True, the thought that she knew them only in this indirect fashion, that is to say did not know them at all (she called this kind of acquaintance knowing people “all my life”), gave Andrée’s mother a touch of melancholy while she plied Albertine with questions about them in a lofty and distant tone, speaking with closed lips, and might have left her doubtful and uneasy as to the importance of her own social position had she not been able to reassure herself, to return safely to the “realities of life,” by saying to the butler: “Please tell the chef that he has not made the peas soft enough.” She then recovered her serenity. And she was quite determined that Andrée was to marry nobody but a man⁠—of the best family, of course⁠—but rich enough for her too to be able to keep a chef and a couple of coachmen. This was the proof positive, the practical indication of “position.” But the fact that Albertine had dined at the banker’s house in the country with this or that great lady, and that the said great lady had invited the girl to stay with her next winter, did not invalidate a sort of special consideration which Albertine showed towards Andrée’s mother, which went very well with the pity, and even repulsion, excited by the tale of her misfortunes, a repulsion increased by the fact that