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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Swann’s Way
+       Remembrance of Things Past, Volume One
+
+Author: Marcel Proust
+
+Release Date: March 22, 2003 [eBook #7178]
+[Most recently updated: May 1, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Eric Eldred and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWANN’S WAY ***
+
+
+
+
+SWANN'S WAY
+
+Remembrance Of Things Past, Volume One
+
+
+By Marcel Proust
+
+
+Translated From The French By C. K. Scott Moncrieff
+
+NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1922
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+OVERTURE
+
+COMBRAY
+
+SWANN IN LOVE
+
+PLACE-NAMES: THE NAME
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OVERTURE
+
+For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out
+my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to
+say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was
+time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book
+which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I
+had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just
+been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own,
+until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book:
+a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This
+impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not
+disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them
+from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then
+it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former
+existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would
+separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form
+part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I
+would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and
+restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to
+which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark
+indeed.
+
+I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling
+of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the
+distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective
+the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying
+towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for
+ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange
+place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to
+farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his
+ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of
+being once again at home.
+
+I would lay my cheeks gently against the comfortable cheeks of my
+pillow, as plump and blooming as the cheeks of babyhood. Or I would
+strike a match to look at my watch. Nearly midnight. The hour when an
+invalid, who has been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a
+strange hotel, awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief
+a streak of daylight shewing under his bedroom door. Oh, joy of joys!
+it is morning. The servants will be about in a minute: he can ring,
+and some one will come to look after him. The thought of being made
+comfortable gives him strength to endure his pain. He is certain he
+heard footsteps: they come nearer, and then die away. The ray of light
+beneath his door is extinguished. It is midnight; some one has turned
+out the gas; the last servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night
+in agony with no one to bring him any help.
+
+I would fall asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches
+only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or
+to open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness,
+to savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay
+heavy upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I
+formed but an insignificant part and whose unconsciousness I should very
+soon return to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned
+without the least effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever
+outgrown; and had come under the thrall of one of my childish terrors,
+such as that old terror of my great-uncle's pulling my curls, which was
+effectually dispelled on the day--the dawn of a new era to me--on which
+they were finally cropped from my head. I had forgotten that event
+during my sleep; I remembered it again immediately I had succeeded in
+making myself wake up to escape my great-uncle's fingers; still, as a
+measure of precaution, I would bury the whole of my head in the pillow
+before returning to the world of dreams.
+
+Sometimes, too, just as Eve was created from a rib of Adam, so a woman
+would come into existence while I was sleeping, conceived from some
+strain in the position of my limbs. Formed by the appetite that I was
+on the point of gratifying, she it was, I imagined, who offered me that
+gratification. My body, conscious that its own warmth was permeating
+hers, would strive to become one with her, and I would awake. The rest
+of humanity seemed very remote in comparison with this woman whose
+company I had left but a moment ago: my cheek was still warm with her
+kiss, my body bent beneath the weight of hers. If, as would sometimes
+happen, she had the appearance of some woman whom I had known in waking
+hours, I would abandon myself altogether to the sole quest of her, like
+people who set out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city
+that they have always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste
+in reality what has charmed their fancy. And then, gradually, the memory
+of her would dissolve and vanish, until I had forgotten the maiden of my
+dream.
+
+When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the
+hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host.
+Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant
+reads off his own position on the earth's surface and the amount of time
+that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt
+to grow confused, and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning,
+after a night of insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading,
+in quite a different position from that in which he normally goes to
+sleep, he has only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back
+in its course, and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the
+time, but will conclude that he has just gone to bed. Or suppose that he
+gets drowsy in some even more abnormal position; sitting in an armchair,
+say, after dinner: then the world will fall topsy-turvy from its orbit,
+the magic chair will carry him at full speed through time and space,
+and when he opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to sleep
+months earlier and in some far distant country. But for me it was enough
+if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my
+consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had
+gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was,
+I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary
+sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an
+animal's consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the
+cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I
+was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very
+possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up
+out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped
+by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of
+civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps,
+followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by
+degrees the component parts of my ego.
+
+Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon
+them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else,
+and by the immobility of our conceptions of them. For it always happened
+that when I awoke like this, and my mind struggled in an unsuccessful
+attempt to discover where I was, everything would be moving round me
+through the darkness: things, places, years. My body, still too heavy
+with sleep to move, would make an effort to construe the form which its
+tiredness took as an orientation of its various members, so as to induce
+from that where the wall lay and the furniture stood, to piece together
+and to give a name to the house in which it must be living. Its memory,
+the composite memory of its ribs, knees, and shoulder-blades offered it
+a whole series of rooms in which it had at one time or another slept;
+while the unseen walls kept changing, adapting themselves to the shape
+of each successive room that it remembered, whirling madly through the
+darkness. And even before my brain, lingering in consideration of when
+things had happened and of what they had looked like, had collected
+sufficient impressions to enable it to identify the room, it, my body,
+would recall from each room in succession what the bed was like, where
+the doors were, how daylight came in at the windows, whether there was a
+passage outside, what I had had in my mind when I went to sleep, and had
+found there when I awoke. The stiffened side underneath my body would,
+for instance, in trying to fix its position, imagine itself to be lying,
+face to the wall, in a big bed with a canopy; and at once I would say to
+myself, "Why, I must have gone to sleep after all, and Mamma never came
+to say good night!" for I was in the country with my grandfather, who
+died years ago; and my body, the side upon which I was lying, loyally
+preserving from the past an impression which my mind should never have
+forgotten, brought back before my eyes the glimmering flame of the
+night-light in its bowl of Bohemian glass, shaped like an urn and hung
+by chains from the ceiling, and the chimney-piece of Siena marble in my
+bedroom at Combray, in my great-aunt's house, in those far distant days
+which, at the moment of waking, seemed present without being clearly
+penned, but would become plainer in a little while when I was properly
+awake.
+
+Then would come up the memory of a fresh position; the wall slid away in
+another direction; I was in my room in Mme. de Saint-Loup's house in the
+country; good heavens, it must be ten o'clock, they will have finished
+dinner! I must have overslept myself, in the little nap which I always
+take when I come in from my walk with Mme. de Saint-Loup, before
+dressing for the evening. For many years have now elapsed since the
+Combray days, when, coming in from the longest and latest walks, I would
+still be in time to see the reflection of the sunset glowing in the
+panes of my bedroom window. It is a very different kind of existence
+at Tansonville now with Mme. de Saint-Loup, and a different kind of
+pleasure that I now derive from taking walks only in the evenings, from
+visiting by moonlight the roads on which I used to play, as a child, in
+the sunshine; while the bedroom, in which I shall presently fall asleep
+instead of dressing for dinner, from afar off I can see it, as we return
+from our walk, with its lamp shining through the window, a solitary
+beacon in the night.
+
+These shifting and confused gusts of memory never lasted for more than
+a few seconds; it often happened that, in my spell of uncertainty as to
+where I was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of which that
+uncertainty was composed any more than, when we watch a horse running,
+we isolate the successive positions of its body as they appear upon
+a bioscope. But I had seen first one and then another of the rooms in
+which I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them
+all in the long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on
+going to bed I would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the
+most diverse materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets,
+a piece of a shawl, the edge of my bed, and a copy of an evening paper,
+all of which things I would contrive, with the infinite patience of
+birds building their nests, to cement into one whole; rooms where, in
+a keen frost, I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the
+outer world (like the sea-swallow which builds at the end of a dark
+tunnel and is kept warm by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire
+keeping in all night, I would sleep wrapped up, as it were, in a great
+cloak of snug and savoury air, shot with the glow of the logs which
+would break out again in flame: in a sort of alcove without walls, a
+cave of warmth dug out of the heart of the room itself, a zone of heat
+whose boundaries were constantly shifting and altering in temperature
+as gusts of air ran across them to strike freshly upon my face, from
+the corners of the room, or from parts near the window or far from the
+fireplace which had therefore remained cold--or rooms in summer, where
+I would delight to feel myself a part of the warm evening, where the
+moonlight striking upon the half-opened shutters would throw down to the
+foot of my bed its enchanted ladder; where I would fall asleep, as it
+might be in the open air, like a titmouse which the breeze keeps poised
+in the focus of a sunbeam--or sometimes the Louis XVI room, so cheerful
+that I could never feel really unhappy, even on my first night in it:
+that room where the slender columns which lightly supported its ceiling
+would part, ever so gracefully, to indicate where the bed was and
+to keep it separate; sometimes again that little room with the high
+ceiling, hollowed in the form of a pyramid out of two separate storeys,
+and partly walled with mahogany, in which from the first moment my mind
+was drugged by the unfamiliar scent of flowering grasses, convinced of
+the hostility of the violet curtains and of the insolent indifference of
+a clock that chattered on at the top of its voice as though I were not
+there; while a strange and pitiless mirror with square feet, which
+stood across one corner of the room, cleared for itself a site I had not
+looked to find tenanted in the quiet surroundings of my normal field of
+vision: that room in which my mind, forcing itself for hours on end
+to leave its moorings, to elongate itself upwards so as to take on the
+exact shape of the room, and to reach to the summit of that monstrous
+funnel, had passed so many anxious nights while my body lay stretched
+out in bed, my eyes staring upwards, my ears straining, my nostrils
+sniffing uneasily, and my heart beating; until custom had changed the
+colour of the curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought an expression
+of pity to the cruel, slanting face of the glass, disguised or even
+completely dispelled the scent of flowering grasses, and distinctly
+reduced the apparent loftiness of the ceiling. Custom! that skilful but
+unhurrying manager who begins by torturing the mind for weeks on end
+with her provisional arrangements; whom the mind, for all that, is
+fortunate in discovering, for without the help of custom it would never
+contrive, by its own efforts, to make any room seem habitable.
+
+Certainly I was now well awake; my body had turned about for the last
+time and the good angel of certainty had made all the surrounding
+objects stand still, had set me down under my bedclothes, in my bedroom,
+and had fixed, approximately in their right places in the uncertain
+light, my chest of drawers, my writing-table, my fireplace, the window
+overlooking the street, and both the doors. But it was no good my
+knowing that I was not in any of those houses of which, in the stupid
+moment of waking, if I had not caught sight exactly, I could still
+believe in their possible presence; for memory was now set in motion; as
+a rule I did not attempt to go to sleep again at once, but used to spend
+the greater part of the night recalling our life in the old days at
+Combray with my great-aunt, at Balbec, Paris, Doncières, Venice, and the
+rest; remembering again all the places and people that I had known, what
+I had actually seen of them, and what others had told me.
+
+At Combray, as every afternoon ended, long before the time when I should
+have to go up to bed, and to lie there, unsleeping, far from my
+mother and grandmother, my bedroom became the fixed point on which my
+melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred. Some one had had the happy
+idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally
+wretched, a magic lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while
+we waited for dinner-time to come: in the manner of the master-builders
+and glass-painters of gothic days it substituted for the opaqueness
+of my walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many
+colours, in which legends were depicted, as on a shifting and transitory
+window. But my sorrows were only increased, because this change of
+lighting destroyed, as nothing else could have done, the customary
+impression I had formed of my room, thanks to which the room itself,
+but for the torture of having to go to bed in it, had become quite
+endurable. For now I no longer recognised it, and I became uneasy, as
+though I were in a room in some hotel or furnished lodging, in a place
+where I had just arrived, by train, for the first time.
+
+Riding at a jerky trot, Golo, his mind filled with an infamous design,
+issued from the little three-cornered forest which dyed dark-green the
+slope of a convenient hill, and advanced by leaps and bounds towards the
+castle of poor Geneviève de Brabant. This castle was cut off short by
+a curved line which was in fact the circumference of one of the
+transparent ovals in the slides which were pushed into position through
+a slot in the lantern. It was only the wing of a castle, and in front
+of it stretched a moor on which Geneviève stood, lost in contemplation,
+wearing a blue girdle. The castle and the moor were yellow, but I could
+tell their colour without waiting to see them, for before the slides
+made their appearance the old-gold sonorous name of Brabant had given
+me an unmistakable clue. Golo stopped for a moment and listened sadly to
+the little speech read aloud by my great-aunt, which he seemed perfectly
+to understand, for he modified his attitude with a docility not devoid
+of a degree of majesty, so as to conform to the indications given in the
+text; then he rode away at the same jerky trot. And nothing could arrest
+his slow progress. If the lantern were moved I could still distinguish
+Golo's horse advancing across the window-curtains, swelling out with
+their curves and diving into their folds. The body of Golo himself,
+being of the same supernatural substance as his steed's, overcame all
+material obstacles--everything that seemed to bar his way--by taking
+each as it might be a skeleton and embodying it in himself: the
+door-handle, for instance, over which, adapting itself at once, would
+float invincibly his red cloak or his pale face, never losing its
+nobility or its melancholy, never shewing any sign of trouble at such a
+transubstantiation.
+
+And, indeed, I found plenty of charm in these bright projections, which
+seemed to have come straight out of a Merovingian past, and to shed
+around me the reflections of such ancient history. But I cannot express
+the discomfort I felt at such an intrusion of mystery and beauty into
+a room which I had succeeded in filling with my own personality until
+I thought no more of the room than of myself. The anaesthetic effect
+of custom being destroyed, I would begin to think and to feel very
+melancholy things. The door-handle of my room, which was different to
+me from all the other doorhandles in the world, inasmuch as it seemed to
+open of its own accord and without my having to turn it, so unconscious
+had its manipulation become; lo and behold, it was now an astral body
+for Golo. And as soon as the dinner-bell rang I would run down to the
+dining-room, where the big hanging lamp, ignorant of Golo and Bluebeard
+but well acquainted with my family and the dish of stewed beef, shed the
+same light as on every other evening; and I would fall into the arms of
+my mother, whom the misfortunes of Geneviève de Brabant had made all the
+dearer to me, just as the crimes of Golo had driven me to a more than
+ordinarily scrupulous examination of my own conscience.
+
+But after dinner, alas, I was soon obliged to leave Mamma, who stayed
+talking with the others, in the garden if it was fine, or in the little
+parlour where everyone took shelter when it was wet. Everyone except my
+grandmother, who held that "It is a pity to shut oneself indoors in the
+country," and used to carry on endless discussions with my father on the
+very wettest days, because he would send me up to my room with a book
+instead of letting me stay out of doors. "That is not the way to make
+him strong and active," she would say sadly, "especially this little
+man, who needs all the strength and character that he can get." My
+father would shrug his shoulders and study the barometer, for he took an
+interest in meteorology, while my mother, keeping very quiet so as not
+to disturb him, looked at him with tender respect, but not too hard,
+not wishing to penetrate the mysteries of his superior mind. But my
+grandmother, in all weathers, even when the rain was coming down in
+torrents and Françoise had rushed indoors with the precious wicker
+armchairs, so that they should not get soaked--you would see my
+grandmother pacing the deserted garden, lashed by the storm, pushing
+back her grey hair in disorder so that her brows might be more free to
+imbibe the life-giving draughts of wind and rain. She would say, "At
+last one can breathe!" and would run up and down the soaking paths--too
+straight and symmetrical for her liking, owing to the want of any
+feeling for nature in the new gardener, whom my father had been asking
+all morning if the weather were going to improve--with her keen, jerky
+little step regulated by the various effects wrought upon her soul by
+the intoxication of the storm, the force of hygiene, the stupidity of
+my education and of symmetry in gardens, rather than by any anxiety (for
+that was quite unknown to her) to save her plum-coloured skirt from the
+spots of mud under which it would gradually disappear to a depth which
+always provided her maid with a fresh problem and filled her with fresh
+despair.
+
+When these walks of my grandmother's took place after dinner there was
+one thing which never failed to bring her back to the house: that was if
+(at one of those points when the revolutions of her course brought her,
+moth-like, in sight of the lamp in the little parlour where the liqueurs
+were set out on the card-table) my great-aunt called out to her:
+"Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!" For,
+simply to tease her (she had brought so foreign a type of mind into my
+father's family that everyone made a joke of it), my great-aunt used to
+make my grandfather, who was forbidden liqueurs, take just a few drops.
+My poor grandmother would come in and beg and implore her husband not to
+taste the brandy; and he would become annoyed and swallow his few drops
+all the same, and she would go out again sad and discouraged, but still
+smiling, for she was so humble and so sweet that her gentleness towards
+others, and her continual subordination of herself and of her own
+troubles, appeared on her face blended in a smile which, unlike those
+seen on the majority of human faces, had no trace in it of irony, save
+for herself, while for all of us kisses seemed to spring from her eyes,
+which could not look upon those she loved without yearning to bestow
+upon them passionate caresses. The torments inflicted on her by my
+great-aunt, the sight of my grandmother's vain entreaties, of her in
+her weakness conquered before she began, but still making the futile
+endeavour to wean my grandfather from his liqueur-glass--all these
+were things of the sort to which, in later years, one can grow so well
+accustomed as to smile at them, to take the tormentor's side with a.
+happy determination which deludes one into the belief that it is not,
+really, tormenting; but in those days they filled me with such horror
+that I longed to strike my great-aunt. And yet, as soon as I heard her
+"Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!" in my
+cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when
+face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them;
+I ran up to the top of the house to cry by myself in a little room
+beside the schoolroom and beneath the roof, which smelt of orris-root,
+and was scented also by a wild currant-bush which had climbed up between
+the stones of the outer wall and thrust a flowering branch in through
+the half-opened window. Intended for a more special and a baser use,
+this room, from which, in the daytime, I could see as far as the keep of
+Roussainville-le-Pin, was for a long time my place of refuge, doubtless
+because it was the only room whose door Ï was allowed to lock, whenever
+my occupation was such as required an inviolable solitude; reading or
+dreaming, secret tears or paroxysms of desire. Alas! I little knew
+that my own lack of will-power, my delicate health, and the consequent
+uncertainty as to my future weighed far more heavily on my grandmother's
+mind than any little breach of the rules by her husband, during those
+endless perambulations, afternoon and evening, in which we used to see
+passing up and down, obliquely raised towards the heavens, her handsome
+face with its brown and wrinkled cheeks, which with age had acquired
+almost the purple hue of tilled fields in autumn, covered, if she were
+walking abroad, by a half-lifted veil, while upon them either the
+cold or some sad reflection invariably left the drying traces of an
+involuntary tear.
+
+My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma
+would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted
+for so short a time: she went down again so soon that the moment in
+which I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her
+garden dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited
+straw, rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment
+of the keenest sorrow. So much did I love that good night that I reached
+the stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as
+to prolong the time of respite during which Mamma would not yet have
+appeared. Sometimes when, after kissing me, she opened the door to go, I
+longed to call her back, to say to her "Kiss me just once again," but
+I knew that then she would at once look displeased, for the concession
+which she made to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to me with
+this kiss of peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies
+absurd, and she would have liked to try to induce me to outgrow the
+need, the custom of having her there at all, which was a very different
+thing from letting the custom grow up of my asking her for an additional
+kiss when she was already crossing the threshold. And to see her look
+displeased destroyed all the sense of tranquillity she had brought me a
+moment before, when she bent her loving face down over my bed, and held
+it out to me like a Host, for an act of Communion in which my lips might
+drink deeply the sense of her real presence, and with it the power to
+sleep. But those evenings on which Mamma stayed so short a time in
+my room were sweet indeed compared to those on which we had guests
+to dinner, and therefore she did not come at all. Our 'guests'
+were practically limited to M. Swann, who, apart from a few passing
+strangers, was almost the only person who ever came to the house at
+Combray, sometimes to a neighbourly dinner (but less frequently since
+his unfortunate marriage, as my family did not care to receive his wife)
+and sometimes after dinner, uninvited. On those evenings when, as we sat
+in front of the house beneath the big chestnut-tree and round the iron
+table, we heard, from the far end of the garden, not the large and
+noisy rattle which heralded and deafened as he approached with its
+ferruginous, interminable, frozen sound any member of the household who
+had put it out of action by coming in 'without ringing,' but the double
+peal--timid, oval, gilded--of the visitors' bell, everyone would at once
+exclaim "A visitor! Who in the world can it be?" but they knew quite
+well that it could only be M. Swann. My great-aunt, speaking in a loud
+voice, to set an example, in a tone which she endeavoured to make sound
+natural, would tell the others not to whisper so; that nothing could be
+more unpleasant for a stranger coming in, who would be led to think that
+people were saying things about him which he was not meant to hear; and
+then my grandmother would be sent out as a scout, always happy to find
+an excuse for an additional turn in the garden, which she would utilise
+to remove surreptitiously, as she passed, the stakes of a rose-tree or
+two, so as to make the roses look a little more natural, as a mother
+might run her hand through her boy's hair, after the barber had smoothed
+it down, to make it stick out properly round his head.
+
+And there we would all stay, hanging on the words which would fall from
+my grandmother's lips when she brought us back her report of the
+enemy, as though there had been some uncertainty among a vast number of
+possible invaders, and then, soon after, my grandfather would say: "I
+can hear Swann's voice." And, indeed, one could tell him only by his
+voice, for it was difficult to make out his face with its arched nose
+and green eyes, under a high forehead fringed with fair, almost red
+hair, dressed in the Bressant style, because in the garden we used as
+little light as possible, so as not to attract mosquitoes: and I would
+slip away as though not going for anything in particular, to tell them
+to bring out the syrups; for my grandmother made a great point, thinking
+it 'nicer' of their not being allowed to seem anything out of the
+ordinary, which we kept for visitors only. Although a far younger man,
+M. Swann was very much attached to my grandfather, who had been an
+intimate friend, in his time, of Swann's father, an excellent but an
+eccentric man in whom the least little thing would, it seemed, often
+check the flow of his spirits and divert the current of his thoughts.
+Several times in the course of a year I would hear my grandfather tell
+at table the story, which never varied, of the behaviour of M. Swann the
+elder upon the death of his wife, by whose bedside he had watched
+day and night. My grandfather, who had not seen him for a long time,
+hastened to join him at the Swanns' family property on the outskirts of
+Combray, and managed to entice him for a moment, weeping profusely, out
+of the death-chamber, so that he should not be present when the body was
+laid in its coffin. They took a turn or two in the park, where there was
+a little sunshine. Suddenly M. Swann seized my grandfather by the arm
+and cried, "Oh, my dear old friend, how fortunate we are to be walking
+here together on such a charming day! Don't you see how pretty they are,
+all these trees--my hawthorns, and my new pond, on which you have never
+congratulated me? You look as glum as a night-cap. Don't you feel this
+little breeze? Ah! whatever you may say, it's good to be alive all the
+same, my dear Amédée!" And then, abruptly, the memory of his dead wife
+returned to him, and probably thinking it too complicated to inquire
+into how, at such a time, he could have allowed himself to be carried
+away by an impulse of happiness, he confined himself to a gesture which
+he habitually employed whenever any perplexing question came into his
+mind: that is, he passed his hand across his forehead, dried his eyes,
+and wiped his glasses. And he could never be consoled for the loss of
+his wife, but used to say to my grandfather, during the two years for
+which he survived her, "It's a funny thing, now; I very often think
+of my poor wife, but I cannot think of her very much at any one time."
+"Often, but a little at a time, like poor old Swann," became one of my
+grandfather's favourite phrases, which he would apply to all kinds of
+things. And I should have assumed that this father of Swann's had been
+a monster if my grandfather, whom I regarded as a better judge than
+myself, and whose word was my law and often led me in the long run to
+pardon offences which I should have been inclined to condemn, had not
+gone on to exclaim, "But, after all, he had a heart of gold."
+
+For many years, albeit--and especially before his marriage--M. Swann
+the younger came often to see them at Combray, my great-aunt and
+grandparents never suspected that he had entirely ceased to live in the
+kind of society which his family had frequented, or that, under the
+sort of incognito which the name of Swann gave him among us, they were
+harbouring--with the complete innocence of a family of honest innkeepers
+who have in their midst some distinguished highwayman and never know
+it--one of the smartest members of the Jockey Club, a particular friend
+of the Comte de Paris and of the Prince of Wales, and one of the
+men most sought after in the aristocratic world of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain.
+
+Our utter ignorance of the brilliant part which Swann was playing in
+the world of fashion was, of course, due in part to his own reserve and
+discretion, but also to the fact that middle-class people in those days
+took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist
+of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself
+called to that station in life which his parents already occupied,
+and nothing, except the chance of a brilliant career or of a 'good'
+marriage, could extract you from that station or admit you to a superior
+caste. M. Swann, the father, had been a stockbroker; and so 'young
+Swann' found himself immured for life in a caste where one's fortune, as
+in a list of taxpayers, varied between such and such limits of income.
+We knew the people with whom his father had associated, and so we knew
+his own associates, the people with whom he was 'in a position to mix.'
+If he knew other people besides, those were youthful acquaintances on
+whom the old friends of the family, like my relatives, shut their eyes
+all the more good-naturedly that Swann himself, after he was left an
+orphan, still came most faithfully to see us; but we would have been
+ready to wager that the people outside our acquaintance whom Swann knew
+were of the sort to whom he would not have dared to raise his hat, had
+he met them while he was walking with ourselves. Had there been such a
+thing as a determination to apply to Swann a social coefficient peculiar
+to himself, as distinct from all the other sons of other stockbrokers in
+his father's position, his coefficient would have been rather lower than
+theirs, because, leading a very simple life, and having always had
+a craze for 'antiques' and pictures, he now lived and piled up his
+collections in an old house which my grandmother longed to visit,
+but which stood on the Quai d'Orléans, a neighbourhood in which my
+great-aunt thought it most degrading to be quartered. "Are you really
+a connoisseur, now?" she would say to him; "I ask for your own sake, as
+you are likely to have 'fakes' palmed off on you by the dealers," for
+she did not, in fact, endow him with any critical faculty, and had no
+great opinion of the intelligence of a man who, in conversation, would
+avoid serious topics and shewed a very dull preciseness, not only when
+he gave us kitchen recipes, going into the most minute details, but
+even when my grandmother's sisters were talking to him about art. When
+challenged by them to give an opinion, or to express his admiration for
+some picture, he would remain almost impolitely silent, and would then
+make amends by furnishing (if he could) some fact or other about the
+gallery in which the picture was hung, or the date at which it had been
+painted. But as a rule he would content himself with trying to amuse
+us by telling us the story of his latest adventure--and he would have
+a fresh story for us on every occasion--with some one whom we ourselves
+knew, such as the Combray chemist, or our cook, or our coachman. These
+stories certainly used to make my great-aunt laugh, but she could
+never tell whether that was on account of the absurd parts which Swann
+invariably made himself play in the adventures, or of the wit that he
+shewed in telling us of them. "It is easy to see that you are a regular
+'character,' M. Swann!"
+
+As she was the only member of our family who could be described as a
+trifle 'common,' she would always take care to remark to strangers, when
+Swann was mentioned, that he could easily, if he had wished to, have
+lived in the Boulevard Haussmann or the Avenue de l'Opéra, and that
+he was the son of old M. Swann who must have left four or five million
+francs, but that it was a fad of his. A fad which, moreover, she thought
+was bound to amuse other people so much that in Paris, when M. Swann
+called on New Year's Day bringing her a little packet of _marrons
+glacés_, she never failed, if there were strangers in the room, to say
+to him: "Well, M. Swann, and do you still live next door to the Bonded
+Vaults, so as to be sure of not missing your train when you go to
+Lyons?" and she would peep out of the corner of her eye, over her
+glasses, at the other visitors.
+
+But if anyone had suggested to my aunt that this Swann, who, in his
+capacity as the son of old M. Swann, was 'fully qualified' to be
+received by any of the 'upper middle class,' the most respected
+barristers and solicitors of Paris (though he was perhaps a trifle
+inclined to let this hereditary privilege go into abeyance), had another
+almost secret existence of a wholly different kind: that when he left
+our house in Paris, saying that he must go home to bed, he would no
+sooner have turned the corner than he would stop, retrace his steps, and
+be off to some drawing-room on whose like no stockbroker or associate
+of stockbrokers had ever set eyes--that would have seemed to my aunt
+as extraordinary as, to a woman of wider reading, the thought of being
+herself on terms of intimacy with Aristaeus, of knowing that he would,
+when he had finished his conversation with her, plunge deep into the
+realms of Thetis, into an empire veiled from mortal eyes, in which
+Virgil depicts him as being received with open arms; or--to be content
+with an image more likely to have occurred to her, for she had seen it
+painted on the plates we used for biscuits at Combray--as the thought
+of having had to dinner Ali Baba, who, as soon as he found himself alone
+and unobserved, would make his way into the cave, resplendent with its
+unsuspected treasures.
+
+One day when he had come to see us after dinner in Paris, and had begged
+pardon for being in evening clothes, Françoise, when he had gone, told
+us that she had got it from his coachman that he had been dining "with a
+princess." "A pretty sort of princess," drawled my aunt; "I know
+them," and she shrugged her shoulders without raising her eyes from her
+knitting, serenely ironical.
+
+Altogether, my aunt used to treat him with scant ceremony. Since she was
+of the opinion that he ought to feel flattered by our invitations, she
+thought it only right and proper that he should never come to see us in
+summer without a basket of peaches or raspberries from his garden,
+and that from each of his visits to Italy he should bring back some
+photographs of old masters for me.
+
+It seemed quite natural, therefore, to send to him whenever we wanted
+a recipe for some special sauce or for a pineapple salad for one of
+our big dinner-parties, to which he himself would not be invited, not
+seeming of sufficient importance to be served up to new friends who
+might be in our house for the first time. If the conversation turned
+upon the Princes of the House of France, "Gentlemen, you and I will
+never know, will we, and don't want to, do we?" my great-aunt would
+say tartly to Swann, who had, perhaps, a letter from Twickenham in his
+pocket; she would make him play accompaniments and turn over music on
+evenings when my grandmother's sister sang; manipulating this creature,
+so rare and refined at other times and in other places, with the rough
+simplicity of a child who will play with some curio from the cabinet no
+more carefully than if it were a penny toy. Certainly the Swann who was
+a familiar figure in all the clubs of those days differed hugely from,
+the Swann created in my great-aunt's mind when, of an evening, in our
+little garden at Combray, after the two shy peals had sounded from the
+gate, she would vitalise, by injecting into it everything she had ever
+heard about the Swann family, the vague and unrecognisable shape which
+began to appear, with my grandmother in its wake, against a background
+of shadows, and could at last be identified by the sound of its voice.
+But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none
+of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for
+everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or
+the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts
+of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as "seeing some
+one we know" is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the
+physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have
+already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we
+compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In
+the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to
+follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in
+the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent
+envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our
+own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen. And so, no
+doubt, from the Swann they had built up for their own purposes my family
+had left out, in their ignorance, a whole crowd of the details of his
+daily life in the world of fashion, details by means of which other
+people, when they met him, saw all the Graces enthroned in his face and
+stopping at the line of his arched nose as at a natural frontier; but
+they contrived also to put into a face from which its distinction had
+been evicted, a face vacant and roomy as an untenanted house, to plant
+in the depths of its unvalued eyes a lingering sense, uncertain but not
+unpleasing, half-memory and half-oblivion, of idle hours spent together
+after our weekly dinners, round the card-table or in the garden, during
+our companionable country life. Our friend's bodily frame had been so
+well lined with this sense, and with various earlier memories of his
+family, that their own special Swann had become to my people a complete
+and living creature; so that even now I have the feeling of leaving
+some one I know for another quite different person when, going back in
+memory, I pass from the Swann whom I knew later and more intimately
+to this early Swann--this early Swann in whom I can distinguish the
+charming mistakes of my childhood, and who, incidentally, is less like
+his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as
+though one's life were a series of galleries in which all the portraits
+of any one period had a marked family likeness, the same (so to speak)
+tonality--this early Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent
+of the great chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and of a sprig of
+tarragon.
+
+And yet one day, when my grandmother had gone to ask some favour of a
+lady whom she had known at the Sacré Coeur (and with whom, because of
+our caste theory, she had not cared to keep up any degree of intimacy in
+spite of several common interests), the Marquise de Villeparisis, of the
+famous house of Bouillon, this lady had said to her:
+
+"I think you know M. Swann very well; he is a great friend of my
+nephews, the des Laumes."
+
+My grandmother had returned from the call full of praise for the house,
+which overlooked some gardens, and in which Mme. de Villeparisis had
+advised her to rent a flat; and also for a repairing tailor and his
+daughter, who kept a little shop in the courtyard, into which she had
+gone to ask them to put a stitch in her skirt, which she had torn on the
+staircase. My grandmother had found these people perfectly charming: the
+girl, she said, was a jewel, and the tailor a most distinguished man,
+the finest she had ever seen. For in her eyes distinction was a thing
+wholly independent of social position. She was in ecstasies over some
+answer the tailor had made, saying to Mamma:
+
+"Sévigné would not have said it better!" and, by way of contrast, of a
+nephew of Mme. de Villeparisis whom she had met at the house:
+
+"My dear, he is so common!"
+
+Now, the effect of that remark about Swann had been, not to raise him
+in my great-aunt's estimation, but to lower Mme. de Villeparisis. It
+appeared that the deference which, on my grandmother's authority, we
+owed to Mme. de Villeparisis imposed on her the reciprocal obligation to
+do nothing that would render her less worthy of our regard, and that
+she had failed in her duty in becoming aware of Swann's existence and
+in allowing members of her family to associate with him. "How should
+she know Swann? A lady who, you always made out, was related to Marshal
+MacMahon!" This view of Swann's social atmosphere which prevailed in my
+family seemed to be confirmed later on by his marriage with a woman of
+the worst class, you might almost say a 'fast' woman, whom, to do him
+justice, he never attempted to introduce to us, for he continued to come
+to us alone, though he came more and more seldom; but from whom they
+thought they could establish, on the assumption that he had found her
+there, the circle, unknown to them, in which he ordinarily moved.
+
+But on one occasion my grandfather read in a newspaper that M. Swann was
+one of the most faithful attendants at the Sunday luncheons given by the
+Duc de X----, whose father and uncle had been among our most prominent
+statesmen in the reign of Louis Philippe. Now my grandfather was curious
+to learn all the little details which might help him to take a mental
+share in the private lives of men like Mole, the Duc Pasquier, or the
+Duc de Broglie. He was delighted to find that Swann associated with
+people who had known them. My great-aunt, however, interpreted this
+piece of news in a sense discreditable to Swann; for anyone who chose
+his associates outside the caste in which he had been born and bred,
+outside his 'proper station,' was condemned to utter degradation in her
+eyes. It seemed to her that such a one abdicated all claim to enjoy the
+fruits of those friendly relations with people of good position which
+prudent parents cultivate and store up for their children's benefit, for
+my great-aunt had actually ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer we
+had known because he had married a 'Highness' and had thereby stepped
+down--in her eyes--from the respectable position of a lawyer's son to
+that of those adventurers, upstart footmen or stable-boys mostly,
+to whom we read that queens have sometimes shewn their favours. She
+objected, therefore, to my grandfather's plan of questioning Swann, when
+next he came to dine with us, about these people whose friendship with
+him we had discovered. On the other hand, my grandmother's two sisters,
+elderly spinsters who shared her nobility of character but lacked her
+intelligence, declared that they could not conceive what pleasure their
+brother-in-law could find in talking about such trifles. They were
+ladies of lofty ambition, who for that reason were incapable of taking
+the least interest in what might be called the 'pinchbeck' things of
+life, even when they had an historic value, or, generally speaking, in
+anything that was not directly associated with some object aesthetically
+precious. So complete was their negation of interest in anything which
+seemed directly or indirectly a part of our everyday life that their
+sense of hearing--which had gradually come to understand its own
+futility when the tone of the conversation, at the dinner-table, became
+frivolous or merely mundane, without the two old ladies' being able to
+guide it back to the topic dear to themselves--would leave its receptive
+channels unemployed, so effectively that they were actually becoming
+atrophied. So that if my grandfather wished to attract the attention of
+the two sisters, he would have to make use of some such alarm signals
+as mad-doctors adopt in dealing with their distracted patients; as by
+beating several times on a glass with the blade of a knife, fixing them
+at the same time with a sharp word and a compelling glance, violent
+methods which the said doctors are apt to bring with them into their
+everyday life among the sane, either from force of professional habit or
+because they think the whole world a trifle mad.
+
+Their interest grew, however, when, the day before Swann was to dine
+with us, and when he had made them a special present of a case of Asti,
+my great-aunt, who had in her hand a copy of the _Figaro_ in which to
+the name of a picture then on view in a Corot exhibition were added the
+words, "from the collection of M. Charles Swann," asked: "Did you see
+that Swann is 'mentioned' in the _Figaro_?"
+
+"But I have always told you," said my grandmother, "that he had plenty
+of taste."
+
+"You would, of course," retorted my great-aunt, "say anything just to
+seem different from _us_." For, knowing that my grandmother never agreed
+with her, and not being quite confident that it was her own opinion
+which the rest of us invariably endorsed, she wished to extort from us
+a wholesale condemnation of my grandmother's views, against which she
+hoped to force us into solidarity with her own.
+
+But we sat silent. My grandmother's sisters having expressed a desire
+to mention to Swann this reference to him in the _Figaro_, my great-aunt
+dissuaded them. Whenever she saw in others an advantage, however
+trivial, which she herself lacked, she would persuade herself that it
+was no advantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to
+have to envy them.
+
+"I don't think that would please him at all; I know very well, I should
+hate to see my name printed like that, as large as life, in the paper,
+and I shouldn't feel at all flattered if anyone spoke to me about it."
+
+She did not, however, put any very great pressure upon my grandmother's
+sisters, for they, in their horror of vulgarity, had brought to such a
+fine art the concealment of a personal allusion in a wealth of ingenious
+circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person
+to whom it was addressed. As for my mother, her only thought was of
+managing to induce my father to consent to speak to Swann, not of his
+wife, but of his daughter, whom he worshipped, and for whose sake it was
+understood that he had ultimately made his unfortunate marriage.
+
+"You need only say a word; just ask him how she is. It must be so very
+hard for him."
+
+My father, however, was annoyed: "No, no; you have the most absurd
+ideas. It would be utterly ridiculous."
+
+But the only one of us in whom the prospect of Swann's arrival gave
+rise to an unhappy foreboding was myself. And that was because on the
+evenings when there were visitors, or just M. Swann in the house, Mamma
+did not come up to my room. I did not, at that time, have dinner with
+the family: I came out to the garden after dinner, and at nine I said
+good night and went to bed. But on these evenings I used to dine earlier
+than the others, and to come in afterwards and sit at table until eight
+o'clock, when it was understood that I must go upstairs; that frail and
+precious kiss which Mamma used always to leave upon my lips when I
+was in bed and just going to sleep I had to take with me from the
+dining-room to my own, and to keep inviolate all the time that it
+took me to undress, without letting its sweet charm be broken, without
+letting its volatile essence diffuse itself and evaporate; and just on
+those very evenings when I must needs take most pains to receive it with
+due formality, I had to snatch it, to seize it instantly and in public,
+without even having the time or being properly free to apply to what I
+was doing the punctiliousness which madmen use who compel themselves to
+exclude all other thoughts from their minds while they are shutting a
+door, so that when the sickness of uncertainty sweeps over them again
+they can triumphantly face and overcome it with the recollection of the
+precise moment in which the door was shut.
+
+We were all in the garden when the double peal of the gate-bell sounded
+shyly. Everyone knew that it must be Swann, and yet they looked at one
+another inquiringly and sent my grandmother scouting.
+
+"See that you thank him intelligibly for the wine," my grandfather
+warned his two sisters-in-law; "you know how good it is, and it is a
+huge case."
+
+"Now, don't start whispering!" said my great-aunt. "How would you like
+to come into a house and find everyone muttering to themselves?"
+
+"Ah! There's M. Swann," cried my father. "Let's ask him if he thinks it
+will be fine to-morrow."
+
+My mother fancied that a word from her would wipe out all the
+unpleasantness which my family had contrived to make Swann feel since
+his marriage. She found an opportunity to draw him aside for a moment.
+But I followed her: I could not bring myself to let her go out of reach
+of me while I felt that in a few minutes I should have to leave her in
+the dining-room and go up to my bed without the consoling thought, as on
+ordinary evenings, that she would come up, later, to kiss me.
+
+"Now, M. Swann," she said, "do tell me about your daughter; I am sure
+she shews a taste already for nice things, like her papa."
+
+"Come along and sit down here with us all on the verandah," said my
+grandfather, coming up to him. My mother had to abandon the quest, but
+managed to extract from the restriction itself a further refinement of
+thought, as great poets do when the tyranny of rhyme forces them into
+the discovery of their finest lines.
+
+"We can talk about her again when we are by ourselves," she said, or
+rather whispered to Swann. "It is only a mother who can understand. I am
+sure that hers would agree with me."
+
+And so we all sat down round the iron table. I should have liked not
+to think of the hours of anguish which I should have to spend, that
+evening, alone in my room, without the possibility of going to sleep: I
+tried to convince myself that they were of no importance, really,
+since I should have forgotten them next morning, and to fix my mind on
+thoughts of the future which would carry me, as on a bridge, across the
+terrifying abyss that yawned at my feet. But my mind, strained by this
+foreboding, distended like the look which I shot at my mother, would not
+allow any other impression to enter. Thoughts did, indeed, enter it,
+but only on the condition that they left behind them every element of
+beauty, or even of quaintness, by which I might have been distracted or
+beguiled. As a surgical patient, by means of a local anaesthetic, can
+look on with a clear consciousness while an operation is being performed
+upon him and yet feel nothing, I could repeat to myself some favourite
+lines, or watch my grandfather attempting to talk to Swann about the Duc
+d'Audriffet-Pasquier, without being able to kindle any emotion from one
+or amusement from the other. Hardly had my grandfather begun to question
+Swann about that orator when one of my grandmother's sisters, in whose
+ears the question echoed like a solemn but untimely silence which her
+natural politeness bade her interrupt, addressed the other with:
+
+"Just fancy, Flora, I met a young Swedish governess to-day who told
+me some most interesting things about the co-operative movement in
+Scandinavia. We really must have her to dine here one evening."
+
+"To be sure!" said her sister Flora, "but I haven't wasted my time
+either. I met such a clever old gentleman at M. Vinteuil's who knows
+Maubant quite well, and Maubant has told him every little thing about
+how he gets up his parts. It is the most interesting thing I ever heard.
+He is a neighbour of M. Vinteuil's, and I never knew; and he is so nice
+besides."
+
+"M. Vinteuil is not the only one who has nice neighbours," cried my aunt
+Céline in a voice which seemed loud because she was so timid, and seemed
+forced because she had been planning the little speech for so long;
+darting, as she spoke, what she called a 'significant glance' at Swann.
+And my aunt Flora, who realised that this veiled utterance was Céline's
+way of thanking Swann intelligibly for the Asti, looked at him with a
+blend of congratulation and irony, either just, because she wished to
+underline her sister's little epigram, or because she envied Swann
+his having inspired it, or merely because she imagined that he was
+embarrassed, and could not help having a little fun at his expense.
+
+"I think it would be worth while," Flora went on, "to have this old
+gentleman to dinner. When you get him upon Maubant or Mme. Materna he
+will talk for hours on end."
+
+"That must be delightful," sighed my grandfather, in whose mind nature
+had unfortunately forgotten to include any capacity whatsoever for
+becoming passionately interested in the co-operative movement among the
+ladies of Sweden or in the methods employed by Maubant to get up his
+parts, just as it had forgotten to endow my grandmother's two sisters
+with a grain of that precious salt which one has oneself to 'add to
+taste' in order to extract any savour from a narrative of the private
+life of Mole or of the Comte de Paris.
+
+"I say!" exclaimed Swann to my grandfather, "what I was going to tell
+you has more to do than you might think with what you were asking me
+just now, for in some respects there has been very little change. I came
+across a passage in Saint-Simon this morning which would have amused
+you. It is in the volume which covers his mission to Spain; not one
+of the best, little more in fact than a journal, but at least it is a
+journal wonderfully well written, which fairly distinguishes it from
+the devastating journalism that we feel bound to read in these days,
+morning, noon and night."
+
+"I do not agree with you: there are some days when I find reading the
+papers very pleasant indeed!" my aunt Flora broke in, to show Swann that
+she had read the note about his Corot in the _Figaro_.
+
+"Yes," aunt Céline went one better. "When they write about things or
+people in whom we are interested."
+
+"I don't deny it," answered Swann in some bewilderment. "The fault I
+find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in
+some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four
+books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance. Suppose
+that, every morning, when we tore the wrapper off our paper with fevered
+hands, a transmutation were to take place, and we were to find inside
+it--oh! I don't know; shall we say Pascal's _Pensées_?" He articulated
+the title with an ironic emphasis so as not to appear pedantic. "And
+then, in the gilt and tooled volumes which we open once in ten years,"
+he went on, shewing that contempt for the things of this world which
+some men of the world like to affect, "we should read that the Queen of
+the Hellenes had arrived at Cannes, or that the Princesse de Léon had
+given a fancy dress ball. In that way we should arrive at the right
+proportion between 'information' and 'publicity.'" But at once
+regretting that he had allowed himself to speak, even in jest, of
+serious matters, he added ironically: "We are having a most entertaining
+conversation; I cannot think why we climb to these lofty summits," and
+then, turning to my grandfather: "Well, Saint-Simon tells how Maulevrier
+had had the audacity to offer his hand to his sons. You remember how he
+says of Maulevrier, 'Never did I find in that coarse bottle anything but
+ill-humour, boorishness, and folly.'"
+
+"Coarse or not, I know bottles in which there is something very
+different!" said Flora briskly, feeling bound to thank Swann as well as
+her sister, since the present of Asti had been addressed to them both.
+Céline began to laugh.
+
+Swann was puzzled, but went on: "'I cannot say whether it was his
+ignorance or a trap,' writes Saint-Simon; 'he wished to give his hand to
+my children. I noticed it in time to prevent him.'"
+
+My grandfather was already in ecstasies over "ignorance or a trap,"
+but Miss Céline--the name of Saint-Simon, a 'man of letters,' having
+arrested the complete paralysis of her sense of hearing--had grown
+angry.
+
+"What! You admire that, do you? Well, it is clever enough! But what is
+the point of it? Does he mean that one man isn't as good as another?
+What difference can it make whether he is a duke or a groom so long
+as he is intelligent and good? He had a fine way of bringing up his
+children, your Saint-Simon, if he didn't teach them to shake hands with
+all honest men. Really and truly, it's abominable. And you dare to quote
+it!"
+
+And my grandfather, utterly depressed, realising how futile it would be
+for him, against this opposition, to attempt to get Swann to tell him
+the stories which would have amused him, murmured to my mother: "Just
+tell me again that line of yours which always comforts me so much on
+these occasions. Oh, yes:
+
+
+  What virtues, Lord, Thou makest us abhor!
+
+Good, that is, very good."
+
+I never took my eyes off my mother. I knew that when they were at table
+I should not be permitted to stay there for the whole of dinner-time,
+and that Mamma, for fear of annoying my father, would not allow me to
+give her in public the series of kisses that she would have had in my
+room. And so I promised myself that in the dining-room, as they began
+to eat and drink and as I felt the hour approach, I would put beforehand
+into this kiss, which was bound to be so brief and stealthy in
+execution, everything that my own efforts could put into it: would
+look out very carefully first the exact spot on her cheek where I would
+imprint it, and would so prepare my thoughts that I might be able,
+thanks to these mental preliminaries, to consecrate the whole of the
+minute Mamma would allow me to the sensation of her cheek against my
+lips, as a painter who can have his subject for short sittings only
+prepares his palette, and from what he remembers and from rough notes
+does in advance everything which he possibly can do in the sitter's
+absence. But to-night, before the dinner-bell had sounded, my
+grandfather said with unconscious cruelty: "The little man looks tired;
+he'd better go up to bed. Besides, we are dining late to-night."
+
+And my father, who was less scrupulous than my grandmother or mother in
+observing the letter of a treaty, went on: "Yes, run along; to bed with
+you."
+
+I would have kissed Mamma then and there, but at that moment the
+dinner-bell rang.
+
+"No, no, leave your mother alone. You've said good night quite enough.
+These exhibitions are absurd. Go on upstairs."
+
+And so I must set forth without viaticum; must climb each step of the
+staircase 'against my heart,' as the saying is, climbing in opposition
+to my heart's desire, which was to return to my mother, since she had
+not, by her kiss, given my heart leave to accompany me forth. That
+hateful staircase, up which I always passed with such dismay, gave out
+a smell of varnish which had to some extent absorbed, made definite and
+fixed the special quality of sorrow that I felt each evening, and made
+it perhaps even more cruel to my sensibility because, when it assumed
+this olfactory guise, my intellect was powerless to resist it. When we
+have gone to sleep with a maddening toothache and are conscious of it
+only as a little girl whom we attempt, time after time, to pull out
+of the water, or as a line of Molière which we repeat incessantly to
+ourselves, it is a great relief to wake up, so that our intelligence
+can disentangle the idea of toothache from any artificial semblance of
+heroism or rhythmic cadence. It was the precise converse of this relief
+which I felt when my anguish at having to go up to my room invaded my
+consciousness in a manner infinitely more rapid, instantaneous almost,
+a manner at once insidious and brutal as I breathed in--a far more
+poisonous thing than any moral penetration--the peculiar smell of the
+varnish upon that staircase.
+
+Once in my room I had to stop every loophole, to close the shutters, to
+dig my own grave as I turned down the bed-clothes, to wrap myself in the
+shroud of my nightshirt. But before burying myself in the iron bed which
+had been placed there because, on summer nights, I was too hot among the
+red curtains of the four-poster, I was stirred to revolt, and attempted
+the desperate stratagem of a condemned prisoner. I wrote to my mother
+begging her to come upstairs for an important reason which I could not
+put in writing. My fear was that Françoise, my aunt's cook who used to
+be put in charge of me when I was at Combray, might refuse to take my
+note. I had a suspicion that, in her eyes, to carry a message to
+my mother when there was a stranger in the room would appear flatly
+inconceivable, just as it would be for the door-keeper of a theatre
+to hand a letter to an actor upon the stage. For things which might
+or might not be done she possessed a code at once imperious, abundant,
+subtle, and uncompromising on points themselves imperceptible or
+irrelevant, which gave it a resemblance to those ancient laws which
+combine such cruel ordinances as the massacre of infants at the breast
+with prohibitions, of exaggerated refinement, against "seething the kid
+in his mother's milk," or "eating of the sinew which is upon the hollow
+of the thigh." This code, if one could judge it by the sudden obstinacy
+which she would put into her refusal to carry out certain of our
+instructions, seemed to have foreseen such social complications and
+refinements of fashion as nothing in Françoise's surroundings or in her
+career as a servant in a village household could have put into her head;
+and we were obliged to assume that there was latent in her some past
+existence in the ancient history of France, noble and little understood,
+just as there is in those manufacturing towns where old mansions still
+testify to their former courtly days, and chemical workers toil among
+delicately sculptured scenes of the Miracle of Theophilus or the Quatre
+Fils Aymon.
+
+In this particular instance, the article of her code which made it
+highly improbable that--barring an outbreak of fire--Françoise would
+go down and disturb Mamma when M. Swann was there for so unimportant a
+person as myself was one embodying the respect she shewed not only for
+the family (as for the dead, for the clergy, or for royalty), but also
+for the stranger within our gates; a respect which I should perhaps have
+found touching in a book, but which never failed to irritate me on her
+lips, because of the solemn and gentle tones in which she would utter
+it, and which irritated me more than usual this evening when the sacred
+character in which she invested the dinner-party might have the effect
+of making her decline to disturb its ceremonial. But to give myself one
+chance of success I lied without hesitation, telling her that it was not
+in the least myself who had wanted to write to Mamma, but Mamma who,
+on saying good night to me, had begged me not to forget to send her
+an answer about something she had asked me to find, and that she would
+certainly be very angry if this note were not taken to her. I think that
+Françoise disbelieved me, for, like those primitive men whose senses
+were so much keener than our own, she could immediately detect, by signs
+imperceptible by the rest of us, the truth or falsehood of anything that
+we might wish to conceal from her. She studied the envelope for five
+minutes as though an examination of the paper itself and the look of
+my handwriting could enlighten her as to the nature of the contents,
+or tell her to which article of her code she ought to refer the matter.
+Then she went out with an air of resignation which seemed to imply:
+"What a dreadful thing for parents to have a child like this!"
+
+A moment later she returned to say that they were still at the ice stage
+and that it was impossible for the butler to deliver the note at once,
+in front of everybody; but that when the finger-bowls were put round he
+would find a way of slipping it into Mamma's hand. At once my anxiety
+subsided; it was now no longer (as it had been a moment ago) until
+to-morrow that I had lost my mother, for my little line was going--to
+annoy her, no doubt, and doubly so because this contrivance would make
+me ridiculous in Swann's eyes--but was going all the same to admit me,
+invisibly and by stealth, into the same room as herself, was going
+to whisper from me into her ear; for that forbidden and unfriendly
+dining-room, where but a moment ago the ice itself--with burned nuts in
+it--and the finger-bowls seemed to me to be concealing pleasures that
+were mischievous and of a mortal sadness because Mamma was tasting of
+them and I was far away, had opened its doors to me and, like a ripe
+fruit which bursts through its skin, was going to pour out into my
+intoxicated heart the gushing sweetness of Mamma's attention while she
+was reading what I had written. Now I was no longer separated from her;
+the barriers were down; an exquisite thread was binding us. Besides,
+that was not all, for surely Mamma would come.
