" Perhaps the similarity between their position and her own created a disagreeable impression for her. There was also the fact that they were soured bluestockings who sought, through the number of theatrical entertainments they hosted, to delude themselves that they kept a salon, and there was a rivalry between them, which the considerable erosion of their fortunes in the course of their rather unruly lives, by obliging them to watch their purse strings and to rely on the charity of the actors they used, transformed into a sort of life struggle. And, again, the lady with the Marie-Antoinette coiffure, whenever she set eyes on Mme de Villeparisis, could not help being reminded of the fact that the Duchesse de Guermantes did not come to her own Friday receptions. She was consoled by the unfailing presence at these Fridays of hers of her dutiful relation, the Princesse de Poix, her own special Guermantes, who never went near Mme de Villeparisis, despite the fact that she was an intimate friend of the Duchesse. Nevertheless, from the mansion on the Quai Malaquais to the salons of the rue de Tournon, the rue de la Chaise, and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a bond as strong as it was hateful united these three fallen divinities, and I would have been keen to learn, from the pages of some dictionary of society mythology, what amorous adventure, what "

― Marcel Proust , The Guermantes Way