Swann's Way

the younger came often to see them at Combray, my great-aunt and
grandparents never suspected that he had entirely ceased to live in the
kind of society which his family had frequented, or that, under the
sort of incognito which the name of Swann gave him among us, they were
harbouring--with the complete innocence of a family of honest innkeepers
who have in their midst some distinguished highwayman and never know
it--one of the smartest members of the Jockey Club, a particular friend
of the Comte de Paris and of the Prince of Wales, and one of the
men most sought after in the aristocratic world of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain.

Our utter ignorance of the brilliant part which Swann was playing in
the world of fashion was, of course, due in part to his own reserve and
discretion, but also to the fact that middle-class people in those days
took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist
of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself
called to that station in life which his parents already occupied,
and nothing, except the chance of a brilliant career or of a 'good'
marriage, could extract you from that station or admit you to a superior