+
+As for the agony through which I had just passed, I imagined that Swann
+would have laughed heartily at it if he had read my letter and had
+guessed its purpose; whereas, on the contrary, as I was to learn in due
+course, a similar anguish had been the bane of his life for many years,
+and no one perhaps could have understood my feelings at that moment so
+well as himself; to him, that anguish which lies in knowing that the
+creature one adores is in some place of enjoyment where oneself is not
+and cannot follow--to him that anguish came through Love, to which it
+is in a sense predestined, by which it must be equipped and adapted; but
+when, as had befallen me, such an anguish possesses one's soul before
+Love has yet entered into one's life, then it must drift, awaiting
+Love's coming, vague and free, without precise attachment, at the
+disposal of one sentiment to-day, of another to-morrow, of filial piety
+or affection for a comrade. And the joy with which I first bound myself
+apprentice, when Françoise returned to tell me that my letter would be
+delivered; Swann, too, had known well that false joy which a friend can
+give us, or some relative of the woman we love, when on his arrival at
+the house or theatre where she is to be found, for some ball or party or
+'first-night' at which he is to meet her, he sees us wandering outside,
+desperately awaiting some opportunity of communicating with her. He
+recognises us, greets us familiarly, and asks what we are doing there.
+And when we invent a story of having some urgent message to give to his
+relative or friend, he assures us that nothing could be more simple,
+takes us in at the door, and promises to send her down to us in five
+minutes. How much we love him--as at that moment I loved Françoise--the
+good-natured intermediary who by a single word has made supportable,
+human, almost propitious the inconceivable, infernal scene of gaiety in
+the thick of which we had been imagining swarms of enemies, perverse and
+seductive, beguiling away from us, even making laugh at us, the woman
+whom we love. If we are to judge of them by him, this relative who has
+accosted us and who is himself an initiate in those cruel mysteries,
+then the other guests cannot be so very demoniacal. Those inaccessible
+and torturing hours into which she had gone to taste of unknown
+pleasures--behold, a breach in the wall, and we are through it. Behold,
+one of the moments whose series will go to make up their sum, a moment
+as genuine as the rest, if not actually more important to ourself
+because our mistress is more intensely a part of it; we picture it to
+ourselves, we possess it, we intervene upon it, almost we have created
+it: namely, the moment in which he goes to tell her that we are waiting
+there below. And very probably the other moments of the party will not
+be essentially different, will contain nothing else so exquisite or so
+well able to make us suffer, since this kind friend has assured us that
+"Of course, she will be delighted to come down! It will be far more
+amusing for her to talk to you than to be bored up there." Alas! Swann
+had learned by experience that the good intentions of a third party are
+powerless to control a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even
+into a ball-room by a man whom she does not love. Too often, the kind
+friend comes down again alone.
+
+My mother did not appear, but with no attempt to safeguard my
+self-respect (which depended upon her keeping up the fiction that she
+had asked me to let her know the result of my search for something
+or other) made Françoise tell me, in so many words "There is no
+answer"--words I have so often, since then, heard the hall-porters in
+'mansions' and the flunkeys in gambling-clubs and the like, repeat to
+some poor girl, who replies in bewilderment: "What! he's said nothing?
+It's not possible. You did give him my letter, didn't you? Very well,
+I shall wait a little longer." And just as she invariably protests that
+she does not need the extra gas which the porter offers to light for
+her, and sits on there, hearing nothing further, except an occasional
+remark on the weather which the porter exchanges with a messenger
+whom he will send off suddenly, when he notices the time, to put some
+customer's wine on the ice; so, having declined Françoise's offer to
+make me some tea or to stay beside me, I let her go off again to the
+servants' hall, and lay down and shut my eyes, and tried not to hear the
+voices of my family who were drinking their coffee in the garden.
+
+But after a few seconds I realised that, by writing that line to Mamma,
+by approaching--at the risk of making her angry--so near to her that I
+felt I could reach out and grasp the moment in which I should see her
+again, I had cut myself off from the possibility of going to sleep
+until I actually had seen her, and my heart began to beat more and more
+painfully as I increased my agitation by ordering myself to keep calm
+and to acquiesce in my ill-fortune. Then, suddenly, my anxiety subsided,
+a feeling of intense happiness coursed through me, as when a strong
+medicine begins to take effect and one's pain vanishes: I had formed a
+resolution to abandon all attempts to go to sleep without seeing Mamma,
+and had decided to kiss her at all costs, even with the certainty of
+being in disgrace with her for long afterwards, when she herself came
+up to bed. The tranquillity which followed my anguish made me extremely
+alert, no less than my sense of expectation, my thirst for and my fear
+of danger.
+
+Noiselessly I opened the window and sat down on the foot of my bed;
+hardly daring to move in case they should hear me from below. Things
+outside seemed also fixed in mute expectation, so as not to disturb the
+moonlight which, duplicating each of them and throwing it back by the
+extension, forwards, of a shadow denser and more concrete than its
+substance, had made the whole landscape seem at once thinner and longer,
+like a map which, after being folded up, is spread out upon the ground.
+What had to move--a leaf of the chestnut-tree, for instance--moved. But
+its minute shuddering, complete, finished to the least detail and with
+utmost delicacy of gesture, made no discord with the rest of the scene,
+and yet was not merged in it, remaining clearly outlined. Exposed upon
+this surface of silence, which absorbed nothing from them, the most
+distant sounds, those which must have come from gardens at the far end
+of the town, could be distinguished with such exact 'finish' that the
+impression they gave of coming from a distance seemed due only to their
+'pianissimo' execution, like those movements on muted strings so well
+performed by the orchestra of the Conservatoire that, although one does
+not lose a single note, one thinks all the same that they are being
+played somewhere outside, a long way from the concert hall, so that all
+the old subscribers, and my grandmother's sisters too, when Swann had
+given them his seats, used to strain their ears as if they had caught
+the distant approach of an army on the march, which had not yet rounded
+the corner of the Rue de Trévise.
+
+I was well aware that I had placed myself in a position than which
+none could be counted upon to involve me in graver consequences at my
+parents' hands; consequences far graver, indeed, than a stranger would
+have imagined, and such as (he would have thought) could follow only
+some really shameful fault. But in the system of education which they
+had given me faults were not classified in the same order as in that of
+other children, and I had been taught to place at the head of the list
+(doubtless because there was no other class of faults from which
+I needed to be more carefully protected) those in which I can now
+distinguish the common feature that one succumbs to them by yielding to
+a nervous impulse. But such words as these last had never been uttered
+in my hearing; no one had yet accounted for my temptations in a way
+which might have led me to believe that there was some excuse for my
+giving in to them, or that I was actually incapable of holding out
+against them. Yet I could easily recognise this class of transgressions
+by the anguish of mind which preceded, as well as by the rigour of the
+punishment which followed them; and I knew that what I had just done was
+in the same category as certain other sins for which I had been severely
+chastised, though infinitely more serious than they. When I went out to
+meet my mother as she herself came up to bed, and when she saw that I
+had remained up so as to say good night to her again in the passage,
+I should not be allowed to stay in the house a day longer, I should be
+packed off to school next morning; so much was certain. Very good: had
+I been obliged, the next moment, to hurl myself out of the window,
+I should still have preferred such a fate. For what I wanted now was
+Mamma, and to say good night to her. I had gone too far along the road
+which led to the realisation of this desire to be able to retrace my
+steps.
+
+I could hear my parents' footsteps as they went with Swann; and, when
+the rattle of the gate assured me that he had really gone, I crept to
+the window. Mamma was asking my father if he had thought the lobster
+good, and whether M. Swann had had some of the coffee-and-pistachio ice.
+"I thought it rather so-so," she was saying; "next time we shall have to
+try another flavour."
+
+"I can't tell you," said my great-aunt, "what a change I find in Swann.
+He is quite antiquated!" She had grown so accustomed to seeing Swann
+always in the same stage of adolescence that it was a shock to her to
+find him suddenly less young than the age she still attributed to him.
+And the others too were beginning to remark in Swann that abnormal,
+excessive, scandalous senescence, meet only in a celibate, in one of
+that class for whom it seems that the great day which knows no morrow
+must be longer than for other men, since for such a one it is void of
+promise, and from its dawn the moments steadily accumulate without any
+subsequent partition among his offspring.
+
+"I fancy he has a lot of trouble with that wretched wife of his, who
+'lives' with a certain Monsieur de Charlus, as all Combray knows. It's
+the talk of the town."
+
+My mother observed that, in spite of this, he had looked much less
+unhappy of late. "And he doesn't nearly so often do that trick of his,
+so like his father, of wiping his eyes and passing his hand across his
+forehead. I think myself that in his heart of hearts he doesn't love his
+wife any more."
+
+"Why, of course he doesn't," answered my grandfather. "He wrote me a
+letter about it, ages ago, to which I took care to pay no attention, but
+it left no doubt as to his feelings, let alone his love for his wife.
+Hullo! you two; you never thanked him for the Asti!" he went on, turning
+to his sisters-in-law.
+
+"What! we never thanked him? I think, between you and me, that I put it
+to him quite neatly," replied my aunt Flora.
+
+"Yes, you managed it very well; I admired you for it," said my aunt
+Céline.
+
+"But you did it very prettily, too."
+
+"Yes; I liked my expression about 'nice neighbours.'"
+
+"What! Do you call that thanking him?" shouted my grandfather. "I heard
+that all right, but devil take me if I guessed it was meant for Swann.
+You may be quite sure he never noticed it."
+
+"Come, come; Swann is not a fool. I am positive he appreciated the
+compliment. You didn't expect me to tell him the number of bottles, or
+to guess what he paid for them."
+
+My father and mother were left alone and sat down for a moment; then my
+father said: "Well, shall we go up to bed?"
+
+"As you wish, dear, though I don't feel in the least like sleeping. I
+don't know why; it can't be the coffee-ice--it wasn't strong enough to
+keep me awake like this. But I see a light in the servants' hall: poor
+Françoise has been sitting up for me, so I will get her to unhook me
+while you go and undress."
+
+My mother opened the latticed door which led from the hall to the
+staircase. Presently I heard her coming upstairs to close her window. I
+went quietly into the passage; my heart was beating so violently that I
+could hardly move, but at least it was throbbing no longer with anxiety,
+but with terror and with joy. I saw in the well of the stair a light
+coming upwards, from Mamma's candle. Then I saw Mamma herself: I threw
+myself upon her. For an instant she looked at me in astonishment, not
+realising what could have happened. Then her face assumed an expression
+of anger. She said not a single word to me; and, for that matter, I used
+to go for days on end without being spoken to, for far less offences
+than this. A single word from Mamma would have been an admission that
+further intercourse with me was within the bounds of possibility,
+and that might perhaps have appeared to me more terrible still, as
+indicating that, with such a punishment as was in store for me, mere
+silence, and even anger, were relatively puerile.
+
+A word from her then would have implied the false calm in which one
+converses with a servant to whom one has just decided to give notice;
+the kiss one bestows on a son who is being packed off to enlist, which
+would have been denied him if it had merely been a matter of being
+angry with him for a few days. But she heard my father coming from the
+dressing-room, where he had gone to take off his clothes, and, to avoid
+the 'scene' which he would make if he saw me, she said, in a voice
+half-stifled by her anger: "Run away at once. Don't let your father see
+you standing there like a crazy jane!"
+
+But I begged her again to "Come and say good night to me!" terrified as
+I saw the light from my father's candle already creeping up the wall,
+but also making use of his approach as a means of blackmail, in the hope
+that my mother, not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must
+if she continued to hold out, would give in to me, and say: "Go back to
+your room. I will come."
+
+Too late: my father was upon us. Instinctively I murmured, though no one
+heard me, "I am done for!"
+
+I was not, however. My father used constantly to refuse to let me do
+things which were quite clearly allowed by the more liberal charters
+granted me by my mother and grandmother, because he paid no heed to
+'Principles,' and because in his sight there were no such things as
+'Rights of Man.' For some quite irrelevant reason, or for no reason at
+all, he would at the last moment prevent me from taking some particular
+walk, one so regular and so consecrated to my use that to deprive me of
+it was a clear breach of faith; or again, as he had done this evening,
+long before the appointed hour he would snap out: "Run along up to
+bed now; no excuses!" But then again, simply because he was devoid
+of principles (in my grandmother's sense), so he could not, properly
+speaking, be called inexorable. He looked at me for a moment with an air
+of annoyance and surprise, and then when Mamma had told him, not without
+some embarrassment, what had happened, said to her: "Go along with him,
+then; you said just now that you didn't feel like sleep, so stay in his
+room for a little. I don't need anything."
+
+"But dear," my mother answered timidly, "whether or not I feel like
+sleep is not the point; we must not make the child accustomed..."
+
+"There's no question of making him accustomed," said my father, with
+a shrug of the shoulders; "you can see quite well that the child is
+unhappy. After all, we aren't gaolers. You'll end by making him ill,
+and a lot of good that will do. There are two beds in his room; tell
+Françoise to make up the big one for you, and stay beside him for the
+rest of the night. I'm off to bed, anyhow; I'm not nervous like you.
+Good night."
+
+It was impossible for me to thank my father; what he called my
+sentimentality would have exasperated him. I stood there, not daring
+to move; he was still confronting us, an immense figure in his white
+nightshirt, crowned with the pink and violet scarf of Indian cashmere
+in which, since he had begun to suffer from neuralgia, he used to tie up
+his head, standing like Abraham in the engraving after Benozzo Gozzoli
+which M. Swann had given me, telling Sarah that she must tear herself
+away from Isaac. Many years have passed since that night. The wall of
+the staircase, up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually
+climb, was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have
+perished which, I imagined, would last for ever, and new structures have
+arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days
+I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are difficult of
+comprehension. It is a long time, too, since my father has been able
+to tell Mamma to "Go with the child." Never again will such hours be
+possible for me. But of late I have been increasingly able to catch, if
+I listen attentively, the sound of the sobs which I had the strength to
+control in my father's presence, and which broke out only when I found
+myself alone with Mamma. Actually, their echo has never ceased: it is
+only because life is now growing more and more quiet round about me that
+I hear them afresh, like those convent bells which are so effectively
+drowned during the day by the noises of the streets that one would
+suppose them to have been stopped for ever, until they sound out again
+through the silent evening air.
+
+Mamma spent that night in my room: when I had just committed a sin so
+deadly that I was waiting to be banished from the household, my parents
+gave me a far greater concession than I should ever have won as the
+reward of a good action. Even at the moment when it manifested itself in
+this crowning mercy, my father's conduct towards me was still somewhat
+arbitrary, and regardless of my deserts, as was characteristic of him
+and due to the fact that his actions were generally dictated by chance
+expediencies rather than based on any formal plan. And perhaps even what
+I called his strictness, when he sent me off to bed, deserved that
+title less, really, than my mother's or grandmother's attitude, for his
+nature, which in some respects differed more than theirs from my own,
+had probably prevented him from guessing, until then, how wretched I was
+every evening, a thing which my mother and grandmother knew well; but
+they loved me enough to be unwilling to spare me that suffering,
+which they hoped to teach me to overcome, so as to reduce my nervous
+sensibility and to strengthen my will. As for my father, whose affection
+for me was of another kind, I doubt if he would have shewn so much
+courage, for as soon as he had grasped the fact that I was unhappy he
+had said to my mother: "Go and comfort him." Mamma stayed all night in
+my room, and it seemed that she did not wish to mar by recrimination
+those hours, so different from anything that I had had a right to
+expect; for when Françoise (who guessed that something extraordinary
+must have happened when she saw Mamma sitting by my side, holding my
+hand and letting me cry unchecked) said to her: "But, Madame, what is
+little Master crying for?" she replied: "Why, Françoise, he doesn't know
+himself: it is his nerves. Make up the big bed for me quickly and then
+go off to your own." And thus for the first time my unhappiness was
+regarded no longer as a fault for which I must be punished, but as
+an involuntary evil which had been officially recognised a nervous
+condition for which I was in no way responsible: I had the consolation
+that I need no longer mingle apprehensive scruples with the bitterness
+of my tears; I could weep henceforward without sin. I felt no small
+degree of pride, either, in Françoise's presence at this return to humane
+conditions which, not an hour after Mamma had refused to come up to my
+room and had sent the snubbing message that I was to go to sleep, raised
+me to the dignity of a grown-up person, brought me of a sudden to a sort
+of puberty of sorrow, to emancipation from tears. I ought then to have
+been happy; I was not. It struck me that my mother had just made a first
+concession which must have been painful to her, that it was a first step
+down from the ideal she had formed for me, and that for the first time
+she, with all her courage, had to confess herself beaten. It struck
+me that if I had just scored a victory it was over her; that I had
+succeeded, as sickness or sorrow or age might have succeeded, in
+relaxing her will, in altering her judgment; that this evening opened
+a new era, must remain a black date in the calendar. And if I had dared
+now, I should have said to Mamma: "No, I don't want you; you mustn't
+sleep here." But I was conscious of the practical wisdom, of what
+would be called nowadays the realism with which she tempered the ardent
+idealism of my grandmother's nature, and I knew that now the mischief
+was done she would prefer to let me enjoy the soothing pleasure of
+her company, and not to disturb my father again. Certainly my mother's
+beautiful features seemed to shine again with youth that evening, as she
+sat gently holding my hands and trying to check my tears; but, just for
+that reason, it seemed to me that this should not have happened; her
+anger would have been less difficult to endure than this new kindness
+which my childhood had not known; I felt that I had with an impious and
+secret finger traced a first wrinkle upon her soul and made the first
+white hair shew upon her head. This thought redoubled my sobs, and then
+I saw that Mamma, who had never allowed herself to go to any length
+of tenderness with me, was suddenly overcome by my tears and had to
+struggle to keep back her own. Then, as she saw that I had noticed
+this, she said to me, with a smile: "Why, my little buttercup, my little
+canary-boy, he's going to make Mamma as silly as himself if this goes
+on. Look, since you can't sleep, and Mamma can't either, we mustn't
+go on in this stupid way; we must do something; I'll get one of your
+books." But I had none there. "Would you like me to get out the books
+now that your grandmother is going to give you for your birthday? Just
+think it over first, and don't be disappointed if there is nothing new
+for you then."
+
+I was only too delighted, and Mamma went to find a parcel of books
+in which I could not distinguish, through the paper in which it was
+wrapped, any more than its squareness and size, but which, even at this
+first glimpse, brief and obscure as it was, bade fair to eclipse already
+the paint-box of last New Year's Day and the silkworms of the year
+before. It contained _La Mare au Diable_, _François le Champi_, _La
+Petite Fadette_, and _Les Maîtres Sonneurs_. My grandmother, as I
+learned afterwards, had at first chosen Mussel's poems, a volume of
+Rousseau, and _Indiana_; for while she considered light reading as
+unwholesome as sweets and cakes, she did not reflect that the strong
+breath of genius must have upon the very soul of a child an influence
+at once more dangerous and less quickening than those of fresh air and
+country breezes upon his body. But when my father had seemed almost to
+regard her as insane on learning the names of the books she proposed
+to give me, she had journeyed back by herself to Jouy-le-Vicomte to
+the bookseller's, so that there should be no fear of my not having my
+present in time (it was a burning hot day, and she had come home so
+unwell that the doctor had warned my mother not to allow her again
+to tire herself in that way), and had there fallen back upon the four
+pastoral novels of George Sand.
+
+"My dear," she had said to Mamma, "I could not allow myself to give the
+child anything that was not well written."
+
+The truth was that she could never make up her mind to purchase anything
+from which no intellectual profit was to be derived, and, above all,
+that profit which good things bestowed on us by teaching us to seek our
+pleasures elsewhere than in the barren satisfaction of worldly wealth.
+Even when she had to make some one a present of the kind called
+'useful,' when she had to give an armchair or some table-silver or
+a walking-stick, she would choose 'antiques,' as though their long
+desuetude had effaced from them any semblance of utility and fitted
+them rather to instruct us in the lives of the men of other days than
+to serve the common requirements of our own. She would have liked me to
+have in my room photographs of ancient buildings or of beautiful places.
+But at the moment of buying them, and for all that the subject of the
+picture had an aesthetic value of its own, she would find that vulgarity
+and utility had too prominent a part in them, through the mechanical
+nature of their reproduction by photography. She attempted by a
+subterfuge, if not to eliminate altogether their commercial banality,
+at least to minimise it, to substitute for the bulk of it what was
+art still, to introduce, as it might be, several 'thicknesses' of
+art; instead of photographs of Chartres Cathedral, of the Fountains
+of Saint-Cloud, or of Vesuvius she would inquire of Swann whether some
+great painter had not made pictures of them, and preferred to give me
+photographs of 'Chartres Cathedral' after Corot, of the 'Fountains of
+Saint-Cloud' after Hubert Robert, and of 'Vesuvius' after Turner, which
+were a stage higher in the scale of art. But although the photographer
+had been prevented from reproducing directly the masterpieces or the
+beauties of nature, and had there been replaced by a great artist, he
+resumed his odious position when it came to reproducing the artist's
+interpretation. Accordingly, having to reckon again with vulgarity,
+my grandmother would endeavour to postpone the moment of contact still
+further. She would ask Swann if the picture had not been engraved,
+preferring, when possible, old engravings with some interest of
+association apart from themselves, such, for example, as shew us a
+masterpiece in a state in which we can no longer see it to-day, as
+Morghen's print of the 'Cenacolo' of Leonardo before it was spoiled
+by restoration. It must be admitted that the results of this method of
+interpreting the art of making presents were not always happy. The idea
+which I formed of Venice, from a drawing by Titian which is supposed to
+have the lagoon in the background, was certainly far less accurate than
+what I have since derived from ordinary photographs. We could no
+longer keep count in the family (when my great-aunt tried to frame an
+indictment of my grandmother) of all the armchairs she had presented
+to married couples, young and old, which on a first attempt to sit down
+upon them had at once collapsed beneath the weight of their recipient.
+But my grandmother would have thought it sordid to concern herself too
+closely with the solidity of any piece of furniture in which could still
+be discerned a flourish, a smile, a brave conceit of the past. And
+even what in such pieces supplied a material need, since it did so in a
+manner to which we are no longer accustomed, was as charming to her as
+one of those old forms of speech in which we can still see traces of a
+metaphor whose fine point has been worn away by the rough usage of our
+modern tongue. In precisely the same way the pastoral novels of George
+Sand, which she was giving me for my birthday, were regular lumber-rooms
+of antique furniture, full of expressions that have fallen out of use
+and returned as imagery, such as one finds now only in country dialects.
+And my grandmother had bought them in preference to other books, just as
+she would have preferred to take a house that had a gothic dovecot, or
+some other such piece of antiquity as would have a pleasant effect on
+the mind, filling it with a nostalgic longing for impossible journeys
+through the realms of time.
+
+Mamma sat down by my bed; she had chosen _François le Champi_, whose
+reddish cover and incomprehensible title gave it a distinct personality
+in my eyes and a mysterious attraction. I had not then read any real
+novels. I had heard it said that George Sand was a typical novelist.
+That prepared me in advance to imagine that _François le Champi_
+contained something inexpressibly delicious. The course of the
+narrative, where it tended to arouse curiosity or melt to pity, certain
+modes of expression which disturb or sadden the reader, and which, with
+a little experience, he may recognise as 'common form' in novels, seemed
+to me then distinctive--for to me a new book was not one of a number of
+similar objects, but was like an individual man, unmatched, and with no
+cause of existence beyond himself--an intoxicating whiff of the peculiar
+essence of _François le Champi_. Beneath the everyday incidents, the
+commonplace thoughts and hackneyed words, I could hear, or overhear, an
+intonation, a rhythmic utterance fine and strange. The 'action' began:
+to me it seemed all the more obscure because in those days, when I read
+to myself, I used often, while I turned the pages, to dream of something
+quite different. And to the gaps which this habit made in my knowledge
+of the story more were added by the fact that when it was Mamma who was
+reading to me aloud she left all the love-scenes out. And so all the odd
+changes which take place in the relations between the miller's wife and
+the boy, changes which only the birth and growth of love can explain,
+seemed to me plunged and steeped in a mystery, the key to which (as I
+could readily believe) lay in that strange and pleasant-sounding name of
+_Champi_, which draped the boy who bore it, I knew not why, in its own
+bright colour, purpurate and charming. If my mother was not a faithful
+reader, she was, none the less, admirable when reading a work in which
+she found the note of true feeling by the respectful simplicity of her
+interpretation and by the sound of her sweet and gentle voice. It was
+the same in her daily life, when it was not works of art but men and
+women whom she was moved to pity or admire: it was touching to observe
+with what deference she would banish from her voice, her gestures, from
+her whole conversation, now the note of joy which might have distressed
+some mother who had long ago lost a child, now the recollection of an
+event or anniversary which might have reminded some old gentleman of the
+burden of his years, now the household topic which might have bored some
+young man of letters. And so, when she read aloud the prose of George
+Sand, prose which is everywhere redolent of that generosity and moral
+distinction which Mamma had learned from my grandmother to place above
+all other qualities in life, and which I was not to teach her until
+much later to refrain from placing, in the same way, above all other
+qualities in literature; taking pains to banish from her voice any
+weakness or affectation which might have blocked its channel for that
+powerful stream of language, she supplied all the natural tenderness,
+all the lavish sweetness which they demanded to phrases which seemed
+to have been composed for her voice, and which were all, so to speak,
+within her compass. She came to them with the tone that they required,
+with the cordial accent which existed before they were, which dictated
+them, but which is not to be found in the words themselves, and by these
+means she smoothed away, as she read on, any harshness there might be
+or discordance in the tenses of verbs, endowing the imperfect and the
+preterite with all the sweetness which there is in generosity, all the
+melancholy which there is in love; guided the sentence that was drawing
+to an end towards that which was waiting to begin, now hastening, now
+slackening the pace of the syllables so as to bring them, despite their
+difference of quantity, into a uniform rhythm, and breathed into this
+quite ordinary prose a kind of life, continuous and full of feeling.
+
+My agony was soothed; I let myself be borne upon the current of this
+gentle night on which I had my mother by my side. I knew that such a
+night could not be repeated; that the strongest desire I had in the
+world, namely, to keep my mother in my room through the sad hours of
+darkness, ran too much counter to general requirements and to the wishes
+of others for such a concession as had been granted me this evening to
+be anything but a rare and casual exception. To-morrow night I should
+again be the victim of anguish and Mamma would not stay by my side. But
+when these storms of anguish grew calm I could no longer realise
+their existence; besides, tomorrow evening was still a long way off;
+I reminded myself that I should still have time to think about things,
+albeit that remission of time could bring me no access of power, albeit
+the coming event was in no way dependent upon the exercise of my will,
+and seemed not quite inevitable only because it was still separated from
+me by this short interval.
+
+* * *
+
+And so it was that, for a long time afterwards, when I lay awake at
+night and revived old memories of Combray, I saw no more of it than
+this sort of luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy
+background, like the panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign
+will illuminate and dissect from the front of a building the other
+parts of which remain plunged in darkness: broad enough at its base, the
+little parlour, the dining-room, the alluring shadows of the path along
+which would come M. Swann, the unconscious author of my sufferings, the
+hall through which I would journey to the first step of that staircase,
+so hard to climb, which constituted, all by itself, the tapering
+'elevation' of an irregular pyramid; and, at the summit, my bedroom,
+with the little passage through whose glazed door Mamma would enter;
+in a word, seen always at the same evening hour, isolated from all
+its possible surroundings, detached and solitary against its shadowy
+background, the bare minimum of scenery necessary (like the setting
+one sees printed at the head of an old play, for its performance in
+the provinces) to the drama of my undressing, as though all Combray had
+consisted of but two floors joined by a slender staircase, and as though
+there had been no time there but seven o'clock at night. I must own
+that I could have assured any questioner that Combray did include other
+scenes and did exist at other hours than these. But since the facts
+which I should then have recalled would have been prompted only by an
+exercise of the will, by my intellectual memory, and since the pictures
+which that kind of memory shews us of the past preserve nothing of
+the past itself, I should never have had any wish to ponder over this
+residue of Combray. To me it was in reality all dead.
+
+Permanently dead? Very possibly.
+
+There is a large element of hazard in these matters, and a second
+hazard, that of our own death, often prevents us from awaiting for any
+length of time the favours of the first.
+
+I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the
+souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior
+being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so
+effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we
+happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which
+forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our
+name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken.
+We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our
+life.
+
+And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to
+recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile.
+The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of
+intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material
+object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object,
+it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves
+must die.
+
+Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was
+comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had
+any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my
+mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did
+not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular
+reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump
+little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they
+had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon,
+mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing
+morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked
+a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with
+it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I
+stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.
+An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached,
+with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life
+had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity
+illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has
+of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not
+in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental,
+mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was
+conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that
+it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the
+same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How
+could I seize upon and define it?
+
+I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the
+first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time
+to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object
+of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has
+called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat
+indefinitely with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which
+I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon
+the tea for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my
+disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my
+own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss
+of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed
+beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region
+through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it
+nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something
+which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and
+substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.
+
+And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this
+unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its
+existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a
+real state in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and
+vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts
+to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I find again
+the same state, illumined by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make
+one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting
+sensation. And that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out
+every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all
+attention to the sounds which come from the next room. And then, feeling
+that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report,
+I compel it for a change to enjoy that distraction which I have just
+denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before
+the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear an empty
+space in front of it. I place in position before my mind's eye the still
+recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within
+me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise,
+something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I
+do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can
+measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.
+
+Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must
+be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has
+tried to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too
+far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless
+reflection in which are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of
+radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as
+the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its
+contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea;
+cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of
+what period in my past life.
+
+Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this
+memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment
+has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the
+very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has
+stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who
+can say whether it will ever rise? Ten times over I must essay the task,
+must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which
+deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has
+urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely
+of the worries of to-day and of my hopes for to-morrow, which let
+themselves be pondered over without effort or distress of mind.
+
+And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb
+of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those
+mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good
+day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it
+first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the
+little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it;
+perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without
+tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image
+had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among
+others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned
+and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the
+forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry,
+so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either
+obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of
+expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my
+consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after
+the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still,
+alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more
+persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a
+long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their
+moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the
+tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of
+recollection.
+
+And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in
+her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I
+did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory
+made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where
+her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to
+the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out
+behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had
+been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to
+night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon,
+the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took
+when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling
+a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper
+which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they
+become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive
+shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable,
+so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park,
+and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and
+their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray
+and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid,
+sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+COMBRAY
+
+Combray at a distance, from a twenty-mile radius, as we used to see it
+from the railway when we arrived there every year in Holy Week, was no
+more than a church epitomising the town, representing it, speaking of it
+and for it to the horizon, and as one drew near, gathering close about
+its long, dark cloak, sheltering from the wind, on the open plain, as
+a shepherd gathers his sheep, the woolly grey backs of its flocking
+houses, which a fragment of its mediaeval ramparts enclosed, here and
+there, in an outline as scrupulously circular as that of a little town
+in a primitive painting. To live in, Combray was a trifle depressing,
+like its streets, whose houses, built of the blackened stone of the
+country, fronted with outside steps, capped with gables which projected
+long shadows downwards, were so dark that one had, as soon as the sun
+began to go down, to draw back the curtains in the sitting-room windows;
+streets with the solemn names of Saints, not a few of whom figured
+in the history of the early lords of Combray, such as the Rue
+Saint-Hilaire, the Rue Saint-Jacques, in which my aunt's house stood,
+the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde, which ran past her railings, and the Rue
+du Saint-Esprit, on to which the little garden gate opened; and these
+Combray streets exist in so remote a quarter of my memory, painted in
+colours so different from those in which the world is decked for me
+to-day, that in fact one and all of them, and the church which towered
+above them in the Square, seem to me now more unsubstantial than the
+projections of my magic-lantern; while at times I feel that to be able
+to cross the Rue Saint-Hilaire again, to engage a room in the Rue de
+l'Oiseau, in the old hostelry of the Oiseau Flesché, from whose windows
+in the pavement used to rise a smell of cooking which rises still in
+my mind, now and then, in the same warm gusts of comfort, would be to
+secure a contact with the unseen world more marvellously supernatural
+than it would be to make Golo's acquaintance and to chat with Geneviève
+de Brabant.
+
+My grandfather's cousin--by courtesy my great-aunt--with whom we used
+to stay, was the mother of that aunt Léonie who, since her husband's (my
+uncle Octave's) death, had gradually declined to leave, first Combray,
+then her house in Combray, then her bedroom, and finally her bed;
+and who now never 'came down,' but lay perpetually in an indefinite
+condition of grief, physical exhaustion, illness, obsessions,
+and religious observances. Her own room looked out over the Rue
+Saint-Jacques, which ran a long way further to end in the Grand-Pré (as
+distinct from the Petit-Pré, a green space in the centre of the town
+where three streets met) and which, monotonous and grey, with the three
+high steps of stone before almost every one of its doors, seemed like a
+deep furrow cut by some sculptor of gothic images in the very block of
+stone out of which he had fashioned a Calvary or a Crib. My aunt's life
+was now practically confined to two adjoining rooms, in one of which she
+would rest in the afternoon while they aired the other. They were rooms
+of that country order which (just as in certain climes whole tracts of
+air or ocean are illuminated or scented by myriads of protozoa which
+we cannot see) fascinate our sense of smell with the countless odours
+springing from their own special virtues, wisdom, habits, a whole secret
+system of life, invisible, superabundant and profoundly moral, which
+their atmosphere holds in solution; smells natural enough indeed, and
+coloured by circumstances as are those of the neighbouring countryside,
+but already humanised, domesticated, confined, an exquisite, skilful,
+limpid jelly, blending all the fruits of the season which have left
+the orchard for the store-room, smells changing with the year, but
+plenishing, domestic smells, which compensate for the sharpness of hoar
+frost with the sweet savour of warm bread, smells lazy and punctual as
+a village clock, roving smells, pious smells; rejoicing in a peace which
+brings only an increase of anxiety, and in a prosiness which serves as
+a deep source of poetry to the stranger who passes through their midst
+without having lived amongst them. The air of those rooms was saturated
+with the fine bouquet of a silence so nourishing, so succulent that I
+could not enter them without a sort of greedy enjoyment, particularly on
+those first mornings, chilly still, of the Easter holidays, when I could
+taste it more fully, because I had just arrived then at Combray: before
+I went in to wish my aunt good day I would be kept waiting a little time
+in the outer room, where the sun, a wintry sun still, had crept in to
+warm itself before the fire, lighted already between its two brick sides
+and plastering all the room and everything in it with a smell of soot,
+making the room like one of those great open hearths which one finds in
+the country, or one of the canopied mantelpieces in old castles under
+which one sits hoping that in the world outside it is raining or
+snowing, hoping almost for a catastrophic deluge to add the romance of
+shelter and security to the comfort of a snug retreat; I would turn to
+and fro between the prayer-desk and the stamped velvet armchairs, each
+one always draped in its crocheted antimacassar, while the fire, baking
+like a pie the appetising smells with which the air of the room was
+thickly clotted, which the dewy and sunny freshness of the morning had
+already 'raised' and started to 'set,' puffed them and glazed them and
+fluted them and swelled them into an invisible though not impalpable
+country cake, an immense puff-pastry, in which, barely waiting to savour
+the crustier, more delicate, more respectable, but also drier smells
+of the cupboard, the chest-of-drawers, and the patterned wall-paper
+I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to bury myself in the
+nondescript, resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity smell of the
+flowered quilt.
+
+In the next room I could hear my aunt talking quietly to herself. She
+never spoke save in low tones, because she believed that there was
+something broken in her head and floating loose there, which she might
+displace by talking too loud; but she never remained for long, even when
+alone, without saying something, because she believed that it was good
+for her throat, and that by keeping the blood there in circulation it
+would make less frequent the chokings and other pains to which she
+was liable; besides, in the life of complete inertia which she led she
+attached to the least of her sensations an extraordinary importance,
+endowed them with a Protean ubiquity which made it difficult for her to
+keep them secret, and, failing a confidant to whom she might communicate
+them, she used to promulgate them to herself in an unceasing monologue
+which was her sole form of activity. Unfortunately, having formed the
+habit of thinking aloud, she did not always take care to see that there
+was no one in the adjoining room, and I would often hear her saying
+to herself: "I must not forget that I never slept a wink"--for "never
+sleeping a wink" was her great claim to distinction, and one admitted
+and respected in our household vocabulary; in the morning Françoise
+would not 'call' her, but would simply 'come to' her; during the day,
+when my aunt wished to take a nap, we used to say just that she wished
+to 'be quiet' or to 'rest'; and when in conversation she so far forgot
+herself as to say "what made me wake up," or "I dreamed that," she would
+flush and at once correct herself.
+
+After waiting a minute, I would go in and kiss her; Françoise would
+be making her tea; or, if my aunt were feeling 'upset,' she would ask
+instead for her 'tisane,' and it would be my duty to shake out of
+the chemist's little package on to a plate the amount of lime-blossom
+required for infusion in boiling water. The drying of the stems had
+twisted them into a fantastic trellis, in whose intervals the pale
+flowers opened, as though a painter had arranged them there, grouping
+them in the most decorative poses. The leaves, which had lost or altered
+their own appearance, assumed those instead of the most incongruous
+things imaginable, as though the transparent wings of flies or the blank
+sides of labels or the petals of roses had been collected and pounded,
+or interwoven as birds weave the material for their nests. A
+thousand trifling little details--the charming prodigality of the
+chemist--details which would have been eliminated from an artificial
+preparation, gave me, like a book in which one is astonished to read the
+name of a person whom one knows, the pleasure of finding that these were
+indeed real lime-blossoms, like those I had seen, when coming from the
+train, in the Avenue de la Gare, altered, but only because they were not
+imitations but the very same blossoms, which had grown old. And as each
+new character is merely a metamorphosis from something older, in these
+little grey balls I recognised green buds plucked before their time; but
+beyond all else the rosy, moony, tender glow which lit up the blossoms
+among the frail forest of stems from which they hung like little golden
+roses--marking, as the radiance upon an old wall still marks the place
+of a vanished fresco, the difference between those parts of the tree
+which had and those which had not been 'in bloom'--shewed me that these
+were petals which, before their flowering-time, the chemist's package
+had embalmed on warm evenings of spring. That rosy candlelight was still
+their colour, but half-extinguished and deadened in the diminished life
+which was now theirs, and which may be called the twilight of a flower.
+Presently my aunt was able to dip in the boiling infusion, in which she
+would relish the savour of dead or faded blossom, a little madeleine, of
+which she would hold out a piece to me when it was sufficiently soft.
+
+At one side of her bed stood a big yellow chest-of-drawers of
+lemon-wood, and a table which served at once as pharmacy and as
+high altar, on which, beneath a statue of Our Lady and a bottle of
+Vichy-Célestins, might be found her service-books and her medical
+prescriptions, everything that she needed for the performance, in bed,
+of her duties to soul and body, to keep the proper times for pepsin and
+for vespers. On the other side her bed was bounded by the window: she
+had the street beneath her eyes, and would read in it from morning to
+night to divert the tedium of her life, like a Persian prince, the daily
+but immemorial chronicles of Combray, which she would discuss in detail
+afterwards with Françoise.
+
+I would not have been five minutes with my aunt before she would send me
+away in case I made her tired. She would hold out for me to kiss her sad
+brow, pale and lifeless, on which at this early hour she would not yet
+have arranged the false hair and through which the bones shone like the
+points of a crown of thorns--or the beads of a rosary, and she would say
+to me: "Now, my poor child, you must go away; go and get ready for
+mass; and if you see Françoise downstairs, tell her not to stay too
+long amusing herself with you; she must come up soon to see if I want
+anything."
+
+Françoise, who had been for many years in my aunt's service and did not
+at that time suspect that she would one day be transferred entirely to
+ours, was a little inclined to desert my aunt during the months which we
+spent in her house. There had been in my infancy, before we first went
+to Combray, and when my aunt Léonie used still to spend the winter in
+Paris with her mother, a time when I knew Françoise so little that on
+New Year's Day, before going into my great-aunt's house, my mother put
+a five-franc piece in my hand and said: "Now, be careful. Don't make
+any mistake. Wait until you hear me say 'Good morning, Françoise,' and
+I touch your arm before you give it to her." No sooner had we arrived
+in my aunt's dark hall than we saw in the gloom, beneath the frills of a
+snowy cap as stiff and fragile as if it had been made of spun sugar, the
+concentric waves of a smile of anticipatory gratitude. It was Françoise,
+motionless and erect, framed in the small doorway of the corridor like
+the statue of a saint in its niche. When we had grown more accustomed to
+this religious darkness we could discern in her features a disinterested
+love of all humanity, blended with a tender respect for the 'upper
+classes' which raised to the most honourable quarter of her heart the
+hope of receiving her due reward. Mamma pinched my arm sharply and said
+in a loud voice: "Good morning, Françoise." At this signal my fingers
+parted and I let fall the coin, which found a receptacle in a confused
+but outstretched hand. But since we had begun to go to Combray there was
+no one I knew better than Françoise. We were her favourites, and in the
+first years at least, while she shewed the same consideration for us
+as for my aunt, she enjoyed us with a keener relish, because we had, in
+addition to our dignity as part of 'the family' (for she had for those
+invisible bonds by which community of blood unites the members of a
+family as much respect as any Greek tragedian), the fresh charm of not
+being her customary employers. And so with what joy would she welcome
+us, with what sorrow complain that the weather was still so bad for us,
+on the day of our arrival, just before Easter, when there was often an
+icy wind; while Mamma inquired after her daughter and her nephews, and
+if her grandson was good-looking, and what they were going to make of
+him, and whether he took after his granny.
+
+Later, when no one else was in the room, Mamma, who knew that Françoise
+was still mourning for her parents, who had been dead for years, would
+speak of them kindly, asking her endless little questions about them and
+their lives.
+
+She had guessed that Françoise was not over-fond of her son-in-law, and
+that he spoiled the pleasure she found in visiting her daughter, as the
+two could not talk so freely when he was there. And so one day, when
+Françoise was going to their house, some miles from Combray, Mamma said
+to her, with a smile: "Tell me, Françoise, if Julien has had to go away,
+and you have Marguerite to yourself all day, you will be very sorry, but
+will make the best of it, won't you?"
+
+And Françoise answered, laughing: "Madame knows everything; Madame
+is worse than the X-rays" (she pronounced 'x' with an affectation
+of difficulty and with a smile in deprecation of her, an unlettered
+woman's, daring to employ a scientific term) "they brought here for Mme.
+Octave, which see what is in your heart"--and she went off, disturbed
+that anyone should be caring about her, perhaps anxious that we should
+not see her in tears: Mamma was the first person who had given her the
+pleasure of feeling that her peasant existence, with its simple joys
+and sorrows, might offer some interest, might be a source of grief or
+pleasure to some one other than herself.
+
+My aunt resigned herself to doing without Françoise to some extent
+during our visits, knowing how much my mother appreciated the services
+of so active and intelligent a maid, one who looked as smart at five
+o'clock in the morning in her kitchen, under a cap whose stiff and
+dazzling frills seemed to be made of porcelain, as when dressed for
+churchgoing; who did everything in the right way, who toiled like a
+horse, whether she was well or ill, but without noise, without the
+appearance of doing anything; the only one of my aunt's maids who when
+Mamma asked for hot water or black coffee would bring them actually
+boiling; she was one of those servants who in a household seem least
+satisfactory, at first, to a stranger, doubtless because they take
+no pains to make a conquest of him and shew him no special attention,
+knowing very well that they have no real need of him, that he will cease
+to be invited to the house sooner than they will be dismissed from it;
+who, on the other hand, cling with most fidelity to those masters and
+mistresses who have tested and proved their real capacity, and do not
+look for that superficial responsiveness, that slavish affability,
+which may impress a stranger favourably, but often conceals an utter
+barrenness of spirit in which no amount of training can produce the
+least trace of individuality.
+
+When Françoise, having seen that my parents had everything they
+required, first went upstairs again to give my aunt her pepsin and to
+find out from her what she would take for luncheon, very few mornings
+pased but she was called upon to give an opinion, or to furnish an
+explanation, in regard to some important event.
+
+"Just fancy, Françoise, Mme. Goupil went by more than a quarter of an
+hour late to fetch her sister: if she loses any more time on the way I
+should not be at all surprised if she got in after the Elevation."
+
+"Well, there'd be nothing wonderful in that," would be the answer. Or:
+
+"Françoise, if you had come in five minutes ago, you would have seen
+Mme. Imbert go past with some asparagus twice the size of what mother
+Callot has: do try to find out from her cook where she got them. You
+know you've been putting asparagus in all your sauces this spring; you
+might be able to get some like these for our visitors."
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised if they came from the Curé's," Françoise would
+say, and:
+
+"I'm sure you wouldn't, my poor Françoise," my aunt would reply, raising
+her shoulders. "From the Curé's, indeed! You know quite well that he
+can never grow anything but wretched little twigs of asparagus, not
+asparagus at all. I tell you these ones were as thick as my arm. Not
+your arm, of course, but my poor arm, which has grown so much thinner
+again this year." Or:
+
+"Françoise, didn't you hear that bell just now! It split my head."
+
+"No, Mme. Octave."
+
+"Ah, poor girl, your skull must be very thick; you may thank God for
+that. It was Maguelone come to fetch Dr. Piperaud. He came out with her
+at once and they went off along the Rue de l'Oiseau. There must be some
+child ill."
+
+"Oh dear, dear; the poor little creature!" would come with a sigh from
+Françoise, who could not hear of any calamity befalling a person unknown
+to her, even in some distant part of the world, without beginning to
+lament. Or:
+
+"Françoise, for whom did they toll the passing-bell just now? Oh dear,
+of course, it would be for Mme. Rousseau. And to think that I had
+forgotten that she passed away the other night. Indeed, it is time the
+Lord called me home too; I don't know what has become of my head since I
+lost my poor Octave. But I am wasting your time, my good girl."
+
+"Indeed no, Mme. Octave, my time is not so precious; whoever made our
+time didn't sell it to us. I am just going to see that my fire hasn't
+gone out."
+
+In this way Françoise and my aunt made a critical valuation between
+them, in the course of these morning sessions, of the earliest
+happenings of the day. But sometimes these happenings assumed so
+mysterious or so alarming an air that my aunt felt she could not wait
+until it was time for Françoise to come upstairs, and then a formidable
+and quadruple peal would resound through the house.
+
+"But, Mme. Octave, it is not time for your pepsin," Françoise would
+begin. "Are you feeling faint?"
+
+"No, thank you, Françoise," my aunt would reply, "that is to say, yes;
+for you know well that there is very seldom a time when I don't feel
+faint; one day I shall pass away like Mme. Rousseau, before I know where
+I am; but that is not why I rang. Would you believe that I have just
+seen, as plainly as I see you, Mme. Goupil with a little girl I didn't
+know at all. Run and get a pennyworth of salt from Camus. It's not often
+that Théodore can't tell you who a person is."
+
+"But that must be M. Pupin's daughter," Françoise would say, preferring
+to stick to an immediate explanation, since she had been perhaps twice
+already into Camus's shop that morning.
+
+"M. Pupin's daughter! Oh, that's a likely story, my poor Françoise. Do
+you think I should not have recognised M. Pupin's daughter!"
+
+"But I don't mean the big one, Mme. Octave; I mean the little girl, he
+one who goes to school at Jouy. I seem to have seen her once already this
+morning."
+
+"Oh, if that's what it is!" my aunt would say, "she must have come over
+for the holidays. Yes, that is it. No need to ask, she will have come
+over for the holidays. But then we shall soon see Mme. Sazerat come
+along and ring her sister's door-bell, for her luncheon. That will be
+it! I saw the boy from Galopin's go by with a tart. You will see that
+the tart was for Mme. Goupil."
+
+"Once Mme. Goupil has anyone in the house, Mme. Octave, you won't be
+long in seeing all her folk going in to their luncheon there, for it's
+not so early as it was," would be the answer, for Françoise, who was
+anxious to retire downstairs to look after our own meal, was not sorry
+to leave my aunt with the prospect of such a distraction.
+
+"Oh! not before midday!" my aunt would reply in a tone of resignation,
+darting an uneasy glance at the clock, but stealthily, so as not to let
+it be seen that she, who had renounced all earthly joys, yet found a
+keen satisfaction in learning that Mme. Goupil was expecting company to
+luncheon, though, alas, she must wait a little more than an hour still
+before enjoying the spectacle. "And it will come in the middle of
+my luncheon!" she would murmur to herself. Her luncheon was such a
+distraction in itself that she did not like any other to come at the
+same time. "At least, you will not forget to give me my creamed eggs on
+one of the flat plates?" These were the only plates which had pictures
+on them and my aunt used to amuse herself at every meal by reading the
+description on whichever might have been sent up to her. She would
+put on her spectacles and spell out: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,"
+"Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp," and smile, and say "Very good indeed."
+
+"I may as well go across to Camus..." Françoise would hazard, seeing
+that my aunt had no longer any intention of sending her there.
+
+"No, no; it's not worth while now; it's certain to be the Pupin girl. My
+poor Françoise, I am sorry to have made you come upstairs for nothing."
+
+But it was not for nothing, as my aunt well knew, that she had rung for
+Françoise, since at Combray a person whom one 'didn't know at all' was
+as incredible a being as any mythological deity, and it was apt to be
+forgotten that after each occasion on which there had appeared in the
+Rue du Saint-Esprit or in the Square one of these bewildering phenomena,
+careful and exhaustive researches had invariably reduced the fabulous
+monster to the proportions of a person whom one 'did know,' either
+personally or in the abstract, in his or her civil status as being more
+or less closely related to some family in Combray. It would turn out to
+be Mme. Sauton's son discharged from the army, or the Abbé Perdreau's
+niece come home from her convent, or the Curé's brother, a tax-collector
+at Châteaudun, who had just retired on a pension or had come over to
+Combray for the holidays. On first noticing them you have been impressed
+by the thought that there might be in Combray people whom you 'didn't
+know at all,' simply because you had failed to recognise or identify
+them at once. And yet long beforehand Mme. Sauton and the Curé had given
+warning that they expected their 'strangers.' In the evening, when I
+came in and went upstairs to tell my aunt the incidents of our walk, if
+I was rash enough to say to her that we had passed, near the Pont-Vieux,
+a man whom my grandfather didn't know:
+
+"A man grandfather didn't know at all!" she would exclaim. "That's a
+likely story." None the less, she would be a little disturbed by
+the news, she would wish to have the details correctly, and so my
+grandfather would be summoned. "Who can it have been that you passed
+near the Pont-Vieux, uncle? A man you didn't know at all?"
+
+"Why, of course I did," my grandfather would answer; "it was Prosper,
+Mme. Bouilleboeuf's gardener's brother."
+
+"Ah, well!" my aunt would say, calm again but slightly flushed still;
+"and the boy told me that you had passed a man you didn't know at all!"
+After which I would be warned to be more careful of what I said, and not
+to upset my aunt so by thoughtless remarks. Everyone was so well known
+in Combray, animals as well as people, that if my aunt had happened to
+see a dog go by which she 'didn't know at all' she would think about it
+incessantly, devoting to the solution of the incomprehensible problem
+all her inductive talent and her leisure hours.
+
+"That will be Mme. Sazerat's dog," Françoise would suggest, without any
+real conviction, but in the hope of peace, and so that my aunt should
+not 'split her head.'
+
+"As if I didn't know Mme. Sazerat's dog!"--for my aunt's critical mind
+would not so easily admit any fresh fact.
+
+"Ah, but that will be the new dog M. Galopin has brought her from
+Lisieux."
+
+"Oh, if that's what it is!"
+
+"It seems, it's a most engaging animal," Françoise would go on, having
+got the story from Théodore, "as clever as a Christian, always in a good
+temper, always friendly, always everything that's nice. It's not often
+you see an animal so well-behaved at that age. Mme. Octave, it's high
+time I left you; I can't afford to stay here amusing myself; look, it's
+nearly ten o'clock and my fire not lighted yet, and I've still to dress
+the asparagus."
+
+"What, Françoise, more asparagus! It's a regular disease of asparagus
+you have got this year: you will make our Parisians sick of it."
+
+"No, no, Madame Octave, they like it well enough. They'll be coming back
+from church soon as hungry as hunters, and they won't eat it out of the
+back of their spoons, you'll see."
+
+"Church! why, they must be there now; you'd better not lose any time. Go
+and look after your luncheon."
