A reputation for beauty, misconduct and elegance

In the last chapter of Swann's Way we move forward in time about 10 years. The narrator is again a young boy, this time in Paris, engaged in playing outdoor games with his new friend, Gilberte Swann.

Proust has used the intervening time to turn the tables on us: the loathsome Odette is now the well-respected Mme Swann, mother of Gilberte, and who is now a rising star in Paris. The narrator is devoted to watching her take daily walks along the Bois. The city is spellbound by her.

"...I saw Mme Swann...in rich finery such as no other woman wore...paying scant attention to the passers-by, as though her sole object was to take exercise, without thinking she was being observed and that every head was turned towards her... "

"Even those that did not know her were warned by something singular, something exorbitant about her...that she must be well known. They would ask one another, 'Who is she?', or sometimes would interrogate a passing stranger..."

"I could feel all about her the indistinct murmur of fame...whose reputation for beauty, misconduct and elegance was universal."

"I doffed my hat to her with so lavish, so prolonged a gesture that she could not repress a smile. People laughed. As for her, she had never seen me with Gilberte, she did not know my name, but I was for her — like one of the keepers in the Bois, or the boatman, or the ducks on the lake to which she threw scraps of bread — one of the minor personages, familiar, nameless, as devoid of individual character as a stage-hand in the theatre, of her daily walks in the Bois."

"...She would not be alone for long, being soon overtaken by some friend, often in a grey 'topper,' whom I did not know, and who would talk to her for some time, while their two carriages crawled behind."

"...[she] acknowledg[ed] with a wink the greetings of the gentlemen in carriages, who, recognising her figure at a distance, raised their hats to her and said to one another that there was never anyone so well turned out as she."

"...on her lips [was] an ambiguous smile in which I read only the benign condescension of Magesty, although it was pre-eminently the smile of a courtesan, which she graciously bestowed upon the men who greeted her. This smile was in reality saying, to one: 'Oh yes, I remember very well; it was wonderful!'"

"And for certain men only she had a sour, strained, shy, cold smile which meant: 'Yes, you old goat, I know that you've got a tongue like an old viper, that you can't keep quiet for a moment. But do you suppose I care what you say?'"