Swann's Way

caste. M. Swann, the father, had been a stockbroker; and so 'young
Swann' found himself immured for life in a caste where one's fortune, as
in a list of taxpayers, varied between such and such limits of income.
We knew the people with whom his father had associated, and so we knew
his own associates, the people with whom he was 'in a position to mix.'
If he knew other people besides, those were youthful acquaintances on
whom the old friends of the family, like my relatives, shut their eyes
all the more good-naturedly that Swann himself, after he was left an
orphan, still came most faithfully to see us; but we would have been
ready to wager that the people outside our acquaintance whom Swann knew
were of the sort to whom he would not have dared to raise his hat, had
he met them while he was walking with ourselves. Had there been such a
thing as a determination to apply to Swann a social coefficient peculiar
to himself, as distinct from all the other sons of other stockbrokers in
his father's position, his coefficient would have been rather lower than
theirs, because, leading a very simple life, and having always had
a craze for 'antiques' and pictures, he now lived and piled up his