It was along the “Méséglise way,” at Montjouvain, a house built on the edge of a large pond, and overlooked by a steep, shrub-grown hill, that M. Vinteuil lived. And so we used often to meet his daughter driving her dogcart at full speed along the road. After a certain year we never saw her alone, but always accompanied by a friend, a girl older than herself, with an evil reputation in the neighbourhood, who in the end installed herself permanently, one day, at Montjouvain. People said: “That poor M. Vinteuil must be blinded by love not to see what everyone is talking about, and to let his daughter⁠—a man who is horrified if you use a word in the wrong sense⁠—bring a woman like that to live under his roof. He says that she is a most superior woman, with a heart of gold, and that she would have shown extraordinary musical talent if she had only been trained. He may be sure it is not music that she is teaching his daughter.” But M.