Cottard, who might have been created on purpose to fill this part, belonged to that special category in a visiting list which Mamma (who inherited certain facets of her father’s turn of mind) used to call the “Tell Sparta” people. Besides⁠—apart from another reason which did not come to our knowledge until many years later⁠— Mme. Swann, in inviting this good-natured, reserved and modest friend, had no need to fear lest she might be introducing into her drawing-room, on her brilliant “days,” a traitor or a rival. She knew what a vast number of homely blossoms that busy worker, armed with her plume and card case, could visit in a single afternoon. She knew the creature’s power of dissemination, and, basing her calculations upon the law of probability, was led to believe that almost certainly some intimate of the Verdurins would be bound to hear, within two or three days, how the Governor of Paris had left cards upon her, or that M. Verdurin himself would be told how M.