When one reads articles about people, even just society people, described as “the last representatives of a world to which no witness any longer exists,” one may of course exclaim: “To think that they should speak so generously and so fulsomely about such an insignificant person! That is what I should so have regretted not having known, if I had only read the newspapers and magazines and not met the man!” But I was tempted instead, reading such pages in the newspapers, to think: “What a pity that—when I was solely preoccupied with my next meeting with Gilberte or Albertine—I did not pay more
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