+
+While my aunt gossiped on in this way with Françoise I would have
+accompanied my parents to mass. How I loved it: how clearly I can see it
+still, our church at Combray! The old porch by which we went in, black,
+and full of holes as a cullender, was worn out of shape and deeply
+furrowed at the sides (as also was the holy water stoup to which it led
+us) just as if the gentle grazing touch of the cloaks of peasant-women
+going into the church, and of their fingers dipping into the water, had
+managed by agelong repetition to acquire a destructive force, to impress
+itself on the stone, to carve ruts in it like those made by cart-wheels
+upon stone gate-posts against which they are driven every day. Its
+memorial stones, beneath which the noble dust of the Abbots of Combray,
+who were buried there, furnished the choir with a sort of spiritual
+pavement, were themselves no longer hard and lifeless matter, for time
+had softened and sweetened them, and had made them melt like honey
+and flow beyond their proper margins, either surging out in a milky,
+frothing wave, washing from its place a florid gothic capital, drowning
+the white violets of the marble floor; or else reabsorbed into their
+limits, contracting still further a crabbed Latin inscription,
+bringing a fresh touch of fantasy into the arrangement of its curtailed
+characters, closing together two letters of some word of which the rest
+were disproportionately scattered. Its windows were never so brilliant
+as on days when the sun scarcely shone, so that if it was dull outside
+you might be certain of fine weather in church. One of them was
+filled from top to bottom by a solitary figure, like the king on a
+playing-card, who lived up there beneath his canopy of stone, between
+earth and heaven; and in the blue light of its slanting shadow, on
+weekdays sometimes, at noon, when there was no service (at one of those
+rare moments when the airy, empty church, more human somehow and more
+luxurious with the sun shewing off all its rich furnishings, seemed to
+have almost a habitable air, like the hall--all sculptured stone and
+painted glass--of some mediaeval mansion), you might see Mme. Sazerat
+kneel for an instant, laying down on the chair beside her own a neatly
+corded parcel of little cakes which she had just bought at the baker's
+and was taking home for her luncheon. In another, a mountain of rosy
+snow, at whose foot a battle was being fought, seemed to have frozen the
+window also, which it swelled and distorted with its cloudy sleet, like
+a pane to which snowflakes have drifted and clung, but flakes illumined
+by a sunrise--the same, doubtless, which purpled the reredos of the
+altar with tints so fresh that they seemed rather to be thrown on it for
+a moment by a light shining from outside and shortly to be extinguished
+than painted and permanently fastened on the stone. And all of them
+were so old that you could see, here and there, their silvery antiquity
+sparkling with the dust of centuries and shewing in its threadbare
+brilliance the very cords of their lovely tapestry of glass. There
+was one among them which was a tall panel composed of a hundred little
+rectangular windows, of blue principally, like a great game of patience
+of the kind planned to beguile King Charles VI; but, either because a
+ray of sunlight had gleamed through it or because my own shifting vision
+had drawn across the window, whose colours died away and were rekindled
+by turns, a rare and transient fire--the next instant it had taken on
+all the iridescence of a peacock's tail, then shook and wavered in a
+flaming and fantastic shower, distilled and dropping from the groin of
+the dark and rocky vault down the moist walls, as though it were
+along the bed of some rainbow grotto of sinuous stalactites that I was
+following my parents, who marched before me, their prayer-books clasped
+in their hands; a moment later the little lozenge windows had put on the
+deep transparence, the unbreakable hardness of sapphires clustered on
+some enormous breastplate; but beyond which could be distinguished,
+dearer than all such treasures, a fleeting smile from the sun, which
+could be seen and felt as well here, in the blue and gentle flood in
+which it washed the masonry, as on the pavement of the Square or the
+straw of the market-place; and even on our first Sundays, when we came
+down before Easter, it would console me for the blackness and bareness
+of the earth outside by making burst into blossom, as in some springtime
+in old history among the heirs of Saint Louis, this dazzling and gilded
+carpet of forget-me-nots in glass.
+
+Two tapestries of high warp represented the coronation of Esther (in
+which tradition would have it that the weaver had given to Ahasuerus the
+features of one of the kings of France and to Esther those of a lady of
+Guermantes whose lover he had been); their colours had melted into one
+another, so as to add expression, relief, light to the pictures. A touch
+of red over the lips of Esther had strayed beyond their outline; the
+yellow on her dress was spread with such unctuous plumpness as to have
+acquired a kind of solidity, and stood boldly out from the receding
+atmosphere; while the green of the trees, which was still bright in silk
+and wool among the lower parts of the panel, but had quite 'gone' at the
+top, separated in a paler scheme, above the dark trunks, the yellowing
+upper branches, tanned and half-obliterated by the sharp though sidelong
+rays of an invisible sun. All these things and, still more than these,
+the treasures which had come to the church from personages who to me
+were almost legendary figures (such as the golden cross wrought, it was
+said, by Saint Eloi and presented by Dagobert, and the tomb of the sons
+of Louis the Germanic in porphyry and enamelled copper), because of
+which I used to go forward into the church when we were making our way
+to our chairs as into a fairy-haunted valley, where the rustic sees with
+amazement on a rock, a tree, a marsh, the tangible proofs of the little
+people's supernatural passage--all these things made of the church for
+me something entirely different from the rest of the town; a building
+which occupied, so to speak, four dimensions of space--the name of the
+fourth being Time--which had sailed the centuries with that old nave,
+where bay after bay, chapel after chapel, seemed to stretch across
+and hold down and conquer not merely a few yards of soil, but each
+successive epoch from which the whole building had emerged triumphant,
+hiding the rugged barbarities of the eleventh century in the thickness
+of its walls, through which nothing could be seen of the heavy arches,
+long stopped and blinded with coarse blocks of ashlar, except where,
+near the porch, a deep groove was furrowed into one wall by the
+tower-stair; and even there the barbarity was veiled by the graceful
+gothic arcade which pressed coquettishly upon it, like a row of grown-up
+sisters who, to hide him from the eyes of strangers, arrange themselves
+smilingly in front of a countrified, unmannerly and ill-dressed younger
+brother; rearing into the sky above the Square a tower which had looked
+down upon Saint Louis, and seemed to behold him still; and thrusting
+down with its crypt into the blackness of a Merovingian night, through
+which, guiding us with groping finger-tips beneath the shadowy vault,
+ribbed strongly as an immense bat's wing of stone, Théodore or his
+sister would light up for us with a candle the tomb of Sigebert's little
+daughter, in which a deep hole, like the bed of a fossil, had been
+bored, or so it was said, "by a crystal lamp which, on the night when
+the Frankish princess was murdered, had left, of its own accord, the
+golden chains by which it was suspended where the apse is to-day and
+with neither the crystal broken nor the light extinguished had buried
+itself in the stone, through which it had gently forced its way."
+
+And then the apse of Combray: what am I to say of that? It was so
+coarse, so devoid of artistic beauty, even of the religious spirit. From
+outside, since the street crossing which it commanded was on a lower
+level, its great wall was thrust upwards from a basement of unfaced
+ashlar, jagged with flints, in all of which there was nothing
+particularly ecclesiastical; the windows seemed to have been pierced at
+an abnormal height, and its whole appearance was that of a prison wall
+rather than of a church. And certainly in later years, were I to recall
+all the glorious apses that I had seen, it would never enter my mind to
+compare with any one of them the apse of Combray. Only, one day,
+turning out of a little street in some country town, I came upon three
+alley-ways that converged, and facing them an old wall, rubbed, worn,
+crumbling, and unusually high; with windows pierced in it far overhead
+and the same asymmetrical appearance as the apse of Combray. And at that
+moment I did not say to myself, as at Chartres I might have done or at
+Rheims, with what strength the religious feeling had been expressed in
+its construction, but instinctively I exclaimed "The Church!"
+
+The church! A dear, familiar friend; close pressed in the Rue
+Saint-Hilaire, upon which its north door opened, by its two neighbours,
+Mme. Loiseau's house and the pharmacy of M. Rapin, against which its
+walls rested without interspace; a simple citizen of Combray, who might
+have had her number in the street had the streets of Combray borne
+numbers, and at whose door one felt that the postman ought to stop on
+his morning rounds, before going into Mme. Loiseau's and after leaving
+M. Rapin's, there existed, for all that, between the church and
+everything in Combray that was not the church a clear line of
+demarcation which I have never succeeded in eliminating from my mind.
+In vain might Mme. Loiseau deck her window-sills with fuchsias, which
+developed the bad habit of letting their branches trail at all times
+and in all directions, head downwards, and whose flowers had no more
+important business, when they were big enough to taste the joys of life,
+than to go and cool their purple, congested cheeks against the dark
+front of the church; to me such conduct sanctified the fuchsias not at
+all; between the flowers and the blackened stones towards which they
+leaned, if my eyes could discern no interval, my mind preserved the
+impression of an abyss.
+
+From a long way off one could distinguish and identify the steeple of
+Saint-Hilaire inscribing its unforgettable form upon a horizon beneath
+which Combray had not yet appeared; when from the train which brought
+us down from Paris at Easter-time my father caught sight of it, as it
+slipped into every fold of the sky in turn, its little iron cock veering
+continually in all directions, he would say: "Come, get your wraps
+together, we are there." And on one of the longest walks we ever took
+from Combray there was a spot where the narrow road emerged suddenly
+on to an immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over
+which rose and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple,
+but so sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched
+on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a
+landscape, to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this
+single indication of human existence. As one drew near it and could make
+out the remains of the square tower, half in ruins, which still stood by
+its side, though without rivalling it in height, one was struck, first
+of all, by the tone, reddish and sombre, of its stones; and on a misty
+morning in autumn one would have called it, to see it rising above the
+violet thunder-cloud of the vineyards, a ruin of purple, almost the
+colour of the wild vine.
+
+Often in the Square, as we came home, my grandmother would make me stop
+to look up at it. From the tower windows, placed two and two, one pair
+above another, with that right and original proportion in their spacing
+to which not only human faces owe their beauty and dignity, it released,
+it let fall at regular intervals flights of jackdaws which for a little
+while would wheel and caw, as though the ancient stones which allowed
+them to sport thus and never seemed to see them, becoming of a sudden
+uninhabitable and discharging some infinitely disturbing element, had
+struck them and driven them forth. Then after patterning everywhere the
+violet velvet of the evening air, abruptly soothed, they would return
+and be absorbed in the tower, deadly no longer but benignant, some
+perching here and there (not seeming to move, but snapping, perhaps, and
+swallowing some passing insect) on the points of turrets, as a seagull
+perches, with an angler's immobility, on the crest of a wave. Without
+quite knowing why, my grandmother found in the steeple of Saint-Hilaire
+that absence of vulgarity, pretension, and meanness which made her
+love--and deem rich in beneficent influences--nature itself, when the
+hand of man had not, as did my great-aunt's gardener, trimmed it, and
+the works of genius. And certainly every part one saw of the church
+served to distinguish the whole from any other building by a kind of
+general feeling which pervaded it, but it was in the steeple that
+the church seemed to display a consciousness of itself, to affirm its
+individual and responsible existence. It was the steeple which spoke for
+the church. I think, too, that in a confused way my grandmother found in
+the steeple of Combray what she prized above anything else in the
+world, namely, a natural air and an air of distinction. Ignorant of
+architecture, she would say:
+
+"My dears, laugh at me if you like; it is not conventionally beautiful,
+but there is something in its quaint old face which pleases me. If it
+could play the piano, I am sure it would really _play_." And when she
+gazed on it, when her eyes followed the gentle tension, the fervent
+inclination of its stony slopes which drew together as they rose, like
+hands joined in prayer, she would absorb herself so utterly in the
+outpouring of the spire that her gaze seemed to leap upwards with it;
+her lips at the same time curving in a friendly smile for the worn old
+stones of which the setting sun now illumined no more than the topmost
+pinnacles, which, at the point where they entered that zone of sunlight
+and were softened and sweetened by it, seemed to have mounted suddenly
+far higher, to have become truly remote, like a song whose singer breaks
+into falsetto, an octave above the accompanying air.
+
+It was the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which shaped and crowned and
+consecrated every occupation, every hour of the day, every point of view
+in the town. From my bedroom window I could discern no more than its
+base, which had been freshly covered with slates; but when on Sundays I
+saw these, in the hot light of a summer morning, blaze like a black sun
+I would say to myself: "Good heavens! nine o'clock! I must get ready for
+mass at once if I am to have time to go in and kiss aunt Léonie first,"
+and I would know exactly what was the colour of the sunlight upon the
+Square, I could feel the heat and dust of the market, the shade behind
+the blinds of the shop into which Mamma would perhaps go on her way
+to mass, penetrating its odour of unbleached calico, to purchase a
+handkerchief or something, of which the draper himself would let her see
+what he had, bowing from the waist: who, having made everything ready
+for shutting up, had just gone into the back shop to put on his Sunday
+coat and to wash his hands, which it was his habit, every few minutes
+and even on the saddest occasions, to rub one against the other with an
+air of enterprise, cunning, and success.
+
+And again, after mass, when we looked in to tell Théodore to bring a
+larger loaf than usual because our cousins had taken advantage of the
+fine weather to come over from Thiberzy for luncheon, we had in front of
+us the steeple, which, baked and brown itself like a larger loaf still
+of 'holy bread,' with flakes and sticky drops on it of sunlight, pricked
+its sharp point into the blue sky. And in the evening, as I came in from
+my walk and thought of the approaching moment when I must say good night
+to my mother and see her no more, the steeple was by contrast so kindly,
+there at the close of day, that I would imagine it as being laid, like a
+brown velvet cushion, against--as being thrust into the pallid sky which
+had yielded beneath its pressure, had sunk slightly so as to make room
+for it, and had correspondingly risen on either side; while the cries of
+the birds wheeling to and fro about it seemed to intensify its silence,
+to elongate its spire still further, and to invest it with some quality
+beyond the power of words.
+
+Even when our errands lay in places behind the church, from which it
+could not be seen, the view seemed always to have been composed with
+reference to the steeple, which would stand up, now here, now there,
+among the houses, and was perhaps even more affecting when it appeared
+thus without the church. And, indeed, there are many others which
+look best when seen in this way, and I can call to mind vignettes of
+housetops with surmounting steeples in quite another category of art
+than those formed by the dreary streets of Combray. I shall never
+forget, in a quaint Norman town not far from Balbec, two charming
+eighteenth-century houses, dear to me and venerable for many reasons,
+between which, when one looks up at them from a fine garden which
+descends in terraces to the river, the gothic spire of a church (itself
+hidden by the houses) soars into the sky with the effect of crowning and
+completing their fronts, but in a material so different, so precious, so
+beringed, so rosy, so polished, that it is at once seen to be no more
+a part of them than would be a part of two pretty pebbles lying side
+by side, between which it had been washed on the beach, the purple,
+crinkled spire of some sea-shell spun out into a turret and gay with
+glossy colour. Even in Paris, in one of the ugliest parts of the town, I
+know a window from which one can see across a first, a second, and even
+a third layer of jumbled roofs, street beyond street, a violet bell,
+sometimes ruddy, sometimes too, in the finest 'prints' which the
+atmosphere makes of it, of an ashy solution of black; which is, in fact,
+nothing else than the dome of Saint-Augustin, and which imparts to this
+view of Paris the character of some of the Piranesi views of Rome. But
+since into none of these little etchings, whatever the taste my
+memory may have been able to bring to their execution, was it able to
+contribute an element I have long lost, the feeling which makes us not
+merely regard a thing as a spectacle, but believe in it as in a creature
+without parallel, so none of them keeps in dependence on it a whole
+section of my inmost life as does the memory of those aspects of the
+steeple of Combray from the streets behind the church. Whether one saw
+it at five o'clock when going to call for letters at the post-office,
+some doors away from one, on the left, raising abruptly with its
+isolated peak the ridge of housetops; or again, when one had to go in
+and ask for news of Mme. Sazerat, one's eyes followed the line where it
+ran low again beyond the farther, descending slope, and one knew that it
+would be the second turning after the steeple; or yet again, if pressing
+further afield one went to the station, one saw it obliquely, shewing in
+profile fresh angles and surfaces, like a solid body surprised at some
+unknown point in its revolution; or, from the banks of the Vivonne, the
+apse, drawn muscularly together and heightened in perspective, seemed
+to spring upwards with the effort which the steeple made to hurl its
+spire-point into the heart of heaven: it was always to the steeple that
+one must return, always it which dominated everything else, summing up
+the houses with an unexpected pinnacle, raised before me like the Finger
+of God, Whose Body might have been concealed below among the crowd of
+human bodies without fear of my confounding It, for that reason, with
+them. And so even to-day in any large provincial town, or in a quarter
+of Paris which I do not know well, if a passer-by who is 'putting me on
+the right road' shews me from afar, as a point to aim at, some belfry of
+a hospital, or a convent steeple lifting the peak of its ecclesiastical
+cap at the corner of the street which I am to take, my memory need only
+find in it some dim resemblance to that dear and vanished outline, and
+the passer-by, should he turn round to make sure that I have not gone
+astray, would see me, to his astonishment, oblivious of the walk that I
+had planned to take or the place where I was obliged to call, standing
+still on the spot, before that steeple, for hours on end, motionless,
+trying to remember, feeling deep within myself a tract of soil reclaimed
+from the waters of Lethe slowly drying until the buildings rise on it
+again; and then no doubt, and then more uneasily than when, just now,
+I asked him for a direction, I will seek my way again, I will turn a
+corner... but... the goal is in my heart...
+
+On our way home from mass we would often meet M. Legrandin, who,
+detained in Paris by his professional duties as an engineer, could
+only (except in the regular holiday seasons) visit his home at Combray
+between Saturday evenings and Monday mornings. He was one of that class
+of men who, apart from a scientific career in which they may well have
+proved brilliantly successful, have acquired an entirely different
+kind of culture, literary or artistic, of which they make no use in the
+specialised work of their profession, but by which their conversation
+profits. More 'literary' than many 'men of letters' (we were not aware
+at this period that M. Legrandin had a distinct reputation as a writer,
+and so were greatly astonished to find that a well-known composer
+had set some verses of his to music), endowed with a greater ease
+in execution than many painters, they imagine that the life they are
+obliged to lead is not that for which they are really fitted, and they
+bring to their regular occupations either a fantastic indifference or
+a sustained and lofty application, scornful, bitter, and conscientious.
+Tall, with a good figure, a fine, thoughtful face, drooping fair
+moustaches, a look of disillusionment in his blue eyes, an almost
+exaggerated refinement of courtesy; a talker such as we had never heard;
+he was in the sight of my family, who never ceased to quote him as an
+example, the very pattern of a gentleman, who took life in the noblest
+and most delicate manner. My grandmother alone found fault with him for
+speaking a little too well, a little too much like a book, for not using
+a vocabulary as natural as his loosely knotted Lavallière neckties, his
+short, straight, almost schoolboyish coat. She was astonished, too, at
+the furious invective which he was always launching at the aristocracy,
+at fashionable life, and 'snobbishness'--"undoubtedly," he would say,
+"the sin of which Saint Paul is thinking when he speaks of the sin for
+which there is no forgiveness."
+
+Worldly ambition was a thing which my grandmother was so little capable
+of feeling, or indeed of understanding, that it seemed to her futile to
+apply so much heat to its condemnation. Besides, she thought it in not
+very good taste that M. Legrandin, whose sister was married to a country
+gentleman of Lower Normandy near Balbec, should deliver himself of such
+violent attacks upon the nobles, going so far as to blame the Revolution
+for not having guillotined them all.
+
+"Well met, my friends!" he would say as he came towards us. "You are
+lucky to spend so much time here; to-morrow I have to go back to Paris,
+to squeeze back into my niche.
+
+"Oh, I admit," he went on, with his own peculiar smile, gently ironical,
+disillusioned and vague, "I have every useless thing in the world in
+my house there. The only thing wanting is the necessary thing, a great
+patch of open sky like this. Always try to keep a patch of sky above
+your life, little boy," he added, turning to me. "You have a soul in
+you of rare quality, an artist's nature; never let it starve for lack of
+what it needs."
+
+When, on our reaching the house, my aunt would send to ask us whether
+Mme. Goupil had indeed arrived late for mass, not one of us could inform
+her. Instead, we increased her anxiety by telling her that there was
+a painter at work in the church copying the window of Gilbert the
+Bad. Françoise was at once dispatched to the grocer's, but returned
+empty-handed owing to the absence of Théodore, whose dual profession of
+choirman, with a part in the maintenance of the fabric, and of grocer's
+assistant gave him not only relations with all sections of society, but
+an encyclopaedic knowledge of their affairs.
+
+"Ah!" my aunt would sigh, "I wish it were time for Eulalie to come. She
+is really the only person who will be able to tell me."
+
+Eulalie was a limping, energetic, deaf spinster who had 'retired' after
+the death of Mme. de la Bretonnerie, with whom she had been in service
+from her childhood, and had then taken a room beside the church, from
+which she would incessantly emerge, either to attend some service,
+or, when there was no service, to say a prayer by herself or to give
+Théodore a hand; the rest of her time she spent in visiting sick persons
+like my aunt Léonie, to whom she would relate everything that had
+occurred at mass or vespers. She was not above adding occasional
+pocket-money to the little income which was found for her by the family
+of her old employers by going from time to time to look after the Curé's
+linen, or that of some other person of note in the clerical world of
+Combray. Above a mantle of black cloth she wore a little white coif that
+seemed almost to attach her to some Order, and an infirmity of the
+skin had stained part of her cheeks and her crooked nose the bright red
+colour of balsam. Her visits were the one great distraction in the life
+of my aunt Léonie, who now saw hardly anyone else, except the reverend
+Curé. My aunt had by degrees erased every other visitor's name from
+her list, because they all committed the fatal error, in her eyes,
+of falling into one or other of the two categories of people she most
+detested. One group, the worse of the two, and the one of which she rid
+herself first, consisted of those who advised her not to take so much
+care of herself, and preached (even if only negatively and with no
+outward signs beyond an occasional disapproving silence or doubting
+smile) the subversive doctrine that a sharp walk in the sun and a good
+red beefsteak would do her more good (her, who had had two dreadful sips
+of Vichy water on her stomach for fourteen hours!) than all her medicine
+bottles and her bed. The other category was composed of people who
+appeared to believe that she was more seriously ill than she thought,
+in fact that she was as seriously ill as she said. And so none of those
+whom she had allowed upstairs to her room, after considerable hesitation
+and at Françoise's urgent request, and who in the course of their visit
+had shewn how unworthy they were of the honour which had been done them
+by venturing a timid: "Don't you think that if you were just to stir out
+a little on really fine days...?" or who, on the other hand, when she
+said to them: "I am very low, very low; nearing the end, dear friends!"
+had replied: "Ah, yes, when one has no strength left! Still, you may
+last a while yet"; each party alike might be certain that her doors
+would never open to them again. And if Françoise was amused by the look
+of consternation on my aunt's face whenever she saw, from her bed, any
+of these people in the Rue du Saint-Esprit, who looked as if they were
+coming to see her, or heard her own door-bell ring, she would laugh far
+more heartily, as at a clever trick, at my aunt's devices (which never
+failed) for having them sent away, and at their look of discomfiture
+when they had to turn back without having seen her; and would be filled
+with secret admiration for her mistress, whom she felt to be superior
+to all these other people, inasmuch as she could and did contrive not to
+see them. In short, my aunt stipulated, at one and the same time, that
+whoever came to see her must approve of her way of life, commiserate
+with her in her sufferings, and assure her of an ultimate recovery.
+
+In all this Eulalie excelled. My aunt might say to her twenty times in
+a minute: "The end is come at last, my poor Eulalie!", twenty times
+Eulalie would retort with: "Knowing your illness as you do, Mme.
+Octave, you will live to be a hundred, as Mme. Sazerin said to me only
+yesterday." For one of Eulalie's most rooted beliefs, and one that the
+formidable list of corrections which her experience must have compiled
+was powerless to eradicate, was that Mme. Sazerat's name was really Mme.
+Sazerin.
+
+"I do not ask to live to a hundred," my aunt would say, for she
+preferred to have no definite limit fixed to the number of her days.
+
+And since, besides this, Eulalie knew, as no one else knew, how to
+distract my aunt without tiring her, her visits, which took place
+regularly every Sunday, unless something unforeseen occurred to prevent
+them, were for my aunt a pleasure the prospect of which kept her on
+those days in a state of expectation, appetising enough to begin with,
+but at once changing to the agony of a hunger too long unsatisfied if
+Eulalie were a minute late in coming. For, if unduly prolonged, the
+rapture of waiting for Eulalie became a torture, and my aunt would never
+cease from looking at the time, and yawning, and complaining of each of
+her symptoms in turn. Eulalie's ring, if it sounded from the front door
+at the very end of the day, when she was no longer expecting it, would
+almost make her ill. For the fact was that on Sundays she thought of
+nothing else than this visit, and the moment that our luncheon was ended
+Françoise would become impatient for us to leave the dining-room so that
+she might go upstairs to 'occupy' my aunt. But--and this more than ever
+from the day on which fine weather definitely set in at Combray--the
+proud hour of noon, descending from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which
+it blazoned for a moment with the twelve points of its sonorous crown,
+would long have echoed about our table, beside the 'holy bread,' which
+too had come in, after church, in its familiar way; and we would still
+be found seated in front of our Arabian Nights plates, weighed down
+by the heat of the day, and even more by our heavy meal. For upon
+the permanent foundation of eggs, cutlets, potatoes, preserves, and
+biscuits, whose appearance on the table she no longer announced to us,
+Françoise would add--as the labour of fields and orchards, the harvest
+of the tides, the luck of the markets, the kindness of neighbours, and
+her own genius might provide; and so effectively that our bill of fare,
+like the quatrefoils that were carved on the porches of cathedrals
+in the thirteenth century, reflected to some extent the march of the
+seasons and the incidents of human life--a brill, because the fish-woman
+had guaranteed its freshness; a turkey, because she had seen a beauty
+in the market at Roussainville-le-Pin; cardoons with marrow, because she
+had never done them for us in that way before; a roast leg of mutton,
+because the fresh air made one hungry and there would be plenty of time
+for it to 'settle down' in the seven hours before dinner; spinach,
+by way of a change; apricots, because they were still hard to get;
+gooseberries, because in another fortnight there would be none left;
+raspberries, which M. Swann had brought specially; cherries, the first
+to come from the cherry-tree, which had yielded none for the last two
+years; a cream cheese, of which in those days I was extremely fond; an
+almond cake, because she had ordered one the evening before; a fancy
+loaf, because it was our turn to 'offer' the holy bread. And when all
+these had been eaten, a work composed expressly for ourselves, but
+dedicated more particularly to my father, who had a fondness for such
+things, a cream of chocolate, inspired in the mind, created by the
+hand of Françoise, would be laid before us, light and fleeting as an
+'occasional piece' of music, into which she had poured the whole of her
+talent. Anyone who refused to partake of it, saying: "No, thank you, I
+have finished; I am not hungry," would at once have been lowered to the
+level of the Philistines who, when an artist makes them a present of one
+of his works, examine its weight and material, whereas what is of value
+is the creator's intention and his signature. To have left even the
+tiniest morsel in the dish would have shewn as much discourtesy as to
+rise and leave a concert hall while the 'piece' was still being played,
+and under the composer's very eyes.
+
+At length my mother would say to me: "Now, don't stay here all day;
+you can go up to your room if you are too hot outside, but get a little
+fresh air first; don't start reading immediately after your food."
+
+And I would go and sit down beside the pump and its trough, ornamented
+here and there, like a gothic font, with a salamander, which modelled
+upon a background of crumbling stone the quick relief of its slender,
+allegorical body; on the bench without a back, in the shade of a
+lilac-tree, in that little corner of the garden which communicated, by
+a service door, with the Rue du Saint-Esprit, and from whose neglected
+soil rose, in two stages, an outcrop from the house itself and
+apparently a separate building, my aunt's back-kitchen. One could see
+its red-tiled floor gleaming like porphyry. It seemed not so much the
+cave of Françoise as a little temple of Venus. It would be overflowing
+with the offerings of the milkman, the fruiterer, the greengrocer, come
+sometimes from distant villages to dedicate here the first-fruits of
+their fields. And its roof was always surmounted by the cooing of a
+dove.
+
+In earlier days I would not have lingered in the sacred grove which
+surrounded this temple, for, before going upstairs to read, I would
+steal into the little sitting-room which my uncle Adolphe, a brother of
+my grandfather and an old soldier who had retired from the service as a
+major, used to occupy on the ground floor, a room which, even when its
+opened windows let in the heat, if not actually the rays of the sun
+which seldom penetrated so far, would never fail to emit that vague and
+yet fresh odour, suggesting at once an open-air and an old-fashioned
+kind of existence, which sets and keeps the nostrils dreaming when one
+goes into a disused gun-room. But for some years now I had not gone into
+my uncle Adolphe's room, since he no longer came to Combray on account
+of a quarrel which had arisen between him and my family, by my fault,
+and in the following circumstances: Once or twice every month, in Paris,
+I used to be sent to pay him a. visit, as he was finishing his luncheon,
+wearing a plain alpaca coat, and waited upon by his servant in a
+working-jacket of striped linen, purple and white. He would complain
+that I had not been to see him for a long time; that he was being
+neglected; he would offer me a marchpane or a tangerine, and we would
+cross a room in which no one ever sat, whose fire was never lighted,
+whose walls were picked out with gilded mouldings, its ceiling painted
+blue in imitation of the sky, and its furniture upholstered in satin, as
+at my grandparents', only yellow; then we would enter what he called his
+'study,' a room whose walls were hung with prints which shewed, against
+a dark background, a plump and rosy goddess driving a car, or standing
+upon a globe, or wearing a star on her brow; pictures which were popular
+under the Second Empire because there was thought to be something about
+them that suggested Pompeii, which were then generally despised, and
+which now people are beginning to collect again for one single and
+consistent reason (despite any others which they may advance), namely,
+that they suggest the Second Empire. And there I would stay with my
+uncle until his man came, with a message from the coachman, to ask him
+at what time he would like the carriage. My uncle would then be lost
+in meditation, while his astonished servant stood there, not daring to
+disturb him by the least movement, wondering and waiting for his
+answer, which never varied. For in the end, after a supreme crisis of
+hesitation, my uncle would utter, infallibly, the words: "A quarter past
+two," which the servant would echo with amazement, but without disputing
+them: "A quarter past two! Very good, sir... I will go and tell him...."
+
+At this date I was a lover of the theatre: a Platonic lover, of
+necessity, since my parents had not yet allowed me to enter one, and
+so incorrect was the picture I drew for myself of the pleasures to be
+enjoyed there that I almost believed that each of the spectators looked,
+as into a stereoscope, upon a stage and scenery which existed for
+himself alone, though closely resembling the thousand other spectacles
+presented to the rest of the audience individually.
+
+Every morning I would hasten to the Moriss column to see what new plays
+it announced. Nothing could be more disinterested or happier than the
+dreams with which these announcements filled my mind, dreams which took
+their form from the inevitable associations of the words forming the
+title of the play, and also from the colour of the bills, still damp and
+wrinkled with paste, on which those words stood out. Nothing, unless
+it were such strange titles as the _Testament de César Girodot, or
+Oedipe-Roi_, inscribed not on the green bills of the Opéra-Comique, but
+on the wine-coloured bills of the Comédie-Française, nothing seemed
+to me to differ more profoundly from the sparkling white plume of
+the _Diamants de la Couronne_ than the sleek, mysterious satin of the
+_Domino Noir_; and since my parents had told me that, for my first visit
+to the theatre, I should have to choose between these two pieces, I
+would study exhaustively and in turn the title of one and the title
+of the other (for those were all that I knew of either), attempting to
+snatch from each a foretaste of the pleasure which it offered me, and to
+compare this pleasure with that latent in the other title, until in the
+end I had shewn myself such vivid, such compelling pictures of, on
+the one hand, a play of dazzling arrogance, and on the other a gentle,
+velvety play, that I was as little capable of deciding which play I
+should prefer to see as if, at the dinner-table, they had obliged me to
+choose between _rice à l'Impératrice_ and the famous cream of chocolate.
+
+All my conversations with my playfellows bore upon actors, whose art,
+although as yet I had no experience of it, was the first of all its
+numberless forms in which Art itself allowed me to anticipate its
+enjoyment. Between one actor's tricks of intonation and inflection and
+another's, the most trifling differences would strike me as being of an
+incalculable importance. And from what I had been told of them I would
+arrange them in the order of their talent in lists which I used to
+murmur to myself all day long: lists which in the end became petrified
+in my brain and were a source of annoyance to it, being irremovable.
+
+And later, in my schooldays, whenever I ventured in class, when the
+master's head was turned, to communicate with some new friend, I would
+always begin by asking him whether he had begun yet to go to theatres,
+and if he agreed that our greatest actor was undoubtedly Got, our second
+Delaunay, and so on. And if, in his judgment, Febvre came below Thiron,
+or Delaunay below Coquelin, the sudden volatility which the name of
+Coquelin, forsaking its stony rigidity, would engender in my mind, in
+which it moved upwards to the second place, the rich vitality with which
+the name of Delaunay would suddenly be furnished, to enable it to slip
+down to fourth, would stimulate and fertilise my brain with a sense of
+budding and blossoming life.
+
+But if the thought of actors weighed so upon me, if the sight of
+Maubant, coming out one afternoon from the Théâtre-Français, had plunged
+me in the throes and sufferings of hopeless love, how much more did the
+name of a 'star,' blazing outside the doors of a theatre, how much more,
+seen through the window of a brougham which passed me in the street, the
+hair over her forehead abloom with roses, did the face of a woman who,
+I would think, was perhaps an actress, leave with me a lasting
+disturbance, a futile and painful effort to form a picture of her
+private life.
+
+I classified, in order of talent, the most distinguished: Sarah
+Bernhardt, Berma, Bartet, Madeleine Brohan, Jeanne Samary; but I was
+interested in them all. Now my uncle knew many of them personally, and
+also ladies of another class, not clearly distinguished from actresses
+in my mind. He used to entertain them at his house. And if we went to
+see him on certain days only, that was because on the other days ladies
+might come whom his family could not very well have met. So we at least
+thought; as for my uncle, his fatal readiness to pay pretty widows (who
+had perhaps never been married) and countesses (whose high-sounding
+titles were probably no more than _noms de guerre_) the compliment of
+presenting them to my grandmother or even of presenting to them some
+of our family jewels, had already embroiled him more than once with
+my grandfather. Often, if the name of some actress were mentioned in
+conversation, I would hear my father say, with a smile, to my mother:
+"One of your uncle's friends," and I would think of the weary novitiate
+through which, perhaps for years on end, a grown man, even a man of real
+importance, might have to pass, waiting on the doorstep of some such
+lady, while she refused to answer his letters and made her hall-porter
+drive him away; and imagine that my uncle was able to dispense a little
+jackanapes like myself from all these sufferings by introducing me in
+his own home to the actress, unapproachable by all the world, but for
+him an intimate friend.
+
+And so--on the pretext that some lesson, the hour of which had been
+altered, now came at such an awkward time that it had already more than
+once prevented me, and would continue to prevent me, from seeing my
+uncle--one day, not one of the days which he set apart for our visits, I
+took advantage of the fact that my parents had had luncheon earlier
+than usual; I slipped out and, instead of going to read the playbills on
+their column, for which purpose I was allowed to go out unaccompanied,
+I ran all the way to his house. I noticed before his door a carriage and
+pair, with red carnations on the horses' blinkers and in the coachman's
+buttonhole. As I climbed the staircase I could hear laughter and a
+woman's voice, and, as soon as I had rung, silence and the sound of
+shutting doors. The man-servant who let me in appeared embarrassed, and
+said that my uncle was extremely busy and probably could not see me; he
+went in, however, to announce my arrival, and the same voice I had heard
+before said: "Oh, yes! Do let him come in; just for a moment; it will be
+so amusing. Is that his photograph there, on your desk? And his mother
+(your niece, isn't she?) beside it? The image of her, isn't he? I should
+so like to see the little chap, just for a second."
+
+I could hear my uncle grumbling and growing angry; finally the
+manservant told me to come in.
+
+On the table was the same plate of marchpanes that was always there; my
+uncle wore the same alpaca coat as on other days; but opposite to him,
+in a pink silk dress with a great necklace of pearls about her throat,
+sat a young woman who was just finishing a tangerine. My uncertainty
+whether I ought to address her as Madame or Mademoiselle made me blush,
+and not daring to look too much in her direction, in case I should be
+obliged to speak to her, I hurried across to kiss my uncle. She looked
+at me and smiled; my uncle said "My nephew!" without telling her my name
+or telling me hers, doubtless because, since his difficulties with
+my grandfather, he had endeavoured as far as possible to avoid any
+association of his family with this other class of acquaintance.
+
+"How like his mother he is," said the lady.
+
+"But you have never seen my niece, except in photographs," my uncle
+broke in quickly, with a note of anger.
+
+"I beg your pardon, dear friend, I passed her on the staircase last year
+when you were so ill. It is true I only saw her for a moment, and your
+staircase is rather dark; but I saw well enough to see how lovely she
+was. This young gentleman has her beautiful eyes, and also this," she
+went on, tracing a line with one finger across the lower part of her
+forehead. "Tell me," she asked my uncle, "is your niece Mme.----; is her
+name the same as yours?"
+
+"He takes most after his father," muttered my uncle, who was no more
+anxious to effect an introduction by proxy, in repeating Mamma's name
+aloud, than to bring the two together in the flesh. "He's his father all
+over, and also like my poor mother."
+
+"I have not met his father, dear," said the lady in pink, bowing her
+head slightly, "and I never saw your poor mother. You will remember it
+was just after your great sorrow that we got to know one another."
+
+I felt somewhat disillusioned, for this young lady was in no way
+different from other pretty women whom I had seen from time to time at
+home, especially the daughter of one of our cousins, to whose house I
+went every New Year's Day. Only better dressed; otherwise my uncle's
+friend had the same quick and kindly glance, the same frank and friendly
+manner. I could find no trace in her of the theatrical appearance
+which I admired in photographs of actresses, nothing of the diabolical
+expression which would have been in keeping with the life she must lead.
+I had difficulty in believing that this was one of 'those women,' and
+certainly I should never have believed her one of the 'smart ones' had I
+not seen the carriage and pair, the pink dress, the pearly necklace, had
+I not been aware, too, that my uncle knew only the very best of them.
+But I asked myself how the millionaire who gave her her carriage and her
+flat and her jewels could find any pleasure in flinging his money away
+upon a woman who had so simple and respectable an appearance. And yet,
+when I thought of what her life must be like, its immorality disturbed
+me more, perhaps, than if it had stood before me in some concrete and
+recognisable form, by its secrecy and invisibility, like the plot of a
+novel, the hidden truth of a scandal which had driven out of the home
+of her middle-class parents and dedicated to the service of all mankind
+which had brought to the flowering-point of her beauty, had raised
+to fame or notoriety this woman, the play of whose features, the
+intonations of whose voice, like so many others I already knew, made me
+regard her, in spite of myself, as a young lady of good family, her who
+was no longer of a family at all.
+
+We had gone by this time into the 'study,' and my uncle, who seemed a
+trifle embarrassed by my presence, offered her a cigarette.
+
+"No, thank you, dear friend," she said. "You know I only smoke the ones
+the Grand Duke sends me. I tell him that they make you jealous." And
+she drew from a case cigarettes covered with inscriptions in gold, in
+a foreign language. "Why, yes," she began again suddenly. "Of course I
+have met this young man's father with you. Isn't he your nephew? How on
+earth could I have forgotten? He was so nice, so charming to me," she
+went on, modestly and with feeling. But when I thought to myself what
+must actually have been the rude greeting (which, she made out, had been
+so charming), I, who knew my father's coldness and reserve, was shocked,
+as though at some indelicacy on his part, at the contrast between the
+excessive recognition bestowed on it and his never adequate geniality.
+It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part
+played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote
+all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of
+sentimental beauty (for, like all artists, they never seek to realise
+the value of those dreams, or to enclose them in the four-square frame
+of everyday life), and their gold, which counts for little, to the
+fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rubbed and scratched
+and ill-polished lives of men. And just as this one filled the
+smoking-room, where my uncle was entertaining her in his alpaca coat,
+with her charming person, her dress of pink silk, her pearls, and the
+refinement suggested by intimacy with a Grand Duke, so, in the same
+way, she had taken some casual remark by my father, had worked it up
+delicately, given it a 'turn,' a precious title, set in it the gem of a
+glance from her own eyes, a gem of the first water, blended of humility
+and gratitude; and so had given it back transformed into a jewel, a work
+of art, into something altogether charming.
+
+"Look here, my boy, it is time you went away," said my uncle.
+
+I rose; I could scarcely resist a desire to kiss the hand of the lady
+in pink, but I felt that to do so would require as much audacity as a
+forcible abduction of her. My heart beat loud while I counted out to
+myself "Shall I do it, shall I not?" and then I ceased to ask myself
+what I ought to do so as at least to do something. Blindly, hotly,
+madly, flinging aside all the reasons I had just found to support such
+action, I seized and raised to my lips the hand she held out to me.
+
+"Isn't he delicious! Quite a ladies' man already; he takes after his
+uncle. He'll be a perfect 'gentleman,'" she went on, setting her teeth
+so as to give the word a kind of English accentuation. "Couldn't he come
+to me some day for 'a cup of tea,' as our friends across the channel
+say; he need only send me a 'blue' in the morning?"
+
+I had not the least idea of what a 'blue' might be. I did not understand
+half the words which the lady used, but my fear lest there should be
+concealed in them some question which it would be impolite in me not to
+answer kept me from withdrawing my close attention from them, and I was
+beginning to feel extremely tired.
+
+"No, no; it is impossible," said my uncle, shrugging his shoulders. "He
+is kept busy at home all day; he has plenty of work to do. He brings
+back all the prizes from his school," he added in a lower tone, so that
+I should not hear this falsehood and interrupt with a contradiction.
+"You can't tell; he may turn out a little Victor Hugo, a kind of
+Vaulabelle, don't you know."
+
+"Oh, I love artistic people," replied the lady in pink; "there is no
+one like them for understanding women. Them, and really nice men like
+yourself. But please forgive my ignorance. Who, what is Vaulabelle? Is
+it those gilt books in the little glass case in your drawing-room? You
+know you promised to lend them to me; I will take great care of them."
+
+My uncle, who hated lending people books, said nothing, and ushered me
+out into the hall. Madly in love with the lady in pink, I covered my
+old uncle's tobacco-stained cheeks with passionate kisses, and while he,
+awkwardly enough, gave me to understand (without actually saying) that
+he would rather I did not tell my parents about this visit, I assured
+him, with tears in my eyes, that his kindness had made so strong an
+impression upon me that some day I would most certainly find a way of
+expressing my gratitude. So strong an impression had it made upon me
+that two hours later, after a string of mysterious utterances which did
+not strike me as giving my parents a sufficiently clear idea of the new
+importance with which I had been invested, I found it simpler to let
+them have a full account, omitting no detail, of the visit I had paid
+that afternoon. In doing this I had no thought of causing my uncle any
+unpleasantness. How could I have thought such a thing, since I did not
+wish it? And I could not suppose that my parents would see any harm in
+a visit in which I myself saw none. Every day of our lives does not
+some friend or other ask us to make his apologies, without fail, to some
+woman to whom he has been prevented from writing; and do not we forget
+to do so, feeling that this woman cannot attach much importance to a
+silence which has none for ourselves? I imagined, like everyone else,
+that the brains of other people were lifeless and submissive receptacles
+with no power of specific reaction to any stimulus which might be
+applied to them; and I had not the least doubt that when I deposited in
+the minds of my parents the news of the acquaintance I had made at my
+uncle's I should at the same time transmit to them the kindly judgment
+I myself had based on the introduction. Unfortunately my parents had
+recourse to principles entirely different from those which I suggested
+they should adopt when they came to form their estimate of my uncle's
+conduct. My father and grandfather had 'words' with him of a violent
+order; as I learned indirectly. A few days later, passing my uncle in
+the street as he drove by in an open carriage, Î felt at once all the
+grief, the gratitude, the remorse which I should have liked to convey to
+him. Beside the immensity of these emotions I considered that merely to
+raise my hat to him would be incongruous and petty, and might make
+him think that I regarded myself as bound to shew him no more than the
+commonest form of courtesy. I decided to abstain from so inadequate a
+gesture, and turned my head away. My uncle thought that, in doing so I
+was obeying my parents' orders; he never forgave them; and though he
+did not die until many years later, not one of us ever set eyes on him
+again.
+
+And so I no longer used to go into the little sitting-room (now kept
+shut) of my uncle Adolphe; instead, after hanging about on the outskirts
+of the back-kitchen until Françoise appeared on its threshold and
+announced: "I am going to let the kitchen-maid serve the coffee and take
+up the hot water; it is time I went off to Mme. Octave," I would then
+decide to go indoors, and would go straight upstairs to my room to read.
+The kitchen-maid was an abstract personality, a permanent institution
+to which an invariable set of attributes assured a sort of fixity and
+continuity and identity throughout the long series of transitory human
+shapes in which that personality was incarnate; for we never found the
+same girl there two years running. In the year in which we ate such
+quantities of asparagus, the kitchen-maid whose duty it was to dress
+them was a poor sickly creature, some way 'gone' in pregnancy when
+we arrived at Combray for Easter, and it was indeed surprising that
+Françoise allowed her to run so many errands in the town and to do so
+much work in the house, for she was beginning to find a difficulty in
+bearing before her the mysterious casket, fuller and larger every day,
+whose splendid outline could be detected through the folds of her ample
+smocks. These last recalled the cloaks in which Giotto shrouds some of
+the allegorical figures in his paintings, of which M. Swann had given
+me photographs. He it was who pointed out the resemblance, and when he
+inquired after the kitchen-maid he would say: "Well, how goes it with
+Giotto's Charity?" And indeed the poor girl, whose pregnancy had swelled
+and stoutened every part of her, even to her face, and the vertical,
+squared outlines of her cheeks, did distinctly suggest those virgins,
+so strong and mannish as to seem matrons rather, in whom the Virtues are
+personified in the Arena Chapel. And I can see now that those Virtues
+and Vices of Padua resembled her in another respect as well. For just as
+the figure of this girl had been enlarged by the additional symbol which
+she carried in her body, without appearing to understand what it meant,
+without any rendering in her facial expression of all its beauty and
+spiritual significance, but carried as if it were an ordinary and rather
+heavy burden, so it is without any apparent suspicion of what she is
+about that the powerfully built housewife who is portrayed in the Arena
+beneath the label 'Caritas,' and a reproduction of whose portrait hung
+upon the wall of my schoolroom at Combray, incarnates that virtue, for
+it seems impossible that any thought of charity can ever have found
+expression in her vulgar and energetic face. By a fine stroke of the
+painter's invention she is tumbling all the treasures of the earth at
+her feet, but exactly as if she were treading grapes in a wine-press to
+extract their juice, or, still more, as if she had climbed on a heap of
+sacks to raise herself higher; and she is holding out her flaming heart
+to God, or shall we say 'handing' it to Him, exactly as a cook might
+hand up a corkscrew through the skylight of her underground kitchen to
+some one who had called down to ask her for it from the ground-level
+above. The 'Invidia,' again, should have had some look on her face of
+envy. But in this fresco, too, the symbol occupies so large a place and
+is represented with such realism; the serpent hissing between the lips
+of Envy is so huge, and so completely fills her wide-opened mouth that
+the muscles of her face are strained and contorted, like a child's who
+is filling a balloon with his breath, and that Envy, and we ourselves
+for that matter, when we look at her, since all her attention and ours
+are concentrated on the action of her lips, have no time, almost, to
+spare for envious thoughts.
+
+Despite all the admiration that M. Swann might profess for these figures
+of Giotto, it was a long time before I could find any pleasure in seeing
+in our schoolroom (where the copies he had brought me were hung) that
+Charity devoid of charity, that Envy who looked like nothing so much
+as a plate in some medical book, illustrating the compression of the
+glottis or uvula by a tumour in the tongue, or by the introduction of
+the operator's instrument, a Justice whose greyish and meanly regular
+features were the very same as those which adorned the faces of certain
+good and pious and slightly withered ladies of Combray whom I used to
+see at mass, many of whom had long been enrolled in the reserve forces
+of Injustice. But in later years I understood that the arresting
+strangeness, the special beauty of these frescoes lay in the great part
+played in each of them by its symbols, while the fact that these
+were depicted, not as symbols (for the thought symbolised was nowhere
+expressed), but as real things, actually felt or materially handled,
+added something more precise and more literal to their meaning,
+something more concrete and more striking to the lesson they imparted.
+And even in the case of the poor kitchen-maid, was not our attention
+incessantly drawn to her belly by the load which filled it; and in the
+same way, again, are not the thoughts of men and women in the agony of
+death often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, internal,
+intestinal aspect, towards that 'seamy side' of death which is, as it
+happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them
+to feel, a side which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a
+difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to
+which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?
+
+There must have been a strong element of reality in those Virtues and
+Vices of Padua, since they appeared to me to be as much alive as
+the pregnant servant-girl, while she herself appeared scarcely less
+allegorical than they. And, quite possibly, this lack (or seeming lack)
+of participation by a person's soul in the significant marks of its own
+special virtue has, apart from its aesthetic meaning, a reality which,
+if not strictly psychological, may at least be called physiognomical.
+Later on, when, in the course of my life, I have had occasion to meet
+with, in convents for instance, literally saintly examples of practical
+charity, they have generally had the brisk, decided, undisturbed, and
+slightly brutal air of a busy surgeon, the face in which one can discern
+no commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suffering humanity, and
+no fear of hurting it, the face devoid of gentleness or sympathy, the
+sublime face of true goodness.
+
+Then while the kitchen-maid--who, all unawares, made the superior
+qualities of Françoise shine with added lustre, just as Error, by
+force of contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth--took in coffee which
+(according to Mamma) was nothing more than hot water, and then carried
+up to our rooms hot water which was barely tepid, I would be lying
+stretched out on my bed, a book in my hand, in my room which trembled
+with the effort to defend its frail, transparent coolness against the
+afternoon sun, behind its almost closed shutters through which, however,
+a reflection of the sunlight had contrived to slip in on its golden
+wings, remaining motionless, between glass and woodwork, in a corner,
+like a butterfly poised upon a flower. It was hardly light enough for
+me to read, and my feeling of the day's brightness and splendour was
+derived solely from the blows struck down below, in the Rue de la Cure,
+by Camus (whom Françoise had assured that my aunt was not 'resting' and
+that he might therefore make a noise), upon some old packing-cases from
+which nothing would really be sent flying but the dust, though the din
+of them, in the resonant atmosphere that accompanies hot weather, seemed
+to scatter broadcast a rain of blood-red stars; and from the flies who
+performed for my benefit, in their small concert, as it might be the
+chamber music of summer; evoking heat and light quite differently from
+an air of human music which, if you happen to have heard it during a
+fine summer, will always bring that summer back to your mind, the flies'
+music is bound to the season by a closer, a more vital tie--born of
+sunny days, and not to be reborn but with them, containing something
+of their essential nature, it not merely calls up their image in our
+memory, but gives us a guarantee that they do really exist, that they
+are close around us, immediately accessible.
+
+This dim freshness of my room was to the broad daylight of the street
+what the shadow is to the sunbeam, that is to say, equally luminous,
+and presented to my imagination the entire panorama of summer, which
+my senses, if I had been out walking, could have tasted and enjoyed in
+fragments only; and so was quite in harmony with my state of repose,
+which (thanks to the adventures related in my books, which had just
+excited it) bore, like a hand reposing motionless in a stream of running
+water, the shock and animation of a torrent of activity and life.
+
+But my grandmother, even if the weather, after growing too hot, had
+broken, and a storm, or just a shower, had burst over us, would come up
+and beg me to go outside. And as I did not wish to leave off my book, I
+would go on with it in the garden, under the chestnut-tree, in a little
+sentry-box of canvas and matting, in the farthest recesses of which I
+used to sit and feel that I was hidden from the eyes of anyone who might
+be coming to call upon the family.
+
+And then my thoughts, did not they form a similar sort of hiding-hole,
+in the depths of which I felt that I could bury myself and remain
+invisible even when I was looking at what went on outside? When I saw
+any external object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain
+between me and it, enclosing it in a slender, incorporeal outline which
+prevented me from ever coming directly in contact with the material
+form; for it would volatilise itself in some way before I could touch
+it, just as an incandescent body which is moved towards something wet
+never actually touches moisture, since it is always preceded, itself, by
+a zone of evaporation. Upon the sort of screen, patterned with different
+states and impressions, which my consciousness would quietly unfold
+while I was reading, and which ranged from the most deeply hidden
+aspirations of my heart to the wholly external view of the horizon
+spread out before my eyes at the foot of the garden, what was from the
+first the most permanent and the most intimate part of me, the lever
+whose incessant movements controlled all the rest, was my belief in the
+philosophic richness and beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire
+to appropriate these to myself, whatever the book might be. For even if
+I had purchased it at Combray, having seen it outside Borange's, whose
+grocery lay too far from our house for Françoise to be able to deal
+there, as she did with Camus, but who enjoyed better custom as a
+stationer and bookseller; even if I had seen it, tied with string to
+keep it in its place in the mosaic of monthly parts and pamphlets which
+adorned either side of his doorway, a doorway more mysterious, more
+teeming with suggestion than that of a cathedral, I should have noticed
+and bought it there simply because I had recognised it as a book which
+had been well spoken of, in my hearing, by the school-master or the
+school-friend who, at that particular time, seemed to me to be
+entrusted with the secret of Truth and Beauty, things half-felt by me,
+half-incomprehensible, the full understanding of which was the vague but
+permanent object of my thoughts.
+
+Next to this central belief, which, while I was reading, would be
+constantly a motion from my inner self to the outer world, towards the
+discovery of Truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in
+which I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with
+more dramatic and sensational events than occur, often, in a whole
+lifetime. These were the events which took place in the book I was
+reading. It is true that the people concerned in them were not what
+Françoise would have called 'real people.' But none of the feelings
+which the joys or misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be
+awakened except through a mental picture of those joys or misfortunes;
+and the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding
+that, as the picture was the one essential element in the complicated
+structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted
+in the suppression, pure and simple, of 'real' people would be a decided
+improvement. A 'real' person, profoundly as we may sympathise with him,
+is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to
+say, he remains opaque, offers a dead weight which our sensibilities
+have not the strength to lift. If some misfortune comes to him, it is
+only in one small section of the complete idea we have of him that
+we are capable of feeling any emotion; indeed it is only in one small
+section of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of
+feeling any emotion either. The novelist's happy discovery was to think
+of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human
+spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which
+the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the
+actions, the feelings of this new order of creatures appear to us in
+the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in
+ourselves that they are happening, that they are holding in thrall,
+while we turn over, feverishly, the pages of the book, our quickened
+breath and staring eyes. And once the novelist has brought us to that
+state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is
+multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes to disturb us as might
+a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression than
+those which come to us in sleep; why, then, for the space of an hour
+he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of
+which, only, we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting
+to know, and the keenest, the most intense of which would never have
+been revealed to us because the slow course of their development stops
+our perception of them. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and
+that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by
+imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural
+phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish,
+successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the
+actual sensation of change.
