The Courvoisiers had formed a less favourable impression of intelligence, and unless one were actually of their world being intelligent was almost tantamount to “having probably murdered one’s father and mother.” For them intelligence was the sort of burglar’s jemmy by means of which people one did not know from Adam forced the doors of the most reputable drawing-rooms, and it was common knowledge among the Courvoisiers that you always had to pay in the long run for having “those sort” of people in your house. To the most trivial statements made by intelligent people who were not “in society” the Courvoisiers opposed a systematic distrust. Someone having on one occasion remarked: “But Swann is younger than Palamède,”⁠—“He says so, at any rate, and if he says it you may be sure it’s because he thinks it is to his interest!” had been

Mme. de Gallardon’s retort. Better still, when someone said of two highly distinguished foreigners whom the Guermantes had entertained that one of them had been sent in first because she was the elder: “But is she really the elder?” Mme.