Swann's Way

allowing gratitude and self-interest to filter into his intelligence and
to influence his ideas, went so far as to proclaim that Mme. Verdurin
was "a great and noble soul." Should any of his old fellow-pupils in the
Louvre school of painting speak to him of some rare or eminent artist,
"I'd a hundred times rather," he would reply, "have the Verdurins." And,
with a solemnity of diction which was new in him: "They are magnanimous
creatures, and magnanimity is, after all, the one thing that matters,
the one thing that gives us distinction here on earth. Look you, there
are only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have
reached an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all
whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes,
and, to make up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to
leave them again as long as one lives. Very well!" he went on, with the
slight emotion which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of
what he is doing, he says something, not because it is true but because
he enjoys saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words
as though they came from some one else, "The die is now cast; I have