+
+Next to, but distinctly less intimate a part of myself than this human
+element, would come the view, more or less projected before my eyes,
+of the country in which the action of the story was taking place, which
+made a far stronger impression on my mind than the other, the actual
+landscape which would meet my eyes when I raised them from my book. In
+this way, for two consecutive summers I used to sit in the heat of our
+Combray garden, sick with a longing inspired by the book I was then
+reading for a land of mountains and rivers, where I could see an endless
+vista of sawmills, where beneath the limpid currents fragments of
+wood lay mouldering in beds of watercress; and nearby, rambling and
+clustering along low walls, purple flowers and red. And since there was
+always lurking in my mind the dream of a woman who would enrich me with
+her love, that dream in those two summers used to be quickened with the
+freshness and coolness of running water; and whoever she might be, the
+woman whose image I called to mind, purple flowers and red would at once
+spring up on either side of her like complementary colours.
+
+This was not only because an image of which we dream remains for ever
+distinguished, is adorned and enriched by the association of colours not
+its own which may happen to surround it in our mental picture; for the
+scenes in the books I read were to me not merely scenery more vividly
+portrayed by my imagination than any which Combray could spread before
+my eyes but otherwise of the same kind. Because of the selection that
+the author had made of them, because of the spirit of faith in which
+my mind would exceed and anticipate his printed word, as it might
+be interpreting a revelation, these scenes used to give me the
+impression--one which I hardly ever derived from any place in which
+I might happen to be, and never from our garden, that undistinguished
+product of the strictly conventional fantasy of the gardener whom my
+grandmother so despised--of their being actually part of Nature herself,
+and worthy to be studied and explored.
+
+Had my parents allowed me, when I read a book, to pay a visit to the
+country it described, I should have felt that I was making an enormous
+advance towards the ultimate conquest of truth. For even if we have
+the sensation of being always enveloped in, surrounded by our own soul,
+still it does not seem a fixed and immovable prison; rather do we seem
+to be borne away with it, and perpetually struggling to pass beyond it,
+to break out into the world, with a perpetual discouragement as we hear
+endlessly, all around us, that unvarying sound which is no echo from
+without, but the resonance of a vibration from within. We try to
+discover in things, endeared to us on that account, the spiritual
+glamour which we ourselves have cast upon them; we are disillusioned,
+and learn that they are in themselves barren and devoid of the charm
+which they owed, in our minds, to the association of certain ideas;
+sometimes we mobilise all our spiritual forces in a glittering array so
+as to influence and subjugate other human beings who, as we very well
+know, are situated outside ourselves, where we can never reach them. And
+so, if I always imagined the woman I loved as in a setting of whatever
+places I most longed, at the time, to visit; if in my secret longings
+it was she who attracted me to them, who opened to me the gate of an
+unknown world, that was not by the mere hazard of a simple association
+of thoughts; no, it was because my dreams of travel and of love were
+only moments--which I isolate artificially to-day as though I
+were cutting sections, at different heights, in a jet of water,
+rainbow-flashing but seemingly without flow or motion--were only drops
+in a single, undeviating, irresistible outrush of all the forces of my
+life.
+
+And then, as I continue to trace the outward course of these impressions
+from their close-packed intimate source in my consciousness, and
+before I come to the horizon of reality which envelops them, I discover
+pleasures of another kind, those of being comfortably seated, of tasting
+the good scent on the air, of not being disturbed by any visitor; and,
+when an hour chimed from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire, of watching what
+was already spent of the afternoon fall drop by drop until I heard the
+last stroke which enabled me to add up the total sum, after which the
+silence that followed seemed to herald the beginning, in the blue sky
+above me, of that long part of the day still allowed me for reading,
+until the good dinner which Françoise was even now preparing should come
+to strengthen and refresh me after the strenuous pursuit of its hero
+through the pages of my book. And, as each hour struck, it would seem to
+me that a few seconds only had passed since the hour before; the latest
+would inscribe itself, close to its predecessor, on the sky's surface,
+and I would be unable to believe that sixty minutes could be squeezed
+into the tiny arc of blue which was comprised between their two golden
+figures. Sometimes it would even happen that this precocious hour would
+sound two strokes more than the last; there must then have been an hour
+which I had not heard strike; something which had taken place had not
+taken place for me; the fascination of my book, a magic as potent as the
+deepest slumber, had stopped my enchanted ears and had obliterated
+the sound of that golden bell from the azure surface of the enveloping
+silence. Sweet Sunday afternoons beneath the chestnut-tree in our
+Combray garden, from which I was careful to eliminate every commonplace
+incident of my actual life, replacing them by a career of strange
+adventures and ambitions in a land watered by living streams, you still
+recall those adventures and ambitions to my mind when I think of you,
+and you embody and preserve them by virtue of having little by little
+drawn round and enclosed them (while I went on with my book and the heat
+of the day declined) in the gradual crystallisation, slowly altering
+in form and dappled with a pattern of chestnut-leaves, of your silent,
+sonorous, fragrant, limpid hours.
+
+Sometimes I would be torn from my book, in the middle of the afternoon,
+by the gardener's daughter, who came running like a mad thing,
+overturning an orange-tree in its tub, cutting a finger, breaking a
+tooth, and screaming out "They're coming, they're coming!" so that
+Françoise and I should run too and not miss anything of the show. That
+was on days when the cavalry stationed in Combray went out for some
+military exercise, going as a rule by the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde. While
+our servants, sitting in a row on their chairs outside the garden
+railings, stared at the people of Combray taking their Sunday walks and
+were stared at in return, the gardener's daughter, through the gap which
+there was between two houses far away in the Avenue de la Gare, would
+have spied the glitter of helmets. The servants then hurried in
+with their chairs, for when the troopers filed through the Rue
+Sainte-Hildegarde they filled it from side to side, and their jostling
+horses scraped against the walls of the houses, covering and drowning
+the pavements like banks which present too narrow a channel to a river
+in flood.
+
+"Poor children," Françoise would exclaim, in tears almost before she
+had reached the railings; "poor boys, to be mown down like grass in a
+meadow. It's just shocking to think of," she would go on, laying a hand
+over her heart, where presumably she had felt the shock.
+
+"A fine sight, isn't it, Mme. Françoise, all these young fellows not
+caring two straws for their lives?" the gardener would ask, just to
+'draw' her. And he would not have spoken in vain.
+
+"Not caring for their lives, is it? Why, what in the world is there that
+we should care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never
+offers us a second time? Oh dear, oh dear; you're right all the same;
+it's quite true, they don't care! I can remember them in '70; in those
+wretched wars they've no fear of death left in them; they're nothing
+more nor less than madmen; and then they aren't worth the price of a
+rope to hang them with; they're not men any more, they're lions." For
+by her way of thinking, to compare a man with a lion, which she used to
+pronounce 'lie-on,' was not at all complimentary to the man.
+
+The Rue Sainte-Hildegarde turned too sharply for us to be able to see
+people approaching at any distance, and it was only through the gap
+between those two houses in the Avenue de la Gare that we could still
+make out fresh helmets racing along towards us, and flashing in the
+sunlight. The gardener wanted to know whether there were still many to
+come, and he was thirsty besides, with the sun beating down upon his
+head. So then, suddenly, his daughter would leap out, as though from
+a beleaguered city, would make a sortie, turn the street corner, and,
+having risked her life a hundred times over, reappear and bring us,
+with a jug of liquorice-water, the news that there were still at least
+a thousand of them, pouring along without a break from the direction
+of Thiberzy and Méséglise. Françoise and the gardener, having 'made up'
+their difference, would discuss the line to be followed in case of war.
+
+"Don't you see, Françoise," he would say. "Revolution would be better,
+because then no one would need to join in unless he liked."
+
+"Oh, yes, I can see that, certainly; it's more straightforward."
+
+The gardener believed that, as soon as war was declared, they would stop
+all the railways.
+
+"Yes, to be sure; so that we sha'n't get away," said Françoise.
+
+And the gardener would assent, with "Ay, they're the cunning ones," for
+he would not allow that war was anything but a kind of trick which the
+state attempted to play on the people, or that there was a man in the
+world who would not run away from it if he had the chance to do so.
+
+But Françoise would hasten back to my aunt, and I would return to my
+book, and the servants would take their places again outside the gate to
+watch the dust settle on the pavement, and the excitement caused by the
+passage of the soldiers subside. Long after order had been restored,
+an abnormal tide of humanity would continue to darken the streets of
+Combray. And in front of every house, even of those where it was not,
+as a rule, 'done,' the servants, and sometimes even the masters would
+sit and stare, festooning their doorsteps with a dark, irregular fringe,
+like the border of shells and sea-weed which a stronger tide than usual
+leaves on the beach, as though trimming it with embroidered crape, when
+the sea itself has retreated.
+
+Except on such days as these, however, I would as a rule be left to read
+in peace. But the interruption which a visit from Swann once made, and
+the commentary which he then supplied to the course of my reading,
+which had brought me to the work of an author quite new to me, called
+Bergotte, had this definite result that for a long time afterwards
+it was not against a wall gay with spikes of purple blossom, but on a
+wholly different background, the porch of a gothic cathedral, that I
+would see outlined the figure of one of the women of whom I dreamed.
+
+I had heard Bergotte spoken of, for the first time, by a friend older
+than myself, for whom I had a strong admiration, a precious youth of the
+name of Bloch. Hearing me confess my love of the _Nuit d'Octobre_, he
+had burst out in a bray of laughter, like a bugle-call, and told me,
+by way of warning: "You must conquer your vile taste for A. de Musset,
+Esquire. He is a bad egg, one of the very worst, a pretty detestable
+specimen. I am bound to admit, natheless," he added graciously, "that
+he, and even the man Racine, did, each of them, once in his life,
+compose a line which is not only fairly rhythmical, but has also what is
+in my eyes the supreme merit of meaning absolutely nothing. One is
+
+
+  _La blanche Oloossone et la blanche Camire_,
+
+and the other
+
+
+  _La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë_."
+
+They were submitted to my judgment, as evidence for the defence of the
+two runagates, in an article by my very dear master Father Lecomte, who
+is found pleasing in the sight of the immortal gods. By which token,
+here is a book which I have not the time, just now, to read, a book
+recommended, it would seem, by that colossal fellow. He regards, or so
+they tell me, its author, one Bergotte, Esquire, as a subtle scribe,
+more subtle, indeed, than any beast of the field; and, albeit he
+exhibits on occasion a critical pacifism, a tenderness in suffering
+fools, for which it is impossible to account, and hard to make
+allowance, still his word has weight with me as it were the Delphic
+Oracle. Read you then this lyrical prose, and, if the Titanic
+master-builder of rhythm who composed _Bhagavat_ and the _Lévrier de
+Magnus_ speaks not falsely, then, by Apollo, you may taste, even you, my
+master, the ambrosial joys of Olympus." It was in an ostensible vein of
+sarcasm that he had asked me to call him, and that he himself called me,
+"my master." But, as a matter of fact, we each derived a certain amount
+of satisfaction from the mannerism, being still at the age in which one
+believes that one gives a thing real existence by giving it a name.
+
+Unfortunately I was not able to set at rest, by further talks with
+Bloch, in which I might have insisted upon an explanation, the doubts
+he had engendered in me when he told me that fine lines of poetry (from
+which I, if you please, expected nothing less than the revelation of
+truth itself) were all the finer if they meant absolutely nothing. For,
+as it happened, Bloch was not invited to the house again. At first, he
+had been well received there. It is true that my grandfather made out
+that, whenever I formed a strong attachment to any one of my friends and
+brought him home with me, that friend was invariably a Jew; to which he
+would not have objected on principle--indeed his own friend Swann was
+of Jewish extraction--had he not found that the Jews whom I chose as
+friends were not usually of the best type. And so I was hardly ever able
+to bring a new friend home without my grandfather's humming the "O,
+God of our fathers" from _La Juive_, or else "Israel, break thy chain,"
+singing the tune alone, of course, to an "um-ti-tum-ti-tum, tra-la"; but
+I used to be afraid of my friend's recognising the sound, and so being
+able to reconstruct the words.
+
+Before seeing them, merely on hearing their names, about which, as often
+as not, there was nothing particularly Hebraic, he would divine not only
+the Jewish origin of such of my friends as might indeed be of the chosen
+people, but even some dark secret which was hidden in their family.
+
+"And what do they call your friend who is coming this evening?"
+
+"Dumont, grandpapa."
+
+"Dumont! Oh, I'm frightened of Dumont."
+
+And he would sing:
+
+
+  Archers, be on your guard!
+  Watch without rest, without sound,
+
+and then, after a few adroit questions on points of detail, he would
+call out "On guard! on guard," or, if it were the victim himself who
+had already arrived, and had been obliged, unconsciously, by my
+grandfather's subtle examination, to admit his origin, then my
+grandfather, to shew us that he had no longer any doubts, would merely
+look at us, humming almost inaudibly the air of
+
+
+  What! do you hither guide the feet
+  Of this timid Israelite?
+
+or of
+
+
+  Sweet vale of Hebron, dear paternal fields,
+
+or, perhaps, of
+
+
+  Yes, I am of the chosen race.
+
+These little eccentricities on my grandfather's part implied no ill-will
+whatsoever towards my friends. But Bloch had displeased my family for
+other reasons. He had begun by annoying my father, who, seeing him come
+in with wet clothes, had asked him with keen interest:
+
+"Why, M. Bloch, is there a change in the weather; has it been raining? I
+can't understand it; the barometer has been 'set fair.'"
+
+Which drew from Bloch nothing more instructive than "Sir, I am
+absolutely incapable of telling you whether it has rained. I live so
+resolutely apart from physical contingencies that my senses no longer
+trouble to inform me of them."
+
+"My poor boy," said my father after Bloch had gone, "your friend is out
+of his mind. Why, he couldn't even tell me what the weather was like. As
+if there could be anything more interesting! He is an imbecile."
+
+Next, Bloch had displeased my grandmother because, after luncheon, when
+she complained of not feeling very well, he had stifled a sob and wiped
+the tears from his eyes.
+
+"You cannot imagine that he is sincere," she observed to me. "Why he
+doesn't know me. Unless he's mad, of course."
+
+And finally he had upset the whole household when he arrived an hour
+and a half late for luncheon and covered with mud from head to foot, and
+made not the least apology, saying merely: "I never allow myself to be
+influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or
+by the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time. I would willingly
+reintroduce to society the opium pipe of China or the Malayan kriss, but
+I am wholly and entirely without instruction in those infinitely more
+pernicious (besides being quite bleakly bourgeois) implements, the
+umbrella and the watch."
+
+In spite of all this he would still have been received at Combray. He
+was, of course, hardly the friend my parents would have chosen for
+me; they had, in the end, decided that the tears which he had shed on
+hearing of my grandmother's illness were genuine enough; but they
+knew, either instinctively or from their own experience, that our early
+impulsive emotions have but little influence over our later actions and
+the conduct of our lives; and that regard for moral obligations, loyalty
+to our friends, patience in finishing our work, obedience to a rule
+of life, have a surer foundation in habits solidly formed and blindly
+followed than in these momentary transports, ardent but sterile. They
+would have preferred to Bloch, as companions for myself, boys who would
+have given me no more than it is proper, by all the laws of middle-class
+morality, for boys to give one another, who would not unexpectedly
+send me a basket of fruit because they happened, that morning, to have
+thought of me with affection, but who, since they were incapable of
+inclining in my favour, by any single impulse of their imagination and
+emotions, the exact balance of the duties and claims of friendship, were
+as incapable of loading the scales to my prejudice. Even the injuries
+we do them will not easily divert from the path of their duty towards us
+those conventional natures of which my great-aunt furnished a type: who,
+after quarrelling for years with a niece, to whom she never spoke again,
+yet made no change in the will in which she had left that niece the
+whole of her fortune, because she was her next-of-kin, and it was the
+'proper thing' to do.
+
+But I was fond of Bloch; my parents wished me to be happy; and the
+insoluble problems which I set myself on such texts as the 'absolutely
+meaningless' beauty of _La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë_ tired me more
+and made me more unwell than I should have been after further talks with
+him, unwholesome as those talks might seem to my mother's mind. And he
+would still have been received at Combray but for one thing. That same
+night, after dinner, having informed me (a piece of news which had a
+great influence on my later life, making it happier at one time and then
+more unhappy) that no woman ever thought of anything but love, and that
+there was not one of them whose resistance a man could not overcome,
+he had gone on to assure me that he had heard it said on unimpeachable
+authority that my great-aunt herself had led a 'gay' life in her younger
+days, and had been notoriously 'kept.' I could not refrain from passing
+on so important a piece of information to my parents; the next time
+Bloch called he was not admitted, and afterwards, when I met him in the
+street, he greeted me with extreme coldness.
+
+But in the matter of Bergotte he had spoken truly.
+
+For the first few days, like a tune which will be running in one's head
+and maddening one soon enough, but of which one has not for the moment
+'got hold,' the things I was to love so passionately in Bergotte's style
+had not yet caught my eye. I could not, it is true, lay down the novel
+of his which I was reading, but I fancied that I was interested in the
+story alone, as in the first dawn of love, when we go every day to meet
+a woman at some party or entertainment by the charm of which we imagine
+it is that we are attracted. Then I observed the rare, almost archaic
+phrases which he liked to employ at certain points, where a hidden flow
+of harmony, a prelude contained and concealed in the work itself would
+animate and elevate his style; and it was at such points as these,
+too, that he would begin to speak of the "vain dream of life," of the
+"inexhaustible torrent of fair forms," of the "sterile, splendid torture
+of understanding and loving," of the "moving effigies which ennoble for
+all time the charming and venerable fronts of our cathedrals"; that he
+would express a whole system of philosophy, new to me, by the use of
+marvellous imagery, to the inspiration of which I would naturally have
+ascribed that sound of harping which began to chime and echo in my ears,
+an accompaniment to which that imagery added something ethereal and
+sublime. One of these passages of Bergotte, the third or fourth which I
+had detached from the rest, filled me with a joy to which the meagre joy
+I had tasted in the first passage bore no comparison, a joy which I felt
+myself to have experienced in some innermost chamber of my soul, deep,
+undivided, vast, from which all obstructions and partitions seemed to
+have been swept away. For what had happened was that, while I recognised
+in this passage the same taste for uncommon phrases, the same bursts
+of music, the same idealist philosophy which had been present in the
+earlier passages without my having taken them into account as the source
+of my pleasure, I now no longer had the impression of being confronted
+by a particular passage in one of Bergotte's works, which traced a
+purely bi-dimensional figure in outline upon the surface of my mind, but
+rather of the 'ideal passage' of Bergotte, common to every one of his
+books, and to which all the earlier, similar passages, now becoming
+merged in it, had added a kind of density and volume, by which my own
+understanding seemed to be enlarged.
+
+I was by no means Bergotte's sole admirer; he was the favourite writer
+also of a friend of my mother's, a highly literary lady; while Dr. du
+Boulbon had kept all his patients waiting until he finished Bergotte's
+latest volume; and it was from his consulting room, and from a house in
+a park near Combray that some of the first seeds were scattered of that
+taste for Bergotte, a rare-growth in those days, but now so universally
+acclimatised that one finds it flowering everywhere throughout Europe
+and America, and even in the tiniest villages, rare still in its
+refinement, but in that alone. What my mother's friend, and, it would
+seem, what Dr. du Boulbon liked above all in the writings of Bergotte
+was just what I liked, the same flow of melody, the same old-fashioned
+phrases, and certain others, quite simple and familiar, but so placed by
+him, in such prominence, as to hint at a particular quality of taste on
+his part; and also, in the sad parts of his books, a sort of roughness,
+a tone that was almost harsh. And he himself, no doubt, realised that
+these were his principal attractions. For in his later books, if he had
+hit upon some great truth, or upon the name of an historic cathedral,
+he would break off his narrative, and in an invocation, an apostrophe, a
+lengthy prayer, would give a free outlet to that effluence which, in
+the earlier volumes, remained buried beneath the form of his prose,
+discernible only in a rippling of its surface, and perhaps even more
+delightful, more harmonious when it was thus veiled from the eye, when
+the reader could give no precise indication of where the murmur of the
+current began, or of where it died away. These passages in which he
+delighted were our favourites also. For my own part I knew all of them
+by heart. I felt even disappointed when he resumed the thread of his
+narrative. Whenever he spoke of something whose beauty had until
+then remained hidden from me, of pine-forests or of hailstorms, of
+_Notre-Dame de Paris_, of _Athalie_, or of _Phèdre_, by some piece
+of imagery he would make their beauty explode and drench me with its
+essence. And so, dimly realising that the universe contained innumerable
+elements which my feeble senses would be powerless to discern, did he
+not bring them within my reach, I wished that I might have his opinion,
+some metaphor of his, upon everything in the world, and especially upon
+such things as I might have an opportunity, some day, of seeing for
+myself; and among such things, more particularly still upon some of the
+historic buildings of France, upon certain views of the sea, because the
+emphasis with which, in his books, he referred to these shewed that he
+regarded them as rich in significance and beauty. But, alas, upon almost
+everything in the world his opinion was unknown to me. I had no doubt
+that it would differ entirely from my own, since his came down from an
+unknown sphere towards which I was striving to raise myself; convinced
+that my thoughts would have seemed pure foolishness to that perfected
+spirit, I had so completely obliterated them all that, if I happened to
+find in one of his books something which had already occurred to my own
+mind, my heart would swell with gratitude and pride as though some deity
+had, in his infinite bounty, restored it to me, had pronounced it to be
+beautiful and right. It happened now and then that a page of Bergotte
+would express precisely those ideas which I used often at night, when
+I was unable to sleep, to write to my grandmother and mother, and so
+concisely and well that his page had the appearance of a collection of
+mottoes for me to set at the head of my letters. And so too, in later
+years, when I began to compose a book of my own, and the quality of some
+of my sentences seemed so inadequate that I could not make up my mind to
+go on with the undertaking, I would find the equivalent of my sentences
+in Bergotte's. But it was only then, when I read them in his pages,
+that I could enjoy them; when it was I myself who composed them, in
+my anxiety that they should exactly reproduce what I seemed to have
+detected in my mind, and in my fear of their not turning out 'true to
+life,' I had no time to ask myself whether what I was writing would be
+pleasant to read! But indeed there was no kind of language, no kind of
+ideas which I really liked, except these. My feverish and unsatisfactory
+attempts were themselves a token of my love, a love which brought me no
+pleasure, but was, for all that, intense and deep. And so, when I came
+suddenly upon similar phrases in the writings of another, that is to say
+stripped of their familiar accompaniment of scruples and repressions and
+self-tormentings, I was free to indulge to the full my own appetite
+for such things, just as a cook who, once in a while, has no dinner to
+prepare for other people, can then find time to gormandise himself. And
+so, when I had found, one day, in a book by Bergotte, some joke about
+an old family servant, to which his solemn and magnificent style added a
+great deal of irony, but which was in principle what I had often said to
+my grandmother about Françoise, and when, another time, I had discovered
+that he thought not unworthy of reflection in one of those mirrors of
+absolute Truth which were his writings, a remark similar to one which I
+had had occasion to make on our friend M. Legrandin (and, moreover, my
+remarks on Françoise and M. Legrandin were among those which I would
+most resolutely have sacrificed for Bergotte's sake, in the belief
+that he would find them quite without interest); then it was suddenly
+revealed to me that my own humble existence and the Realms of Truth were
+less widely separated than I had supposed, that at certain points they
+were actually in contact; and in my new-found confidence and joy I wept
+upon his printed page, as in the arms of a long-lost father.
+
+From his books I had formed an impression of Bergotte as a frail and
+disappointed old man, who had lost his children, and had never found
+any consolation. And so I would read, or rather sing his sentences in
+my brain, with rather more _dolce_, rather more _lento_ than he himself
+had, perhaps, intended, and his simplest phrase would strike my ears
+with something peculiarly gentle and loving in its intonation. More than
+anything else in the world I cherished his philosophy, and had pledged
+myself to it in lifelong devotion. It made me impatient to reach the
+age when I should be eligible to attend the class at school called
+'Philosophy.' I did not wish to learn or do anything else there, but
+simply to exist and be guided entirely by the mind of Bergotte, and,
+if I had been told then that the metaphysicians whom I was actually to
+follow there resembled him in nothing, I should have been struck down by
+the despair a young lover feels who has sworn lifelong fidelity, when
+a friend speaks to him of the other mistresses he will have in time to
+come.
+
+One Sunday, while I was reading in the garden, I was interrupted by
+Swann, who had come to call upon my parents.
+
+"What are you reading? May I look? Why, it's Bergotte! Who has been
+telling you about him?"
+
+I replied that Bloch was responsible.
+
+"Oh, yes, that boy I saw here once, who looks so like the Bellini
+portrait of Mahomet II. It's an astonishing likeness; he has the same
+arched eyebrows and hooked nose and prominent cheekbones. When his beard
+comes he'll be Mahomet himself. Anyhow he has good taste, for Bergotte
+is a charming creature." And seeing how much I seemed to admire
+Bergotte, Swann, who never spoke at all about the people he knew, made
+an exception in my favour and said: "I know him well; if you would like
+him to write a few words on the title-page of your book I could ask him
+for you."
+
+I dared not accept such an offer, but bombarded Swann with questions
+about his friend. "Can you tell me, please, who is his favourite actor?"
+
+"Actor? No, I can't say. But I do know this: there's not a man on the
+stage whom he thinks equal to Berma; he puts her above everyone. Have
+you seen her?"
+
+"No, sir, my parents do not allow me to go to the theatre."
+
+"That is a pity. You should insist. Berma in _Phèdre_, in the _Cid_;
+well, she's only an actress, if you like, but you know that I don't
+believe very much in the 'hierarchy' of the arts." As he spoke I
+noticed, what had often struck me before in his conversations with
+my grandmother's sisters, that whenever he spoke of serious matters,
+whenever he used an expression which seemed to imply a definite opinion
+upon some important subject, he would take care to isolate, to sterilise
+it by using a special intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he
+had put the phrase or word between inverted commas, and was anxious
+to disclaim any personal responsibility for it; as who should say "the
+'hierarchy,' don't you know, as silly people call it." But then, if it
+was so absurd, why did he say the 'hierarchy'? A moment later he went
+on: "Her acting will give you as noble an inspiration as any masterpiece
+of art in the world, as--oh, I don't know--" and he began to laugh,
+"shall we say the Queens of Chartres?" Until then I had supposed that
+his horror of having to give a serious opinion was something Parisian
+and refined, in contrast to the provincial dogmatism of my grandmother's
+sisters; and I had imagined also that it was characteristic of the
+mental attitude towards life of the circle in which Swann moved,
+where, by a natural reaction from the 'lyrical' enthusiasms of earlier
+generations, an excessive importance was given to small and precise
+facts, formerly regarded as vulgar, and anything in the nature of
+'phrase-making' was banned. But now I found myself slightly shocked
+by this attitude which Swann invariably adopted when face to face with
+generalities. He appeared unwilling to risk even having an opinion, and
+to be at his ease only when he could furnish, with meticulous accuracy,
+some precise but unimportant detail. But in so doing he did not take
+into account that even here he was giving an opinion, holding a brief
+(as they say) for something, that the accuracy of his details had an
+importance of its own. I thought again of the dinner that night, when I
+had been so unhappy because Mamma would not be coming up to my room, and
+when he had dismissed the balls given by the Princesse de Léon as being
+of no importance. And yet it was to just that sort of amusement that he
+was devoting his life. For what other kind of existence did he reserve
+the duties of saying in all seriousness what he thought about things,
+of formulating judgments which he would not put between inverted commas;
+and when would he cease to give himself up to occupations of which at
+the same time he made out that they were absurd? I noticed, too, in the
+manner in which Swann spoke to me of Bergotte, something which, to do
+him justice, was not peculiar to himself, but was shared by all that
+writer's admirers at that time, at least by my mother's friend and
+by Dr. du Boulbon. Like Swann, they would say of Bergotte: "He has a
+charming mind, so individual, he has a way of his own of saying things,
+which is a little far-fetched, but so pleasant. You never need to look
+for his name on the title-page, you can tell his work at once." But
+none of them had yet gone so far as to say "He is a great writer, he has
+great talent." They did not even credit him with talent at all. They
+did not speak, because they were not aware of it. We are very slow in
+recognising in the peculiar physiognomy of a new writer the type which
+is labelled 'great talent' in our museum of general ideas. Simply
+because that physiognomy is new and strange, we can find in it no
+resemblance to what we are accustomed to call talent. We say rather
+originality, charm, delicacy, strength; and then one day we add up the
+sum of these, and find that it amounts simply to talent.
+
+"Are there any books in which Bergotte has written about Berma?" I asked
+M. Swann.
+
+"I think he has, in that little essay on Racine, but it must be out of
+print. Still, there has perhaps been a second impression. I will find
+out. Anyhow, I can ask Bergotte himself all that you want to know next
+time he comes to dine with us. He never misses a week, from one year's
+end to another. He is my daughter's greatest friend. They go about
+together, and look at old towns and cathedrals and castles."
+
+As I was still completely ignorant of the different grades in the social
+hierarchy, the fact that my father found it impossible for us to see
+anything of Swann's wife and daughter had, for a long time, had the
+contrary effect of making me imagine them as separated from us by an
+enormous gulf, which greatly enhanced their dignity and importance in
+my eyes. I was sorry that my mother did not dye her hair and redden her
+lips, as I had heard our neighbour, Mme. Sazerat, say that Mme. Swann
+did, to gratify not her husband but M. de Charlus; and I felt that, to
+her, we must be an object of scorn, which distressed me particularly on
+account of the daughter, such a pretty little girl, as I had heard, and
+one of whom I used often to dream, always imagining her with the same
+features and appearance, which I bestowed upon her quite arbitrarily,
+but with a charming effect. But from this afternoon, when I had learned
+that Mlle. Swann was a creature living in such rare and fortunate
+circumstances, bathed, as in her natural element, in such a sea of
+privilege that, if she should ask her parents whether anyone were coming
+to dinner, she would be answered in those two syllables, radiant with
+celestial light, would hear the name of that golden guest who was to
+her no more than an old friend of her family, Bergotte; that for her the
+intimate conversation at table, corresponding to what my great-aunt's
+conversation was for me, would be the words of Bergotte upon all those
+subjects which he had not been able to take up in his writings, and on
+which I would fain have heard him utter oracles; and that, above all,
+when she went to visit other towns, he would be walking by her side,
+unrecognised and glorious, like the gods who came down, of old, from
+heaven to dwell among mortal men: then I realised both the rare worth
+of a creature such as Mlle. Swann, and, at the same time, how coarse and
+ignorant I should appear to her; and I felt so keenly how pleasant and
+yet how impossible it would be for me to become her friend that I was
+filled at once with longing and with despair. And usually, from this
+time forth, when I thought of her, I would see her standing before the
+porch of a cathedral, explaining to me what each of the statues meant,
+and, with a smile which was my highest commendation, presenting me, as
+her friend, to Bergotte. And invariably the charm of all the fancies
+which the thought of cathedrals used to inspire in me, the charm of the
+hills and valleys of the Ile-de-France and of the plains of Normandy,
+would radiate brightness and beauty over the picture I had formed in my
+mind of Mlle. Swann; nothing more remained but to know and to love
+her. Once we believe that a fellow-creature has a share in some unknown
+existence to which that creature's love for ourselves can win us
+admission, that is, of all the preliminary conditions which Love exacts,
+the one to which he attaches most importance, the one which makes him
+generous or indifferent as to the rest. Even those women who pretend
+that they judge a man by his exterior only, see in that exterior an
+emanation from some special way of life. And that is why they fall
+in love with a soldier or a fireman, whose uniform makes them less
+particular about his face; they kiss and believe that beneath the
+crushing breastplate there beats a heart different from the rest, more
+gallant, more adventurous, more tender; and so it is that a young king
+or a crown prince may travel in foreign countries and make the most
+gratifying conquests, and yet lack entirely that regular and classic
+profile which would be indispensable, I dare say, in an outside-broker.
+
+While I was reading in the garden, a thing my great-aunt would never
+have understood my doing save on a Sunday, that being the day on which
+it was unlawful to indulge in any serious occupation, and on which she
+herself would lay aside her sewing (on a week-day she would have said,
+"How you can go on amusing yourself with a book; it isn't Sunday, you
+know!" putting into the word 'amusing' an implication of childishness
+and waste of time), my aunt Léonie would be gossiping with Françoise
+until it was time for Eulalie to arrive. She would tell her that she had
+just seen Mme. Goupil go by "without an umbrella, in the silk dress
+she had made for her the other day at Châteaudun. If she has far to go
+before vespers, she may get it properly soaked."
+
+"Very likely" (which meant also "very likely not") was the answer,
+for Françoise did not wish definitely to exclude the possibility of a
+happier alternative.
+
+"There, now," went on my aunt, beating her brow, "that reminds me that
+I never heard if she got to church this morning before the Elevation. I
+must remember to ask Eulalie... Françoise, just look at that black cloud
+behind the steeple, and how poor the light is on the slates, you may be
+certain it will rain before the day is out. It couldn't possibly keep on
+like this, it's been too hot. And the sooner the better, for until the
+storm breaks my Vichy water won't 'go down,'" she concluded, since, in
+her mind, the desire to accelerate the digestion of her Vichy water was
+of infinitely greater importance than her fear of seeing Mme. Goupil's
+new dress ruined.
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"And you know that when it rains in the Square there's none too much
+shelter." Suddenly my aunt turned pale. "What, three o'clock!" she
+exclaimed. "But vespers will have begun already, and I've forgotten my
+pepsin! Now I know why that Vichy water has been lying on my stomach."
+And falling precipitately upon a prayer-book bound in purple velvet,
+with gilt clasps, out of which in her haste she let fall a shower of
+the little pictures, each in a lace fringe of yellowish paper, which she
+used to mark the places of the greater feasts of the church, my aunt,
+while she swallowed her drops, began at full speed to mutter the words
+of the sacred text, its meaning being slightly clouded in her brain by
+the uncertainty whether the pepsin, when taken so long after the
+Vichy, would still be able to overtake it and to 'send it down.' "Three
+o'clock! It's unbelievable how time flies."
+
+A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it,
+followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower
+of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall
+spread, took on an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming,
+musical, innumerable, universal. It was the rain.
+
+"There, Françoise, what did I tell you? How it's coming down! But I
+think I heard the bell at the garden gate: go along and see who can be
+outside in this weather."
+
+Françoise went and returned. "It's Mme. Amédée" (my grandmother). "She
+said she was going for a walk. It's raining hard, all the same."
+
+"I'm not at all surprised," said my aunt, looking up towards the sky.
+"I've always said that she was not in the least like other people. Well,
+I'm glad it's she and not myself who's outside in all this."
+
+"Mme. Amédée is always the exact opposite of the rest," said Françoise,
+not unkindly, refraining until she should be alone with the other
+servants from stating her belief that my grandmother was 'a bit off her
+head.'
+
+"There's Benediction over! Eulalie will never come now," sighed my aunt.
+"It will be the weather that's frightened her away."
+
+"But it's not five o'clock yet, Mme. Octave, it's only half-past four."
+
+"Only half-past four! And here am I, obliged to draw back the small
+curtains, just to get a tiny streak of daylight. At half-past four! Only
+a week before the Rogation-days. Ah, my poor Françoise, the dear Lord
+must be sorely vexed with us. The world is going too far in these days.
+As my poor Octave used to say, we have forgotten God too often, and He
+is taking vengeance upon us."
+
+A bright flush animated my aunt's cheeks; it was Eulalie. As ill luck
+would have it, scarcely had she been admitted to the presence when
+Françoise reappeared and, with a smile which was meant to indicate her
+full participation in the pleasure which, she had no doubt, her tidings
+would give my aunt, articulating each syllable so as to shew that, in
+spite of her having to translate them into indirect speech, she was
+repeating, as a good servant should, the very words which the new
+visitor had condescended to use, said: "His reverence the Curé would be
+delighted, enchanted, if Mme. Octave is not resting just now, and
+could see him. His reverence does not wish to disturb Mme. Octave. His
+reverence is downstairs; I told him to go into the parlour."
+
+Had the truth been known, the Curé's visits gave my aunt no such
+ecstatic pleasure as Françoise supposed, and the air of jubilation with
+which she felt bound to illuminate her face whenever she had to announce
+his arrival, did not altogether correspond to what was felt by her
+invalid. The Curé (an excellent man, with whom I am sorry now that I did
+not converse more often, for, even if he cared nothing for the arts,
+he knew a great many etymologies), being in the habit of shewing
+distinguished visitors over his church (he had even planned to compile
+a history of the Parish of Combray), used to weary her with his endless
+explanations, which, incidentally, never varied in the least degree.
+But when his visit synchronized exactly with Eulalie's it became frankly
+distasteful to my aunt. She would have preferred to make the most of
+Eulalie, and not to have had the whole of her circle about her at one
+time. But she dared not send the Curé away, and had to content herself
+with making a sign to Eulalie not to leave when he did, so that she
+might have her to herself for a little after he had gone.
+
+"What is this I have been hearing, Father, that a painter has set up his
+easel in your church, and is copying one of the windows? Old as I am,
+I can safely say that I have never even heard of such a thing in all my
+life! What is the world coming to next, I wonder! And the ugliest thing
+in the whole church, too."
+
+"I will not go so far as to say that it is quite the ugliest, for,
+although there are certain things in Saint-Hilaire which are well worth
+a visit, there are others that are very old now, in my poor basilica,
+the only one in all the diocese that has never even been restored.
+The Lord knows, our porch is dirty and out of date; still, it is of a
+majestic character; take, for instance, the Esther tapestries, though
+personally I would not give a brass farthing for the pair of them, but
+experts put them next after the ones at Sens. I can quite see, too, that
+apart from certain details which are--well, a trifle realistic, they
+shew features which testify to a genuine power of observation. But don't
+talk to me about the windows. Is it common sense, I ask you, to leave
+up windows which shut out all the daylight, and even confuse the eyes by
+throwing patches of colour, to which I should be hard put to it to give
+a name, on a floor in which there are not two slabs on the same level?
+And yet they refuse to renew the floor for me because, if you please,
+those are the tombstones of the Abbots of Combray and the Lords of
+Guermantes, the old Counts, you know, of Brabant, direct ancestors of
+the present Duc de Guermantes, and of his Duchesse also, since she was a
+lady of the Guermantes family, and married her cousin." (My grandmother,
+whose steady refusal to take any interest in 'persons' had ended in
+her confusing all their names and titles, whenever anyone mentioned the
+Duchesse de Guermantes used to make out that she must be related to Mme.
+de Villeparisis. The whole family would then burst out laughing; and she
+would attempt to justify herself by harking back to some invitation to
+a christening or funeral: "I feel sure that there was a Guermantes in it
+somewhere." And for once I would side with the others, and against
+her, refusing to admit that there could be any connection between her
+school-friend and the descendant of Geneviève de Brabant.)
+
+"Look at Roussainville," the Curé went on. "It is nothing more nowadays
+than a parish of farmers, though in olden times the place must have had
+a considerable importance from its trade in felt hats and clocks. (I
+am not certain, by the way, of the etymology of Roussainville. I
+should dearly like to think that the name was originally Rouville, from
+_Radulfi villa_, analogous, don't you see, to Châteauroux, _Castrum
+Radulfi_, but we will talk about that some other time.) Very well; the
+church there has superb windows, almost all quite modern, including that
+most imposing 'Entry of Louis-Philippe into Combray' which would be more
+in keeping, surely, at Combray itself, and which is every bit as good, I
+understand, as the famous windows at Chartres. Only yesterday I met Dr.
+Percepied's brother, who goes in for these things, and he told me that
+he looked upon it as a most beautiful piece of work. But, as I said to
+this artist, who, by the way, seems to be a most civil fellow, and is a
+regular virtuoso, it appears, with his brush; what on earth, I said to
+him, do you find so extraordinary in this window, which is, if anything,
+a little dingier than the rest?"
+
+"I am sure that if you were to ask his Lordship," said my aunt in
+a resigned tone, for she had begun to feel that she was going to be
+'tired,' "he would never refuse you a new window."
+
+"You may depend upon it, Mme. Octave," replied the Curé. "Why, it was
+just his Lordship himself who started the outcry about the window, by
+proving that it represented Gilbert the Bad, a Lord of Guermantes and
+a direct descendant of Geneviève de Brabant, who was a daughter of the
+House of Guermantes, receiving absolution from Saint Hilaire."
+
+"But I don't see where Saint Hilaire comes in."
+
+"Why yes, have you never noticed, in the corner of the window, a lady in
+a yellow robe? Very well, that is Saint Hilaire, who is also known, you
+will remember, in certain parts of the country as Saint Illiers, Saint
+Hèlier, and even, in the Jura, Saint Ylie. But these various corruptions
+of _Sanctus Hilarius_ are by no means the most curious that have
+occurred in the names of the blessed Saints. Take, for example, my good
+Eulalie, the case of your own patron, _Sancta Eulalia_; do you know what
+she has become in Burgundy? Saint Eloi, nothing more nor less! The lady
+has become a gentleman. Do you hear that, Eulalie, after you are dead
+they will make a man of you!"
+
+"Father will always have his joke."
+
+"Gilbert's brother, Charles the Stammerer, was a pious prince, but,
+having early in life lost his father, Pepin the Mad, who died as a
+result of his mental infirmity, he wielded the supreme power with all
+the arrogance of a man who has not been subjected to discipline in his
+youth, so much so that, whenever he saw a man in a town whose face
+he did not remember, he would massacre the whole place, to the last
+inhabitant. Gilbert, wishing to be avenged on Charles, caused the church
+at Combray to be burned down, the original church, that was, which
+Théodebert, when he and his court left the country residence he had near
+here, at Thiberzy (which is, of course, _Theodeberiacus_), to go out
+and fight the Burgundians, had promised to build over the tomb of Saint
+Hilaire if the Saint brought him victory. Nothing remains of it now
+but the crypt, into which Théodore has probably taken you, for Gilbert
+burned all the rest. Finally, he defeated the unlucky Charles with the
+aid of William" which the Curé pronounced "Will'am" "the Conqueror,
+which is why so many English still come to visit the place. But he
+does not appear to have managed to win the affection of the people of
+Combray, for they fell upon him as he was coming out from mass, and cut
+off his head. Théodore has a little book, that he lends people, which
+tells you the whole story.
+
+"But what is unquestionably the most remarkable thing about our church
+is the view from the belfry, which is full of grandeur. Certainly in
+your case, since you are not very strong, I should never recommend you
+to climb our seven and ninety steps, just half the number they have in
+the famous cathedral at Milan. It is quite tiring enough for the most
+active person, especially as you have to go on your hands and knees, if
+you don't wish to crack your skull, and you collect all the cobwebs off
+the staircase upon your clothes. In any case you should be well wrapped
+up," he went on, without noticing my aunt's fury at the mere suggestion
+that she could ever, possibly, be capable of climbing into his belfry,
+"for there's a strong breeze there, once you get to the top. Some people
+even assure me that they have felt the chill of death up there. No
+matter, on Sundays there are always clubs and societies, who come,
+some of them, long distances to admire our beautiful panorama, and they
+always go home charmed. Wait now, next Sunday, if the weather holds, you
+will be sure to find a lot of people there, for Rogation-tide. You must
+admit, certainly, that the view from up there is like a fairy-tale, with
+what you might call vistas along the plain, which have quite a special
+charm of their own. On a clear day you can see as far as Verneuil. And
+then another thing; you can see at the same time places which you are in
+the habit of seeing one without the other, as, for instance, the course
+of the Vivonne and the ditches at Saint-Assise-lès-Combray, which
+are separated, really, by a screen of tall trees; or, to take another
+example, there are all the canals at Jouy-le-Vicomte, which is
+_Gaudiacus vicecomitis_, as of course you know. Each time that I have
+been to Jouy I have seen a bit of a canal in one place, and then I have
+turned a corner and seen another, but when I saw the second I could no
+longer see the first. I tried in vain to imagine how they lay by one
+another; it was no good. But, from the top of Saint-Hilaire, it's quite
+another matter; the whole countryside is spread out before you like a
+map. Only, you cannot make out the water; you would say that there were
+great rifts in the town, slicing it up so neatly that it looks like a
+loaf of bread which still holds together after it has been cut up. To
+get it all quite perfect you would have to be in both places at once; up
+here on the top of Saint-Hilaire and down there at Jouy-le-Vicomte."
+
+The Curé had so much exhausted my aunt that no sooner had he gone than
+she was obliged to send away Eulalie also.
+
+"Here, my poor Eulalie," she said in a feeble voice, drawing a coin from
+a small purse which lay ready to her hand. "This is just something so
+that you shall not forget me in your prayers."
+
+"Oh, but, Mme. Octave, I don't think I ought to; you know very well
+that I don't come here for that!" So Eulalie would answer, with the
+same hesitation and the same embarrassment, every Sunday, as though
+each temptation were the first, and with a look of displeasure which
+enlivened my aunt and never offended her, for if it so happened that
+Eulalie, when she took the money, looked a little less sulky than usual,
+my aunt would remark afterwards, "I cannot think what has come over
+Eulalie; I gave her just the trifle I always give, and she did not look
+at all pleased."
+
+"I don't think she has very much to complain of, all the same,"
+Françoise would sigh grimly, for she had a tendency to regard as petty
+cash all that my aunt might give her for herself or her children, and as
+treasure riotously squandered on a pampered and ungrateful darling the
+little coins slipped, Sunday by Sunday, into Eulalie's hand, but so
+discreetly passed that Françoise never managed to see them. It was
+not that she wanted to have for herself the money my aunt bestowed
+on Eulalie. She already enjoyed a sufficiency of all that my
+aunt possessed, in the knowledge that the wealth of the mistress
+automatically ennobled and glorified the maid in the eyes of the world;
+and that she herself was conspicuous and worthy to be praised throughout
+Combray, Jouy-le-Vicomte, and other cities of men, on account of my
+aunt's many farms, her frequent and prolonged visits from the Curé, and
+the astonishing number of bottles of Vichy water which she consumed.
+Françoise was avaricious only for my aunt; had she had control over
+my aunt's fortune (which would have more than satisfied her highest
+ambition) she would have guarded it from the assaults of strangers with
+a maternal ferocity. She would, however, have seen no great harm in what
+my aunt, whom she knew to be incurably generous, allowed herself to give
+away, had she given only to those who were already rich. Perhaps
+she felt that such persons, not being actually in need of my aunt's
+presents, could not be suspected of simulating affection for her on
+that account. Besides, presents offered to persons of great wealth and
+position, such as Mme. Sazerat, M. Swann, M. Legrandin and Mme. Goupil,
+to persons of the 'same class' as my aunt, and who would naturally
+'mix with her,' seemed to Françoise to be included among the ornamental
+customs of that strange and brilliant life led by rich people, who
+hunted and shot, gave balls and paid visits, a life which she would
+contemplate with an admiring smile. But it was by no means the same
+thing if, for this princely exchange of courtesies, my aunt substituted
+mere charity, if her beneficiaries were of the class which Françoise
+would label "people like myself," or "people no better than myself,"
+people whom she despised even more if they did not address her always
+as "Mme. Françoise," just to shew that they considered themselves to be
+'not as good.' And when she saw that, despite all her warnings, my aunt
+continued to do exactly as she pleased, and to fling money away with
+both hands (or so, at least, Françoise believed) on undeserving objects,
+she began to find that the presents she herself received from my aunt
+were very tiny compared to the imaginary riches squandered upon
+Eulalie, There was not, in the neighbourhood of Combray, a farm of such
+prosperity and importance that Françoise doubted Eulalie's ability to
+buy it, without thinking twice, out of the capital which her visits to
+my aunt had 'brought in.' It must be added that Eulalie had formed an
+exactly similar estimate of the vast and secret hoards of Françoise.
+So, every Sunday, after Eulalie had gone, Françoise would mercilessly
+prophesy her coming downfall. She hated Eulalie, but was at the same
+time afraid of her, and so felt bound, when Eulalie was there, to 'look
+pleasant.' But she would make up for that after the other's departure;
+never, it is true, alluding to her by name, but hinting at her in
+Sibylline oracles, or in utterances of a comprehensive character, like
+those of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher, but so worded that their special
+application could not escape my aunt. After peering out at the side of
+the curtain to see whether Eulalie had shut the front-door behind her;
+"Flatterers know how to make themselves welcome, and to gather up the
+crumbs; but have patience, have patience; our God is a jealous God, and
+one fine day He will be avenged upon them!" she would declaim, with the
+sidelong, insinuating glance of Joash, thinking of Athaliah alone when
+he says that the
+
+            ....prosperity
+  Of wicked men runs like a torrent past,
+  And soon is spent.
+
+But on this memorable afternoon, when the Curé had come as well, and
+by his interminable visit had drained my aunt's strength, Françoise
+followed Eulalie from the room, saying: "Mme. Octave, I will leave you
+to rest; you look utterly tired out."
+
+And my aunt answered her not a word, breathing a sigh so faint that
+it seemed it must prove her last, and lying there with closed eyes, as
+though already dead. But hardly had Françoise arrived downstairs, when
+four peals of a bell, pulled with the utmost violence, reverberated
+through the house, and my aunt, sitting erect upon her bed, called out:
+"Has Eulalie gone yet? Would you believe it; I forgot to ask her whether
+Mme. Goupil arrived in church before the Elevation. Run after her,
+quick!"
+
+But Françoise returned alone, having failed to overtake Eulalie. "It
+is most provoking," said my aunt, shaking her head. "The one important
+thing that I had to ask her."
+
+In this way life went by for my aunt Léonie, always the same, in the
+gentle uniformity of what she called, with a pretence of deprecation
+but with a deep tenderness, her 'little jog-trot.' Respected by all
+and sundry, not merely in her own house, where every one of us, having
+learned the futility of recommending any healthier mode of life, had
+become gradually resigned to its observance, but in the village as well,
+where, three streets away, a tradesman who had to hammer nails into a
+packing-case would send first to Françoise to make sure that my aunt
+was not 'resting'--her 'little jog-trot' was, none the less, brutally
+disturbed on one occasion in this same year. Like a fruit hidden among
+its leaves, which has grown and ripened unobserved by man, until it
+falls of its own accord, there came upon us one night the kitchen-maid's
+confinement. Her pains were unbearable, and, as there was no midwife
+in Combray, Françoise had to set off before dawn to fetch one from
+Thiberzy. My aunt was unable to 'rest,' owing to the cries of the girl,
+and as Françoise, though the distance was nothing, was very late in
+returning, her services were greatly missed. And so, in the course of
+the morning, my mother said to me: "Run upstairs, and see if your aunt
+wants anything."
+
+I went into the first of her two rooms, and through the open door of the
+other saw my aunt lying on her side, asleep. I could hear her breathing,
+in what was almost distinguishable as a snore. I was just going to slip
+away when something, probably the sound of my entry, interrupted her
+sleep, and made it 'change speed,' as they say of motorcars nowadays,
+for the music of her snore broke off for a second and began again on a
+lower note; then she awoke, and half turned her face, which I could see
+for the first time; a kind of horror was imprinted on it; plainly she
+had just escaped from some terrifying dream. She could not see me from
+where she was lying, and I stood there not knowing whether I ought to go
+forward or to retire; but all at once she seemed to return to a sense
+of reality, and to grasp the falsehood of the visions that had terrified
+her; a smile of joy, a pious act of thanksgiving to God, Who is pleased
+to grant that life shall be less cruel than our dreams, feebly illumined
+her face, and, with the habit she had formed of speaking to herself,
+half-aloud, when she thought herself alone, she murmured: "The Lord be
+praised! We have nothing to disturb us here but the kitchen-maid's baby.
+And I've been dreaming that my poor Octave had come back to life, and
+was trying to make me take a walk every day!" She stretched out a hand
+towards her rosary, which was lying on the small table, but sleep was
+once again getting the mastery, and did not leave her the strength to
+reach it; she fell asleep, calm and contented, and I crept out of the
+room on tiptoe, without either her or anyone's else ever knowing, from
+that day to this, what I had seen and heard.
