for Vermeer of Delft, she
asked whether he had been made to suffer by a woman, if it was a woman
that had inspired him, and once Swann had told her that no one knew, she
had lost all interest in that painter. She would often say: "I'm sure,
poetry; well, of course, there'd be nothing like it if it was all true,
if the poets really believed the things they said. But as often as not
you'll find there's no one so mean and calculating as those fellows. I
know something about poetry. I had a friend, once, who was in love with
a poet of sorts. In his verses he never spoke of anything but love, and
heaven, and the stars. Oh! she was properly taken in! He had more than
three hundred thousand francs out of her before he'd finished." If,
then, Swann tried to shew her in what artistic beauty consisted, how one
ought to appreciate poetry or painting, after a minute or two she would
cease to listen, saying: "Yes... I never thought it would be like that."
And he felt that her disappointment was so great that he preferred to
lie to her, assuring her that what he had said was nothing, that he
had only touched the surface, that he had not time to go into it all
properly, that there was more in it than that. Then she would interrupt
with a brisk, "More in it? What?... Do tell me!", but he did not tell
her, for he realised how petty it would appear to her, and how different
from what she had expected, less sensational and less touching; he was
afraid, too, lest, disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the
same time be disillusioned in the greater matter of love.

With the result that she found Swann inferior, intellectually, to what
she had supposed. "You're always so reserved; I can't make you out." She
marvelled increasingly at his indif