X⁠⸺” (the wife of the talkative Academician, and herself a remarkable woman) “who quotes twenty volumes at you.” “Oh, but there isn’t any comparison between them.” The faculty of saying such things as these, and of saying them sincerely, Swann had acquired from the Duchess, and had never lost. He made use of it now with reference to the people who came to his house. He forced himself to distinguish, and to admire in them the qualities that every human being will display if we examine him with a prejudice in his favour, and not with the distaste of the nice-minded; he extolled the merits of Mme.