+
+When I say that, apart from such rare happenings as this confinement, my
+aunt's 'little jog-trot' never underwent any variation, I do not include
+those variations which, repeated at regular intervals and in identical
+form, did no more, really, than print a sort of uniform pattern upon
+the greater uniformity of her life. So, for instance, every Saturday, as
+Françoise had to go in the afternoon to market at Roussainville-le-Pin,
+the whole household would have to have luncheon an hour earlier. And my
+aunt had so thoroughly acquired the habit of this weekly exception to
+her general habits, that she clung to it as much as to the rest. She
+was so well 'routined' to it, as Françoise would say, that if, on a
+Saturday, she had had to wait for her luncheon until the regular hour,
+it would have 'upset' her as much as if she had had, on an ordinary
+day, to put her luncheon forward to its Saturday time. Incidentally this
+acceleration of luncheon gave Saturday, for all of us, an individual
+character, kindly and rather attractive. At the moment when, ordinarily,
+there was still an hour to be lived through before meal-time sounded,
+we would all know that in a few seconds we should see the endives
+make their precocious appearance, followed by the special favour of an
+omelette, an unmerited steak. The return of this asymmetrical Saturday
+was one of those petty occurrences, intra-mural, localised, almost
+civic, which, in uneventful lives and stable orders of society, create a
+kind of national unity, and become the favourite theme for conversation,
+for pleasantries, for anecdotes which can be embroidered as the narrator
+pleases; it would have provided a nucleus, ready-made, for a legendary
+cycle, if any of us had had the epic mind. At daybreak, before we were
+dressed, without rhyme or reason, save for the pleasure of proving the
+strength of our solidarity, we would call to one another good-humoredly,
+cordially, patriotically, "Hurry up; there's no time to be lost; don't
+forget, it's Saturday!" while my aunt, gossiping with Françoise, and
+reflecting that the day would be even longer than usual, would say, "You
+might cook them a nice bit of veal, seeing that it's Saturday." If, at
+half-past ten, some one absent-mindedly pulled out a watch and said, "I
+say, an hour-and-a-half still before luncheon," everyone else would
+be in ecstasies over being able to retort at once: "Why, what are you
+thinking about? Have you for-gotten that it's Saturday?" And a quarter
+of an hour later we would still be laughing, and reminding ourselves to
+go up and tell aunt Léonie about this absurd mistake, to amuse her. The
+very face of the sky appeared to undergo a change. After luncheon the
+sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the
+zenith, and when some one, thinking that we were late in starting for
+our walk, said, "What, only two o'clock!" feeling the heavy throb go by
+him of the twin strokes from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire (which as
+a rule passed no one at that hour upon the highways, deserted for the
+midday meal or for the nap which follows it, or on the banks of the
+bright and ever-flowing stream, which even the angler had abandoned, and
+so slipped unaccompanied into the vacant sky, where only a few loitering
+clouds remained to greet them) the whole family would respond in chorus:
+"Why, you're forgetting; we had luncheon an hour earlier; you know very
+well it's Saturday."
+
+The surprise of a 'barbarian' (for so we termed everyone who was not
+acquainted with Saturday's special customs) who had called at eleven
+o'clock to speak to my father, and had found us at table, was an event
+which used to cause Françoise as much merriment as, perhaps, anything
+that had ever happened in her life. And if she found it amusing that the
+nonplussed visitor should not have known, beforehand, that we had our
+luncheon an hour earlier on Saturday, it was still more irresistibly
+funny that my father himself (fully as she sympathised, from the bottom
+of her heart, with the rigid chauvinism which prompted him) should never
+have dreamed that the barbarian could fail to be aware of so simple a
+matter, and so had replied, with no further enlightenment of the
+other's surprise at seeing us already in the dining-room: "You see, it's
+Saturday." On reaching this point in the story, Françoise would pause to
+wipe the tears of merriment from her eyes, and then, to add to her own
+enjoyment, would prolong the dialogue, inventing a further reply for
+the visitor to whom the word 'Saturday' had conveyed nothing. And so far
+from our objecting to these interpolations, we would feel that the story
+was not yet long enough, and would rally her with: "Oh, but surely he
+said something else as well. There was more than that, the first time
+you told it."
+
+My great-aunt herself would lay aside her work, and raise her head and
+look on at us over her glasses.
+
+The day had yet another characteristic feature, namely, that during May
+we used to go out on Saturday evenings after dinner to the 'Month of
+Mary' devotions.
+
+As we were liable, there, to meet M. Vinteuil, who held very strict
+views on "the deplorable untidiness of young people, which seems to
+be encouraged in these days," my mother would first see that there was
+nothing out of order in my appearance, and then we would set out for
+the church. It was in these 'Month of Mary' services that I can remember
+having first fallen in love with hawthorn-blossom. The hawthorn was not
+merely in the church, for there, holy ground as it was, we had all of us
+a right of entry; but, arranged upon the altar itself, inseparable from
+the mysteries in whose celebration it was playing a part, it thrust in
+among the tapers and the sacred vessels its rows of branches, tied to
+one another horizontally in a stiff, festal scheme of decoration; and
+they were made more lovely still by the scalloped outline of the dark
+leaves, over which were scattered in profusion, as over a bridal train,
+little clusters of buds of a dazzling whiteness. Though I dared not look
+at them save through my fingers, I could feel that the formal scheme
+was composed of living things, and that it was Nature herself who, by
+trimming the shape of the foliage, and by adding the crowning ornament
+of those snowy buds, had made the decorations worthy of what was at
+once a public rejoicing and a solemn mystery. Higher up on the altar,
+a flower had opened here and there with a careless grace, holding so
+unconcernedly, like a final, almost vaporous bedizening, its bunch of
+stamens, slender as gossamer, which clouded the flower itself in a
+white mist, that in following these with my eyes, in trying to imitate,
+somewhere inside myself, the action of their blossoming, I imagined it
+as a swift and thoughtless movement of the head with an enticing glance
+from her contracted pupils, by a young girl in white, careless and
+alive.
+
+M. Vinteuil had come in with his daughter and had sat down beside us.
+He belonged to a good family, and had once been music-master to
+my grandmother's sisters; so that when, after losing his wife and
+inheriting some property, he had retired to the neighbourhood of
+Combray, we used often to invite him to our house. But with his intense
+prudishness he had given up coming, so as not to be obliged to meet
+Swann, who had made what he called "a most unsuitable marriage, as
+seems to be the fashion in these days." My mother, on hearing that he
+'composed,' told him by way of a compliment that, when she came to see
+him, he must play her something of his own. M. Vinteuil would have liked
+nothing better, but he carried politeness and consideration for others
+to so fine a point, always putting himself in their place, that he was
+afraid of boring them, or of appearing egotistical, if he carried out,
+or even allowed them to suspect what were his own desires. On the day
+when my parents had gone to pay him a visit, I had accompanied them,
+but they had allowed me to remain outside, and as M. Vinteuil's house,
+Montjouvain, stood on a site actually hollowed out from a steep hill
+covered with shrubs, among which I took cover, I had found myself on a
+level with his drawing-room, upstairs, and only a few feet away from its
+window. When a servant came in to tell him that my parents had arrived,
+I had seen M. Vinteuil run to the piano and lay out a sheet of music
+so as to catch the eye. But as soon as they entered the room he had
+snatched it away and hidden it in a corner. He was afraid, no doubt, of
+letting them suppose that he was glad to see them only because it gave
+him a chance of playing them some of his compositions. And every time
+that my mother, in the course of her visit, had returned to the subject
+of his playing, he had hurriedly protested: "I cannot think who put that
+on the piano; it is not the proper place for it at all," and had turned
+the conversation aside to other topics, simply because those were of
+less interest to himself.
+
+His one and only passion was for his daughter, and she, with her
+somewhat boyish appearance, looked so robust that it was hard to
+restrain a smile when one saw the precautions her father used to take
+for her health, with spare shawls always in readiness to wrap around
+her shoulders. My grandmother had drawn our attention to the gentle,
+delicate, almost timid expression which might often be caught flitting
+across the face, dusted all over with freckles, of this otherwise stolid
+child. When she had spoken, she would at once take her own words in the
+sense in which her audience must have heard them, she would be alarmed
+at the possibility of a misunderstanding, and one would see, in clear
+outline, as though in a transparency, beneath the mannish face of the
+'good sort' that she was, the finer features of a young woman in tears.
+
+When, before turning to leave the church, I made a genuflection before
+the altar, I felt suddenly, as I rose again, a bitter-sweet fragrance of
+almonds steal towards me from the hawthorn-blossom, and I then noticed
+that on the flowers themselves were little spots of a creamier colour,
+in which I imagined that this fragrance must lie concealed, as the taste
+of an almond cake lay in the burned parts, or the sweetness of Mlle.
+Vinteuil's cheeks beneath their freckles. Despite the heavy, motionless
+silence of the hawthorns, these gusts of fragrance came to me like
+the murmuring of an intense vitality, with which the whole altar was
+quivering like a roadside hedge explored by living antennae, of which I
+was reminded by seeing some stamens, almost red in colour, which seemed
+to have kept the springtime virulence, the irritant power of stinging
+insects now transmuted into flowers.
+
+Outside the church we would stand talking for a moment with M. Vinteuil,
+in the porch. Boys would be chevying one another in the Square, and he
+would interfere, taking the side of the little ones and lecturing the
+big. If his daughter said, in her thick, comfortable voice, how glad she
+had been to see us, immediately it would seem as though some elder and
+more sensitive sister, latent in her, had blushed at this thoughtless,
+schoolboyish utterance, which had, perhaps, made us think that she was
+angling for an invitation to the house. Her father would then arrange
+a cloak over her shoulders, they would clamber into a little dog-cart
+which she herself drove, and home they would both go to Montjouvain.
+As for ourselves, the next day being Sunday, with no need to be up and
+stirring before high mass, if it was a moonlight night and warm, then,
+instead of taking us home at once, my father, in his thirst for personal
+distinction, would lead us on a long walk round by the Calvary, which my
+mother's utter incapacity for taking her bearings, or even for knowing
+which road she might be on, made her regard as a triumph of his
+strategic genius. Sometimes we would go as far as the viaduct, which
+began to stride on its long legs of stone at the railway station, and
+to me typified all the wretchedness of exile beyond the last outposts of
+civilisation, because every year, as we came down from Paris, we would
+be warned to take special care, when we got to Combray, not to miss
+the station, to be ready before the train stopped, since it would start
+again in two minutes and proceed across the viaduct, out of the lands of
+Christendom, of which Combray, to me, represented the farthest limit.
+We would return by the Boulevard de la Gare, which contained the most
+attractive villas in the town. In each of their gardens the moonlight,
+copying the art of Hubert Robert, had scattered its broken staircases
+of white marble, its fountains of water and gates temptingly ajar. Its
+beams had swept away the telegraph office. All that was left of it was
+a column, half shattered, but preserving the beauty of a ruin which
+endures for all time. I would by now be dragging my weary limbs, and
+ready to drop with sleep; the balmy scent of the lime-trees seemed a
+consolation which I could obtain only at the price of great suffering
+and exhaustion, and not worthy of the effort. From gates far apart
+the watchdogs, awakened by our steps in the silence, would set up
+an antiphonal barking, as I still hear them bark, at times, in the
+evenings, and it is in their custody (when the public gardens of Combray
+were constructed on its site) that the Boulevard de la Gare must
+have taken refuge, for wherever I may be, as soon as they begin their
+alternate challenge and acceptance, I can see it again with all its
+lime-trees, and its pavement glistening beneath the moon.
+
+Suddenly my father would bring us to a standstill and ask my
+mother--"Where are we?" Utterly worn out by the walk but still proud of
+her husband, she would lovingly confess that she had not the least
+idea. He would shrug his shoulders and laugh. And then, as though it had
+slipped, with his latchkey, from his waistcoat pocket, he would point
+out to us, when it stood before our eyes, the back-gate of our own
+garden, which had come hand-in-hand with the familiar corner of the Rue
+du Saint-Esprit, to await us, to greet us at the end of our wanderings
+over paths unknown. My mother would murmur admiringly "You really are
+wonderful!" And from that instant I had not to take another step; the
+ground moved forward under my feet in that garden where, for so long,
+my actions had ceased to require any control, or even attention, from my
+will. Custom came to take me in her arms, carried me all the way up to
+my bed, and laid me down there like a little child.
+
+Although Saturday, by beginning an hour earlier, and by depriving her
+of the services of Françoise, passed more slowly than other days for my
+aunt, yet, the moment it was past, and a new week begun, she would look
+forward with impatience to its return, as something that embodied all
+the novelty and distraction which her frail and disordered body was
+still able to endure. This was not to say, however, that she did not
+long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not
+pass through those abnormal hours in which one thirsts for something
+different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of
+energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in
+themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, in
+their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion
+(even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which prosperity has
+silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again
+by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when
+the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue its
+impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled
+desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its guiding reins
+into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be, cruel. Of
+course, since my aunt's strength, which was completely drained by the
+slightest exertion, returned but drop by drop into the pool of her
+repose, the reservoir was very slow in filling, and months would go by
+before she reached that surplus which other people use up in their daily
+activities, but which she had no idea--and could never decide how to
+employ. And I have no doubt that then--just as a desire to have her
+potatoes served with béchamel sauce, for a change, would be formed,
+ultimately, from the pleasure she found in the daily reappearance of
+those mashed potatoes of which she was never 'tired'--she would extract
+from the accumulation of those monotonous days (on which she so much
+depended) a keen expectation of some domestic cataclysm, instantaneous
+in its happening, but violent enough to compel her to put into effect,
+once for all, one of those changes which she knew would be beneficial to
+her health, but to which she could never make up her mind without some
+such stimulus. She was genuinely fond of us; she would have enjoyed the
+long luxury of weeping for our untimely decease; coming at a moment when
+she felt 'well' and was not in a perspiration, the news that the house
+was being destroyed by a fire, in which all the rest of us had already
+perished, a fire which, in a little while, would not leave one stone
+standing upon another, but from which she herself would still have
+plenty of time to escape without undue haste, provided that she rose
+at once from her bed, must often have haunted her dreams, as a prospect
+which combined with the two minor advantages of letting her taste the
+full savour of her affection for us in long years of mourning, and of
+causing universal stupefaction in the village when she should sally
+forth to conduct our obsequies, crushed but courageous, moribund but
+erect, the paramount and priceless boon of forcing her at the right
+moment, with no time to be lost, no room for weakening hesitations, to
+go off and spend the summer at her charming farm of Mirougrain, where
+there was a waterfall. Inasmuch as nothing of this sort had ever
+occurred, though indeed she must often have pondered the success of
+such a manoeuvre as she lay alone absorbed in her interminable games of
+patience (and though it must have plunged her in despair from the first
+moment of its realisation, from the first of those little unforeseen
+facts, the first word of calamitous news, whose accents can never
+afterwards be expunged from the memory, everything that bears upon it
+the imprint of actual, physical death, so terribly different from the
+logical abstraction of its possibility) she would fall back from time
+to time, to add an interest to her life, upon imagining other, minor
+catastrophes, which she would follow up with passion. She would beguile
+herself with a sudden suspicion that Françoise had been robbing her,
+that she had set a trap to make certain, and had caught her betrayer
+red-handed; and being in the habit, when she made up a game of cards by
+herself, of playing her own and her adversary's hands at once, she would
+first stammer out Françoise's awkward apologies, and then reply to them
+with such a fiery indignation that any of us who happened to intrude
+upon her at one of these moments would find her bathed in perspiration,
+her eyes blazing, her false hair pushed awry and exposing the baldness
+of her brows. Françoise must often, from the next room, have heard these
+mordant sarcasms levelled at herself, the mere framing of which in words
+would not have relieved my aunt's feelings sufficiently, had they been
+allowed to remain in a purely immaterial form, without the degree
+of substance and reality which she added to them by murmuring them
+half-aloud. Sometimes, however, even these counterpane dramas would not
+satisfy my aunt; she must see her work staged. And so, on a Sunday,
+with all the doors mysteriously closed, she would confide in Eulalie her
+doubts of Françoise's integrity and her determination to be rid of her,
+and on another day she would confide in Françoise her suspicions of the
+disloyalty of Eulalie, to whom the front-door would very soon be closed
+for good. A few days more, and, disgusted with her latest confidant, she
+would again be 'as thick as thieves' with the traitor, while, before the
+next performance, the two would once more have changed their parts. But
+the suspicions which Eulalie might occasionally breed in her were no
+more than a fire of straw, which must soon subside for lack of fuel,
+since Eulalie was not living with her in the house. It was a very
+different matter when the suspect was Françoise, of whose presence under
+the same roof as herself my aunt was perpetually conscious, while for
+fear of catching cold, were she to leave her bed, she would never dare
+go downstairs to the kitchen to see for herself whether there was,
+indeed, any foundation for her suspicions. And so on by degrees, until
+her mind had no other occupation than to attempt, at every hour of the
+day, to discover what was being done, what was being concealed from her
+by Françoise. She would detect the most furtive movement of Françoise's
+features, something contradictory in what she was saying, some desire
+which she appeared to be screening. And she would shew her that she was
+unmasked, by, a single word, which made Françoise turn pale, and which
+my aunt seemed to find a cruel satisfaction in driving into her unhappy
+servant's heart. And the very next Sunday a disclosure by Eulalie--like
+one of those discoveries which suddenly open up an unsuspected field
+for exploration to some new science which has hitherto followed only
+the beaten paths--proved to my aunt that her own worst suspicions fell
+a long way short of the appalling truth. "But Françoise ought to know
+that," said Eulalie, "now that you have given her a carriage."
+
+"Now that I have given her a carriage!" gasped my aunt.
+
+"Oh, but I didn't know; I only thought so; I saw her go by yesterday in
+her open coach, as proud as Artaban, on her way to Roussainville market.
+I supposed that it must be Mme. Octave who had given it to her."
+
+So on by degrees, until Françoise and my aunt, the quarry and the
+hunter, could never cease from trying to forestall each other's devices.
+My mother was afraid lest Françoise should develop a genuine hatred of
+my aunt, who was doing everything in her power to annoy her. However
+that might be, Françoise had come, more and more, to pay an infinitely
+scrupulous attention to my aunt's least word and gesture. When she had
+to ask her for anything she would hesitate, first, for a long time,
+making up her mind how best to begin. And when she had uttered her
+request, she would watch my aunt covertly, trying to guess from the
+expression on her face what she thought of it, and how she would reply.
+And in this way--whereas an artist who had been reading memoirs of the
+seventeenth century, and wished to bring himself nearer to the great
+Louis, would consider that he was making progress in that direction when
+he constructed a pedigree that traced his own descent from some historic
+family, or when he engaged in correspondence with one of the reigning
+Sovereigns of Europe, and so would shut his eyes to the mistake he was
+making in seeking to establish a similarity by an exact and therefore
+lifeless copy of mere outward forms--a middle-aged lady in a small
+country town, by doing no more than yield whole-hearted obedience to her
+own irresistible eccentricities, and to a spirit of mischief engendered
+by the utter idleness of her existence, could see, without ever having
+given a thought to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily
+life, her morning toilet, her luncheon, her afternoon nap, assume, by
+virtue of their despotic singularity, something of the interest that was
+to be found in what Saint-Simon used to call the 'machinery' of life at
+Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence,
+a shade of good humour or of arrogance on her features would provide
+Françoise with matter for a mental commentary as tense with passion and
+terror, as did the silence, the good humour or the arrogance of the King
+when a courtier, or even his greatest nobles, had presented a petition
+to him, at the turning of an avenue, at Versailles.
+
+One Sunday, when my aunt had received simultaneous visits from the Curé
+and from Eulalie, and had been left alone, afterwards, to rest, the
+whole family went upstairs to bid her good night, and Mamma ventured
+to condole with her on the unlucky coincidence that always brought both
+visitors to her door at the same time.
+
+"I hear that things went wrong again to-day, Léonie," she said kindly,
+"you have had all your friends here at once."
+
+And my great-aunt interrupted with: "Too many good things..." for, since
+her daughter's illness, she felt herself in duty bound to revive her as
+far as possible by always drawing her attention to the brighter side of
+things. But my father had begun to speak.
+
+"I should like to take advantage," he said, "of the whole family's being
+here together, to tell you a story, so as not to have to begin all over
+again to each of you separately. I am afraid we are in M. Legrandin's
+bad books; he would hardly say 'How d'ye do' to me this morning."
+
+I did not wait to hear the end of my father's story, for I had been with
+him myself after mass when we had passed M. Legrandin; instead, I went
+downstairs to the kitchen to ask for the bill of fare for our dinner,
+which was of fresh interest to me daily, like the news in a paper, and
+excited me as might the programme of a coming festivity.
+
+As M. Legrandin had passed close by us on our way from church,
+walking by the side of a lady, the owner of a country house in the
+neighbourhood, whom we knew only by sight, my father had saluted him in
+a manner at once friendly and reserved, without stopping in his walk; M.
+Legrandin had barely acknowledged the courtesy, and then with an air of
+surprise, as though he had not recognised us, and with that distant look
+characteristic of people who do not wish to be agreeable, and who from
+the suddenly receding depths of their eyes seem to have caught sight of
+you at the far end of an interminably straight road, and at so great
+a distance that they content themselves with directing towards you
+an almost imperceptible movement of the head, in proportion to your
+doll-like dimensions.
+
+Now, the lady who was walking with Legrandin was a model of virtue,
+known and highly respected; there could be no question of his being
+out for amorous adventure, and annoyed at being detected; and my father
+asked himself how he could possibly have displeased our friend.
+
+"I should be all the more sorry to feel that he was angry with us," he
+said, "because among all those people in their Sunday clothes there
+is something about him, with his little cut-away coat and his soft
+neckties, so little 'dressed-up,' so genuinely simple; an air of
+innocence, almost, which is really attractive."
+
+But the vote of the family council was unanimous, that my father had
+imagined the whole thing, or that Legrandin, at the moment in question,
+had been preoccupied in thinking about something else. Anyhow, my
+father's fears were dissipated no later than the following evening.
+As we returned from a long walk we saw, near the Pont-Vieux, Legrandin
+himself, who, on account of the holidays, was spending a few days more
+in Combray. He came up to us with outstretched hand: "Do you know,
+master book-lover," he asked me, "this line of Paul Desjardins?
+
+
+  Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.
+
+Is not that a fine rendering of a moment like this? Perhaps you have
+never read Paul Desjardins. Read him, my boy, read him; in these days he
+is converted, they tell me, into a preaching friar, but he used to have
+the most charming water-colour touch--
+
+
+  Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.
+
+May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even
+when the time comes, which is coming now for me, when the woods are all
+black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself,
+as I am doing, by looking up to the sky." He took a cigarette from
+his pocket and stood for a long time, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
+"Goodbye, friends!" he suddenly exclaimed, and left us.
+
+At the hour when I usually went downstairs to find out what there was
+for dinner, its preparation would already have begun, and Françoise,
+a colonel with all the forces of nature for her subalterns, as in the
+fairy-tales where giants hire themselves out as scullions, would be
+stirring the coals, putting the potatoes to steam, and, at the right
+moment, finishing over the fire those culinary masterpieces which had
+been first got ready in some of the great array of vessels, triumphs of
+the potter's craft, which ranged from tubs and boilers and cauldrons
+and fish kettles down to jars for game, moulds for pastry, and tiny
+pannikins for cream, and included an entire collection of pots and
+pans of every shape and size. I would stop by the table, where the
+kitchen-maid had shelled them, to inspect the platoons of peas, drawn up
+in ranks and numbered, like little green marbles, ready for a game; but
+what fascinated me would be the asparagus, tinged with ultramarine
+and rosy pink which ran from their heads, finely stippled in mauve and
+azure, through a series of imperceptible changes to their white
+feet, still stained a little by the soil of their garden-bed: a
+rainbow-loveliness that was not of this world. I felt that these
+celestial hues indicated the presence of exquisite creatures who had
+been pleased to assume vegetable form, who, through the disguise which
+covered their firm and edible flesh, allowed me to discern in this
+radiance of earliest dawn, these hinted rainbows, these blue evening
+shades, that precious quality which I should recognise again when, all
+night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played
+(lyrical and coarse in their jesting as the fairies in Shakespeare's
+_Dream_) at transforming my humble chamber into a bower of aromatic
+perfume.
+
+Poor Giotto's Charity, as Swann had named her, charged by Françoise with
+the task of preparing them for the table, would have them lying beside
+her in a basket; sitting with a mournful air, as though all the sorrows
+of the world were heaped upon her; and the light crowns of azure which
+capped the asparagus shoots above their pink jackets would be finely and
+separately outlined, star by star, as in Giotto's fresco are the flowers
+banded about the brows, or patterning the basket of his Virtue at Padua.
+And, meanwhile, Françoise would be turning on the spit one of those
+chickens, such as she alone knew how to roast, chickens which had wafted
+far abroad from Combray the sweet savour of her merits, and which, while
+she was serving them to us at table, would make the quality of kindness
+predominate for the moment in my private conception of her character;
+the aroma of that cooked flesh, which she knew how to make so unctuous
+and so tender, seeming to me no more than the proper perfume of one of
+her many virtues.
+
+But the day on which, while my father took counsel with his family upon
+our strange meeting with Legrandin, I went down to the kitchen, was one
+of those days when Giotto's Charity, still very weak and ill after her
+recent confinement, had been unable to rise from her bed; Françoise,
+being without assistance, had fallen into arrears. When I went in, I saw
+her in the back-kitchen which opened on to the courtyard, in process of
+killing a chicken; by its desperate and quite natural resistance, which
+Françoise, beside herself with rage as she attempted to slit its throat
+beneath the ear, accompanied with shrill cries of "Filthy creature!
+Filthy creature!" it made the saintly kindness and unction of our
+servant rather less prominent than it would do, next day at dinner, when
+it made its appearance in a skin gold-embroidered like a chasuble, and
+its precious juice was poured out drop by drop as from a pyx. When it
+was dead Françoise mopped up its streaming blood, in which, however,
+she did not let her rancour drown, for she gave vent to another burst
+of rage, and, gazing down at the carcass of her enemy, uttered a final
+"Filthy creature!"
+
+I crept out of the kitchen and upstairs, trembling all over; I could
+have prayed, then, for the instant dismissal of Françoise. But who
+would have baked me such hot rolls, boiled me such fragrant coffee, and
+even--roasted me such chickens? And, as it happened, everyone else had
+already had to make the same cowardly reckoning. For my aunt Léonie knew
+(though I was still in ignorance of this) that Françoise, who, for her
+own daughter or for her nephews, would have given her life without a
+murmur, shewed a singular implacability in her dealings with the rest
+of the world. In spite of which my aunt still retained her, for, while
+conscious of her cruelty, she could appreciate her services. I began
+gradually to realise that Françoise's kindness, her compunction, the
+sum total of her virtues concealed many of these back-kitchen tragedies,
+just as history reveals to us that the reigns of the kings and queens
+who are portrayed as kneeling with clasped hands in the windows of
+churches, were stained by oppression and bloodshed. I had taken note of
+the fact that, apart from her own kinsfolk, the sufferings of humanity
+inspired in her a pity which increased in direct ratio to the distance
+separating the sufferers from herself. The tears which flowed from her
+in torrents when she read of the misfortunes of persons unknown to her,
+in a newspaper, were quickly stemmed once she had been able to form a
+more accurate mental picture of the victims. One night, shortly after
+her confinement, the kitchen-maid was seized with the most appalling
+pains; Mamma heard her groans, and rose and awakened Françoise, who,
+quite unmoved, declared that all the outcry was mere malingering, that
+the girl wanted to 'play the mistress' in the house. The doctor, who
+had been afraid of some such attack, had left a marker in a medical
+dictionary which we had, at the page on which the symptoms were
+described, and had told us to turn up this passage, where we would find
+the measures of 'first aid' to be adopted. My mother sent Françoise
+to fetch the book, warning her not to let the marker drop out. An hour
+elapsed, and Françoise had not returned; my mother, supposing that
+she had gone back to bed, grew vexed, and told me to go myself to the
+bookcase and fetch the volume. I did so, and there found Françoise who,
+in her curiosity to know what the marker indicated, had begun to read
+the clinical account of these after-pains, and was violently sobbing,
+now that it was a question of a type of illness with which she was not
+familiar. At each painful symptom mentioned by the writer she would
+exclaim: "Oh, oh, Holy Virgin, is it possible that God wishes any
+wretched human creature to suffer so? Oh, the poor girl!"
+
+But when I had called her, and she had returned to the bedside of
+Giotto's Charity, her tears at once ceased to flow; she could find no
+stimulus for that pleasant sensation of tenderness and pity which she
+very well knew, having been moved to it often enough by the perusal
+of newspapers; nor any other pleasure of the same kind in her sense of
+weariness and irritation at being pulled out of bed in the middle of
+the night for the kitchen-maid; so that at the sight of those very
+sufferings, the printed account of which had moved her to tears, she
+had nothing to offer but ill-tempered mutterings, mingled with bitter
+sarcasm, saying, when she thought that we had gone out of earshot:
+"Well, she need never have done what she must have done to bring all
+this about! She found that pleasant enough, I dare say! She had better
+not put on any airs now. All the same, he must have been a god-forsaken
+young man to go after _that_. Dear, dear, it's just as they used to say
+in my poor mother's country:
+
+
+  Snaps and snails and puppy-dogs' tails,
+    And dirty sluts in plenty,
+  Smell sweeter than roses in young men's noses
+    When the heart is one-and-twenty."
+
+Although, when her grandson had a slight cold in his head, she would set
+off at night, even if she were ill also, instead of going to bed, to
+see whether he had everything that he wanted, covering ten miles on foot
+before daybreak so as to be in time to begin her work, this same love
+for her own people, and her desire to establish the future greatness of
+her house on a solid foundation reacted, in her policy with regard to
+the other servants, in one unvarying maxim, which was never to let any
+of them set foot in my aunt's room; indeed she shewed a sort of pride
+in not allowing anyone else to come near my aunt, preferring, when she
+herself was ill, to get out of bed and to administer the Vichy water in
+person, rather than to concede to the kitchen-maid the right of entry
+into her mistress's presence. There is a species of hymenoptera,
+observed by Fabre, the burrowing wasp, which in order to provide a
+supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls
+in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive
+cruelty, and, having made a collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds
+with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which
+their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions)
+depends, so that the paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid,
+will furnish the larva, when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive
+quarry, incapable either of flight or of resistance, but perfectly fresh
+for the larder: in the same way Françoise had adopted, to minister
+to her permanent and unfaltering resolution to render the house
+uninhabitable to any other servant, a series of crafty and pitiless
+stratagems. Many years later we discovered that, if we had been fed on
+asparagus day after day throughout that whole season, it was because the
+smell of the plants gave the poor kitchen-maid, who had to prepare them,
+such violent attacks of asthma that she was finally obliged to leave my
+aunt's service.
+
+Alas! we had definitely to alter our opinion of M. Legrandin. On one
+of the Sundays following our meeting with him on the Pont-Vieux, after
+which my father had been forced to confess himself mistaken, as mass
+drew to an end, and, with the sunshine and the noise of the outer world,
+something else invaded the church, an atmosphere so far from sacred that
+Mme. Goupil, Mme. Percepied (all those, in fact, who a moment ago, when
+I arrived a little late, had been sitting motionless, their eyes fixed
+on their prayer-books; who, I might even have thought, had not seen
+me come in, had not their feet moved slightly to push away the little
+kneeling-desk which was preventing me from getting to my chair) began in
+loud voices to discuss with us all manner of utterly mundane topics, as
+though we were already outside in the Square, we saw, standing on the
+sun-baked steps of the porch, dominating the many-coloured tumult of the
+market, Legrandin himself, whom the husband of the lady we had seen with
+him, on the previous occasion, was just going to introduce to the wife
+of another large landed proprietor of the district. Legrandin's face
+shewed an extraordinary zeal and animation; he made a profound bow, with
+a subsidiary backward movement which brought his spine sharply up into a
+position behind its starting-point, a gesture in which he must have
+been trained by the husband of his sister, Mme. de Cambremer. This rapid
+recovery caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin's
+hips, which I had not supposed to be so fleshy; I cannot say why, but
+this undulation of pure matter, this wholly carnal fluency, with not the
+least hint in it of spiritual significance, this wave lashed to a fury
+by the wind of an assiduity, an obsequiousness of the basest sort, awoke
+my mind suddenly to the possibility of a Legrandin altogether different
+from the one whom we knew. The lady gave him some message for her
+coachman, and while he was stepping down to her carriage the impression
+of joy, timid and devout, which the introduction had stamped there,
+still lingered on his face. Carried away in a sort of dream, he smiled,
+then he began to hurry back towards the lady; he was walking faster than
+usual, and his shoulders swayed backwards and forwards, right and left,
+in the most absurd fashion; altogether he looked, so utterly had he
+abandoned himself to it, ignoring all other considerations, as though he
+were the lifeless and wire-pulled puppet of his own happiness. Meanwhile
+we were coming out through the porch; we were passing close beside him;
+he was too well bred to turn his head away; but he fixed his eyes, which
+had suddenly changed to those of a seer, lost in the profundity of his
+vision, on so distant a point of the horizon that he could not see us,
+and so had not to acknowledge our presence. His face emerged, still with
+an air of innocence, from his straight and pliant coat, which looked
+as though conscious of having been led astray, in spite of itself,
+and plunged into surroundings of a detested splendour. And a spotted
+necktie, stirred by the breezes of the Square, continued to float in
+front of Legrandin, like the standard of his proud isolation, of his
+noble independence. Just as we reached the house my mother discovered
+that we had forgotten the 'Saint-Honoré,' and asked my father to go
+back with me and tell them to send it up at once. Near the church we met
+Legrandin, coming towards us with the same lady, whom he was escorting
+to her carriage. He brushed past us, and did not interrupt what he was
+saying to her, but gave us, out of the corner of his blue eye, a little
+sign, which began and ended, so to speak, inside his eyelids, and as
+it did not involve the least movement of his facial muscles, managed to
+pass quite unperceived by the lady; but, striving to compensate by the
+intensity of his feelings for the somewhat restricted field in which
+they had to find expression, he made that blue chink, which was set
+apart for us, sparkle with all the animation of cordiality, which went
+far beyond mere playfulness, and almost touched the border-line of
+roguery; he subtilised the refinements of good-fellowship into a wink
+of connivance, a hint, a hidden meaning, a secret understanding, all the
+mysteries of complicity in a plot, and finally exalted his assurances
+of friendship to the level of protestations of affection, even of a
+declaration of love, lighting up for us, and for us alone, with a secret
+and languid flame invisible by the great lady upon his other side, an
+enamoured pupil in a countenance of ice.
+
+Only the day before he had asked my parents to send me to dine with him
+on this same Sunday evening. "Come and bear your aged friend company,"
+he had said to me. "Like the nosegay which a traveller sends us from
+some land to which we shall never go again, come and let me breathe from
+the far country of your adolescence the scent of those flowers of
+spring among which I also used to wander, many years ago. Come with
+the primrose, with the canon's beard, with the gold-cup; come with the
+stone-crop, whereof are posies made, pledges of love, in the Balzacian
+flora, come with that flower of the Resurrection morning, the Easter
+daisy, come with the snowballs of the guelder-rose, which begin to
+embalm with their fragrance the alleys of your great-aunt's garden ere
+the last snows of Lent are melted from its soil. Come with the glorious
+silken raiment of the lily, apparel fit for Solomon, and with the
+many-coloured enamel of the pansies, but come, above all, with the
+spring breeze, still cooled by the last frosts of winter, wafting apart,
+for the two butterflies' sake, that have waited outside all morning, the
+closed portals of the first Jerusalem rose."
+
+The question was raised at home whether, all things considered, I ought
+still to be sent to dine with M. Legrandin. But my grandmother refused
+to believe that he could have been impolite.
+
+"You admit yourself that he appears at church there, quite simply
+dressed, and all that; he hardly looks like a man of fashion." She added
+that; in any event, even if, at the worst, he had been intentionally
+rude, it was far better for us to pretend that we had noticed nothing.
+And indeed my father himself, though more annoyed than any of us by the
+attitude which Legrandin had adopted, may still have held in reserve a
+final uncertainty as to its true meaning. It was like every attitude
+or action which reveals a man's deep and hidden character; they bear
+no relation to what he has previously said, and we cannot confirm our
+suspicions by the culprit's evidence, for he will admit nothing; we are
+reduced to the evidence of our own senses, and we ask ourselves, in the
+face of this detached and incoherent fragment of recollection, whether
+indeed our senses have not been the victims of a hallucination; with
+the result that such attitudes, and these alone are of importance in
+indicating character, are the most apt to leave us in perplexity.
+
+I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house, by moonlight. "There
+is a charming quality, is there not," he said to me, "in this silence;
+for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist, whom you will read
+in time to come, claims that there is no remedy but silence and shadow.
+And see you this, my boy, there comes in all lives a time, towards which
+you still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of
+light, the light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the
+stillroom of darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what
+the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence."
+
+I could hear what M. Legrandin was saying; like everything that he said,
+it sounded attractive; but I was disturbed by the memory of a lady whom
+I had seen recently for the first time; and thinking, now that I
+knew that Legrandin was on friendly terms with several of the local
+aristocracy, that perhaps she also was among his acquaintance, I
+summoned up all my courage and said to him: "Tell me, sir, do you, by
+any chance, know the lady--the ladies of Guermantes?" and I felt glad
+because, in pronouncing the name, I had secured a sort of power over
+it, by the mere act of drawing it up out of my dreams and giving it an
+objective existence in the world of spoken things.
+
+But, at the sound of the word Guermantes, I saw in the middle of each of
+our friend's blue eyes a little brown dimple appear, as though they had
+been stabbed by some invisible pin-point, while the rest of his pupils,
+reacting from the shock, received and secreted the azure overflow.
+His fringed eyelids darkened, and drooped. His mouth, which had been
+stiffened and seared with bitter lines, was the first to recover, and
+smiled, while his eyes still seemed full of pain, like the eyes of a
+good-looking martyr whose body bristles with arrows.
+
+"No, I do not know them," he said, but instead of uttering so simple a
+piece of information, a reply in which there was so little that could
+astonish me, in the natural and conversational tone which would have
+befitted it, he recited it with a separate stress upon each word,
+leaning forward, bowing his head, with at once the vehemence which a man
+gives, so as to be believed, to a highly improbable statement (as though
+the fact that he did not know the Guermantes could be due only to some
+strange accident of fortune) and with the emphasis of a man who, finding
+himself unable to keep silence about what is to him a painful situation,
+chooses to proclaim it aloud, so as to convince his hearers that the
+confession he is making is one that causes him no embarrassment, but is
+easy, agreeable, spontaneous, that the situation in question, in this
+case the absence of relations with the Guermantes family, might very
+well have been not forced upon, but actually designed by Legrandin
+himself, might arise from some family tradition, some moral principle or
+mystical vow which expressly forbade his seeking their society.
+
+"No," he resumed, explaining by his words the tone in which they were
+uttered. "No, I do not know them; I have never wished to know them; I
+have always made a point of preserving complete independence; at heart,
+as you know, I am a bit of a Radical. People are always coming to me
+about it, telling me I am mistaken in not going to Guermantes, that I
+make myself seem ill-bred, uncivilised, an old bear. But that's not the
+sort of reputation that can frighten me; it's too true! In my heart
+of hearts I care for nothing in the world now but a few churches,
+books--two or three, pictures--rather more, perhaps, and the light of
+the moon when the fresh breeze of youth (such as yours) wafts to my
+nostrils the scent of gardens whose flowers my old eyes are not sharp
+enough, now, to distinguish."
+
+I did not understand very clearly why, in order to refrain from going
+to the houses of people whom one did not know, it should be necessary to
+cling to one's independence, nor how that could give one the appearance
+of a savage or a bear. But what I did understand was this, that
+Legrandin was not altogether truthful when he said that he cared only
+for churches, moonlight, and youth; he cared also, he cared a very
+great deal, for people who lived in country houses, and would be so much
+afraid, when in their company, of incurring their displeasure that he
+would never dare to let them see that he numbered, as well, among
+his friends middle-class people, the families of solicitors and
+stockbrokers, preferring, if the truth must be known, that it should
+be revealed in his absence, when he was out of earshot, that judgment
+should go against him (if so it must) by default: in a word, he was a
+snob. Of course he would never have admitted all or any of this in the
+poetical language which my family and I so much admired. And if I asked
+him, "Do you know the Guermantes family?" Legrandin the talker would
+reply, "No, I have never cared to know them." But unfortunately the
+talker was now subordinated to another Legrandin, whom he kept carefully
+hidden in his breast, whom he would never consciously exhibit, because
+this other could tell stories about our own Legrandin and about his
+snobbishness which would have ruined his reputation for ever; and this
+other Legrandin had replied to me already in that wounded look, that
+stiffened smile, the undue gravity of his tone in uttering those
+few words, in the thousand arrows by which our own Legrandin had
+instantaneously been stabbed and sickened, like a Saint Sebastian of
+snobbery:
+
+"Oh, how you hurt me! No, I do not know the Guermantes family. Do not
+remind me of the great sorrow of my life." And since this other,
+this irrepressible, dominant, despotic Legrandin, if he lacked our
+Legrandin's charming vocabulary, shewed an infinitely greater promptness
+in expressing himself, by means of what are called 'reflexes,' it
+followed that, when Legrandin the talker attempted to silence him, he
+would already have spoken, and it would be useless for our friend to
+deplore the bad impression which the revelations of his _alter ego_ must
+have caused, since he could do no more now than endeavour to mitigate
+them.
+
+This was not to say that M. Legrandin was anything but sincere when he
+inveighed against snobs. He could not (from his own knowledge, at least)
+be aware that he was one also, since it is only with the passions of
+others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to find out
+about our own can be no more than what other people have shewn us. Upon
+ourselves they react but indirectly, through our imagination, which
+substitutes for our actual, primary motives other, secondary motives,
+less stark and therefore more decent. Never had Legrandin's snobbishness
+impelled him to make a habit of visiting a duchess as such. Instead, it
+would set his imagination to make that duchess appear, in Legrandin's
+eyes, endowed with all the graces. He would be drawn towards the
+duchess, assuring himself the while that he was yielding to the
+attractions of her mind, and her other virtues, which the vile race of
+snobs could never understand. Only his fellow-snobs knew that he was
+of their number, for, owing to their inability to appreciate the
+intervening efforts of his imagination, they saw in close juxtaposition
+the social activities of Legrandin and their primary cause.
+
+At home, meanwhile, we had no longer any illusions as to M. Legrandin,
+and our relations with him had become much more distant. Mamma would be
+greatly delighted whenever she caught him red-handed in the sin, which
+he continued to call the unpardonable sin, of snobbery. As for my
+father, he found it difficult to take Legrandin's airs in so light, in
+so detached a spirit; and when there was some talk, one year, of sending
+me to spend the long summer holidays at Balbec with my grandmother,
+he said: "I must, most certainly, tell Legrandin that you are going to
+Balbec, to see whether he will offer you an introduction to his sister.
+He probably doesn't remember telling us that she lived within a mile of
+the place."
+
+My grandmother, who held that, when one went to the seaside, one ought
+to be on the beach from morning to night, to taste the salt breezes, and
+that one should not know anyone in the place, because calls and parties
+and excursions were so much time stolen from what belonged, by rights,
+to the sea-air, begged him on no account to speak to Legrandin of our
+plans; for already, in her mind's eye, she could see his sister, Mme. de
+Cambremer, alighting from her carriage at the door of our hotel just
+as we were on the point of going out fishing, and obliging us to remain
+indoors all afternoon to entertain her. But Mamma laughed her fears to
+scorn, for she herself felt that the danger was not so threatening, and
+that Legrandin would shew no undue anxiety to make us acquainted with
+his sister. And, as it happened, there was no need for any of us to
+introduce the subject of Balbec, for it was Legrandin himself who,
+without the least suspicion that we had ever had any intention of
+visiting those parts, walked into the trap uninvited one evening, when
+we met him strolling on the banks of the Vivonne.
+
+"There are tints in the clouds this evening, violets and blues, which
+are very beautiful, are they not, my friend?" he said to my father.
+"Especially a blue which is far more floral than atmospheric, a
+cineraria blue, which it is surprising to see in the sky. And that
+little pink cloud there, has it not just the tint of some flower, a
+carnation or hydrangea? Nowhere, perhaps, except on the shores of the
+English Channel, where Normandy merges into Brittany, have I been able
+to find such copious examples of what you might call a vegetable kingdom
+in the clouds. Down there, close to Balbec, among all those places which
+are still so uncivilised, there is a little bay, charmingly quiet, where
+the sunsets of the Auge Valley, those red-and-gold sunsets (which,
+all the same, I am very far from despising) seem commonplace and
+insignificant; for in that moist and gentle atmosphere these heavenly
+flower-beds will break into blossom, in a few moments, in the evenings,
+incomparably lovely, and often lasting for hours before they fade.
+Others shed their leaves at once, and then it is more beautiful still
+to see the sky strewn with the scattering of their innumerable petals,
+sulphurous yellow and rosy red. In that bay, which they call the Opal
+Bay, the golden sands appear more charming still from being fastened,
+like fair Andromeda, to those terrible rocks of the surrounding coast,
+to that funereal shore, famed for the number of its wrecks, where every
+winter many a brave vessel falls a victim to the perils of the sea.
+Balbec! the oldest bone in the geological skeleton that underlies our
+soil, the true Armor, the sea, the land's end, the accursed region
+which Anatole France--an enchanter whose works our young friend ought to
+read--has so well depicted, beneath its eternal fogs, as though it were
+indeed the land of the Cimmerians in the Odyssey. Balbec; yes, they
+are building hotels there now, superimposing them upon its ancient and
+charming soil, which they are powerless to alter; how delightful it is,
+down there, to be able to step out at once into regions so primitive and
+so entrancing."
+
+"Indeed! And do you know anyone at Balbec?" inquired my father. "This
+young man is just going to spend a couple of months there with his
+grandmother, and my wife too, perhaps."
+
+Legrandin, taken unawares by the question at a moment when he was
+looking directly at my father, was unable to turn aside his gaze, and so
+concentrated it with steadily increasing intensity--smiling mournfully
+the while--upon the eyes of his questioner, with an air of friendliness
+and frankness and of not being afraid to look him in the face, until he
+seemed to have penetrated my father's skull, as it had been a ball of
+glass, and to be seeing, at the moment, a long way beyond and behind it,
+a brightly coloured cloud, which provided him with a mental alibi, and
+would enable him to establish the theory that, just when he was
+being asked whether he knew anyone at Balbec, he had been thinking
+of something else, and so had not heard the question. As a rule these
+tactics make the questioner proceed to ask, "Why, what are you thinking
+about?" But my father, inquisitive, annoyed, and cruel, repeated: "Have
+you friends, then, in that neighbourhood, that you know Balbec so well?"
+
+In a final and desperate effort the smiling gaze of Legrandin struggled
+to the extreme limits of its tenderness, vagueness, candour, and
+distraction; then feeling, no doubt, that there was nothing left for it
+now but to answer, he said to us: "I have friends all the world over,
+wherever there are companies of trees, stricken but not defeated,
+which have come together to offer a common supplication, with pathetic
+obstinacy, to an inclement sky which has no mercy upon them."
+
+"That is not quite what I meant," interrupted my father, obstinate as
+a tree and merciless as the sky. "I asked you, in case anything should
+happen to my mother-in-law and she wanted to feel that she was not all
+alone down there, at the ends of the earth, whether you knew any of the
+people."
+
+"There as elsewhere, I know everyone and I know no one," replied
+Legrandin, who was by no means ready yet to surrender; "places I know
+well, people very slightly. But, down there, the places themselves seem
+to me just like people, rare and wonderful people, of a delicate quality
+which would have been corrupted and ruined by the gift of life. Perhaps
+it is a castle which you encounter upon the cliff's edge; standing there
+by the roadside, where it has halted to contemplate its sorrows before
+an evening sky, still rosy, through which a golden moon is climbing;
+while the fishing-boats, homeward bound, creasing the watered silk of
+the Channel, hoist its pennant at their mastheads and carry its colours.
+Or perhaps it is a simple dwelling-house that stands alone, ugly, if
+anything, timid-seeming but full of romance, hiding from every eye some
+imperishable secret of happiness and disenchantment. That land which
+knows not truth," he continued with Machiavellian subtlety, "that land
+of infinite fiction makes bad reading for any boy; and is certainly
+not what I should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is
+already so much inclined to melancholy, for a heart already predisposed
+to receive its impressions. Climates that breathe amorous secrets and
+futile regrets may agree with an old and disillusioned man like myself;
+but they must always prove fatal to a temperament which is still
+unformed. Believe me," he went on with emphasis, "the waters of that
+bay--more Breton than Norman--may exert a sedative influence, though
+even that is of questionable value, upon a heart which, like mine, is no
+longer unbroken, a heart for whose wounds there is no longer anything
+to compensate. But at your age, my boy, those waters are
+contra-indicated.... Good night to you, neighbours," he added, moving
+away from us with that evasive abruptness to which we were accustomed;
+and then, turning towards us, with a physicianly finger raised in
+warning, he resumed the consultation: "No Balbec before you are fifty!"
+he called out to me, "and even then it must depend on the state of the
+heart."
+
+My father spoke to him of it again, as often as we met him, and tortured
+him with questions, but it was labour in vain: like that scholarly
+swindler who devoted to the fabrication of forged palimpsests a wealth
+of skill and knowledge and industry the hundredth part of which would
+have sufficed to establish him in a more lucrative--but an honourable
+occupation, M. Legrandin, had we insisted further, would in the end have
+constructed a whole system of ethics, and a celestial geography of Lower
+Normandy, sooner than admit to us that, within a mile of Balbec, his own
+sister was living in her own house; sooner than find himself obliged
+to offer us a letter of introduction, the prospect of which would never
+have inspired him with such terror had he been absolutely certain--as,
+from his knowledge of my grandmother's character, he really ought to
+have been certain--that in no circumstances whatsoever would we have
+dreamed of making use of it.
+
+* * *
+
+We used always to return from our walks in good time to pay aunt Léonie
+a visit before dinner. In the first weeks of our Combray holidays, when
+the days ended early, we would still be able to see, as we turned
+into the Rue du Saint-Esprit, a reflection of the western sky from the
+windows of the house and a band of purple at the foot of the Calvary,
+which was mirrored further on in the pond; a fiery glow which,
+accompanied often by a cold that burned and stung, would associate
+itself in my mind with the glow of the fire over which, at that very
+moment, was roasting the chicken that was to furnish me, in place of the
+poetic pleasure I had found in my walk, with the sensual pleasures of
+good feeding, warmth and rest. But in summer, when we came back to the
+house, the sun would not have set; and while we were upstairs paying our
+visit to aunt Léonie its rays, sinking until they touched and lay along
+her window-sill, would there be caught and held by the large inner
+curtains and the bands which tied them back to the wall, and split and
+scattered and filtered; and then, at last, would fall upon and inlay
+with tiny flakes of gold the lemonwood of her chest-of-drawers,
+illuminating the room in their passage with the same delicate, slanting,
+shadowed beams that fall among the boles of forest trees. But on some
+days, though very rarely, the chest-of-drawers would long since have
+shed its momentary adornments, there would no longer, as we turned into
+the Rue du Saint-Esprit, be any reflection from the western sky burning
+along the line of window-panes; the pond beneath the Calvary would
+have lost its fiery glow, sometimes indeed had changed already to an
+opalescent pallor, while a long ribbon of moonlight, bent and broken
+and broadened by every ripple upon the water's surface, would be lying
+across it, from end to end. Then, as we drew near the house, we would
+make out a figure standing upon the doorstep, and Mamma would say to me:
+"Good heavens! There is Françoise looking out for us; your aunt must be
+anxious; that means we are late."
+
+And without wasting time by stopping to take off our 'things' we would
+fly upstairs to my aunt Léonie's room to reassure her, to prove to her
+by our bodily presence that all her gloomy imaginings were false, that,
+on the contrary, nothing had happened to us, but that we had gone the
+'Guermantes way,' and, good lord, when one took that walk, my aunt knew
+well enough that one could never say at what time one would be home.
+
+"There, Françoise," my aunt would say, "didn't I tell you that they must
+have gone the Guermantes way? Good gracious! They must be hungry! And
+your nice leg of mutton will be quite dried up now, after all the hours
+it's been waiting. What a time to come in! Well, and so you went the
+Guermantes way?"
+
+"But, Leonie, I supposed you knew," Mamma would answer. "I thought
+that Françoise had seen us go out by the little gate, through the
+kitchen-garden."
+
+For there were, in the environs of Combray, two 'ways' which we used to
+take for our walks, and so diametrically opposed that we would actually
+leave the house by a different door, according to the way we had chosen:
+the way towards Méséglise-la-Vineuse, which we called also 'Swann's
+way,' because, to get there, one had to pass along the boundary of M.
+Swann's estate, and the 'Guermantes way.' Of Méséglise-la-Vineuse, to
+tell the truth, I never knew anything more than the way there, and
+the strange people who would come over on Sundays to take the air in
+Combray, people whom, this time, neither my aunt nor any of us would
+'know at all,' and whom we would therefore assume to be 'people who must
+have come over from Méséglise.' As for Guermantes, I was to know it well
+enough one day, but that day had still to come; and, during the whole
+of my boyhood, if Méséglise was to me something as inaccessible as the
+horizon, which remained hidden from sight, however far one went, by the
+folds of a country which no longer bore the least resemblance to the
+country round Combray; Guermantes, on the other hand, meant no more than
+the ultimate goal, ideal rather than real, of the 'Guermantes way,' a
+sort of abstract geographical term like the North Pole or the Equator.
+And so to 'take the Guermantes way' in order to get to Méséglise, or
+vice versa, would have seemed to me as nonsensical a proceeding as to
+turn to the east in order to reach the west. Since my father used always
+to speak of the 'Méséglise way' as comprising the finest view of a plain
+that he knew anywhere, and of the 'Guermantes way' as typical of river
+scenery, I had invested each of them, by conceiving them in this way as
+two distinct entities, with that cohesion, that unity which belongs
+only to the figments of the mind; the smallest detail of either of
+them appeared to me as a precious thing, which exhibited the special
+excellence of the whole, while, immediately beside them, in the first
+stages of our walk, before we had reached the sacred soil of one or the
+other, the purely material roads, at definite points on which they
+were set down as the ideal view over a plain and the ideal scenery of a
+river, were no more worth the trouble of looking at them than, to a keen
+playgoer and lover of dramatic art, are the little streets which may
+happen to run past the walls of a theatre. But, above all, I set between
+them, far more distinctly than the mere distance in miles and yards and
+inches which separated one from the other, the distance that there was
+between the two parts of my brain in which I used to think of them, one
+of those distances of the mind which time serves only to lengthen, which
+separate things irremediably from one another, keeping them for ever
+upon different planes. And this distinction was rendered still more
+absolute because the habit we had of never going both ways on the same
+day, or in the course of the same walk, but the 'Méséglise way' one time
+and the 'Guermantes way' another, shut them up, so to speak, far apart
+and unaware of each other's existence, in the sealed vessels--between
+which there could be no communication--of separate afternoons.
