ion is a thing that emanates
from a comparatively small number of leaders, who project it to a
considerable distance--with more or less strength according as one
is nearer to or farther from their intimate centre--over the widening
circle of their friends and the friends of their friends, whose names
form a sort of tabulated index. People 'in society' know this index by
heart, they are gifted in such matters with an erudition from which they
have extracted a sort of taste, of tact, so automatic in its operation
that Swann, for example, without needing to draw upon his knowledge of
the world, if he read in a newspaper the names of the people who had
been guests at a dinner, could tell at once how fashionable the dinner
had been, just as a man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can
estimate exactly the literary merit of its author. But Odette was one
of those persons (an extremely numerous class, whatever the fashionable
world may think, and to be found in every section of society) who do
not share this knowledge, but imagine fashion to be something of quite
another kind, which assumes different aspects according to the circle to
which they themselves belong, but has the special characteristic--common
alike to the fashion of which Odette used to dream and to that before
which Mme. Cottard bowed--of being directly accessible to all. The other
kind, the fashion of 'fashionable people,' is, it must be admitted,
accessible also; but there are inevitable delays. Odette would say of
some one: "He never goes to any place that isn't really smart."

And if Swann were to ask her what she meant by that, she would answer,
with a touch of contempt, "Smart places! Why, good heavens, just fancy,
at your age, having to be told what the smart places are in Paris! What
do you expect me to say? Well, on Sunday mornings there's the Avenue de
l'Imperatrice, and round the lake at five o'clock, and on Thursdays
the Eden-Theatre, and the Hippodrome on Fridays; then there are the
balls..."

"What balls?"

"Why, silly, the balls people give in Paris; the smart ones, I mean.
Wait now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of
the jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the
best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears
such swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a
light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with
that old image, takes her