and thus it is also idle to brood about the philosophy underlying the subtle distinctions in John and Stella’s social likes and dislikes. The resulting valuation seems strange. For instance, they take a lively interest in the fates and concerns of the working classes, and not just theoretically, they naturally adore their chef, spoil their caretaker’s wife, treat their chauffeur, John’s butler, and Stella’s chambermaids with patriarchal care and kindness, heartily shake hands with their dentist when encountering him in the lobby of the opera, greet his wife with explosive recognition whether meeting her for the first or the tenth time; however, they display ethereally remote politesse toward the wife of a bank director, because the borders are so fine here as to be all too easily crossed; and with vigorous cordiality they are icily neutral toward the wives of those of John’s diplomatic colleagues who cannot deny a background that is, no doubt, highly respectable but simply not quite to be counted as part of Society.

a year and a half ago, I recall, all this was terribly interesting to me. I felt the bliss of a butterfly hunter who has caught an especially rare and beautiful specimen when, for instance, I discovered that it is always the wives who determine the final place in the social hierarchy; for the time being, bachelors are uncategorized, with every opportunity open . . .

but it is winter 1940, the first Ice Age commenced two years ago and is about to climax, the butterflies are dead on their pins in the glass cases, my passion for lepidoptera has deepened into a passion for deeper biological dynamics: now, for instance, I would like to open Cousin Wolfgang’s eyes to what the stylistic difference between John and Stella’s informational conversations and Uncle Ferdinand’s overflowing chitchat signifies for their joint world. When John and Stella exchange information about the beau monde they belong to, they do so in a businesslike way, which is cool, terse, and precise. Their membership is presumed by their social prestige and their financial standing, matters that must be administered both cautiously and soberly if they are to be well administered. John and Stella, in the web of the higher and highest circles, hang on the threads of innumerable commercial, social, familial, and, last but not least, simply human interests. Unavoidably, they talk about their world. But only privately. They leave no doubt that it is a closed world. They even lower their voices as though fearing that outsiders might be eavesdropping. Even when they are alone—or privately with me—they speak quickly, in shorthand and ciphers: they refer to people either by nicknames and pet names (Maxi, Bully, Manetti, Coco, Toto, Cloclo) or by titles that reveal nothing to the uninitiated about family connections and that conceal degrees of kinship like that between the Baron Charlus and the Duke of Guermantes. Or else they speak about their friends by using—even more mysteriously—the names of their estates, which are not always identical to their family names. John and Stella practice the utmost discretion. Even when directly asked, they avoid exposing all too intimate facts. And they handle anything beyond the sparest information with a certain blurry sketchiness, which one can follow only with precise and comprehensive knowledge and which is therefore accessible only to true initiates (even though the subject matter is usually something that anyone might just as well know). Even I, who live with them in a way that one could—God knows!—call intimate, am sometimes afflicted by a vexed impatience at this hush-hush business over banalities. And though Coco’s wheelings and Cloclo’s dealings are largely matters of indifference to me, I do find that when John and Stella exchange their quick and quiet seals and ciphers, I am as spellbound as someone trying to divine the hushed cooperation of face and gesture between two deaf-mutes.