+
+When we had decided to go the 'Méséglise way' we would start (without
+undue haste, and even if the sky were clouded over, since the walk was
+not very long, and did not take us too far from home), as though we were
+not going anywhere in particular, by the front-door of my aunt's house,
+which opened on to the Rue du Saint-Esprit. We would be greeted by
+the gunsmith, we would drop our letters into the box, we would tell
+Théodore, from Françoise, as we passed, that she had run out of oil
+or coffee, and we would leave the town by the road which ran along the
+white fence of M. Swann's park. Before reaching it we would be met on
+our way by the scent of his lilac-trees, come out to welcome strangers.
+Out of the fresh little green hearts of their foliage the lilacs raised
+inquisitively over the fence of the park their plumes of white or purple
+blossom, which glowed, even in the shade, with the sunlight in which
+they had been bathed. Some of them, half-concealed by the little
+tiled house, called the Archers' Lodge, in which Swann's keeper lived,
+overtopped its gothic gable with their rosy minaret. The nymphs of
+spring would have seemed coarse and vulgar in comparison with these
+young houris, who retained, in this French garden, the pure and vivid
+colouring of a Persian miniature. Despite my desire to throw my arms
+about their pliant forms and to draw down towards me the starry locks
+that crowned their fragrant heads, we would pass them by without
+stopping, for my parents had ceased to visit Tansonville since Swann's
+marriage, and, so as not to appear to be looking into his park, we
+would, instead of taking the road which ran beside its boundary and then
+climbed straight up to the open fields, choose another way, which led in
+the same direction, but circuitously, and brought us out rather too far
+from home.
+
+One day my grandfather said to my 'father: "Don't you remember Swann's
+telling us yesterday that his wife and daughter had gone off to Rheims
+and that he was taking the opportunity of spending a day or two in
+Paris? We might go along by the park, since the ladies are not at home;
+that will make it a little shorter."
+
+We stopped for a moment by the fence. Lilac-time was nearly over; some
+of the trees still thrust aloft, in tall purple chandeliers, their tiny
+balls of blossom, but in many places among their foliage where, only
+a week before, they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam,
+these were now spent and shrivelled and discoloured, a hollow scum, dry
+and scentless. My grandfather pointed out to my father in what respects
+the appearance of the place was still the same, and how far it had
+altered since the walk that he had taken with old M. Swann, on the day
+of his wife's death; and he seized the opportunity to tell us, once
+again, the story of that walk.
+
+In front of us a path bordered with nasturtiums rose in the full glare
+of the sun towards the house. But to our right the park stretched away
+into the distance, on level ground. Overshadowed by the tall trees which
+stood close around it, an 'ornamental water' had been constructed by
+Swann's parents but, even in his most artificial creations, nature is
+the material upon which man has to work; certain spots will persist in
+remaining surrounded by the vassals of their own especial sovereignty,
+and will raise their immemorial standards among all the 'laid-out'
+scenery of a park, just as they would have done far from any human
+interference, in a solitude which must everywhere return to engulf
+them, springing up out of the necessities of their exposed position, and
+superimposing itself upon the work of man's hands. And so it was that,
+at the foot of the path which led down to this artificial lake, there
+might be seen, in its two tiers woven of trailing forget-me-nots below
+and of periwinkle flowers above, the natural, delicate, blue garland
+which binds the luminous, shadowed brows of water-nymphs; while the
+iris, its swords sweeping every way in regal profusion, stretched out
+over agrimony and water-growing king-cups the lilied sceptres, tattered
+glories of yellow and purple, of the kingdom of the lake.
+
+The absence of Mlle. Swann, which--since it preserved me from the
+terrible risk of seeing her appear on one of the paths, and of being
+identified and scorned by this so privileged little girl who had
+Bergotte for a friend and used to go with him to visit cathedrals--made
+the exploration of Tansonville, now for the first time permitted me, a
+matter of indifference to myself, seemed however to invest the property,
+in my grandfather's and father's eyes, with a fresh and transient charm,
+and (like an entirely cloudless sky when one is going mountaineering) to
+make the day extraordinarily propitious for a walk in this direction;
+I should have liked to see their reckoning proved false, to see, by a
+miracle, Mlle. Swann appear, with her father, so close to us that we
+should not have time to escape, and should therefore be obliged to make
+her acquaintance. And so, when I suddenly noticed a straw basket lying
+forgotten on the grass by the side of a line whose float was bobbing
+in the water, I made a great effort to keep my father and grandfather
+looking in another direction, away from this sign that she might, after
+all, be in residence. Still, as Swann had told us that he ought not,
+really, to go away just then, as he had some people staying in the
+house, the line might equally belong to one of these guests. Not a
+footstep was to be heard on any of the paths. Somewhere in one of the
+tall trees, making a stage in its height, an invisible bird, desperately
+attempting to make the day seem shorter, was exploring with a long,
+continuous note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it
+received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of
+silence and of immobility that, one would have said, it had arrested
+for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more
+quickly. The sunlight fell so implacably from a fixed sky that one was
+naturally inclined to slip away out of the reach of its attentions, and
+even the slumbering water, whose repose was perpetually being invaded by
+the insects that swarmed above its surface, while it dreamed, no doubt,
+of some imaginary maelstrom, intensified the uneasiness which the sight
+of that floating cork had wrought in me, by appearing to draw it at
+full speed across the silent reaches of a mirrored firmament; now almost
+vertical, it seemed on the point of plunging down out of sight, and
+I had begun to ask myself whether, setting aside the longing and the
+terror that I had of making her acquaintance, it was not actually my
+duty to warn Mlle. Swann that the fish was biting--when I was obliged
+to run after my father and grandfather, who were calling me, and were
+surprised that I had not followed them along the little path, climbing
+up hill towards the open fields, into which they had already turned. I
+found the whole path throbbing with the fragrance of hawthorn-blossom.
+The hedge resembled a series of chapels, whose walls were no longer
+visible under the mountains of flowers that were heaped upon their
+altars; while underneath, the sun cast a square of light upon the
+ground, as though it had shone in upon them through a window; the scent
+that swept out over me from them was as rich, and as circumscribed in
+its range, as though I had been standing before the Lady-altar, and
+the flowers, themselves adorned also, held out each its little bunch of
+glittering stamens with an air of inattention, fine, radiating 'nerves'
+in the flamboyant style of architecture, like those which, in church,
+framed the stair to the rood-loft or closed the perpendicular tracery
+of the windows, but here spread out into pools of fleshy white, like
+strawberry-beds in spring. How simple and rustic, in comparison with
+these, would seem the dog-roses which, in a few weeks' time, would be
+climbing the same hillside path in the heat of the sun, dressed in the
+smooth silk of their blushing pink bodices, which would be undone and
+scattered by the first breath of wind.
+
+But it was in vain that I lingered before the hawthorns, to breathe in,
+to marshal before my mind (which knew not what to make of it), to lose
+in order to rediscover their invisible and unchanging odour, to absorb
+myself in the rhythm which disposed their flowers here and there with
+the light-heartedness of youth, and at intervals as unexpected as
+certain intervals of music; they offered me an indefinite continuation
+of the same charm, in an inexhaustible profusion, but without letting
+me delve into it any more deeply, like those melodies which one can play
+over a hundred times in succession without coming any nearer to their
+secret. I turned away from them for a moment so as to be able to return
+to them with renewed strength. My eyes followed up the slope which,
+outside the hedge, rose steeply to the fields, a poppy that had strayed
+and been lost by its fellows, or a few cornflowers that had fallen
+lazily behind, and decorated the ground here and there with their
+flowers like the border of a tapestry, in which may be seen at intervals
+hints of the rustic theme which appears triumphant in the panel itself;
+infrequent still, spaced apart as the scattered houses which warn us
+that we are approaching a village, they betokened to me the vast expanse
+of waving corn beneath the fleecy clouds, and the sight of a single
+poppy hoisting upon its slender rigging and holding against the breeze
+its scarlet ensign, over the buoy of rich black earth from which it
+sprang, made my heart beat as does a wayfarer's when he perceives, upon
+some low-lying ground, an old and broken boat which is being caulked and
+made seaworthy, and cries out, although he has not yet caught sight of
+it, "The Sea!"
+
+And then I returned to my hawthorns, and stood before them as one stands
+before those masterpieces of painting which, one imagines, one will
+be better able to 'take in' when one has looked away, for a moment, at
+something else; but in vain did I shape my fingers into a frame, so as
+to have nothing but the hawthorns before my eyes; the sentiment which
+they aroused in me remained obscure and vague, struggling and failing
+to free itself, to float across and become one with the flowers. They
+themselves offered me no enlightenment, and I could not call upon any
+other flowers to satisfy this mysterious longing. And then, inspiring
+me with that rapture which we feel on seeing a work by our favourite
+painter quite different from any of those that we already know, or,
+better still, when some one has taken us and set us down in front of a
+picture of which we have hitherto seen no more than a pencilled sketch,
+or when a piece of music which we have heard played over on the piano
+bursts out again in our ears with all the splendour and fullness of an
+orchestra, my grandfather called me to him, and, pointing to the hedge
+of Tansonville, said: "You are fond of hawthorns; just look at this pink
+one; isn't it pretty?"
+
+And it was indeed a hawthorn, but one whose flowers were pink, and
+lovelier even than the white. It, too, was in holiday attire, for one of
+those days which are the only true holidays, the holy days of religion,
+because they are not appointed by any capricious accident, as secular
+holidays are appointed, upon days which are not specially ordained for
+such observances, which have nothing about them that is essentially
+festal--but it was attired even more richly than the rest, for the
+flowers which clung to its branches, one above another, so thickly as to
+leave no part of the tree undecorated, like the tassels wreathed about
+the crook of a rococo shepherdess, were every one of them 'in colour,'
+and consequently of a superior quality, by the aesthetic standards of
+Combray, to the 'plain,' if one was to judge by the scale of prices
+at the 'stores' in the Square, or at Camus's, where the most expensive
+biscuits were those whose sugar was pink. And for my own part I set a
+higher value on cream cheese when it was pink, when I had been allowed
+to tinge it with crushed strawberries. And these flowers had chosen
+precisely the colour of some edible and delicious thing, or of some
+exquisite addition to one's costume for a great festival, which colours,
+inasmuch as they make plain the reason for their superiority, are those
+whose beauty is most evident to the eyes of children, and for that
+reason must always seem more vivid and more natural than any other
+tints, even after the child's mind has realised that they offer no
+gratification to the appetite, and have not been selected by the
+dressmaker. And, indeed, I had felt at once, as I had felt before
+the white blossom, but now still more marvelling, that it was in no
+artificial manner, by no device of human construction, that the festal
+intention of these flowers was revealed, but that it was Nature herself
+who had spontaneously expressed it (with the simplicity of a woman from
+a village shop, labouring at the decoration of a street altar for some
+procession) by burying the bush in these little rosettes, almost too
+ravishing in colour, this rustic 'pompadour.' High up on the branches,
+like so many of those tiny rose-trees, their pots concealed in jackets
+of paper lace, whose slender stems rise in a forest from the altar on
+the greater festivals, a thousand buds were swelling and opening, paler
+in colour, but each disclosing as it burst, as at the bottom of a cup of
+pink marble, its blood-red stain, and suggesting even more strongly
+than the full-blown flowers the special, irresistible quality of the
+hawthorn-tree, which, wherever it budded, wherever it was about to
+blossom, could bud and blossom in pink flowers alone. Taking its place
+in the hedge, but as different from the rest as a young girl in holiday
+attire among a crowd of dowdy women in everyday clothes, who are staying
+at home, equipped and ready for the 'Month of Mary,' of which it seemed
+already to form a part, it shone and smiled in its cool, rosy garments,
+a Catholic bush indeed, and altogether delightful.
+
+The hedge allowed us a glimpse, inside the park, of an alley bordered
+with jasmine, pansies, and verbenas, among which the stocks held open
+their fresh plump purses, of a pink as fragrant and as faded as old
+Spanish leather, while on the gravel-path a long watering-pipe, painted
+green, coiling across the ground, poured, where its holes were, over the
+flowers whose perfume those holes inhaled, a vertical and prismatic fan
+of infinitesimal, rainbow-coloured drops. Suddenly I stood still, unable
+to move, as happens when something appears that requires not only our
+eyes to take it in, but involves a deeper kind of perception and takes
+possession of the whole of our being. A little girl, with fair, reddish
+hair, who appeared to be returning from a walk, and held a trowel in her
+hand, was looking at us, raising towards us a face powdered with pinkish
+freckles. Her black eyes gleamed, and as I did not at that time know,
+and indeed have never since learned how to reduce to its objective
+elements any strong impression, since I had not, as they say, enough
+'power of observation' to isolate the sense of their colour, for a long
+time afterwards, whenever I thought of her, the memory of those bright
+eyes would at once present itself to me as a vivid azure, since her
+complexion was fair; so much so that, perhaps, if her eyes had not been
+quite so black--which was what struck one most forcibly on first meeting
+her--I should not have been, as I was, especially enamoured of their
+imagined blue.
+
+I gazed at her, at first with that gaze which is not merely a messenger
+from the eyes, but in whose window all the senses assemble and lean out,
+petrified and anxious, that gaze which would fain reach, touch, capture,
+bear off in triumph the body at which it is aimed, and the soul with the
+body; then (so frightened was I lest at any moment my grandfather and
+father, catching sight of the girl, might tear me away from her, by
+making me run on in front of them) with another, an unconsciously
+appealing look, whose object was to force her to pay attention to me, to
+see, to know me. She cast a glance forwards and sideways, so as to take
+stock of my grandfather and father, and doubtless the impression she
+formed of them was that we were all absurd people, for she turned away
+with an indifferent and contemptuous air, withdrew herself so as to
+spare her face the indignity of remaining within their field of
+vision; and while they, continuing to walk on without noticing her, had
+overtaken and passed me, she allowed her eyes to wander, over the space
+that lay between us, in my direction, without any particular expression,
+without appearing to have seen me, but with an intensity, a half-hidden
+smile which I was unable to interpret, according to the instruction I
+had received in the ways of good breeding, save as a mark of infinite
+disgust; and her hand, at the same time, sketched in the air an
+indelicate gesture, for which, when it was addressed in public to a
+person whom one did not know, the little dictionary of manners which
+I carried in my mind supplied only one meaning, namely, a deliberate
+insult.
+
+"Gilberte, come along; what are you doing?" called out in a piercing
+tone of authority a lady in white, whom I had not seen until that
+moment, while, a little way beyond her, a gentleman in a suit of linen
+'ducks,' whom I did not know either, stared at me with eyes which seemed
+to be starting from his head; the little girl's smile abruptly faded,
+and, seizing her trowel, she made off without turning to look again in
+my direction, with an air of obedience, inscrutable and sly.
+
+And so was wafted to my ears the name of Gilberte, bestowed on me like a
+talisman which might, perhaps, enable me some day to rediscover her whom
+its syllables had just endowed with a definite personality, whereas, a
+moment earlier, she had been only something vaguely seen. So it came
+to me, uttered across the heads of the stocks and jasmines, pungent and
+cool as the drops which fell from the green watering-pipe; impregnating
+and irradiating the zone of pure air through which it had passed, which
+it set apart and isolated from all other air, with the mystery of the
+life of her whom its syllables designated to the happy creatures that
+lived and walked and travelled in her company; unfolding through the
+arch of the pink hawthorn, which opened at the height of my shoulder,
+the quintessence of their familiarity--so exquisitely painful to
+myself--with her, and with all that unknown world of her existence, into
+which I should never penetrate.
+
+For a moment (while we moved away, and my grandfather murmured: "Poor
+Swann, what a life they are leading him; fancy sending him away so
+that she can be left alone with her Charlus--for that was Charlus: I
+recognised him at once! And the child, too; at her age, to be mixed up
+in all that!") the impression left on me by the despotic tone in which
+Gilberte's mother had spoken to her, without her replying, by exhibiting
+her to me as being obliged to yield obedience to some one else, as not
+being indeed superior to the whole world, calmed my sufferings somewhat,
+revived some hope in me, and cooled the ardour of my love. But very soon
+that love surged up again in me like a reaction by which my humiliated
+heart was endeavouring to rise to Gilberte's level, or to draw her down
+to its own. I loved her; I was sorry not to have had the time and the
+inspiration to insult her, to do her some injury, to force her to keep
+some memory of me. I knew her to be so beautiful that I should have
+liked to be able to retrace my steps so as to shake my fist at her and
+shout, "I think you are hideous, grotesque; you are utterly disgusting!"
+However, I walked away, carrying with me, then and for ever afterwards,
+as the first illustration of a type of happiness rendered inaccessible
+to a little boy of my kind by certain laws of nature which it was
+impossible to transgress, the picture of a little girl with reddish
+hair, and a skin freckled with tiny pink marks, who held a trowel in
+her hand, and smiled as she directed towards me a long and subtle and
+inexpressive stare. And already the charm with which her name, like a
+cloud of incense, had filled that archway in the pink hawthorn through
+which she and I had, together, heard its sound, was beginning to
+conquer, to cover, to embalm, to beautify everything with which it had
+any association: her grandparents, whom my own had been so unspeakably
+fortunate as to know, the glorious profession of a stockholder, even
+the melancholy neighbourhood of the Champs-Elysées, where she lived in
+Paris.
+
+"Léonie," said my grandfather on our return, "I wish we had had you with
+us this afternoon. You would never have known Tansonville. If I had had
+the courage I would have cut you a branch of that pink hawthorn you used
+to like so much." And so my grandfather told her the story of our walk,
+either just to amuse her, or perhaps because there was still some hope
+that she might be stimulated to rise from her bed and to go out of
+doors. For in earlier days she had been very fond of Tansonville, and,
+moreover, Swann's visits had been the last that she had continued to
+receive, at a time when she had already closed her doors to all the
+world. And just as, when he called, in these later days, to inquire for
+her (and she was still the only person in our household whom he would
+ask to see), she would send down to say that she was tired at the moment
+and resting, but that she would be happy to see him another time,
+so, this evening, she said to my grandfather, "Yes, some day when the
+weather is fine I shall go for a drive as far as the gate of the park."
+And in saying this she was quite sincere. She would have liked to see
+Swann and Tansonville again; but the mere wish to do so sufficed for all
+that remained of her strength, which its fulfilment would have more
+than exhausted. Sometimes a spell of fine weather made her a little more
+energetic, she would rise and put on her clothes; but before she had
+reached the outer room she would be 'tired' again, and would insist on
+returning to her bed. The process which had begun in her--and in her a
+little earlier only than it must come to all of us--was the great and
+general renunciation which old age makes in preparation for death, the
+chrysalis stage of life, which may be observed wherever life has been
+unduly prolonged; even in old lovers who have lived for one another with
+the utmost intensity of passion, and in old friends bound by the closest
+ties of mental sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the
+necessary journey, or even to cross the street to see one another, cease
+to correspond, and know well that they will communicate no more in this
+world. My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that she would not
+see Swann again, that she would never leave her own house any more, but
+this ultimate seclusion seemed to be accepted by her with all the more
+readiness for the very reason which, to our minds, ought to have made
+it more unbearable; namely, that such a seclusion was forced upon her by
+the gradual and steady diminution in her strength which she was able to
+measure daily, which, by making every action, every movement 'tiring' to
+her if not actually painful, gave to inaction, isolation and silence the
+blessed, strengthening and refreshing charm of repose.
+
+My aunt did not go to see the pink hawthorn in the hedge, but at all
+hours of the day I would ask the rest of my family whether she was
+not going to go, whether she used not, at one time, to go often to
+Tansonville, trying to make them speak of Mlle. Swann's parents and
+grandparents, who appeared to me to be as great and glorious as gods.
+The name, which had for me become almost mythological, of Swann--when I
+talked with my family I would grow sick with longing to hear them
+utter it; I dared not pronounce it myself, but I would draw them into a
+discussion of matters which led naturally to Gilberte and her family, in
+which she was involved, in speaking of which I would feel myself not too
+remotely banished from her company; and I would suddenly force my father
+(by pretending, for instance, to believe that my grandfather's business
+had been in our family before his day, or that the hedge with the pink
+hawthorn which my aunt Léonie wished to visit was on common ground) to
+correct my statements, to say, as though in opposition to me and of his
+own accord: "No, no, the business belonged to _Swann's_ father, that
+hedge is part of _Swann's_ park." And then I would be obliged to pause
+for breath; so stifling was the pressure, upon that part of me where it
+was for ever inscribed, of that name which, at the moment when I heard
+it, seemed to me fuller, more portentous than any other name, because
+it was burdened with the weight of all the occasions on which I had
+secretly uttered it in my mind. It caused me a pleasure which I was
+ashamed to have dared to demand from my parents, for so great was it
+that to have procured it for me must have involved them in an immensity
+of effort, and with no recompense, since for them there was no pleasure
+in the sound. And so I would prudently turn the conversation. And by
+a scruple of conscience, also. All the singular seductions which I had
+stored up in the sound of that word Swann, I found again as soon as it
+was uttered. And then it occurred to me suddenly that my parents could
+not fail to experience the same emotions, that they must find themselves
+sharing my point of view, that they perceived in their turn, that they
+condoned, that they even embraced my visionary longings, and I was as
+wretched as though I had ravished and corrupted the innocence of their
+hearts.
+
+That year my family fixed the day of their return to Paris rather
+earlier than usual. On the morning of our departure I had had my
+hair curled, to be ready to face the photographer, had had a new hat
+carefully set upon my head, and had been buttoned into a velvet jacket;
+a little later my mother, after searching everywhere for me, found me
+standing in tears on that steep little hillside close to Tansonville,
+bidding a long farewell to my hawthorns, clasping their sharp branches
+to my bosom, and (like a princess in a tragedy, oppressed by the weight
+of all her senseless jewellery) with no gratitude towards the officious
+hand which had, in curling those ringlets, been at pains to collect all
+my hair upon my forehead; trampling underfoot the curl-papers which I
+had torn from my head, and my new hat with them. My mother was not at
+all moved by my tears, but she could not suppress a cry at the sight of
+my battered headgear and my ruined jacket. I did not, however, hear her.
+"Oh, my poor little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it
+is not you that want to make me unhappy, to force me to leave you.
+You, you have never done me any harm. So I shall always love you." And,
+drying my eyes, I promised them that, when I grew up, I would never copy
+the foolish example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring
+days, instead of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I would make
+excursions into the country to see the first hawthorn-trees in bloom.
+
+Once in the fields we never left them again during the rest of our
+Méséglise walk. They were perpetually crossed, as though by invisible
+streams of traffic, by the wind, which was to me the tutelary genius of
+Combray. Every year, on the day of our arrival, in order to feel that I
+really was at Combray, I would climb the hill to find it running again
+through my clothing, and setting me running in its wake. One always
+had the wind for companion when one went the 'Méséglise way,' on
+that swelling plain which stretched, mile beyond mile, without any
+disturbance of its gentle contour. I knew that Mlle. Swann used often
+to go and spend a few days at Laon, and, for all that it was many
+miles away, the distance was obviated by the absence of any intervening
+obstacle; when, on hot afternoons, I would see a breath of wind emerge
+from the farthest horizon, bowing the heads of the corn in distant
+fields, pouring like a flood over all that vast expanse, and finally
+settling down, warm and rustling, among the clover and sainfoin at my
+feet, that plain which was common to us both seemed then to draw us
+together, to unite us; I would imagine that the same breath had passed
+by her also, that there was some message from her in what it was
+whispering to me, without my being able to understand it, and I would
+catch and kiss it as it passed. On my left was a village called Champieu
+(_Campus Pagani_, according to the Curé). On my right I could see
+across the cornfields the two crocketed, rustic spires of
+Saint-André-des-Champs, themselves as tapering, scaly, plated,
+honeycombed, yellowed, and roughened as two ears of wheat.
+
+At regular intervals, among the inimitable ornamentation of their
+leaves, which can be mistaken for those of no other fruit-tree, the
+apple-trees were exposing their broad petals of white satin, or hanging
+in shy bunches their unopened, blushing buds. It was while going
+the 'Méséglise way' that I first noticed the circular shadow which
+apple-trees cast upon the sunlit ground, and also those impalpable
+threads of golden silk which the setting sun weaves slantingly downwards
+from beneath their leaves, and which I would see my father slash through
+with his stick without ever making them swerve from their straight path.
+
+Sometimes in the afternoon sky a white moon would creep up like a little
+cloud, furtive, without display, suggesting an actress who does not have
+to 'come on' for a while, and so goes 'in front' in her ordinary
+clothes to watch the rest of the company for a moment, but keeps in the
+background, not wishing to attract attention to herself. I was glad to
+find her image reproduced in books and paintings, though these works of
+art were very different--at least in my earlier years, before Bloch had
+attuned my eyes and mind to more subtle harmonies--from those in
+which the moon seems fair to me to-day, but in which I should not have
+recognised her then. It might be, for instance, some novel by Saintine,
+some landscape by Gleyre, in which she is cut out sharply against the
+sky, in the form of a silver sickle, some work as unsophisticated and
+as incomplete as were, at that date, my own impressions, and which it
+enraged my grandmother's sisters to see me admire. They held that one
+ought to set before children, and that children shewed their own innate
+good taste in admiring, only such books and pictures as they would
+continue to admire when their minds were developed and mature. No doubt
+they regarded aesthetic values as material objects which an unclouded
+vision could not fail to discern, without needing to have their
+equivalent in experience of life stored up and slowly ripening in one's
+heart.
+
+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 shewn 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. Vinteuil assured them that it was, and indeed
+it is remarkable that people never fail to arouse admiration of their
+normal qualities in the relatives of anyone with whom they are in
+physical intercourse. Bodily passion, which has been so unjustly
+decried, compels its victims to display every vestige that is in them
+of unselfishness and generosity, and so effectively that they shine
+resplendent in the eyes of all beholders. Dr. Percepied, whose loud
+voice and bushy eyebrows enabled him to play to his heart's content the
+part of 'double-dealer,' a part to which he was not, otherwise, adapted,
+without in the least degree compromising his unassailable and quite
+unmerited reputation of being a kind-hearted old curmudgeon, could make
+the Curé and everyone else laugh until they cried by saying in a harsh
+voice: "What d'ye say to this, now? It seems that she plays music with
+her friend, Mlle. Vinteuil. That surprises you, does it? Oh, I know
+nothing, nothing at all. It was Papa Vinteuil who told me all about
+it yesterday. After all, she has every right to be fond of music, that
+girl. I should never dream of thwarting the artistic vocation of a
+child; nor Vinteuil either, it seems. And then he plays music too,
+with his daughter's friend. Why, gracious heavens, it must be a regular
+musical box, that house out there! What are you laughing at? I say
+they've been playing too much music, those people. I met Papa Vinteuil
+the other day, by the cemetery. It was all he could do to keep on his
+feet."
+
+Anyone who, like ourselves, had seen M. Vinteuil, about this time,
+avoiding people whom he knew, and turning away as soon as he caught
+sight of them, changed in a few months into an old man, engulfed in a
+sea of sorrows, incapable of any effort not directly aimed at promoting
+his daughter's happiness, spending whole days beside his wife's grave,
+could hardly have failed to realise that he was gradually dying of a
+broken heart, could hardly have supposed that he paid no attention to
+the rumours which were going about. He knew, perhaps he even believed,
+what his neighbours were saying. There is probably no one, however rigid
+his virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of
+circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which
+he himself has been most outspoken in condemning, without at first
+recognising it beneath the disguise which it assumes on entering his
+presence, so as to wound him and to make him suffer; the odd words, the
+unaccountable attitude, one evening, of a person whom he has a thousand
+reasons for loving. But for a man of M. Vinteuil's sensibility it must
+have been far more painful than for a hardened man of the world to have
+to resign himself to one of those situations which are wrongly supposed
+to occur in Bohemian circles only; for they are produced whenever there
+needs to establish itself in the security necessary to its development a
+vice which Nature herself has planted in the soul of a child, perhaps by
+no more than blending the virtues of its father and mother, as she might
+blend the colours of their eyes. And yet however much M. Vinteuil
+may have known of his daughter's conduct it did not follow that his
+adoration of her grew any less. The facts of life do not penetrate to
+the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that
+engendered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them; they
+can aim at them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without
+weakening them; and an avalanche of miseries and maladies coming, one
+after another, without interruption into the bosom of a family, will not
+make it lose faith in either the clemency of its God or the capacity of
+its physician. But when M. Vinteuil regarded his daughter and himself
+from the point of view of the world, and of their reputation, when he
+attempted to place himself by her side in the rank which they occupied
+in the general estimation of their neighbours, then he was bound to give
+judgment, to utter his own and her social condemnation in precisely
+the terms which the inhabitant of Combray most hostile to him and his
+daughter would have employed; he saw himself and her in 'low,' in the
+very 'lowest water,' inextricably stranded; and his manners had of late
+been tinged with that humility, that respect for persons who ranked
+above him and to whom he must now look up (however far beneath him they
+might hitherto have been), that tendency to search for some means of
+rising again to their level, which is an almost mechanical result of any
+human misfortune.
+
+One day, when we were walking with Swann in one of the streets of
+Combray, M. Vinteuil, turning out of another street, found himself so
+suddenly face to face with us all that he had not time to escape; and
+Swann, with that almost arrogant charity of a man of the world who,
+amid the dissolution of all his own moral prejudices, finds in another's
+shame merely a reason for treating him with a friendly benevolence, the
+outward signs of which serve to enhance and gratify the self-esteem of
+the bestower because he feels that they are all the more precious to him
+upon whom they are bestowed, conversed at great length with M. Vinteuil,
+with whom for a long time he had been barely on speaking terms, and
+invited him, before leaving us, to send his daughter over, one day,
+to play at Tansonville. It was an invitation which, two years earlier,
+would have enraged M. Vinteuil, but which now filled him with so much
+gratitude that he felt himself obliged to refrain from the indiscretion
+of accepting. Swann's friendly regard for his daughter seemed to him to
+be in itself so honourable, so precious a support for his cause that he
+felt it would perhaps be better to make no use of it, so as to have the
+wholly Platonic satisfaction of keeping it in reserve.
+
+"What a charming man!" he said to us, after Swann had gone, with the
+same enthusiasm and veneration which make clever and pretty women of the
+middle classes fall victims to the physical and intellectual charms of a
+duchess, even though she be ugly and a fool. "What a charming man! What
+a pity that he should have made such a deplorable marriage!"
+
+And then, so strong an element of hypocrisy is there in even the most
+sincere of men, who cast off, while they are talking to anyone, the
+opinion they actually hold of him and will express when he is no longer
+there, my family joined with M. Vinteuil in deploring Swann's marriage,
+invoking principles and conventions which (all the more because they
+invoked them in common with him, as though we were all thorough good
+fellows of the same sort) they appeared to suggest were in no way
+infringed at Montjouvain. M. Vinteuil did not send his daughter to visit
+Swann, an omission which Swann was the first to regret. For constantly,
+after meeting M. Vinteuil, he would remember that he had been meaning
+for a long time to ask him about some one of the same name as himself,
+one of his relatives, Swann supposed. And on this occasion he determined
+that he would not forget what he had to say to him when M. Vinteuil
+should appear with his daughter at Tansonville.
+
+Since the 'Méséglise way' was the shorter of the two that we used to
+take for our walks round Combray, and for that reason was reserved for
+days of uncertain weather, it followed that the climate of Méséglise
+shewed an unduly high rainfall, and we would never lose sight of the
+fringe of Roussainville wood, so that we could, at any moment, run for
+shelter beneath its dense thatch of leaves.
+
+Often the sun would disappear behind a cloud, which impinged on its
+roundness, but whose edge the sun gilded in return. The brightness,
+though not the light of day, would then be shut off from a landscape
+in which all life appeared to be suspended, while the little village
+of Roussainville carved in relief upon the sky the white mass of its
+gables, with a startling precision of detail. A gust of wind blew from
+its perch a rook, which floated away and settled in the distance, while
+beneath a paling sky the woods on the horizon assumed a deeper tone of
+blue, as though they were painted in one of those cameos which you still
+find decorating the walls of old houses.
+
+But on other days would begin to fall the rain, of which we had had due
+warning from the little barometer-figure which the spectacle-maker hung
+out in his doorway. Its drops, like migrating birds which fly off in a
+body at a given moment, would come down out of the sky in close marching
+order. They would never drift apart, would make no movement at random in
+their rapid course, but each one, keeping in its place, would draw
+after it the drop which was following, and the sky would be as greatly
+darkened as by the swallows flying south. We would take refuge among the
+trees. And when it seemed that their flight was accomplished, a few last
+drops, feebler and slower than the rest, would still come down. But we
+would emerge from our shelter, for the rain was playing a game, now,
+among the branches, and, even when it was almost dry again underfoot, a
+stray drop or two, lingering in the hollow of a leaf, would run down and
+hang glistening from the point of it until suddenly it splashed plump
+upon our upturned faces from the whole height of the tree.
+
+Often, too, we would hurry for shelter, tumbling in among all its stony
+saints and patriarchs, into the porch of Saint-André-des-Champs. How
+typically French that church was! Over its door the saints, the kings
+of chivalry with lilies in their hands, the wedding scenes and funerals
+were carved as they might have been in the mind of Françoise. The
+sculptor had also recorded certain anecdotes of Aristotle and Virgil,
+precisely as Françoise in her kitchen would break into speech about
+Saint Louis as though she herself had known him, generally in order to
+depreciate, by contrast with him, my grandparents, whom she considered
+less 'righteous.' One could see that the ideas which the mediaeval
+artist and the mediaeval peasant (who had survived to cook for us in
+the nineteenth century) had of classical and of early Christian history,
+ideas whose inaccuracy was atoned for by their honest simplicity, were
+derived not from books, but from a tradition at once ancient and direct,
+unbroken, oral, degraded, unrecognisable, and alive. Another Combray
+person whom I could discern also, potential and typified, in the gothic
+sculptures of Saint-André-des-Champs was young Théodore, the assistant
+in Camus's shop. And, indeed, Françoise herself was well aware that she
+had in him a countryman and contemporary, for when my aunt was too ill
+for Françoise to be able, unaided, to lift her in her bed or to carry
+her to her chair, rather than let the kitchen-maid come upstairs
+and, perhaps, 'make an impression' on my aunt, she would send out for
+Théodore. And this lad, who was regarded, and quite rightly, in the town
+as a 'bad character,' was so abounding in that spirit which had served
+to decorate the porch of Saint-André-des-Champs, and particularly in the
+feelings of respect due, in Françoise eyes, to all 'poor invalids,' and,
+above all, to her own 'poor mistress,' that he had, when he bent down
+to raise my aunt's head from her pillow, the same air of préraphaélite
+simplicity and zeal which the little angels in the bas-reliefs wear, who
+throng, with tapers in their hands, about the deathbed of Our Lady, as
+though those carved faces of stone, naked and grey like trees in winter,
+were, like them, asleep only, storing up life and waiting to flower
+again in countless plebeian faces, reverend and cunning as the face of
+Théodore, and glowing with the ruddy brilliance of ripe apples.
+
+There, too, not fastened to the wall like the little angels, but
+detached from the porch, of more than human stature, erect upon her
+pedestal as upon a footstool, which had been placed there to save her
+feet from contact with the wet ground, stood a saint with the full
+cheeks, the firm breasts which swelled out inside her draperies like
+a cluster of ripe grapes inside a bag, the narrow forehead, short and
+stubborn nose, deep-set eyes, and strong, thick-skinned, courageous
+expression of the country-women of those parts. This similarity, which
+imparted to the statue itself a kindliness that I had not looked to
+find in it, was corroborated often by the arrival of some girl from
+the fields, come, like ourselves, for shelter beneath the porch, whose
+presence there--as when the leaves of a climbing plant have grown up
+beside leaves carved in stone--seemed intended by fate to allow us, by
+confronting it with its type in nature, to form a critical estimate
+of the truth of the work of art. Before our eyes, in the distance, a
+promised or an accursed land, Roussainville, within whose walls I had
+never penetrated, Roussainville was now, when the rain had ceased for
+us, still being chastised, like a village in the Old Testament, by
+all the innumerable spears and arrows of the storm, which beat down
+obliquely upon the dwellings of its inhabitants, or else had already
+received the forgiveness of the Almighty, Who had restored to it the
+light of His sun, which fell upon it in rays of uneven length, like the
+rays of a monstrance upon an altar.
+
+Sometimes, when the weather had completely broken, we were obliged to go
+home and to remain shut up indoors. Here and there, in the distance, in
+a landscape which, what with the failing light and saturated atmosphere,
+resembled a seascape rather, a few solitary houses clinging to the lower
+slopes of a hill whose heights were buried in a cloudy darkness shone
+out like little boats which had folded their sails and would ride at
+anchor, all night, upon the sea. But what mattered rain or storm?
+In summer, bad weather is no more than a passing fit of superficial
+ill-temper expressed by the permanent, underlying fine weather; a very
+different thing from the fluid and unstable 'fine weather' of winter,
+its very opposite, in fact; for has it not (firmly established in the
+soil, on which it has taken solid form in dense masses of foliage over
+which the rain may pour in torrents without weakening the resistance
+offered by their real and lasting happiness) hoisted, to keep them
+flying throughout the season, in the village streets, on the walls of
+the houses and in their gardens, its silken banners, violet and white.
+Sitting in the little parlour, where I would pass the time until dinner
+with a book, I might hear the water dripping from our chestnut-trees,
+but I would know that the shower would only glaze and brighten the
+greenness of their thick, crumpled leaves, and that they themselves
+had undertaken to remain there, like pledges of summer, all through the
+rainy night, to assure me of the fine weather's continuing; it might
+rain as it pleased, but to-morrow, over the white fence of Tansonville,
+there would surge and flow, numerous as ever, a sea of little
+heart-shaped leaves; and without the least anxiety I could watch the
+poplar in the Rue des Perchamps praying for mercy, bowing in desperation
+before the storm; without the least anxiety I could hear, at the far end
+of the garden, the last peals of thunder growling among our lilac-trees.
+
+If the weather was bad all morning, my family would abandon the idea of
+a walk, and I would remain at home. But, later on, I formed the habit
+of going out by myself on such days, and walking towards
+Méséglise-la-Vineuse, during that autumn when we had to come to Combray
+to settle the division of my aunt Léonie's estate; for she had died at
+last, leaving both parties among her neighbours triumphant in the
+fact of her demise--those who had insisted that her mode of life was
+enfeebling and must ultimately kill her, and, equally, those who had
+always maintained that she suffered from some disease not imaginary,
+but organic, by the visible proof of which the most sceptical would
+be obliged to own themselves convinced, once she had succumbed to it;
+causing no intense grief to any save one of her survivors, but to that
+one a grief savage in its violence. During the long fortnight of my
+aunt's last illness Françoise never went out of her room for an instant,
+never took off her clothes, allowed no one else to do anything for my
+aunt, and did not leave her body until it was actually in its grave.
+Then, at last, we understood that the sort of terror in which Françoise
+had lived of my aunt's harsh words, her suspicions and her anger, had
+developed in her a sentiment which we had mistaken for hatred, and which
+was really veneration and love. Her true mistress, whose decisions it
+had been impossible to foresee, from whose stratagems it had been
+so hard to escape, of whose good nature it had been so easy to take
+advantage, her sovereign, her mysterious and omnipotent monarch was no
+more. Compared with such a mistress we counted for very little. The
+time had long passed when, on our first coming to spend our holidays
+at Combray, we had been of equal importance, in Françoise eyes, with my
+aunt.
+
+During that autumn my parents, finding the days so fully occupied with
+the legal formalities that had to be gone through, and discussions with
+solicitors and farmers, that they had little time for walks which, as it
+happened, the weather made precarious, began to let me go, without them,
+along the 'Méséglise way,' wrapped up in a huge Highland plaid which
+protected me from the rain, and which I was all the more ready to throw
+over my shoulders because I felt that the stripes of its gaudy tartan
+scandalised Françoise, whom it was impossible to convince that the
+colour of one's clothes had nothing whatever to do with one's mourning
+for the dead, and to whom the grief which we had shewn on my aunt's
+death was wholly unsatisfactory, since we had not entertained the
+neighbours to a great funeral banquet, and did not adopt a special tone
+when we spoke of her, while I at times might be heard humming a tune. I
+am sure that in a book--and to that extent my feelings were closely akin
+to those of Françoise--such a conception of mourning, in the manner
+of the _Chanson de Roland_ and of the porch of Saint-André-des-Champs,
+would have seemed most attractive. But the moment that Françoise herself
+approached, some evil spirit would urge me to attempt to make her angry,
+and I would avail myself of the slightest pretext to say to her that I
+regretted my aunt's death because she had been a good woman in spite of
+her absurdities, but not in the least because she was my aunt; that
+she might easily have been my aunt and yet have been so odious that her
+death would not have caused me a moment's sorrow; statements which, in a
+book, would have struck me as merely fatuous.
+
+And if Françoise then, inspired like a poet with a flood of confused
+reflections upon bereavement, grief, and family memories, were to
+plead her inability to rebut my theories, saying: "I don't know how to
+_espress_ myself"--I would triumph over her with an ironical and brutal
+common sense worthy of Dr. Percepied; and if she went on: "All the same
+she was a _geological_ relation; there is always the respect due to your
+_geology_," I would shrug my shoulders and say: "It is really very good
+of me to discuss the matter with an illiterate old woman who cannot
+speak her own language," adopting, to deliver judgment on Françoise,
+the mean and narrow outlook of the pedant, whom those who are most
+contemptuous of him in the impartiality of their own minds are only too
+prone to copy when they are obliged to play a part upon the vulgar stage
+of life.
+
+My walks, that autumn, were all the more delightful because I used
+to take them after long hours spent over a book. When I was tired of
+reading, after a whole morning in the house, I would throw my plaid
+across my shoulders and set out; my body, which in a long spell of
+enforced immobility had stored up an accumulation of vital energy, was
+now obliged, like a spinning-top wound and let go, to spend this in
+every direction. The walls of houses, the Tansonville hedge, the trees
+of Roussainville wood, the bushes against which Montjouvain leaned its
+back, all must bear the blows of my walking-stick or umbrella, must
+hear my shouts of happiness, blows and shouts being indeed no more than
+expressions of the confused ideas which exhilarated me, and which, not
+being developed to the point at which they might rest exposed to the
+light of day, rather than submit to a slow and difficult course
+of elucidation, found it easier and more pleasant to drift into an
+immediate outlet. And so it is that the bulk of what appear to be the
+emotional renderings of our inmost sensations do no more than relieve us
+of the burden of those sensations by allowing them to escape from us in
+an indistinct form which does not teach us how it should be interpreted.
+When I attempt to reckon up all that I owe to the 'Méséglise way,' all
+the humble discoveries of which it was either the accidental setting or
+the direct inspiration and cause, I am reminded that it was in that same
+autumn, on one of those walks, near the bushy precipice which guarded
+Montjouvain from the rear, that I was struck for the first time by
+this lack of harmony between our impressions and their normal forms of
+expression. After an hour of rain and wind, against which I had put up a
+brisk fight, as I came to the edge of the Montjouvain pond, and reached
+a little hut, roofed with tiles, in which M. Vinteuil's gardener kept
+his tools, the sun shone out again, and its golden rays, washed clean
+by the shower, blazed once more in the sky, on the trees, on the wall
+of the hut, and on the still wet tiles of the roof, which had a chicken
+perching upon its ridge. The wind pulled out sideways the wild grass
+that grew in the wall, and the chicken's downy feathers, both of which
+things let themselves float upon the wind's breath to their full extent,
+with the unresisting submissiveness of light and lifeless matter. The
+tiled roof cast upon the pond, whose reflections were now clear again
+in the sunlight, a square of pink marble, the like of which I had never
+observed before. And, seeing upon the water, where it reflected the
+wall, a pallid smile responding to the smiling sky, I cried aloud in my
+enthusiasm, brandishing my furled umbrella: "Damn, damn, damn, damn!"
+But at the same time I felt that I was in duty bound not to content
+myself with these unilluminating words, but to endeavour to see more
+clearly into the sources of my enjoyment.
+
+And it was at that moment, too--thanks to a peasant who went past,
+apparently in a bad enough humour already, but more so when he nearly
+received my umbrella in his face, and who replied without any cordiality
+to my "Fine day, what! good to be out walking!"--that I learned
+that identical emotions do not spring up in the hearts of all men
+simultaneously, by a pre-established order. Later on I discovered that,
+whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the
+friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment
+have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and
+wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed. And if I had been
+thinking with affection of my parents, and forming the most sensible and
+proper plans for giving them pleasure, they would have been using
+the same interval of time to discover some misdeed that I had already
+forgotten, and would begin to scold me severely, just as I flung myself
+upon them with a kiss.
+
+Sometimes to the exhilaration which I derived from being alone would be
+added an alternative feeling, so that I could not be clear in my mind to
+which I should give the casting vote; a feeling stimulated by the desire
+to see rise up before my eyes a peasant-girl whom I might clasp in my
+arms. Coming abruptly, and without giving me time to trace it accurately
+to its source among so many ideas of a very different kind, the pleasure
+which accompanied this desire seemed only a degree superior to what was
+given me by my other thoughts. I found an additional merit in everything
+that was in my mind at the moment, in the pink reflection of the tiled
+roof, the wild grass in the wall, the village of Roussainville into
+which I had long desired to penetrate, the trees of its wood and the
+steeple of its church, created in them by this fresh emotion which made
+them appear more desirable only because I thought it was they that
+had provoked it, and which seemed only to wish to bear me more swiftly
+towards them when it filled my sails with a potent, unknown, and
+propitious breeze. But if this desire that a woman should appear added
+for me something more exalting than the charms of nature, they in their
+turn enlarged what I might, in the woman's charm, have found too much
+restricted. It seemed to me that the beauty of the trees was hers
+also, and that, as for the spirit of those horizons, of the village of
+Roussainville, of the books which I was reading that year, it was her
+kiss which would make me master of them all; and, my imagination drawing
+strength from contact with my sensuality, my sensuality expanding
+through all the realms of my imagination, my desire had no longer any
+bounds. Moreover--just as in moments of musing contemplation of nature,
+the normal actions of the mind being suspended, and our abstract ideas
+of things set on one side, we believe with the profoundest faith in the
+originality, in the individual existence of the place in which we may
+happen to be--the passing figure which my desire evoked seemed to be
+not any one example of the general type of 'woman,' but a necessary and
+natural product of the soil. For at that time everything which was not
+myself, the earth and the creatures upon it, seemed to me more precious,
+more important, endowed with a more real existence than they appear
+to full-grown men. And between the earth and its creatures I made
+no distinction. I had a desire for a peasant-girl from Méséglise or
+Roussainville, for a fisher-girl from Balbec, just as I had a desire for
+Balbec and Méséglise. The pleasure which those girls were empowered to
+give me would have seemed less genuine, I should have had no faith in
+it any longer, if I had been at liberty to modify its conditions as I
+chose. To meet in Paris a fisher-girl from Balbec or a peasant-girl from
+Méséglise would have been like receiving the present of a shell which
+I had never seen upon the beach, or of a fern which I had never found
+among the woods, would have stripped from the pleasure which she was
+about to give me all those other pleasures in the thick of which my
+imagination had enwrapped her. But to wander thus among the woods of
+Roussainville without a peasant-girl to embrace was to see those woods
+and yet know nothing of their secret treasure, their deep-hidden beauty.
+That girl whom I never saw save dappled with the shadows of their
+leaves, was to me herself a plant of local growth, only taller than the
+rest, and one whose structure would enable me to approach more closely
+than in them to the intimate savour of the land from which she had
+sprung. I could believe this all the more readily (and also that
+the caresses by which she would bring that savour to my senses were
+themselves of a particular kind, yielding a pleasure which I could
+never derive from any but herself) since I was still, and must for long
+remain, in that period of life when one has not yet separated the fact
+of this sensual pleasure from the various women in whose company one has
+tasted it, when one has not reduced it to a general idea which makes one
+regard them thenceforward as the variable instruments of a pleasure that
+is always the same. Indeed, that pleasure does not exist, isolated and
+formulated in the consciousness, as the ultimate object with which one
+seeks a woman's company, or as the cause of the uneasiness which, in
+anticipation, one then feels. Hardly even does one think of oneself,
+but only how to escape from oneself. Obscurely awaited, immanent and
+concealed, it rouses to such a paroxysm, at the moment when at last it
+makes itself felt, those other pleasures which we find in the tender
+glance, in the kiss of her who is by our side, that it seems to us, more
+than anything else, a sort of transport of gratitude for the kindness of
+heart of our companion and for her touching predilection of ourselves,
+which we measure by the benefits, by the happiness that she showers upon
+us.
+
+Alas, it was in vain that I implored the dungeon-keep of Roussainville,
+that I begged it to send out to meet me some daughter of its village,
+appealing to it as to the sole confidant to whom I had disclosed my
+earliest desire when, from the top floor of our house at Combray, from
+the little room that smelt of orris-root, I had peered out and seen
+nothing but its tower, framed in the square of the half-opened window,
+while, with the heroic scruples of a traveller setting forth for
+unknown climes, or of a desperate wretch hesitating on the verge of
+self-destruction, faint with emotion, I explored, across the bounds of
+my own experience, an untrodden path which, I believed, might lead me to
+my death, even--until passion spent itself and left me shuddering among
+the sprays of flowering currant which, creeping in through the window,
+tumbled all about my body. In vain I called upon it now. In vain I
+compressed the whole landscape into my field of vision, draining it with
+an exhaustive gaze which sought to extract from it a female creature. I
+might go alone as far as the porch of Saint-André-des-Champs: never did
+I find there the girl whom I should inevitably have met, had I been with
+my grandfather, and so unable to engage her in conversation. I would fix
+my eyes, without limit of time, upon the trunk of a distant tree, from
+behind which she must appear and spring towards me; my closest scrutiny
+left the horizon barren as before; night was falling; without any hope
+now would I concentrate my attention, as though to force up out of it
+the creatures which it must conceal, upon that sterile soil, that stale
+and outworn land; and it was no longer in lightness of heart, but with
+sullen anger that I aimed blows at the trees of Roussainville wood, from
+among which no more living creatures made their appearance than if they
+had been trees painted on the stretched canvas background of a panorama,
+when, unable to resign myself to having to return home without having
+held in my arms the woman I so greatly desired, I was yet obliged to
+retrace my steps towards Combray, and to admit to myself that the chance
+of her appearing in my path grew smaller every moment. And if she had
+appeared, would I have dared to speak to her? I felt that she would have
+regarded me as mad, for I no longer thought of those desires which came
+to me on my walks, but were never realized, as being shared by others,
+or as having any existence apart from myself. They seemed nothing more
+now than the purely subjective, impotent, illusory creatures of my
+temperament. They were in no way connected now with nature, with the
+world of real things, which from now onwards lost all its charm and
+significance, and meant no more to my life than a purely conventional
+framework, just as the action of a novel is framed in the railway
+carriage, on a seat of which a traveller is reading it to pass the time.
+
+And it is perhaps from another impression which I received at
+Montjouvain, some years later, an impression which at that time was
+without meaning, that there arose, long afterwards, my idea of that
+cruel side of human passion called 'sadism.' We shall see, in due
+course, that for quite another reason the memory of this impression was
+to play an important part in my life. It was during a spell of very hot
+weather; my parents, who had been obliged to go away for the whole day,
+had told me that I might stay out as late as I pleased; and having
+gone as far as the Montjouvain pond, where I enjoyed seeing again the
+reflection of the tiled roof of the hut, I had lain down in the shade
+and gone to sleep among the bushes on the steep slope that rose up
+behind the house, just where I had waited for my parents, years before,
+one day when they had gone to call on M. Vinteuil. It was almost dark
+when I awoke, and I wished to rise and go away, but I saw Mlle. Vinteuil
+(or thought, at least, that I recognised her, for I had not seen her
+often at Combray, and then only when she was still a child, whereas
+she was now growing into a young woman), who probably had just come in,
+standing in front of me, and only a few feet away from me, in that room
+in which her father had entertained mine, and which she had now made
+into a little sitting-room for herself. The window was partly open; the
+lamp was lighted; I could watch her every movement without her being
+able to see me; but, had I gone away, I must have made a rustling sound
+among the bushes, she would have heard me, and might have thought that I
+had been hiding there in order to spy upon her.
+
+She was in deep mourning, for her father had but lately died. We had
+not gone to see her; my mother had not cared to go, on account of that
+virtue which alone in her fixed any bounds to her benevolence--namely,
+modesty; but she pitied the girl from the depths of her heart. My
+mother had not forgotten the sad end of M. Vinteuil's life, his complete
+absorption, first in having to play both mother and nursery-maid to his
+daughter, and, later, in the suffering which she had caused him; she
+could see the tortured expression which was never absent from the old
+man's face in those terrible last years; she knew that he had definitely
+abandoned the task of transcribing in fair copies the whole of his later
+work, the poor little pieces, we imagined, of an old music-master, a
+retired village organist, which, we assumed, were of little or no value
+in themselves, though we did not despise them, because they were of such
+great value to him and had been the chief motive of his life before he
+sacrificed them to his daughter; pieces which, being mostly not even
+written down, but recorded only in his memory, while the rest were
+scribbled on loose sheets of paper, and quite illegible, must now remain
+unknown for ever; my mother thought, also, of that other and still more
+cruel renunciation to which M. Vinteuil had been driven, that of seeing
+the girl happily settled, with an honest and respectable future; when
+she called to mind all this utter and crushing misery that had come
+upon my aunts' old music-master, she was moved to very real grief, and
+shuddered to think of that other grief, so different in its bitterness,
+which Mlle. Vinteuil must now be feeling, tinged with remorse at having
+virtually killed her father. "Poor M. Vinteuil," my mother would say,
+"he lived for his daughter, and now he has died for her, without getting
+his reward. Will he get it now, I wonder, and in what form? It can only
+come to him from her."
