de Guermantes, never suspecting that this assertion destroyed the force of those previously made by the Duke. “What’s on at the Princess’s?” inquired Swann. “Practically nothing,” the Duke hastened to reply, the question having made him think that Swann was not invited. “What’s that, Basin? When all the highways and hedgerows have been scoured? It will be a deathly crush. What will be pretty, though,” she went on, looking wistfully at Swann, “if the storm I can feel in the air now doesn’t break, will be those marvellous gardens. You know them, of course. I was there a month ago, at the time when the lilacs were in flower, you can’t have any idea how lovely they were. And then the fountain, really, it’s Versailles in Paris.” “What sort of person is the Princess?” I asked. “Why, you know quite well, you’ve seen her here, she’s as beautiful as the day, also rather an idiot. Very nice, in spite of all her Germanic high-and-mightiness, full of good nature and stupid mistakes.” Swann was too subtle not to perceive that the Duchess, in this speech, was trying to show the “Guermantes wit,” and at no great cost to herself, for she was only serving up in a less perfect form an old saying of her own.