The simple and elementary gestures used by a man of the world when he courteously holds out his hand to the unknown youth who is being introduced to him, and when he bows discreetly before the Ambassador to whom he is being introduced, had gradually pervaded, without his being conscious of it, the whole of Swann’s social deportment, so that in the company of people of a lower grade than his own, such as the Verdurins and their friends, he instinctively showed an assiduity, and made overtures with which, by their account, any of their “bores” would have dispensed. He chilled, though for a moment only, on meeting