+
+At the far end of Mlle. Vinteuil's sitting-room, on the mantelpiece,
+stood a small photograph of her father which she went briskly to fetch,
+just as the sound of carriage wheels was heard from the road outside,
+then flung herself down on a sofa and drew close beside her a little
+table on which she placed the photograph, just as, long ago, M. Vinteuil
+had 'placed' beside him the piece of music which he would have liked
+to play over to my parents. And then her friend came in. Mlle. Vinteuil
+greeted her without rising, clasping her hands behind her head, and
+drew her body to one side of the sofa, as though to 'make room.' But no
+sooner had she done this than she appeared to feel that she was perhaps
+suggesting a particular position to her friend, with an emphasis which
+might well be regarded as importunate. She thought that her friend would
+prefer, no doubt, to sit down at some distance from her, upon a chair;
+she felt that she had been indiscreet; her sensitive heart took fright;
+stretching herself out again over the whole of the sofa, she closed her
+eyes and began to yawn, so as to indicate that it was a desire to sleep,
+and that alone, which had made her lie down there. Despite the rude
+and hectoring familiarity with which she treated her companion I could
+recognise in her the obsequious and reticent advances, the abrupt
+scruples and restraints which had characterised her father. Presently
+she rose and came to the window, where she pretended to be trying to
+close the shutters and not succeeding.
+
+"Leave them open," said her friend. "I am hot."
+
+"But it's too dreadful! People will see us," Mlle. Vinteuil answered.
+And then she guessed, probably, that her friend would think that she had
+uttered these words simply in order to provoke a reply in certain other
+words, which she seemed, indeed, to wish to hear spoken, but, from
+prudence, would let her friend be the first to speak. And so, although
+I could not see her face clearly enough, I am sure that the expression
+must have appeared on it which my grandmother had once found so
+delightful, when she hastily went on: "When I say 'see us' I mean, of
+course, see us reading. It's so dreadful to think that in every trivial
+little thing you do some one may be overlooking you."
+
+With the instinctive generosity of her nature, a courtesy beyond her
+control, she refrained from uttering the studied words which, she had
+felt, were indispensable for the full realisation of her desire. And
+perpetually, in the depths of her being, a shy and suppliant maiden
+would kneel before that other element, the old campaigner, battered but
+triumphant, would intercede with him and oblige him to retire.
+
+"Oh, yes, it is so extremely likely that people are looking at us at
+this time of night in this densely populated district!" said her friend,
+with bitter irony. "And what if they are?" she went on, feeling bound
+to annotate with a malicious yet affectionate wink these words which
+she was repeating, out of good nature, like a lesson prepared beforehand
+which, she knew, it would please Mlle. Vinteuil to hear. "And what if
+they are? All the better that they should see us."
+
+Mlle. Vinteuil shuddered and rose to her feet. In her sensitive
+and scrupulous heart she was ignorant what words ought to flow,
+spontaneously, from her lips, so as to produce the scene for which her
+eager senses clamoured. She reached out as far as she could across the
+limitations of her true character to find the language appropriate to
+a vicious young woman such as she longed to be thought, but the
+words which, she imagined, such a young woman might have uttered with
+sincerity sounded unreal in her own mouth. And what little she allowed
+herself to say was said in a strained tone, in which her ingrained
+timidity paralysed her tendency to freedom and audacity of speech; while
+she kept on interrupting herself with: "You're sure you aren't cold? You
+aren't too hot? You don't want to sit and read by yourself?...
+
+"Your ladyship's thoughts seem to be rather 'warm' this evening," she
+concluded, doubtless repeating a phrase which she had heard used, on
+some earlier occasion, by her friend.
+
+In the V-shaped opening of her crape bodice Mlle. Vinteuil felt the
+sting of her friend's sudden kiss; she gave a little scream and
+ran away; and then they began to chase one another about the room,
+scrambling over the furniture, their wide sleeves fluttering like
+wings, clucking and crowing like a pair of amorous fowls. At last Mlle.
+Vinteuil fell down exhausted upon the sofa, where she was screened from
+me by the stooping body of her friend. But the latter now had her back
+turned to the little table on which the old music-master's portrait had
+been arranged. Mlle. Vinteuil realised that her friend would not see
+it unless her attention were drawn to it, and so exclaimed, as if she
+herself had just noticed it for the first time: "Oh! there's my father's
+picture looking at us; I can't think who can have put it there; I'm sure
+I've told them twenty times, that is not the proper place for it."
+
+I remembered the words that M. Vinteuil had used to my parents in
+apologising for an obtrusive sheet of music. This photograph was, of
+course, in common use in their ritual observances, was subjected to
+daily profanation, for the friend replied in words which were evidently
+a liturgical response: "Let him stay there. He can't trouble us any
+longer. D'you think he'd start whining, d'you think he'd pack you out
+of the house if he could see you now, with the window open, the ugly old
+monkey?"
+
+To which Mlle. Vinteuil replied, "Oh, please!"--a gentle reproach
+which testified to the genuine goodness of her nature, not that it
+was prompted by any resentment at hearing her father spoken of in this
+fashion (for that was evidently a feeling which she had trained herself,
+by a long course of sophistries, to keep in close subjection at such
+moments), but rather because it was the bridle which, so as to avoid all
+appearance of egotism, she herself used to curb the gratification which
+her friend was attempting to procure for her. It may well have been,
+too, that the smiling moderation with which she faced and answered these
+blasphemies, that this tender and hypocritical rebuke appeared to her
+frank and generous nature as a particularly shameful and seductive form
+of that criminal attitude towards life which she was endeavouring to
+adopt. But she could not resist the attraction of being treated with
+affection by a woman who had just shewn herself so implacable towards
+the defenceless dead; she sprang on to the knees of her friend and held
+out a chaste brow to be kissed; precisely as a daughter would have done
+to her mother, feeling with exquisite joy that they would thus, between
+them, inflict the last turn of the screw of cruelty, in robbing M.
+Vinteuil, as though they were actually rifling his tomb, of the sacred
+rights of fatherhood. Her friend took the girl's head in her hands and
+placed a kiss on her brow with a docility prompted by the real affection
+she had for Mlle. Vinteuil, as well as by the desire to bring what
+distraction she could into the dull and melancholy life of an orphan.
+
+"Do you know what I should like to do to that old horror?" she said,
+taking up the photograph. She murmured in Mlle. Vinteuil's ear something
+that I could not distinguish.
+
+"Oh! You would never dare."
+
+"Not dare to spit on it? On that?" shouted the friend with deliberate
+brutality.
+
+I heard no more, for Mlle. Vinteuil, who now seemed weary, awkward,
+preoccupied, sincere, and rather sad, came back to the window and drew
+the shutters close; but I knew now what was the reward that M. Vinteuil,
+in return for all the suffering that he had endured in his lifetime, on
+account of his daughter, had received from her after his death.
+
+And yet I have since reflected that if M. Vinteuil had been able to be
+present at this scene, he might still, and in spite of everything, have
+continued to believe in his daughter's soundness of heart, and that he
+might even, in so doing, have been not altogether wrong. It was true
+that in all Mlle. Vinteuil's actions the appearance of evil was so
+strong and so consistent that it would have been hard to find it
+exhibited in such completeness save in what is nowadays called a
+'sadist'; it is behind the footlights of a Paris theatre, and not under
+the homely lamp of an actual country house, that one expects to see a
+girl leading her friend on to spit upon the portrait of a father who has
+lived and died for nothing and no one but herself; and when we find in
+real life a desire for melodramatic effect, it is generally the 'sadic'
+instinct that is responsible for it. It is possible that, without being
+in the least inclined towards 'sadism,' a girl might have shewn the
+same outrageous cruelty as Mlle. Vinteuil in desecrating the memory and
+defying the wishes of her dead father, but she would not have given them
+deliberate expression in an act so crude in its symbolism, so lacking
+in subtlety; the criminal element in her behaviour would have been less
+evident to other people, and even to herself, since she would not have
+admitted to herself that she was doing wrong. But, appearances apart, in
+Mlle. Vinteuil's soul, at least in the earlier stages, the evil element
+was probably not unmixed. A 'sadist' of her kind is an artist in evil,
+which a wholly wicked person could not be, for in that case the evil
+would not have been external, it would have seemed quite natural to her,
+and would not even have been distinguishable from herself; and as for
+virtue, respect for the dead, filial obedience, since she would never
+have practised the cult of these things, she would take no impious
+delight in their profanation. 'Sadists' of Mlle. Vinteuil's sort are
+creatures so purely sentimental, so virtuous by nature, that even
+sensual pleasure appears to them as something bad, a privilege reserved
+for the wicked. And when they allow themselves for a moment to enjoy it
+they endeavour to impersonate, to assume all the outward appearance of
+wicked people, for themselves and their partners in guilt, so as to gain
+the momentary illusion of having escaped beyond the control of their own
+gentle and scrupulous natures into the inhuman world of pleasure. And
+I could understand how she must have longed for such an escape when I
+realised that it was impossible for her to effect it. At the moment when
+she wished to be thought the very antithesis of her father, what she at
+once suggested to me were the mannerisms, in thought and speech, of
+the poor old music-master. Indeed, his photograph was nothing; what she
+really desecrated, what she corrupted into ministering to her pleasures,
+but what remained between them and her and prevented her from any
+direct enjoyment of them, was the likeness between her face and his, his
+mother's blue eyes which he had handed down to her, like some trinket to
+be kept in the family, those little friendly movements and inclinations
+which set up between the viciousness of Mlle. Vinteuil and herself a
+phraseology, a mentality not designed for vice, which made her regard it
+as not in any way different from the numberless little social duties and
+courtesies to which she must devote herself every day. It was not evil
+that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it
+was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil. And as, every time that she
+indulged in it, pleasure came to her attended by evil thoughts such as,
+ordinarily, had no place in her virtuous mind, she came at length to
+see in pleasure itself something diabolical, to identify it with Evil.
+Perhaps Mlle. Vinteuil felt that at heart her friend was not altogether
+bad, not really sincere when she gave vent to those blasphemous
+utterances. At any rate, she had the pleasure of receiving those kisses
+on her brow, those smiles, those glances; all feigned, perhaps, but akin
+in their base and vicious mode of expression to those which would have
+been discernible on the face of a creature formed not out of kindness
+and long-suffering, but out of self-indulgence and cruelty. She was
+able to delude herself for a moment into believing that she was indeed
+amusing herself in the way in which, with so unnatural an accomplice, a
+girl might amuse herself who really did experience that savage antipathy
+towards her father's memory. Perhaps she would not have thought of
+wickedness as a state so rare, so abnormal, so exotic, one which it was
+so refreshing to visit, had she been able to distinguish in herself,
+as in all her fellow-men and women, that indifference to the sufferings
+which they cause which, whatever names else be given it, is the one
+true, terrible and lasting form of cruelty.
+
+If the 'Méséglise way' was so easy, it was a very different matter when
+we took the 'Guermantes way,' for that meant a long walk, and we must
+make sure, first, of the weather. When we seemed to have entered upon a
+spell of fine days, when Françoise, in desperation that not a drop was
+falling upon the 'poor crops,' gazing up at the sky and seeing there
+only a little white cloud floating here and there upon its calm, azure
+surface, groaned aloud and exclaimed: "You would say they were nothing
+more nor less than a lot of dogfish swimming about and sticking up their
+snouts! Ah, they never think of making it rain a little for the poor
+labourers! And then when the corn is all ripe, down it will come,
+rattling all over the place, and think no more of where it is falling
+than if it was on the sea!"--when my father's appeals to the gardener
+had met with the same encouraging answer several times in succession,
+then some one would say, at dinner: "To-morrow, if the weather holds,
+we might go the Guermantes way." And off we would set, immediately after
+luncheon, through the little garden gate which dropped us into the Rue
+des Perchamps, narrow and bent at a sharp angle, dotted with grass-plots
+over which two or three wasps would spend the day botanising, a street
+as quaint as its name, from which its odd characteristics and its
+personality were, I felt, derived; a street for which one might search
+in vain through the Combray of to-day, for the public school now rises
+upon its site. But in my dreams of Combray (like those architects,
+pupils of Viollet-le-Duc, who, fancying that they can detect, beneath
+a Renaissance rood-loft and an eighteenth-century altar, traces of a
+Norman choir, restore the whole church to the state in which it probably
+was in the twelfth century) I leave not a stone of the modern edifice
+standing, I pierce through it and 'restore' the Rue des Perchamps. And
+for such reconstruction memory furnishes me with more detailed guidance
+than is generally at the disposal of restorers; the pictures which it
+has preserved--perhaps the last surviving in the world to-day, and soon
+to follow the rest into oblivion--of what Combray looked like in my
+childhood's days; pictures which, simply because it was the old Combray
+that traced their outlines upon my mind before it vanished, are as
+moving--if I may compare a humble landscape with those glorious works,
+reproductions of which my grandmother was so fond of bestowing on me--as
+those old engravings of the 'Cenacolo,' or that painting by Gentile
+Bellini, in which one sees, in a state in which they no longer exist,
+the masterpiece of Leonardo and the portico of Saint Mark's.
+
+We would pass, in the Rue de l'Oiseau, before the old hostelry of the
+Oiseau Flesché, into whose great courtyard, once upon a time, would
+rumble the coaches of the Duchesses de Montpensier, de Guermantes,
+and de Montmorency, when they had to come down to Combray for some
+litigation with their farmers, or to receive homage from them. We would
+come at length to the Mall, among whose treetops I could distinguish the
+steeple of Saint-Hilaire. And I should have liked to be able to sit down
+and spend the whole day there, reading and listening to the bells, for
+it was so charming there and so quiet that, when an hour struck, you
+would have said not that it broke in upon the calm of the day, but that
+it relieved the day of its superfluity, and that the steeple, with the
+indolent, painstaking exactitude of a person who has nothing else to do,
+had simply, in order to squeeze out and let fall the few golden drops
+which had slowly and naturally accumulated in the hot sunlight, pressed,
+at a given moment, the distended surface of the silence.
+
+The great charm of the 'Guermantes' way was that we had beside us,
+almost all the time, the course of the Vivonne. We crossed it first, ten
+minutes after leaving the house, by a foot-bridge called the Pont-Vieux.
+And every year, when we arrived at Combray, on Easter morning, after the
+sermon, if the weather was fine, I would run there to see (amid all the
+disorder that prevails on the morning of a great festival, the gorgeous
+preparations for which make the everyday household utensils that they
+have not contrived to banish seem more sordid than ever) the river
+flowing past, sky-blue already between banks still black and bare, its
+only companions a clump of daffodils, come out before their time, a few
+primroses, the first in flower, while here and there burned the blue
+flame of a violet, its stem bent beneath the weight of the drop of
+perfume stored in its tiny horn. The Pont-Vieux led to a tow-path which,
+at this point, would be overhung in summer by the bluish foliage of a
+hazel, under which a fisherman in a straw hat seemed to have taken
+root. At Combray, where I knew everyone, and could always detect the
+blacksmith or grocer's boy through his disguise of a beadle's uniform
+or chorister's surplice, this fisherman was the only person whom I was
+never able to identify. He must have known my family, for he used to
+raise his hat when we passed; and then I would always be just on the
+point of asking his name, when some one would make a sign to me to be
+quiet, or I would frighten the fish. We would follow the tow-path which
+ran along the top of a steep bank, several feet above the stream. The
+ground on the other side was lower, and stretched in a series of broad
+meadows as far as the village and even to the distant railway-station.
+Over these were strewn the remains, half-buried in the long grass, of
+the castle of the old Counts of Combray, who, during the Middle Ages,
+had had on this side the course of the Vivonne as a barrier and defence
+against attack from the Lords of Guermantes and Abbots of Martinville.
+Nothing was left now but a few stumps of towers, hummocks upon the broad
+surface of the fields, hardly visible, broken battlements over which, in
+their day, the bowmen had hurled down stones, the watchmen had gazed out
+over Novepont, Clairefontaine, Martinville-le-Sec, Bailleau-l'Exempt,
+fiefs all of them of Guermantes, a ring in which Combray was locked;
+but fallen among the grass now, levelled with the ground, climbed and
+commanded by boys from the Christian Brothers' school, who came there
+in their playtime, or with lesson-books to be conned; emblems of a past
+that had sunk down and well-nigh vanished under the earth, that lay by
+the water's edge now, like an idler taking the air, yet giving me strong
+food for thought, making the name of Combray connote to me not the
+little town of to-day only, but an historic city vastly different,
+seizing and holding my imagination by the remote, incomprehensible
+features which it half-concealed beneath a spangled veil of buttercups.
+For the buttercups grew past numbering on this spot which they had
+chosen for their games among the grass, standing singly, in couples, in
+whole companies, yellow as the yolk of eggs, and glowing with an added
+lustre, I felt, because, being powerless to consummate with my palate
+the pleasure which the sight of them never failed to give me, I would
+let it accumulate as my eyes ranged over their gilded expanse, until
+it had acquired the strength to create in my mind a fresh example of
+absolute, unproductive beauty; and so it had been from my earliest
+childhood, when from the tow-path I had stretched out my arms towards
+them, before even I could pronounce their charming name--a name fit for
+the Prince in some French fairy-tale; colonists, perhaps, in some far
+distant century from Asia, but naturalised now for ever in the village,
+well satisfied with their modest horizon, rejoicing in the sunshine
+and the water's edge, faithful to their little glimpse of the
+railway-station; yet keeping, none the less, as do some of our old
+paintings, in their plebeian simplicity, a poetic scintillation from the
+golden East.
+
+I would amuse myself by watching the glass jars which the boys used
+to lower into the Vivonne, to catch minnows, and which, filled by the
+current of the stream, in which they themselves also were enclosed, at
+once 'containers' whose transparent sides were like solidified water
+and 'contents' plunged into a still larger container of liquid,
+flowing crystal, suggested an image of coolness more delicious and more
+provoking than the same water in the same jars would have done, standing
+upon a table laid for dinner, by shewing it as perpetually in flight
+between the impalpable water, in which my hands could not arrest it, and
+the insoluble glass, in which my palate could not enjoy it. I decided
+that I would come there again with a line and catch fish; I begged for
+and obtained a morsel of bread from our luncheon basket; and threw into
+the Vivonne pellets which had the power, it seemed, to bring about a
+chemical precipitation, for the water at once grew solid round about
+them in oval clusters of emaciated tadpoles, which until then it had, no
+doubt, been holding in solution, invisible, but ready and alert to enter
+the stage of crystallisation.
+
+Presently the course of the Vivonne became choked with water-plants.
+At first they appeared singly, a lily, for instance, which the current,
+across whose path it had unfortunately grown, would never leave at rest
+for a moment, so that, like a ferry-boat mechanically propelled, it
+would drift over to one bank only to return to the other, eternally
+repeating its double journey. Thrust towards the bank, its stalk would
+be straightened out, lengthened, strained almost to breaking-point until
+the current again caught it, its green moorings swung back over their
+anchorage and brought the unhappy plant to what might fitly be called
+its starting-point, since it was fated not to rest there a moment before
+moving off once again. I would still find it there, on one walk after
+another, always in the same helpless state, suggesting certain victims
+of neurasthenia, among whom my grandfather would have included my aunt
+Léonie, who present without modification, year after year, the spectacle
+of their odd and unaccountable habits, which they always imagine
+themselves to be on the point of shaking off, but which they always
+retain to the end; caught in the treadmill of their own maladies and
+eccentricities, their futile endeavours to escape serve only to actuate
+its mechanism, to keep in motion the clockwork of their strange,
+ineluctable, fatal daily round. Such as these was the water-lily,
+and also like one of those wretches whose peculiar torments, repeated
+indefinitely throughout eternity, aroused the curiosity of Dante, who
+would have inquired of them at greater length and in fuller detail from
+the victims themselves, had not Virgil, striding on ahead, obliged him
+to hasten after him at full speed, as I must hasten after my parents.
+
+But farther on the current slackened, where the stream ran through a
+property thrown open to the public by its owner, who had made a hobby of
+aquatic gardening, so that the little ponds into which the Vivonne was
+here diverted were aflower with water-lilies. As the banks at this
+point were thickly wooded, the heavy shade of the trees gave the water a
+background which was ordinarily dark green, although sometimes, when we
+were coming home on a calm evening after a stormy afternoon, I have seen
+in its depths a clear, crude blue that was almost violet, suggesting a
+floor of Japanese cloisonné. Here and there, on the surface, floated,
+blushing like a strawberry, the scarlet heart of a lily set in a ring of
+white petals.
+
+Beyond these the flowers were more frequent, but paler, less glossy,
+more thickly seeded, more tightly folded, and disposed, by accident, in
+festoons so graceful that I would fancy I saw floating upon the stream,
+as though after the dreary stripping of the decorations used in some
+Watteau festival, moss-roses in loosened garlands. Elsewhere a corner
+seemed to be reserved for the commoner kinds of lily; of a neat pink or
+white like rocket-flowers, washed clean like porcelain, with housewifely
+care; while, a little farther again, were others, pressed close together
+in a floating garden-bed, as though pansies had flown out of a garden
+like butterflies and were hovering with blue and burnished wings over
+the transparent shadowiness of this watery border; this skiey border
+also, for it set beneath the flowers a soil of a colour more precious,
+more moving than their own; and both in the afternoon, when it sparkled
+beneath the lilies in the kaleidoscope of a happiness silent, restless,
+and alert, and towards evening, when it was filled like a distant heaven
+with the roseate dreams of the setting sun, incessantly changing and
+ever remaining in harmony, about the more permanent colour of the
+flowers themselves, with the utmost profundity, evanescence, and
+mystery--with a quiet suggestion of infinity; afternoon or evening, it
+seemed to have set them flowering in the heart of the sky.
+
+After leaving this park the Vivonne began to flow again more swiftly.
+How often have I watched, and longed to imitate, when I should be free
+to live as I chose, a rower who had shipped his oars and lay stretched
+out on his back, his head down, in the bottom of his boat, letting it
+drift with the current, seeing nothing but the sky which slipped quietly
+above him, shewing upon his features a foretaste of happiness and peace.
+
+We would sit down among the irises at the water's edge. In the holiday
+sky a lazy cloud streamed out to its full length. Now and then, crushed
+by the burden of idleness, a carp would heave up out of the water, with
+an anxious gasp. It was time for us to feed. Before starting homewards
+we would sit for a long time there, eating fruit and bread and
+chocolate, on the grass, over which came to our ears, horizontal, faint,
+but solid still and metallic, the sound of the bells of Saint-Hilaire,
+which had melted not at all in the atmosphere it was so well accustomed
+to traverse, but, broken piecemeal by the successive palpitation of all
+their sonorous strokes, throbbed as it brushed the flowers at our feet.
+
+Sometimes, at the water's edge and embedded in trees, we would come upon
+a house of the kind called 'pleasure houses,' isolated and lost, seeing
+nothing of the world, save the river which bathed its feet. A young
+woman, whose pensive face and fashionable veils did not suggest a local
+origin, and who had doubtless come there, in the popular phrase, 'to
+bury herself,' to taste the bitter sweetness of feeling that her name,
+and still more the name of him whose heart she had once held, but had
+been unable to keep, were unknown there, stood framed in a window from
+which she had no outlook beyond the boat that was moored beside her
+door. She raised her eyes with an air of distraction when she heard,
+through the trees that lined the bank, the voices of passers-by of whom,
+before they came in sight, she might be certain that never had they
+known, nor would they know, the faithless lover, that nothing in their
+past lives bore his imprint, which nothing in their future would have
+occasion to receive. One felt that in her renunciation of life she had
+willingly abandoned those places in which she would at least have been
+able to see him whom she loved, for others where he had never trod. And
+I watched her, as she returned from some walk along a road where she had
+known that he would not appear, drawing from her submissive fingers long
+gloves of a precious, useless charm.
+
+Never, in the course of our walks along the 'Guermantes way,' might
+we penetrate as far as the source of the Vivonne, of which I had often
+thought, which had in my mind so abstract, so ideal an existence, that I
+had been as much surprised when some one told me that it was actually
+to be found in the same department, and at a given number of miles from
+Combray, as I had been on the day when I had learned that there was
+another fixed point somewhere on the earth's surface, where, according
+to the ancients, opened the jaws of Hell. Nor could we ever reach that
+other goal, to which I longed so much to attain, Guermantes itself. I
+knew that it was the residence of its proprietors, the Duc and Duchesse
+de Guermantes, I knew that they were real personages who did actually
+exist, but whenever I thought about them I pictured them to myself
+either in tapestry, as was the 'Coronation of Esther' which hung in our
+church, or else in changing, rainbow colours, as was Gilbert the Bad in
+his window, where he passed from cabbage green, when I was dipping my
+fingers in the holy water stoup, to plum blue when I had reached our row
+of chairs, or again altogether impalpable, like the image of Geneviève
+de Brabant, ancestress of the Guermantes family, which the magic lantern
+sent wandering over the curtains of my room or flung aloft upon the
+ceiling--in short, always wrapped in the mystery of the Merovingian age,
+and bathed, as in a sunset, in the orange light which glowed from the
+resounding syllable 'antes.' And if, in spite of that, they were for
+me, in their capacity as a duke and a duchess, real people, though of
+an unfamiliar kind, this ducal personality was in its turn enormously
+distended, immaterialised, so as to encircle and contain that Guermantes
+of which they were duke and duchess, all that sunlit 'Guermantes way'
+of our walks, the course of the Vivonne, its water-lilies and its
+overshadowing trees, and an endless series of hot summer afternoons.
+And I knew that they bore not only the titles of Duc and Duchesse de
+Guermantes, but that since the fourteenth century, when, after vain
+attempts to conquer its earlier lords in battle, they had allied
+themselves by marriage, and so became Counts of Combray, the first
+citizens, consequently, of the place, and yet the only ones among
+its citizens who did not reside in it--Comtes de Combray, possessing
+Combray, threading it on their string of names and titles, absorbing it
+in their personalities, and illustrating, no doubt, in themselves that
+strange and pious melancholy which was peculiar to Combray; proprietors
+of the town, though not of any particular house there; dwelling,
+presumably, out of doors, in the street, between heaven and earth, like
+that Gilbert de Guermantes, of whom I could see, in the stained glass of
+the apse of Saint-Hilaire, only the 'other side' in dull black lacquer,
+if I raised my eyes to look for him, when I was going to Camus's for a
+packet of salt.
+
+And then it happened that, going the 'Guermantes way,' I passed
+occasionally by a row of well-watered little gardens, over whose hedges
+rose clusters of dark blossom. I would stop before them, hoping to gain
+some precious addition to my experience, for I seemed to have before my
+eyes a fragment of that riverside country which I had longed so much
+to see and know since coming upon a description of it by one of my
+favourite authors. And it was with that story-book land, with its
+imagined soil intersected by a hundred bubbling watercourses, that
+Guermantes, changing its form in my mind, became identified, after I
+heard Dr. Percepied speak of the flowers and the charming rivulets and
+fountains that were to be seen there in the ducal park. I used to dream
+that Mme. de Guermantes, taking a sudden capricious fancy for myself,
+invited me there, that all day long she stood fishing for trout by my
+side. And when evening came, holding my hand in her own, as we passed by
+the little gardens of her vassals, she would point out to me the flowers
+that leaned their red and purple spikes along the tops of the low walls,
+and would teach me all their names. She would make me tell her, too, all
+about the poems that I meant to compose. And these dreams reminded me
+that, since I wished, some day, to become a writer, it was high time to
+decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked
+myself the question, and tried to discover some subjects to which I
+could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind
+would stop like a clock, I would see before me vacuity, nothing, would
+feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent, or that, perhaps, a
+malady of the brain was hindering its development. Sometimes I would
+depend upon my father's arranging everything for me. He was so powerful,
+in such favour with the people who 'really counted,' that he made it
+possible for us to transgress laws which Françoise had taught me to
+regard as more ineluctable than the laws of life and death, as when we
+were allowed to postpone for a year the compulsory repainting of the
+walls of our house, alone among all the houses in that part of Paris,
+or when he obtained permission from the Minister for Mme. Sazerat's
+son, who had been ordered to some watering-place, to take his degree two
+months before the proper time, among the candidates whose surnames began
+with 'A,' instead of having to wait his turn as an 'S.' If I had fallen
+seriously ill, if I had been captured by brigands, convinced that my
+father's understanding with the supreme powers was too complete, that
+his letters of introduction to the Almighty were too irresistible for my
+illness or captivity to turn out anything but vain illusions, in which
+there was no danger actually threatening me, I should have awaited
+with perfect composure the inevitable hour of my return to comfortable
+realities, of my deliverance from bondage or restoration to health.
+Perhaps this want of talent, this black cavity which gaped in my mind
+when I ransacked it for the theme of my future writings, was itself no
+more, either, than an unsubstantial illusion, and would be brought to
+an end by the intervention of my father, who would arrange with the
+Government and with Providence that I should be the first writer of
+my day. But at other times, while my parents were growing impatient
+at seeing me loiter behind instead of following them, my actual life,
+instead of seeming an artificial creation by my father, and one which he
+could modify as he chose, appeared, on the contrary, to be comprised in
+a larger reality which had not been created for my benefit, from whose
+judgments there was no appeal, in the heart of which I was bound,
+helpless, without friend or ally, and beyond which no further
+possibilities lay concealed. It was evident to me then that I existed in
+the same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die
+like them, and that among them I was to be distinguished merely as one
+of those who have no aptitude for writing. And so, utterly despondent, I
+renounced literature for ever, despite the encouragements that had been
+given me by Bloch. This intimate, spontaneous feeling, this sense of the
+nullity of my intellect, prevailed against all the flattering speeches
+that might be lavished upon me, as a wicked man, when everyone is loud
+in the praise of his good deeds, is gnawed by the secret remorse of
+conscience.
+
+One day my mother said: "You are always talking about Mme. de
+Guermantes. Well, Dr. Percepied did a great deal for her when she was
+ill, four years ago, and so she is coming to Combray for his daughter's
+wedding. You will be able to see her in church." It was from Dr.
+Percepied, as it happened, that I had heard most about Mme. de
+Guermantes, and he had even shewn us the number of an illustrated paper
+in which she was depicted in the costume which she had worn at a fancy
+dress ball given by the Princesse de Léon.
+
+Suddenly, during the nuptial mass, the beadle, by moving to one side,
+enabled me to see, sitting in a chapel, a lady with fair hair and a
+large nose, piercing blue eyes, a billowy scarf of mauve silk, glossy
+and new and brilliant, and a little spot at the corner of her nose. And
+because on the surface of her face, which was red, as though she had
+been very warm, I could make out, diluted and barely perceptible,
+details which resembled the portrait that had been shewn to me; because,
+more especially, the particular features which I remarked in this lady,
+if I attempted to catalogue them, formulated themselves in precisely the
+same terms:--_a large nose, blue eyes_, as Dr. Percepied had used when
+describing in my presence the Duchesse de Guermantes, I said to myself:
+"This lady is like the Duchesse de Guermantes." Now the chapel from
+which she was following the service was that of Gilbert the Bad; beneath
+its flat tombstones, yellowed and bulging like cells of honey in a comb,
+rested the bones of the old Counts of Brabant; and I remembered having
+heard it said that this chapel was reserved for the Guermantes family,
+whenever any of its members came to attend a ceremony at Combray; there
+was, indeed, but one woman resembling the portrait of Mme. de Guermantes
+who on that day, the very day on which she was expected to come there,
+could be sitting in that chapel: it was she! My disappointment was
+immense. It arose from my not having borne in mind, when I thought of
+Mme. de Guermantes, that I was picturing her to myself in the colours of
+a tapestry or a painted window, as living in another century, as being
+of another substance than the rest of the human race. Never had I taken
+into account that she might have a red face, a mauve scarf like Mme.
+Sazerat; and the oval curve of her cheeks reminded me so strongly of
+people whom I had seen at home that the suspicion brushed against my
+mind (though it was immediately banished) that this lady in her creative
+principle, in the molecules of her physical composition, was perhaps
+not substantially the Duchesse de Guermantes, but that her body, in
+ignorance of the name that people had given it, belonged to a certain
+type of femininity which included, also, the wives of doctors and
+tradesmen. "It is, it must be Mme. de Guermantes, and no one else!" were
+the words underlying the attentive and astonished expression with
+which I was gazing upon this image, which, naturally enough, bore no
+resemblance to those that had so often, under the same title of 'Mme. de
+Guermantes,' appeared to me in dreams, since this one had not been, like
+the others, formed arbitrarily by myself, but had sprung into sight for
+the first time, only a moment ago, here in church; an image which was
+not of the same nature, was not colourable at will, like those others
+that allowed themselves to imbibe the orange tint of a sonorous
+syllable, but which was so real that everything, even to the fiery
+little spot at the corner of her nose, gave an assurance of her
+subjection to the laws of life, as in a transformation scene on the
+stage a crease in the dress of a fairy, a quivering of her tiny finger,
+indicate the material presence of a living actress before our eyes,
+whereas we were uncertain, till then, whether we were not looking merely
+at a projection of limelight from a lantern.
+
+Meanwhile I was endeavouring to apply to this image, which the prominent
+nose, the piercing eyes pinned down and fixed in my field of vision
+(perhaps because it was they that had first struck it, that had made the
+first impression on its surface, before I had had time to wonder
+whether the woman who thus appeared before me might possibly be Mme. de
+Guermantes), to this fresh and unchanging image the idea: "It is Mme. de
+Guermantes"; but I succeeded only in making the idea pass between me and
+the image, as though they were two discs moving in separate planes,
+with a space between. But this Mme. de Guermantes of whom I had so often
+dreamed, now that I could see that she had a real existence independent
+of myself, acquired a fresh increase of power over my imagination,
+which, paralysed for a moment by contact with a reality so different
+from anything that it had expected, began to react and to say within me:
+"Great and glorious before the days of Charlemagne, the Guermantes
+had the right of life and death over their vassals; the Duchesse de
+Guermantes descends from Geneviève de Brabant. She does not know, nor
+would she consent to know, any of the people who are here to-day."
+
+And then--oh, marvellous independence of the human gaze, tied to the
+human face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray,
+alone, as far as it may choose--while Mme. de Guermantes sat in the
+chapel above the tombs of her dead ancestors, her gaze lingered here
+and wandered there, rose to the capitals of the pillars, and even rested
+upon myself, like a ray of sunlight straying down the nave, but a ray
+of sunlight which, at the moment when I received its caress, appeared
+conscious of where it fell. As for Mme. de Guermantes herself, since
+she remained there motionless, sitting like a mother who affects not to
+notice the rude or awkward conduct of her children who, in the course
+of their play, are speaking to people whom she does not know, it was
+impossible for me to determine whether she approved or condemned the
+vagrancy of her eyes in the careless detachment of her heart.
+
+I felt it to be important that she should not leave the church before
+I had been able to look long enough upon her, reminding myself that for
+years past I had regarded the sight of her as a thing eminently to be
+desired, and I kept my eyes fixed on her, as though by gazing at her
+I should be able to carry away and incorporate, to store up, for later
+reference, in myself the memory of that prominent nose, those red
+cheeks, of all those details which struck me as so much precious,
+authentic, unparalleled information with regard to her face. And now
+that, whenever I brought my mind to bear upon that face--and
+especially, perhaps, in my determination, that form of the instinct
+of self-preservation with which we guard everything that is best in
+ourselves, not to admit that I had been in any way deceived--I found
+only beauty there; setting her once again (since they were one and the
+same person, this lady who sat before me and that Duchesse de Guermantes
+whom, until then, I had been used to conjure into an imagined shape)
+apart from and above that common run of humanity with which the sight,
+pure and simple, of her in the flesh had made me for a moment confound
+her, I grew indignant when I heard people saying, in the congregation
+round me: "She is better looking than Mme. Sazerat" or "than Mlle.
+Vinteuil," as though she had been in any way comparable with them. And
+my gaze resting upon her fair hair, her blue eyes, the lines of her
+neck, and overlooking the features which might have reminded me of
+the faces of other women, I cried out within myself, as I admired this
+deliberately unfinished sketch: "How lovely she is! What true nobility!
+it is indeed a proud Guermantes, the descendant of Geneviève de Brabant,
+that I have before me!" And the care which I took to focus all my
+attention upon her face succeeded in isolating it so completely that
+to-day, when I call that marriage ceremony to mind, I find it impossible
+to visualise any single person who was present except her, and the
+beadle who answered me in the affirmative when I inquired whether the
+lady was, indeed, Mme. de Guermantes. But her, I can see her still quite
+clearly, especially at the moment when the procession filed into the
+sacristy, lighted by the intermittent, hot sunshine of a windy and rainy
+day, where Mme. de Guermantes found herself in the midst of all
+those Combray people whose names, even, she did not know, but whose
+inferiority proclaimed her own supremacy so loud that she must, in
+return, feel for them a genuine, pitying sympathy, and whom she might
+count on impressing even more forcibly by virtue of her simplicity and
+natural charm. And then, too, since she could not bring into play the
+deliberate glances, charged with a definite meaning, which one directs,
+in a crowd, towards people whom one knows, but must allow her vague
+thoughts to escape continually from her eyes in a flood of blue light
+which she was powerless to control, she was anxious not to distress in
+any way, not to seem to be despising those humbler mortals over whom
+that current flowed, by whom it was everywhere arrested. I can see
+again to-day, above her mauve scarf, silky and buoyant, the gentle
+astonishment in her eyes, to which she had added, without daring to
+address it to anyone in particular, but so that everyone might enjoy his
+share of it, the almost timid smile of a sovereign lady who seems to
+be making an apology for her presence among the vassals whom she loves.
+This smile rested upon myself, who had never ceased to follow her with
+my eyes. And I, remembering the glance which she had let fall upon me
+during the service, blue as a ray of sunlight that had penetrated the
+window of Gilbert the Bad, said to myself, "Of course, she is thinking
+about me." I fancied that I had found favour in her sight, that she
+would continue to think of me after she had left the church, and would,
+perhaps, grow pensive again, that evening, at Guermantes, on my account.
+And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to
+make us love a woman that she looks on us with contempt, as I supposed
+Mlle. Swann to have done, while we imagine that she cannot ever be ours,
+it is enough, also, sometimes that she looks on us kindly, as Mme. de
+Guermantes did then, while we think of her as almost ours already. Her
+eyes waxed blue as a periwinkle flower, wholly beyond my reach, yet
+dedicated by her to me; and the sun, bursting out again from behind
+a threatening cloud and darting the full force of its rays on to the
+Square and into the sacristy, shed a geranium glow over the red carpet
+laid down for the wedding, along which Mme. de Guermantes smilingly
+advanced, and covered its woollen texture with a nap of rosy velvet, a
+bloom of light, giving it that sort of tenderness, of solemn sweetness
+in the pomp of a joyful celebration, which characterises certain pages
+of _Lohengrin_, certain paintings by Carpaccio, and makes us understand
+how Baudelaire was able to apply to the sound of the trumpet the epithet
+'delicious.'
+
+How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the
+'Guermantes way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect
+on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must
+abandon all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I
+felt for this, while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself,
+made me suffer so acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of
+its own accord, by a sort of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased
+entirely to think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on
+which my want of talent precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart
+from all those literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment
+to anything, suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a
+stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the
+special pleasure that each of them gave me, and also because they
+appeared to be concealing, beneath what my eyes could see, something
+which they invited me to approach and seize from them, but which,
+despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As I felt that the
+mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand there in front
+of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavouring to penetrate with
+my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And if I had then to hasten
+after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still seek to
+recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concentrate upon
+recalling exactly the line of the roof, the colour of the stone, which,
+without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to be teeming,
+ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which they were
+themselves no more than the outer coverings. It was certainly not any
+impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had lost
+of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of them
+was associated with some material object devoid of any intellectual
+value, and suggesting no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an
+unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and
+in that way distracted me from the tedium, from the sense of my own
+impotence which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme
+for some great literary work. So urgent was the task imposed on my
+conscience by these impressions of form or perfume or colour--to strive
+for a perception of what lay hidden beneath them, that I was never
+long in seeking an excuse which would allow me to relax so strenuous an
+effort and to spare myself the fatigue that it involved. As good luck
+would have it, my parents called me; I felt that I had not, for the
+moment, the calm environment necessary for a successful pursuit of my
+researches, and that it would be better to think no more of the matter
+until I reached home, and not to exhaust myself in the meantime to no
+purpose. And so I concerned myself no longer with the mystery that lay
+hidden in a form or a perfume, quite at ease in my mind, since I was
+taking it home with me, protected by its visible and tangible covering,
+beneath which I should find it still alive, like the fish which, on days
+when I had been allowed to go out fishing, I used to carry back in my
+basket, buried in a couch of grass which kept them cool and fresh. Once
+in the house again I would begin to think of something else, and so my
+mind would become littered (as my room was with the flowers that I had
+gathered on my walks, or the odds and ends that people had given me)
+with a stone from the surface of which the sunlight was reflected, a
+roof, the sound of a bell, the smell of fallen leaves, a confused mass
+of different images, under which must have perished long ago the reality
+of which I used to have some foreboding, but which I never had the
+energy to discover and bring to light. Once, however, when we had
+prolonged our walk far beyond its ordinary limits, and so had been very
+glad to encounter, half way home, as afternoon darkened into evening,
+Dr. Percepied, who drove past us at full speed in his carriage, saw and
+recognised us, stopped, and made us jump in beside him, I received an
+impression of this sort which I did not abandon without having first
+subjected it to an examination a little more thorough. I had been set
+on the box beside the coachman, we were going like the wind because
+the Doctor had still, before returning to Combray, to call at
+Martinville-le-Sec, at the house of a patient, at whose door he asked
+us to wait for him. At a bend in the road I experienced, suddenly, that
+special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other, when I caught
+sight of the twin steeples of Martinville, on which the setting sun was
+playing, while the movement of the carriage and the windings of the road
+seemed to keep them continually changing their position; and then of a
+third steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, which, although separated from them
+by a hill and a valley, and rising from rather higher ground in the
+distance, appeared none the less to be standing by their side.
+
+In ascertaining and noting the shape of their spires, the changes
+of aspect, the sunny warmth of their surfaces, I felt that I was not
+penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay
+behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at
+once to contain and to conceal.
+
+The steeples appeared so distant, and we ourselves seemed to come so
+little nearer them, that I was astonished when, a few minutes later, we
+drew up outside the church of Martinville. I did not know the reason for
+the pleasure which I had found in seeing them upon the horizon, and
+the business of trying to find out what that reason was seemed to me
+irksome; I wished only to keep in reserve in my brain those converging
+lines, moving in the sunshine, and, for the time being, to think of
+them no more. And it is probable that, had I done so, those two steeples
+would have vanished for ever, in a great medley of trees and roofs and
+scents and sounds which I had noticed and set apart on account of the
+obscure sense of pleasure which they gave me, but without ever exploring
+them more fully. I got down from the box to talk to my parents while we
+were waiting for the Doctor to reappear. Then it was time to start; I
+climbed up again to my place, turning my head to look back, once more,
+at my steeples, of which, a little later, I caught a farewell glimpse
+at a turn in the road. The coachman, who seemed little inclined for
+conversation, having barely acknowledged my remarks, I was obliged,
+in default of other society, to fall back on my own, and to attempt to
+recapture the vision of my steeples. And presently their outlines and
+their sunlit surface, as though they had been a sort of rind, were
+stripped apart; a little of what they had concealed from me became
+apparent; an idea came into my mind which had not existed for me a
+moment earlier, framed itself in words in my head; and the pleasure
+with which the first sight of them, just now, had filled me was so much
+enhanced that, overpowered by a sort of intoxication, I could no longer
+think of anything but them. At this point, although we had now travelled
+a long way from Martinville, I turned my head and caught sight of them
+again, quite black this time, for the sun had meanwhile set. Every few
+minutes a turn in the road would sweep them out of sight; then they
+shewed themselves for the last time, and so I saw them no more.
+
+Without admitting to myself that what lay buried within the steeples of
+Martinville must be something analogous to a charming phrase, since it
+was in the form of words which gave me pleasure that it had appeared to
+me, I borrowed a pencil and some paper from the Doctor, and composed,
+in spite of the jolting of the carriage, to appease my conscience and to
+satisfy my enthusiasm, the following little fragment, which I have since
+discovered, and now reproduce, with only a slight revision here and
+there.
+
+Alone, rising from the level of the plain, and seemingly lost in
+that expanse of open country, climbed to the sky the twin steeples of
+Martinville. Presently we saw three: springing into position confronting
+them by a daring volt, a third, a dilatory steeple, that of Vieuxvicq,
+was come to join them. The minutes passed, we were moving rapidly, and
+yet the three steeples were always a long way ahead of us, like
+three birds perched upon the plain, motionless and conspicuous in
+the sunlight. Then the steeple of Vieuxvicq withdrew, took its proper
+distance, and the steeples of Martinville remained alone, gilded by
+the light of the setting sun, which, even at that distance, I could
+see playing and smiling upon their sloped sides. We had been so long in
+approaching them that I was thinking of the time that must still elapse
+before we could reach them when, of a sudden, the carriage, having
+turned a corner, set us down at their feet; and they had flung
+themselves so abruptly in our path that we had barely time to stop
+before being dashed against the porch of the church.
+
+We resumed our course; we had left Martinville some little time, and
+the village, after accompanying us for a few seconds, had already
+disappeared, when, lingering alone on the horizon to watch our flight,
+its steeples and that of Vieuxvicq waved once again, in token of
+farewell, their sun-bathed pinnacles. Sometimes one would withdraw,
+so that the other two might watch us for a moment still; then the road
+changed direction, they veered in the light like three golden pivots,
+and vanished from my gaze. But, a little later, when we were already
+close to Combray, the sun having set meanwhile, I caught sight of them
+for the last time, far away, and seeming no more now than three flowers
+painted upon the sky above the low line of fields. They made me think,
+too, of three maidens in a legend, abandoned in a solitary place over
+which night had begun to fall; and while we drew away from them at a
+gallop, I could see them timidly seeking their way, and, after some
+awkward, stumbling movements of their noble silhouettes, drawing close
+to one another, slipping one behind another, shewing nothing more,
+now, against the still rosy sky than a single dusky form, charming and
+resigned, and so vanishing in the night.
+
+I never thought again of this page, but at the moment when, on my
+corner of the box-seat, where the Doctor's coachman was in the habit
+of placing, in a hamper, the fowls which he had bought at Martinville
+market, I had finished writing it, I found such a sense of happiness,
+felt that it had so entirely relieved my mind of the obsession of the
+steeples, and of the mystery which they concealed, that, as though I
+myself were a hen and had just laid an egg, I began to sing at the top
+of my voice.
+
+All day long, during these walks, I had been able to muse upon the
+pleasure that there would be in the friendship of the Duchesse de
+Guermantes, in fishing for trout, in drifting by myself in a boat on the
+Vivonne; and, greedy for happiness, I asked nothing more from life, in
+such moments, than that it should consist always of a series of joyous
+afternoons. But when, on our way home, I had caught sight of a farm, on
+the left of the road, at some distance from two other farms which were
+themselves close together, and from which, to return to Combray, we need
+only turn down an avenue of oaks, bordered on one side by a series of
+orchard-closes, each one planted at regular intervals with apple-trees
+which cast upon the ground, when they were lighted by the setting sun,
+the Japanese stencil of their shadows; then, sharply, my heart would
+begin to beat, I would know that in half an hour we should be at
+home, and that there, as was the rule on days when we had taken the
+'Guermantes way' and dinner was, in consequence, served later than
+usual, I should be sent to bed as soon as I had swallowed my soup, so
+that my mother, kept at table, just as though there had been company to
+dinner, would not come upstairs to say good night to me in bed. The zone
+of melancholy which I then entered was totally distinct from that other
+zone, in which I had been bounding for joy a moment earlier, just as
+sometimes in the sky a band of pink is separated, as though by a line
+invisibly ruled, from a band of green or black. You may see a bird
+flying across the pink; it draws near the border-line, touches it,
+enters and is lost upon the black. The longings by which I had just
+now been absorbed, to go to Guermantes, to travel, to live a life of
+happiness--I was now so remote from them that their fulfilment would
+have afforded me no pleasure. How readily would I have sacrificed them
+all, just to be able to cry, all night long, in the arms of Mamma!
+Shuddering with emotion, I could not take my agonised eyes from my
+mother's face, which was not to appear that evening in the bedroom where
+I could see myself already lying, in imagination; and wished only that
+I were lying dead. And this state would persist until the morrow, when,
+the rays of morning leaning their bars of light, as the gardener might
+lean his ladder, against the wall overgrown with nasturtiums, which
+clambered up it as far as my window-sill, I would leap out of bed to run
+down at once into the garden, with no thought of the fact that evening
+must return, and with it the hour when I must leave my mother. And so
+it was from the 'Guermantes way' that I learned to distinguish between
+these states which reigned alternately in my mind, during certain
+periods, going so far as to divide every day between them, each one
+returning to dispossess the other with the regularity of a fever and
+ague: contiguous, and yet so foreign to one another, so devoid of means
+of communication, that I could no longer understand, or even picture to
+myself, in one state what I had desired or dreaded or even done in the
+other.
+
+So the 'Méséglise way' and the 'Guermantes way' remain for me linked
+with many of the little incidents of that one of all the divers lives
+along whose parallel lines we are moved, which is the most abundant in
+sudden reverses of fortune, the richest in episodes; I mean the life of
+the mind. Doubtless it makes in us an imperceptible progress, and the
+truths which have changed for us its meaning and its aspect, which have
+opened new paths before our feet, we had for long been preparing for
+their discovery; but that preparation was unconscious; and for us
+those truths date only from the day, from the minute when they became
+apparent. The flowers which played then among the grass, the water
+which rippled past in the sunshine, the whole landscape which served as
+environment to their apparition lingers around the memory of them still
+with its unconscious or unheeding air; and, certainly, when they were
+slowly scrutinised by this humble passer-by, by this dreaming
+child--as the face of a king is scrutinised by a petitioner lost in the
+crowd--that scrap of nature, that corner of a garden could never suppose
+that it would be thanks to him that they would be elected to survive in
+all their most ephemeral details; and yet the scent of hawthorn which
+strays plundering along the hedge from which, in a little while, the
+dog-roses will have banished it, a sound of footsteps followed by no
+echo, upon a gravel path, a bubble formed at the side of a waterplant by
+the current, and formed only to burst--my exaltation of mind has borne
+them with it, and has succeeded in making them traverse all these
+successive years, while all around them the one-trodden ways have
+vanished, while those who thronged those ways, and even the memory of
+those who thronged those trodden ways, are dead. Sometimes the fragment
+of landscape thus transported into the present will detach itself in
+such isolation from all associations that it floats uncertainly upon my
+mind, like a flowering isle of Delos, and I am unable to say from
+what place, from what time--perhaps, quite simply, from which of my
+dreams--it comes. But it is pre-eminently as the deepest layer of my
+mental soil, as firm sites on which I still may build, that I regard
+the Méséglise and Guermantes 'ways.' It is because I used to think of
+certain things, of certain people, while I was roaming along them, that
+the things, the people which they taught me to know, and these alone,
+I still take seriously, still give me joy. Whether it be that the faith
+which creates has ceased to exist in me, or that reality will take shape
+in the memory alone, the flowers that people shew me nowadays for the
+first time never seem to me to be true flowers. The 'Méséglise way'
+with its lilacs, its hawthorns, its cornflowers, its poppies, its
+apple-trees, the 'Guermantes way' with its river full of tadpoles, its
+water-lilies, and its buttercups have constituted for me for all time
+the picture of the land in which I fain would pass my life, in which my
+only requirements are that I may go out fishing, drift idly in a boat,
+see the ruins of a gothic fortress in the grass, and find hidden among
+the cornfields--as Saint-André-des-Champs lay hidden--an old church,
+monumental, rustic, and yellow like a mill-stone; and the cornflowers,
+the hawthorns, the apple-trees which I may happen, when I go walking, to
+encounter in the fields, because they are situated at the same depth, on
+the level of my past life, at once establish contact with my heart. And
+yet, because there is an element of individuality in places, when I am
+seized with a desire to see again the 'Guermantes way,' it would not
+be satisfied were I led to the banks of a river in which were lilies
+as fair, or even fairer than those in the Vivonne, any more than on my
+return home in the evening, at the hour when there awakened in me that
+anguish which, later on in life, transfers itself to the passion of
+love, and may even become its inseparable companion, I should have
+wished for any strange mother to come in and say good night to me,
+though she were far more beautiful and more intelligent than my own. No:
+just as the one thing necessary to send me to sleep contented (in that
+untroubled peace which no mistress, in later years, has ever been able
+to give me, since one has doubts of them at the moment when one believes
+in them, and never can possess their hearts as I used to receive, in her
+kiss, the heart of my mother, complete, without scruple or reservation,
+unburdened by any liability save to myself) was that it should be my
+mother who came, that she should incline towards me that face on which
+there was, beneath her eye, something that was, it appears, a blemish,
+and which I loved as much as all the rest--so what I want to see again
+is the 'Guermantes way' as I knew it, with the farm that stood a little
+apart from the two neighbouring farms, pressed so close together, at the
+entrance to the oak avenue; those meadows upon whose surface, when it
+is polished by the sun to the mirroring radiance of a lake, are outlined
+the leaves of the apple-trees; that whole landscape whose individuality
+sometimes, at night, in my dreams, binds me with a power that is almost
+fantastic, of which I can discover no trace when I awake.
