even if it were the writer of the memoir who was wrong, that would prove nothing against the value of the life that produced such genius. (After all, what man of genius has not adopted the irritating conversational mannerisms of the artists of his set, before achieving, as did Elstir, and as happens all too rarely, a higher level of taste? Are not Balzac’s letters, for instance, strewn with vulgar turns of phrase which Swann would have died a thousand deaths rather than employ? And yet in all probability Swann, discriminating as he was, so free of every dislikable absurdity, would have been
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