+
+No doubt, by virtue of having permanently and indissolubly combined in
+me groups of different impressions, for no reason save that they had
+made me feel several separate things at the same time, the Méséglise
+and Guermantes 'ways' left me exposed, in later life, to much
+disillusionment, and even to many mistakes. For often I have wished to
+see a person again without realising that it was simply because that
+person recalled to me a hedge of hawthorns in blossom; and I have been
+led to believe, and to make some one else believe in an aftermath of
+affection, by what was no more than an inclination to travel. But by
+the same qualities, and by their persistence in those of my impressions,
+to-day, to which they can find an attachment, the two 'ways' give to
+those impressions a foundation, depth, a dimension lacking from the
+rest. They invest them, too, with a charm, a significance which is for
+me alone. When, on a summer evening, the resounding sky growls like a
+tawny lion, and everyone is complaining of the storm, it is along the
+'Méséglise way' that my fancy strays alone in ecstasy, inhaling,
+through the noise of falling rain, the odour of invisible and persistent
+lilac-trees.
+
+And so I would often lie until morning, dreaming of the old days at
+Combray, of my melancholy and wakeful evenings there; of other days
+besides, the memory of which had been more lately restored to me by the
+taste--by what would have been called at Combray the 'perfume'---of a
+cup of tea; and, by an association of memories, of a story which, many
+years after I had left the little place, had been told me of a love
+affair in which Swann had been involved before I was born; with that
+accuracy of detail which it is easier, often, to obtain when we are
+studying the lives of people who have been dead for centuries than when
+we are trying to chronicle those of our own most intimate friends, an
+accuracy which it seems as impossible to attain as it seemed impossible
+to speak from one town to another, before we learned of the contrivance
+by which that impossibility has been overcome. All these memories,
+following one after another, were condensed into a single substance,
+but had not so far coalesced that I could not discern between the
+three strata, between my oldest, my instinctive memories, those others,
+inspired more recently by a taste or 'perfume,' and those which were
+actually the memories of another, from whom I had acquired them at
+second hand--no fissures, indeed, no geological faults, but at least
+those veins, those streaks of colour which in certain rocks, in certain
+marbles, point to differences of origin, age, and formation.
+
+It is true that, when morning drew near, I would long have settled the
+brief uncertainty of my waking dream, I would know in what room I
+was actually lying, would have reconstructed it round about me in
+the darkness, and--fixing my orientation by memory alone, or with the
+assistance of a feeble glimmer of light at the foot of which I placed
+the curtains and the window--would have reconstructed it complete and
+with its furniture, as an architect and an upholsterer might do, working
+upon an original, discarded plan of the doors and windows; would have
+replaced the mirrors and set the chest-of-drawers on its accustomed
+site. But scarcely had daylight itself--and no longer the gleam from
+a last, dying ember on a brass curtain-rod, which I had mistaken for
+daylight--traced across the darkness, as with a stroke of chalk across
+a blackboard, its first white correcting ray, when the window, with
+its curtains, would leave the frame of the doorway, in which I had
+erroneously placed it, while, to make room for it, the writing-table,
+which my memory had clumsily fixed where the window ought to be, would
+hurry off at full speed, thrusting before it the mantelpiece, and
+sweeping aside the wall of the passage; the well of the courtyard would
+be enthroned on the spot where, a moment earlier, my dressing-room had
+lain, and the dwelling-place which I had built up for myself in the
+darkness would have gone to join all those other dwellings of which I
+had caught glimpses from the whirlpool of awakening; put to flight
+by that pale sign traced above my window-curtains by the uplifted
+forefinger of day.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SWANN IN LOVE
+
+To admit you to the 'little nucleus,' the 'little group,' the 'little
+clan' at the Verdurins', one condition sufficed, but that one was
+indispensable; you must give tacit adherence to a Creed one of whose
+articles was that the young pianist, whom Mme. Verdurin had taken under
+her patronage that year, and of whom she said "Really, it oughtn't to
+be allowed, to play Wagner as well as that!" left both Planté
+and Rubinstein 'sitting'; while Dr. Cottard was a more brilliant
+diagnostician than Potain. Each 'new recruit' whom the Verdurins failed
+to persuade that the evenings spent by other people, in other houses
+than theirs, were as dull as ditch-water, saw himself banished
+forthwith. Women being in this respect more rebellious than men, more
+reluctant to lay aside all worldly curiosity and the desire to find out
+for themselves whether other drawing-rooms might not sometimes be as
+entertaining, and the Verdurins feeling, moreover, that this critical
+spirit and this demon of frivolity might, by their contagion, prove
+fatal to the orthodoxy of the little church, they had been obliged to
+expel, one after another, all those of the 'faithful' who were of the
+female sex.
+
+Apart from the doctor's young wife, they were reduced almost exclusively
+that season (for all that Mme. Verdurin herself was a thoroughly 'good'
+woman, and came of a respectable middle-class family, excessively rich
+and wholly undistinguished, with which she had gradually and of her own
+accord severed all connection) to a young woman almost of a 'certain
+class,' a Mme. de Crécy, whom Mme. Verdurin called by her Christian
+name, Odette, and pronounced a 'love,' and to the pianist's aunt, who
+looked as though she had, at one period, 'answered the bell': ladies
+quite ignorant of the world, who in their social simplicity were so
+easily led to believe that the Princesse de Sagan and the Duchesse
+de Guermantes were obliged to pay large sums of money to other poor
+wretches, in order to have anyone at their dinner-parties, that if
+somebody had offered to procure them an invitation to the house of
+either of those great dames, the old doorkeeper and the woman of 'easy
+virtue' would have contemptuously declined.
+
+The Verdurins never invited you to dinner; you had your 'place laid'
+there. There was never any programme for the evening's entertainment.
+The young pianist would play, but only if he felt inclined, for no one
+was forced to do anything, and, as M. Verdurin used to say: "We're all
+friends here. Liberty Hall, you know!"
+
+If the pianist suggested playing the Ride of the Valkyries, or the
+Prelude to Tristan, Mme. Verdurin would protest, not that the music was
+displeasing to her, but, on the contrary, that it made too violent an
+impression. "Then you want me to have one of my headaches? You know
+quite well, it's the same every time he plays that. I know what I'm
+in for. Tomorrow, when I want to get up--nothing doing!" If he was not
+going to play they talked, and one of the friends--usually the painter
+who was in favour there that year--would "spin," as M. Verdurin put
+it, "a damned funny yarn that made 'em all split with laughter," and
+especially Mme. Verdurin, for whom--so strong was her habit of taking
+literally the figurative accounts of her emotions--Dr. Cottard, who was
+then just starting in general practice, would "really have to come one
+day and set her jaw, which she had dislocated with laughing too much."
+
+Evening dress was barred, because you were all 'good pals,' and didn't
+want to look like the 'boring people' who were to be avoided like the
+plague, and only asked to the big evenings, which were given as seldom
+as possible, and then only if it would amuse the painter or make the
+musician better known. The rest of the time you were quite happy playing
+charades and having supper in fancy dress, and there was no need to
+mingle any strange element with the little 'clan.'
+
+But just as the 'good pals' came to take a more and more prominent place
+in Mme. Verdurin's life, so the 'bores,' the 'nuisances' grew to include
+everybody and everything that kept her friends away from her, that made
+them sometimes plead 'previous engagements,' the mother of one, the
+professional duties of another, the 'little place in the country' of a
+third. If Dr. Cottard felt bound to say good night as soon as they rose
+from table, so as to go back to some patient who was seriously ill; "I
+don't know," Mme. Verdurin would say, "I'm sure it will do him far more
+good if you don't go disturbing him again this evening; he will have a
+good night without you; to-morrow morning you can go round early and you
+will find him cured." From the beginning of December it would make her
+quite ill to think that the 'faithful' might fail her on Christmas and
+New Year's Days. The pianist's aunt insisted that he must accompany her,
+on the latter, to a family dinner at her mother's.
+
+"You don't suppose she'll die, your mother," exclaimed Mme. Verdurin
+bitterly, "if you don't have dinner with her on New Year's Day, like
+people in the _provinces_!"
+
+Her uneasiness was kindled again in Holy Week: "Now you, Doctor, you're
+a sensible, broad-minded man; you'll come, of course, on Good Friday,
+just like any other day?" she said to Cottard in the first year of the
+little 'nucleus,' in a loud and confident voice, as though there could
+be no doubt of his answer. But she trembled as she waited for it, for if
+he did not come she might find herself condemned to dine alone.
+
+"I shall come on Good Friday--to say good-bye to you, for we are going
+to spend the holidays in Auvergne."
+
+"In Auvergne? To be eaten by fleas and all sorts of creatures! A fine
+lot of good that will do you!" And after a solemn pause: "If you had
+only told us, we would have tried to get up a party, and all gone there
+together, comfortably."
+
+And so, too, if one of the 'faithful' had a friend, or one of the ladies
+a young man, who was liable, now and then, to make them miss an evening,
+the Verdurins, who were not in the least afraid of a woman's having a
+lover, provided that she had him in their company, loved him in their
+company and did not prefer him to their company, would say: "Very well,
+then, bring your friend along." And he would be put to the test, to see
+whether he was willing to have no secrets from Mme. Verdurin, whether he
+was susceptible of being enrolled in the 'little clan.' If he failed
+to pass, the faithful one who had introduced him would be taken on one
+side, and would be tactfully assisted to quarrel with the friend or
+mistress. But if the test proved satisfactory, the newcomer would in
+turn be numbered among the 'faithful.' And so when, in the course of
+this same year, the courtesan told M. Verdurin that she had made the
+acquaintance of such a charming gentleman, M. Swann, and hinted that
+he would very much like to be allowed to come, M. Verdurin carried the
+request at once to his wife. He never formed an opinion on any subject
+until she had formed hers, his special duty being to carry out her
+wishes and those of the 'faithful' generally, which he did with
+boundless ingenuity.
+
+"My dear, Mme. de Crécy has something to say to you. She would like to
+bring one of her friends here, a M. Swann. What do you say?"
+
+"Why, as if anybody could refuse anything to a little piece of
+perfection like that. Be quiet; no one asked your opinion. I tell you
+that you are a piece of perfection."
+
+"Just as you like," replied Odette, in an affected tone, and then went
+on: "You know I'm not fishing for compliments."
+
+"Very well; bring your friend, if he's nice."
+
+Now there was no connection whatsoever between the 'little nucleus' and
+the society which Swann frequented, and a purely worldly man would
+have thought it hardly worth his while, when occupying so exceptional
+a position in the world, to seek an introduction to the Verdurins. But
+Swann was so ardent a lover that, once he had got to know almost all the
+women of the aristocracy, once they had taught him all that there was
+to learn, he had ceased to regard those naturalisation papers, almost a
+patent of nobility, which the Faubourg Saint-Germain had bestowed upon
+him, save as a sort of negotiable bond, a letter of credit with no
+intrinsic value, which allowed him to improvise a status for himself in
+some little hole in the country, or in some obscure quarter of Paris,
+where the good-looking daughter of a local squire or solicitor had taken
+his fancy. For at such times desire, or love itself, would revive in
+him a feeling of vanity from which he was now quite free in his everyday
+life, although it was, no doubt, the same feeling which had originally
+prompted him towards that career as a man of fashion in which he had
+squandered his intellectual gifts upon frivolous amusements, and had
+made use of his erudition in matters of art only to advise society
+ladies what pictures to buy and how to decorate their houses; and this
+vanity it was which made him eager to shine, in the sight of any fair
+unknown who had captivated him for the moment, with a brilliance which
+the name of Swann by itself did not emit. And he was most eager when the
+fair unknown was in humble circumstances. Just as it is not by other
+men of intelligence that an intelligent man is afraid of being thought
+a fool, so it is not by the great gentleman but by boors and 'bounders'
+that a man of fashion is afraid of finding his social value underrated.
+Three-fourths of the mental ingenuity displayed, of the social
+falsehoods scattered broadcast ever since the world began by people
+whose importance they have served only to diminish, have been aimed at
+inferiors. And Swann, who behaved quite simply and was at his ease when
+with a duchess, would tremble for fear of being despised, and would
+instantly begin to pose, were he to meet her grace's maid.
+
+Unlike so many people, who, either from lack of energy or else from a
+resigned sense of the obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur
+to remain moored like houseboats to a certain point on the bank of the
+stream of life, abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them
+above and below that point, that degree in life in which they will
+remain fixed until the day of their death, and are content, in the
+end, to describe as pleasures, for want of any better, those mediocre
+distractions, that just not intolerable tedium which is enclosed there
+with them; Swann would endeavour not to find charm and beauty in the
+women with whom he must pass time, but to pass his time among women whom
+he had already found to be beautiful and charming. And these were, as
+often as not, women whose beauty was of a distinctly 'common' type, for
+the physical qualities which attracted him instinctively, and without
+reason, were the direct opposite of those that he admired in the women
+painted or sculptured by his favourite masters. Depth of character, or
+a melancholy expression on a woman's face would freeze his senses, which
+would, however, immediately melt at the sight of healthy, abundant, rosy
+human flesh.
+
+If on his travels he met a family whom it would have been more correct
+for him to make no attempt to know, but among whom a woman caught his
+eye, adorned with a special charm that was new to him, to remain on his
+'high horse' and to cheat the desire that she had kindled in him, to
+substitute a pleasure different from that which he might have tasted in
+her company by writing to invite one of his former mistresses to come
+and join him, would have seemed to him as cowardly an abdication in the
+face of life, as stupid a renunciation of a new form of happiness as if,
+instead of visiting the country where he was, he had shut himself up in
+his own rooms and looked at 'views' of Paris. He did not immure himself
+in the solid structure of his social relations, but had made of them, so
+as to be able to set it up afresh upon new foundations wherever a woman
+might take his fancy, one of those collapsible tents which explorers
+carry about with them. Any part of it which was not portable or could
+not be adapted to some fresh pleasure he would discard as valueless,
+however enviable it might appear to others. How often had his credit
+with a duchess, built up of the yearly accumulation of her desire to
+do him some favour for which she had never found an opportunity, been
+squandered in a moment by his calling upon her, in an indiscreetly
+worded message, for a recommendation by telegraph which would put him
+in touch at once with one of her agents whose daughter he had noticed in
+the country, just as a starving man might barter a diamond for a crust
+of bread. Indeed, when it was too late, he would laugh at himself for
+it, for there was in his nature, redeemed by many rare refinements, an
+element of clownishness. Then he belonged to that class of intelligent
+men who have led a life of idleness, and who seek consolation and,
+perhaps, an excuse in the idea, which their idleness offers to their
+intelligence, of objects as worthy of their interest as any that could
+be attained by art or learning, the idea that 'Life' contains situations
+more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written.
+So, at least, he would assure and had no difficulty in persuading the
+more subtle among his friends in the fashionable world, notably the
+Baron de Charlus, whom he liked to amuse with stories of the startling
+adventures that had befallen him, such as when he had met a woman in the
+train, and had taken her home with him, before discovering that she was
+the sister of a reigning monarch, in whose hands were gathered, at that
+moment, all the threads of European politics, of which he found himself
+kept informed in the most delightful fashion, or when, in the complexity
+of circumstances, it depended upon the choice which the Conclave
+was about to make whether he might or might not become the lover of
+somebody's cook.
+
+It was not only the brilliant phalanx of virtuous dowagers, generals
+and academicians, to whom he was bound by such close ties, that Swann
+compelled with so much cynicism to serve him as panders. All his friends
+were accustomed to receive, from time to time, letters which called on
+them for a word of recommendation or introduction, with a diplomatic
+adroitness which, persisting throughout all his successive 'affairs'
+and using different pretexts, revealed more glaringly than the clumsiest
+indiscretion, a permanent trait in his character and an unvarying quest.
+I used often to recall to myself when, many years later, I began to
+take an interest in his character because of the similarities which, in
+wholly different respects, it offered to my own, how, when he used to
+write to my grandfather (though not at the time we are now considering,
+for it was about the date of my own birth that Swann's great 'affair'
+began, and made a long interruption in his amatory practices) the
+latter, recognising his friend's handwriting on the envelope, would
+exclaim: "Here is Swann asking for something; on guard!" And, either
+from distrust or from the unconscious spirit of devilry which urges us
+to offer a thing only to those who do not want it, my grandparents would
+meet with an obstinate refusal the most easily satisfied of his prayers,
+as when he begged them for an introduction to a girl who dined with us
+every Sunday, and whom they were obliged, whenever Swann mentioned her,
+to pretend that they no longer saw, although they would be wondering,
+all through the week, whom they could invite to meet her, and often
+failed, in the end, to find anyone, sooner than make a sign to him who
+would so gladly have accepted.
+
+Occasionally a couple of my grandparents' acquaintance, who had been
+complaining for some time that they never saw Swann now, would announce
+with satisfaction, and perhaps with a slight inclination to make my
+grandparents envious of them, that he had suddenly become as charming as
+he could possibly be, and was never out of their house. My grandfather
+would not care to shatter their pleasant illusion, but would look at my
+grandmother, as he hummed the air of:
+
+
+  What is this mystery?
+  I cannot understand it;
+
+or of:
+
+
+  Vision fugitive...;
+  In matters such as this
+  'Tis best to close one's eyes.
+
+A few months later, if my grandfather asked Swann's new friend "What
+about Swann? Do you still see as much of him as ever?" the other's face
+would lengthen: "Never mention his name to me again!"
+
+"But I thought that you were such friends..."
+
+He had been intimate in this way for several months with some cousins
+of my grandmother, dining almost every evening at their house. Suddenly,
+and without any warning, he ceased to appear. They supposed him to be
+ill, and the lady of the house was going to send to inquire for him
+when, in her kitchen, she found a letter in his hand, which her cook had
+left by accident in the housekeeping book. In this he announced that he
+was leaving Paris and would not be able to come to the house again. The
+cook had been his mistress, and at the moment of breaking off relations
+she was the only one of the household whom he had thought it necessary
+to inform.
+
+But when his mistress for the time being was a woman in society, or at
+least one whose birth was not so lowly, nor her position so irregular
+that he was unable to arrange for her reception in 'society,' then for
+her sake he would return to it, but only to the particular orbit in
+which she moved or into which he had drawn her. "No good depending on
+Swann for this evening," people would say; "don't you remember, it's his
+American's night at the Opera?" He would secure invitations for her to
+the most exclusive drawing-rooms, to those houses where he himself
+went regularly, for weekly dinners or for poker; every evening, after
+a slight 'wave' imparted to his stiffly brushed red locks had tempered
+with a certain softness the ardour of his bold green eyes, he would
+select a flower for his buttonhole and set out to meet his mistress at
+the house of one or other of the women of his circle; and then, thinking
+of the affection and admiration which the fashionable folk, whom he
+always treated exactly as he pleased, would, when he met them there,
+lavish upon him in the presence of the woman whom he loved, he would
+find a fresh charm in that worldly existence of which he had grown
+weary, but whose substance, pervaded and warmly coloured by the
+flickering light which he had slipped into its midst, seemed to him
+beautiful and rare, now that he had incorporated in it a fresh love.
+
+But while each of these attachments, each of these flirtations had been
+the realisation, more or less complete, of a dream born of the sight of
+a face or a form which Swann had spontaneously, and without effort on
+his part, found charming, it was quite another matter when, one day at
+the theatre, he was introduced to Odette de Crécy by an old friend of
+his own, who had spoken of her to him as a ravishing creature with whom
+he might very possibly come to an understanding; but had made her out
+to be harder of conquest than she actually was, so as to appear to be
+conferring a special favour by the introduction. She had struck Swann
+not, certainly, as being devoid of beauty, but as endowed with a style
+of beauty which left him indifferent, which aroused in him no desire,
+which gave him, indeed, a sort of physical repulsion; as one of those
+women of whom every man can name some, and each will name different
+examples, who are the converse of the type which our senses demand. To
+give him any pleasure her profile was too sharp, her skin too delicate,
+her cheek-bones too prominent, her features too tightly drawn. Her eyes
+were fine, but so large that they seemed to be bending beneath their own
+weight, strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell
+or in an ill humour. Some time after this introduction at the theatre
+she had written to ask Swann whether she might see his collections,
+which would interest her so much, she, "an ignorant woman with a taste
+for beautiful things," saying that she would know him better when
+once she had seen him in his 'home,' where she imagined him to be "so
+comfortable with his tea and his books"; although she had not concealed
+her surprise at his being in that part of the town, which must be so
+depressing, and was "not nearly smart enough for such a very smart man."
+And when he allowed her to come she had said to him as she left how
+sorry she was to have stayed so short a time in a house into which she
+was so glad to have found her way at last, speaking of him as though he
+had meant something more to her than the rest of the people she knew,
+and appearing to unite their two selves with a kind of romantic bond
+which had made him smile. But at the time of life, tinged already with
+disenchantment, which Swann was approaching, when a man can content
+himself with being in love for the pleasure of loving without expecting
+too much in return, this linking of hearts, if it is no longer, as in
+early youth, the goal towards which love, of necessity, tends, still
+is bound to love by so strong an association of ideas that it may well
+become the cause of love if it presents itself first. In his younger
+days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves;
+later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough
+to make him fall in love with her. And so, at an age when it would
+appear--since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective
+pleasure--that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part
+in its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical
+order, without any foundation in desire. At this time of life a man has
+already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer
+evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws,
+before his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we falsify
+it by memory and by suggestion; recognising one of its symptoms we
+recall and recreate the rest. Since we possess its hymn, engraved on
+our hearts in its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the
+opening lines, potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for
+us to remember all that follows. And if she begin in the middle, where
+it sings of our existing, henceforward, for one another only, we are
+well enough attuned to that music to be able to take it up and follow
+our partner, without hesitation, at the first pause in her voice.
+
+Odette de Crécy came again to see Swann; her visits grew more frequent,
+and doubtless each visit revived the sense of disappointment which he
+felt at the sight of a face whose details he had somewhat forgotten in
+the interval, not remembering it as either so expressive or, in spite
+of her youth, so faded; he used to regret, while she was talking to
+him, that her really considerable beauty was not of the kind which he
+spontaneously admired. It must be remarked that Odette's face appeared
+thinner and more prominent than it actually was, because her forehead
+and the upper part of her cheeks, a single and almost plane surface,
+were covered by the masses of hair which women wore at that period,
+drawn forward in a fringe, raised in crimped waves and falling in stray
+locks over her ears; while as for her figure, and she was admirably
+built, it was impossible to make out its continuity (on account of
+the fashion then prevailing, and in spite of her being one of the
+best-dressed women in Paris) for the corset, jetting forwards in an
+arch, as though over an imaginary stomach, and ending in a sharp point,
+beneath which bulged out the balloon of her double skirts, gave a woman,
+that year, the appearance of being composed of different sections badly
+fitted together; to such an extent did the frills, the flounces, the
+inner bodice follow, in complete independence, controlled only by the
+fancy of their designer or the rigidity of their material, the line
+which led them to the knots of ribbon, falls of lace, fringes of
+vertically hanging jet, or carried them along the bust, but nowhere
+attached themselves to the living creature, who, according as the
+architecture of their fripperies drew them towards or away from her
+own, found herself either strait-laced to suffocation or else completely
+buried.
+
+But, after Odette had left him, Swann would think with a smile of her
+telling him how the time would drag until he allowed her to come again;
+he remembered the anxious, timid way in which she had once begged him
+that it might not be very long, and the way in which she had looked at
+him then, fixing upon him her fearful and imploring gaze, which gave her
+a touching air beneath the bunches of artificial pansies fastened in
+the front of her round bonnet of white straw, tied with strings of black
+velvet. "And won't you," she had ventured, "come just once and take tea
+with me?" He had pleaded pressure of work, an essay--which, in reality,
+he had abandoned years ago--on Vermeer of Delft. "I know that I am quite
+useless," she had replied, "a little wild thing like me beside a learned
+great man like you. I should be like the frog in the fable! And yet I
+should so much like to learn, to know things, to be initiated. What fun
+it would be to become a regular bookworm, to bury my nose in a lot of
+old papers!" she had gone on, with that self-satisfied air which a smart
+woman adopts when she insists that her one desire is to give herself
+up, without fear of soiling her fingers, to some unclean task, such as
+cooking the dinner, with her "hands right in the dish itself." "You will
+only laugh at me, but this painter who stops you from seeing me," she
+meant Vermeer, "I have never even heard of him; is he alive still? Can I
+see any of his things in Paris, so as to have some idea of what is going
+on behind that great brow which works so hard, that head which I feel
+sure is always puzzling away about things; just to be able to say
+'There, that's what he's thinking about!' What a dream it would be to be
+able to help you with your work."
+
+He had sought an excuse in his fear of forming new friendships, which he
+gallantly described as his fear of a hopeless passion. "You are afraid
+of falling in love? How funny that is, when I go about seeking nothing
+else, and would give my soul just to find a little love somewhere!" she
+had said, so naturally and with such an air of conviction that he had
+been genuinely touched. "Some woman must have made you suffer. And you
+think that the rest are all like her. She can't have understood you: you
+are so utterly different from ordinary men. That's what I liked about
+you when I first saw you; I felt at once that you weren't like everybody
+else."
+
+"And then, besides, there's yourself----" he had continued, "I know what
+women are; you must have a whole heap of things to do, and never any
+time to spare."
+
+"I? Why, I have never anything to do. I am always free, and I always
+will be free if you want me. At whatever hour of the day or night it may
+suit you to see me, just send for me, and I shall be only too delighted
+to come. Will you do that? Do you know what I should really like--to
+introduce you to Mme. Verdurin, where I go every evening. Just fancy my
+finding you there, and thinking that it was a little for my sake that
+you had gone."
+
+No doubt, in thus remembering their conversations, in thinking about her
+thus when he was alone, he did no more than call her image into being
+among those of countless other women in his romantic dreams; but if,
+thanks to some accidental circumstance (or even perhaps without that
+assistance, for the circumstance which presents itself at the moment
+when a mental state, hitherto latent, makes itself felt, may well have
+had no influence whatsoever upon that state), the image of Odette de
+Crécy came to absorb the whole of his dreams, if from those dreams
+the memory of her could no longer be eliminated, then her bodily
+imperfections would no longer be of the least importance, nor would the
+conformity of her body, more or less than any other, to the requirements
+of Swann's taste; since, having become the body of her whom he loved, it
+must henceforth be the only one capable of causing him joy or anguish.
+
+It so happened that my grandfather had known--which was more than could
+be said of any other actual acquaintance--the family of these Verdurins.
+But he had entirely severed his connection with what he called "young
+Verdurin," taking a general view of him as one who had fallen--though
+without losing hold of his millions--among the riff-raff of Bohemia. One
+day he received a letter from Swann asking whether my grandfather could
+put him in touch with the Verdurins. "On guard! on guard!" he exclaimed
+as he read it, "I am not at all surprised; Swann was bound to finish up
+like this. A nice lot of people! I cannot do what he asks, because, in
+the first place, I no longer know the gentleman in question. Besides,
+there must be a woman in it somewhere, and I don't mix myself up in such
+matters. Ah, well, we shall see some fun if Swann begins running after
+the little Verdurins."
+
+And on my grandfather's refusal to act as sponsor, it was Odette herself
+who had taken Swann to the house.
+
+The Verdurins had had dining with them, on the day when Swann made his
+first appearance, Dr. and Mme. Cottard, the young pianist and his aunt,
+and the painter then in favour, while these were joined, in the course
+of the evening, by several more of the 'faithful.'
+
+Dr. Cottard was never quite certain of the tone in which he ought to
+reply to any observation, or whether the speaker was jesting or
+in earnest. And so in any event he would embellish all his facial
+expressions with the offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose
+expectant subtlety would exonerate him from the charge of being a
+simpleton, if the remark addressed to him should turn out to have been
+facetious. But as he must also be prepared to face the alternative, he
+never dared to allow this smile a definite expression on his features,
+and you would see there a perpetually flickering uncertainty, in which
+you might decipher the question that he never dared to ask: "Do you
+really mean that?" He was no more confident of the manner in which he
+ought to conduct himself in the street, or indeed in life generally,
+than he was in a drawing-room; and he might be seen greeting passers-by,
+carriages, and anything that occurred with a malicious smile which
+absolved his subsequent behaviour of all impropriety, since it proved,
+if it should turn out unsuited to the occasion, that he was well aware
+of that, and that if he had assumed a smile, the jest was a secret of
+his own.
+
+On all those points, however, where a plain question appeared to him to
+be permissible, the Doctor was unsparing in his endeavours to cultivate
+the wilderness of his ignorance and uncertainty and so to complete his
+education.
+
+So it was that, following the advice given him by a wise mother on his
+first coming up to the capital from his provincial home, he would never
+let pass either a figure of speech or a proper name that was new to him
+without an effort to secure the fullest information upon it.
+
+As regards figures of speech, he was insatiable in his thirst for
+knowledge, for often imagining them to have a more definite meaning than
+was actually the case, he would want to know what, exactly, was intended
+by those which he most frequently heard used: 'devilish pretty,' 'blue
+blood,' 'a cat and dog life,' 'a day of reckoning,' 'a queen of fashion,
+'to give a free hand,' 'to be at a deadlock,' and so forth; and in
+what particular circumstances he himself might make use of them in
+conversation. Failing these, he would adorn it with puns and other
+'plays upon words' which he had learned by rote. As for the names of
+strangers which were uttered in his hearing, he used merely to repeat
+them to himself in a questioning tone, which, he thought, would suffice
+to furnish him with explanations for which he would not ostensibly seek.
+
+As the critical faculty, on the universal application of which he prided
+himself, was, in reality, completely lacking, that refinement of good
+breeding which consists in assuring some one whom you are obliging in
+any way, without expecting to be believed, that it is really yourself
+that is obliged to him, was wasted on Cottard, who took everything that
+he heard in its literal sense. However blind she may have been to his
+faults, Mme. Verdurin was genuinely annoyed, though she still continued
+to regard him as brilliantly clever, when, after she had invited him to
+see and hear Sarah Bernhardt from a stage box, and had said politely:
+"It is very good of you to have come, Doctor, especially as I'm sure
+you must often have heard Sarah Bernhardt; and besides, I'm afraid we're
+rather too near the stage," the Doctor, who had come into the box with a
+smile which waited before settling upon or vanishing from his face
+until some one in authority should enlighten him as to the merits of the
+spectacle, replied: "To be sure, we are far too near the stage, and
+one is getting sick of Sarah Bernhardt. But you expressed a wish that
+I should come. For me, your wish is a command. I am only too glad to be
+able to do you this little service. What would one not do to please you,
+you are so good." And he went on, "Sarah Bernhardt; that's what they
+call the Voice of God, ain't it? You see, often, too, that she 'sets the
+boards on fire.' That's an odd expression, ain't it?" in the hope of an
+enlightening commentary, which, however, was not forthcoming.
+
+"D'you know," Mme. Verdurin had said to her husband, "I believe we are
+going the wrong way to work when we depreciate anything we offer the
+Doctor. He is a scientist who lives quite apart from our everyday
+existence; he knows nothing himself of what things are worth, and he
+accepts everything that we say as gospel."
+
+"I never dared to mention it," M. Verdurin had answered, "but I've
+noticed the same thing myself." And on the following New Year's Day,
+instead of sending Dr. Cottard a ruby that cost three thousand francs,
+and pretending that it was a mere trifle, M. Verdurin bought an
+artificial stone for three hundred, and let it be understood that it was
+something almost impossible to match.
+
+When Mme. Verdurin had announced that they were to see M. Swann that
+evening; "Swann!" the Doctor had exclaimed in a tone rendered brutal
+by his astonishment, for the smallest piece of news would always take
+utterly unawares this man who imagined himself to be perpetually in
+readiness for anything. And seeing that no one answered him, "Swann! Who
+on earth is Swann?" he shouted, in a frenzy of anxiety which subsided
+as soon as Mme. Verdurin had explained, "Why, Odette's friend, whom she
+told us about."
+
+"Ah, good, good; that's all right, then," answered the Doctor, at once
+mollified. As for the painter, he was overjoyed at the prospect of
+Swann's appearing at the Verdurins', because he supposed him to be in
+love with Odette, and was always ready to assist at lovers' meetings.
+"Nothing amuses me more than match-making," he confided to Cottard; "I
+have been tremendously successful, even with women!"
+
+In telling the Verdurins that Swann was extremely 'smart,' Odette had
+alarmed them with the prospect of another 'bore.' When he arrived,
+however, he made an excellent impression, an indirect cause of which,
+though they did not know it, was his familiarity with the best society.
+He had, indeed, one of those advantages which men who have lived and
+moved in the world enjoy over others, even men of intelligence and
+refinement, who have never gone into society, namely that they no longer
+see it transfigured by the longing or repulsion with which it fills
+the imagination, but regard it as quite unimportant. Their good nature,
+freed from all taint of snobbishness and from the fear of seeming
+too friendly, grown independent, in fact, has the ease, the grace of
+movement of a trained gymnast each of whose supple limbs will carry out
+precisely the movement that is required without any clumsy participation
+by the rest of his body. 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 shewed 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 Dr. Cottard; for seeing him close one eye with an ambiguous
+smile, before they had yet spoken to one another (a grimace which
+Cottard styled "letting 'em all come"), Swann supposed that the Doctor
+recognised him from having met him already somewhere, probably in some
+house of 'ill-fame,' though these he himself very rarely visited,
+never having made a habit of indulging in the mercenary sort of love.
+Regarding such an allusion as in bad taste, especially before Odette,
+whose opinion of himself it might easily alter for the worse, Swann
+assumed his most icy manner. But when he learned that the lady next to
+the Doctor was Mme. Cottard, he decided that so young a husband would
+not deliberately, in his wife's hearing, have made any allusion to
+amusements of that order, and so ceased to interpret the Doctor's
+expression in the sense which he had at first suspected. The painter at
+once invited Swann to visit his studio with Odette, and Swann found him
+very pleasant. "Perhaps you will be more highly favoured than I have
+been," Mme. Verdurin broke in, with mock resentment of the favour,
+"perhaps you will be allowed to see Cottard's portrait" (for which she
+had given the painter a commission). "Take care, Master Biche," she
+reminded the painter, whom it was a time-honoured pleasantry to address
+as 'Master,' "to catch that nice look in his eyes, that witty little
+twinkle. You know, what I want to have most of all is his smile; that's
+what I've asked you to paint--the portrait of his smile." And since the
+phrase struck her as noteworthy, she repeated it very loud, so as to
+make sure that as many as possible of her guests should hear it, and
+even made use of some indefinite pretext to draw the circle closer
+before she uttered it again. Swann begged to be introduced to everyone,
+even to an old friend of the Verdurins, called Saniette, whose shyness,
+simplicity and good-nature had deprived him of all the consideration due
+to his skill in palaeography, his large fortune, and the distinguished
+family to which he belonged. When he spoke, his words came with
+a confusion which was delightful to hear because one felt that it
+indicated not so much a defect in his speech as a quality of his soul,
+as it were a survival from the age of innocence which he had never
+wholly outgrown. All the consonants which he did not manage to pronounce
+seemed like harsh utterances of which his gentle lips were incapable. By
+asking to be made known to M. Saniette, Swann made M. Verdurin reverse
+the usual form of introduction (saying, in fact, with emphasis on the
+distinction: "M. Swann, pray let me present to you our friend Saniette")
+but he aroused in Saniette himself a warmth of gratitude, which,
+however, the Verdurins never disclosed to Swann, since Saniette rather
+annoyed them, and they did not feel bound to provide him with friends.
+On the other hand the Verdurins were extremely touched by Swann's next
+request, for he felt that he must ask to be introduced to the pianist's
+aunt. She wore a black dress, as was her invariable custom, for she
+believed that a woman always looked well in black, and that nothing
+could be more distinguished; but her face was exceedingly red, as
+it always was for some time after a meal. She bowed to Swann with
+deference, but drew herself up again with great dignity. As she was
+entirely uneducated, and was afraid of making mistakes in grammar and
+pronunciation, she used purposely to speak in an indistinct and garbling
+manner, thinking that if she should make a slip it would be so buried in
+the surrounding confusion that no one could be certain whether she had
+actually made it or not; with the result that her talk was a sort of
+continuous, blurred expectoration, out of which would emerge, at rare
+intervals, those sounds and syllables of which she felt positive.
+Swann supposed himself entitled to poke a little mild fun at her in
+conversation with M. Verdurin, who, however, was not at all amused.
+
+"She is such an excellent woman!" he rejoined. "I grant you that she
+is not exactly brilliant; but I assure you that she can talk most
+charmingly when you are alone with her."
+
+"I am sure she can," Swann hastened to conciliate him. "All I meant was
+that she hardly struck me as 'distinguished,'" he went on, isolating
+the epithet in the inverted commas of his tone, "and, after all, that is
+something of a compliment."
+
+"Wait a moment," said M. Verdurin, "now, this will surprise you; she
+writes quite delightfully. You have never heard her nephew play? It is
+admirable; eh, Doctor? Would you like me to ask him to play something,
+M. Swann?"
+
+"I should count myself most fortunate..." Swann was beginning, a trifle
+pompously, when the Doctor broke in derisively. Having once heard it
+said, and never having forgotten that in general conversation emphasis
+and the use of formal expressions were out of date, whenever he heard a
+solemn word used seriously, as the word 'fortunate' had been used just
+now by Swann, he at once assumed that the speaker was being deliberately
+pedantic. And if, moreover, the same word happened to occur, also, in
+what he called an old 'tag' or 'saw,' however common it might still be
+in current usage, the Doctor jumped to the conclusion that the whole
+thing was a joke, and interrupted with the remaining words of the
+quotation, which he seemed to charge the speaker with having intended
+to introduce at that point, although in reality it had never entered his
+mind.
+
+"Most fortunate for France!" he recited wickedly, shooting up both arms
+with great vigour. M. Verdurin could not help laughing.
+
+"What are all those good people laughing at over there? There's no sign
+of brooding melancholy down in your corner," shouted Mme. Verdurin. "You
+don't suppose I find it very amusing to be stuck up here by myself on
+the stool of repentance," she went on peevishly, like a spoiled child.
+
+Mme. Verdurin was sitting upon a high Swedish chair of waxed pine-wood,
+which a violinist from that country had given her, and which she kept in
+her drawing-room, although in appearance it suggested a school 'form,'
+and 'swore,' as the saying is, at the really good antique furniture
+which she had besides; but she made a point of keeping on view the
+presents which her 'faithful' were in the habit of making her from time
+to time, so that the donors might have the pleasure of seeing them there
+when they came to the house. She tried to persuade them to confine
+their tributes to flowers and sweets, which had at least the merit of
+mortality; but she was never successful, and the house was gradually
+filled with a collection of foot-warmers, cushions, clocks, screens,
+barometers and vases, a constant repetition and a boundless incongruity
+of useless but indestructible objects.
+
+From this lofty perch she would take her spirited part in the
+conversation of the 'faithful,' and would revel in all their fun; but,
+since the accident to her jaw, she had abandoned the effort involved in
+real hilarity, and had substituted a kind of symbolical dumb-show which
+signified, without endangering or even fatiguing her in any way, that
+she was 'laughing until she cried.' At the least witticism aimed by any
+of the circle against a 'bore,' or against a former member of the circle
+who was now relegated to the limbo of 'bores'--and to the utter despair
+of M. Verdurin, who had always made out that he was just as easily
+amused as his wife, but who, since his laughter was the 'real thing,'
+was out of breath in a moment, and so was overtaken and vanquished
+by her device of a feigned but continuous hilarity--she would utter a
+shrill cry, shut tight her little bird-like eyes, which were beginning
+to be clouded over by a cataract, and quickly, as though she had only
+just time to avoid some indecent sight or to parry a mortal blow,
+burying her face in her hands, which completely engulfed it, and
+prevented her from seeing anything at all, she would appear to be
+struggling to suppress, to eradicate a laugh which, were she to give
+way to it, must inevitably leave her inanimate. So, stupefied with
+the gaiety of the 'faithful,' drunken with comradeship, scandal and
+asseveration, Mme. Verdurin, perched on her high seat like a cage-bird
+whose biscuit has been steeped in mulled wine, would sit aloft and sob
+with fellow-feeling.
+
+Meanwhile M. Verdurin, after first asking Swann's permission to light
+his pipe ("No ceremony here, you understand; we're all pals!"), went and
+begged the young musician to sit down at the piano.
+
+"Leave him alone; don't bother him; he hasn't come here to be
+tormented," cried Mme. Verdurin. "I won't have him tormented."
+
+"But why on earth should it bother him?" rejoined M. Verdurin. "I'm sure
+M. Swann has never heard the sonata in F sharp which we discovered; he
+is going to play us the pianoforte arrangement."
+
+"No, no, no, not my sonata!" she screamed, "I don't want to be made to
+cry until I get a cold in the head, and neuralgia all down my face, like
+last time; thanks very much, I don't intend to repeat that performance;
+you are all very kind and considerate; it is easy to see that none of
+you will have to stay in bed, for a week."
+
+This little scene, which was re-enacted as often as the young pianist
+sat down to play, never failed to delight the audience, as though
+each of them were witnessing it for the first time, as a proof of the
+seductive originality of the 'Mistress' as she was styled, and of the
+acute sensitiveness of her musical 'ear.' Those nearest to her would
+attract the attention of the rest, who were smoking or playing cards at
+the other end of the room, by their cries of 'Hear, hear!' which, as
+in Parliamentary debates, shewed that something worth listening to was
+being said. And next day they would commiserate with those who had
+been prevented from coming that evening, and would assure them that the
+'little scene' had never been so amusingly done.
+
+"Well, all right, then," said M. Verdurin, "he can play just the
+andante."
+
+"Just the _andante_! How you do go on," cried his wife. "As if it
+weren't 'just the _andante_' that breaks every bone in my body. The
+'Master' is really too priceless! Just as though, 'in the Ninth,' he
+said 'we need only have the _finale_,' or 'just the overture' of the
+_Meistersinger_."
+
+The Doctor, however, urged Mme. Verdurin to let the pianist play,
+not because he supposed her to be malingering when she spoke of the
+distressing effects that music always had upon her, for he recognised
+the existence of certain neurasthenic states--but from his habit, common
+to many doctors, of at once relaxing the strict letter of a prescription
+as soon as it appeared to jeopardise, what seemed to him far more
+important, the success of some social gathering at which he was present,
+and of which the patient whom he had urged for once to forget her
+dyspepsia or headache formed an essential factor.
+
+"You won't be ill this time, you'll find," he told her, seeking at the
+same time to subdue her mind by the magnetism of his gaze. "And, if you
+are ill, we will cure you."
+
+"Will you, really?" Mme. Verdurin spoke as though, with so great a
+favour in store for her, there was nothing for it but to capitulate.
+Perhaps, too, by dint of saying that she was going to be ill, she had
+worked herself into a state in which she forgot, occasionally, that it
+was all only a 'little scene,' and regarded things, quite sincerely,
+from an invalid's point of view. For it may often be remarked that
+invalids grow weary of having the frequency of their attacks depend
+always on their own prudence in avoiding them, and like to let
+themselves think that they are free to do everything that they most
+enjoy doing, although they are always ill after doing it, provided only
+that they place themselves in the hands of a higher authority which,
+without putting them to the least inconvenience, can and will, by
+uttering a word or by administering a tabloid, set them once again upon
+their feet.
+
+Odette had gone to sit on a tapestry-covered sofa near the piano, saying
+to Mme. Verdurin, "I have my own little corner, haven't I?"
+
+And Mme. Verdurin, seeing Swann by himself upon a chair, made him get
+up. "You're not at all comfortable there; go along and sit by Odette;
+you can make room for M. Swann there, can't you, Odette?"
+
+"What charming Beauvais!" said Swann, stopping to admire the sofa before
+he sat down on it, and wishing to be polite.
+
+"I am glad you appreciate my sofa," replied Mme. Verdurin, "and I warn
+you that if you expect ever to see another like it you may as well
+abandon the idea at once. They never made any more like it. And these
+little chairs, too, are perfect marvels. You can look at them in a
+moment. The emblems in each of the bronze mouldings correspond to the
+subject of the tapestry on the chair; you know, you combine amusement
+with instruction when you look at them;--I can promise you a delightful
+time, I assure you. Just look at the little border around the edges;
+here, look, the little vine on a red background in this one, the Bear
+and the Grapes. Isn't it well drawn? What do you say? I think they knew
+a thing or two about design! Doesn't it make your mouth water, this
+vine? My husband makes out that I am not fond of fruit, because I eat
+less than he does. But not a bit of it, I am greedier than any of you,
+but I have no need to fill my mouth with them when I can feed on them
+with my eyes. What are you all laughing at now, pray? Ask the Doctor;
+he will tell you that those grapes act on me like a regular purge. Some
+people go to Fontainebleau for cures; I take my own little Beauvais cure
+here. But, M. Swann, you mustn't run away without feeling the little
+bronze mouldings on the backs. Isn't it an exquisite surface? No, no,
+not with your whole hand like that; feel them properly!"
+
+"If Mme. Verdurin is going to start playing about with her bronzes,"
+said the painter, "we shan't get any music to-night."
+
+"Be quiet, you wretch! And yet we poor women," she went on, "are
+forbidden pleasures far less voluptuous than this. There is no flesh in
+the world as soft as these. None. When M. Verdurin did me the honour
+of being madly jealous... come, you might at least be polite. Don't say
+that you never have been jealous!"
+
+"But, my dear, I have said absolutely nothing. Look here, Doctor, I call
+you as a witness; did I utter a word?"
+
+Swann had begun, out of politeness, to finger the bronzes, and did not
+like to stop.
+
+"Come along; you can caress them later; now it is you that are going to
+be caressed, caressed in the ear; you'll like that, I think. Here's the
+young gentleman who will take charge of that."
+
+After the pianist had played, Swann felt and shewed more interest in him
+than in any of the other guests, for the following reason:
+
+The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music
+played on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the
+material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it
+had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the
+violin-part, delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole,
+he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a
+flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent,
+level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of
+the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at
+a given moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline,
+or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had
+tried to collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony--he
+knew not which--that had just been played, and had opened and expanded
+his soul, just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist
+air of evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils. Perhaps it was
+owing to his own ignorance of music that he had been able to receive so
+confused an impression, one of those that are, notwithstanding, our only
+purely musical impressions, limited in their extent, entirely original,
+and irreducible into any other kind. An impression of this order,
+vanishing in an instant, is, so to speak, an impression _sine materia_.
+Presumably the notes which we hear at such moments tend to spread out
+before our eyes, over surfaces greater or smaller according to their
+pitch and volume; to trace arabesque designs, to give us the sensation
+of breadth or tenuity, stability or caprice. But the notes themselves
+have vanished before these sensations have developed sufficiently to
+escape submersion under those which the following, or even simultaneous
+notes have already begun to awaken in us. And this indefinite perception
+would continue to smother in its molten liquidity the _motifs_ which now
+and then emerge, barely discernible, to plunge again and disappear and
+drown; recognised only by the particular kind of pleasure which they
+instil, impossible to describe, to recollect, to name; ineffable;--if
+our memory, like a labourer who toils at the laying down of firm
+foundations beneath the tumult of the waves, did not, by fashioning for
+us facsimiles of those fugitive phrases, enable us to compare and to
+contrast them with those that follow. And so, hardly had the delicious
+sensation, which Swann had experienced, died away, before his memory
+had furnished him with an immediate transcript, summary, it is true,
+and provisional, but one on which he had kept his eyes fixed while
+the playing continued, so effectively that, when the same impression
+suddenly returned, it was no longer uncapturable. He was able to picture
+to himself its extent, its symmetrical arrangement, its notation, the
+strength of its expression; he had before him that definite object which
+was no longer pure music, but rather design, architecture, thought,
+and which allowed the actual music to be recalled. This time he had
+distinguished, quite clearly, a phrase which emerged for a few moments
+from the waves of sound. It had at once held out to him an invitation to
+partake of intimate pleasures, of whose existence, before hearing it, he
+had never dreamed, into which he felt that nothing but this phrase could
+initiate him; and he had been filled with love for it, as with a new and
+strange desire.
+
+With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here, there, everywhere,
+towards a state of happiness noble, unintelligible, yet clearly
+indicated. And then, suddenly having reached a certain point from which
+he was prepared to follow it, after pausing for a moment, abruptly it
+changed its direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, multiform,
+melancholy, incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards a vista
+of joys unknown. Then it vanished. He hoped, with a passionate longing,
+that he might find it again, a third time. And reappear it did, though
+without speaking to him more clearly, bringing him, indeed, a pleasure
+less profound. But when he was once more at home he needed it, he
+was like a man into whose life a woman, whom he has seen for a moment
+passing by, has brought a new form of beauty, which strengthens and
+enlarges his own power of perception, without his knowing even whether
+he is ever to see her again whom he loves already, although he knows
+nothing of her, not even her name.
+
+Indeed this passion for a phrase of music seemed, in the first few
+months, to be bringing into Swann's life the possibility of a sort of
+rejuvenation. He had so long since ceased to direct his course towards
+any ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of ephemeral
+satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally
+stating his belief even to himself, that he would remain all his life in
+that condition, which death alone could alter. More than this, since his
+mind no longer entertained any lofty ideals, he had ceased to believe
+in (although he could not have expressly denied) their reality. He had
+grown also into the habit of taking refuge in trivial considerations,
+which allowed him to set on one side matters of fundamental importance.
+Just as he had never stopped to ask himself whether he would not have
+done better by not going into society, knowing very well that if he
+had accepted an invitation he must put in an appearance, and that
+afterwards, if he did not actually call, he must at least leave cards
+upon his hostess; so in his conversation he took care never to express
+with any warmth a personal opinion about a thing, but instead would
+supply facts and details which had a value of a sort in themselves, and
+excused him from shewing how much he really knew. He would be extremely
+precise about the recipe for a dish, the dates of a painter's birth and
+death, and the titles of his works. Sometimes, in spite of himself, he
+would let himself go so far as to utter a criticism of a work of art, or
+of some one's interpretation of life, but then he would cloak his words
+in a tone of irony, as though he did not altogether associate himself
+with what he was saying. But now, like a confirmed invalid whom, all
+of a sudden, a change of air and surroundings, or a new course of
+treatment, or, as sometimes happens, an organic change in himself,
+spontaneous and unaccountable, seems to have so far recovered from his
+malady that he begins to envisage the possibility, hitherto beyond
+all hope, of starting to lead--and better late than never--a wholly
+different life, Swann found in himself, in the memory of the phrase that
+he had heard, in certain other sonatas which he had made people play
+over to him, to see whether he might not, perhaps, discover his phrase
+among them, the presence of one of those invisible realities in which
+he had ceased to believe, but to which, as though the music had had upon
+the moral barrenness from which he was suffering a sort of recreative
+influence, he was conscious once again of a desire, almost, indeed, of
+the power to consecrate his life. But, never having managed to find out
+whose work it was that he had heard played that evening, he had been
+unable to procure a copy, and finally had forgotten the quest. He had
+indeed, in the course of the next few days, encountered several of the
+people who had been at the party with him, and had questioned them;
+but most of them had either arrived after or left before the piece was
+played; some had indeed been in the house, but had gone into another
+room to talk, and those who had stayed to listen had no clearer
+impression than the rest. As for his hosts, they knew that it was a
+recently published work which the musicians whom they had engaged for
+the evening had asked to be allowed to play; but, as these last were now
+on tour somewhere, Swann could learn nothing further. He had, of
+course, a number of musical friends, but, vividly as he could recall the
+exquisite and inexpressible pleasure which the little phrase had given
+him, and could see, still, before his eyes the forms that it had traced
+in outline, he was quite incapable of humming over to them the air. And
+so, at last, he ceased to think of it.
+
+But to-night, at Mme. Verdurin's, scarcely had the little pianist begun
+to play when, suddenly, after a high note held on through two whole
+bars, Swann saw it approaching, stealing forth from underneath that
+resonance, which was prolonged and stretched out over it, like a curtain
+of sound, to veil the mystery of its birth--and recognised, secret,
+whispering, articulate, the airy and fragrant phrase that he had loved.
+And it was so peculiarly itself, it had so personal a charm, which
+nothing else could have replaced, that Swann felt as though he had met,
+in a friend's drawing-room, a woman whom he had seen and admired, once,
+in the street, and had despaired of ever seeing her again. Finally the
+phrase withdrew and vanished, pointing, directing, diligent among the
+wandering currents of its fragrance, leaving upon Swann's features a
+reflection of its smile. But now, at last, he could ask the name of
+his fair unknown (and was told that it was the _andante_ movement of
+Vinteuil's sonata for the piano and violin), he held it safe, could
+have it again to himself, at home, as often as he would, could study its
+language and acquire its secret.
+
+And so, when the pianist had finished, Swann crossed the room and
+thanked him with a vivacity which delighted Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"Isn't he charming?" she asked Swann, "doesn't he just understand it,
+his sonata, the little wretch? You never dreamed, did you, that a piano
+could be made to express all that? Upon my word, there's everything in
+it except the piano! I'm caught out every time I hear it; I think
+I'm listening to an orchestra. Though it's better, really, than an
+orchestra, more complete."
+
+The young pianist bent over her as he answered, smiling and underlining
+each of his words as though he were making an epigram: "You are most
+generous to me."
+
+And while Mme. Verdurin was saying to her husband, "Run and fetch him a
+glass of orangeade; it's well earned!" Swann began to tell Odette how he
+had fallen in love with that little phrase. When their hostess, who was
+a little way off, called out, "Well! It looks to me as though some one
+was saying nice things to you, Odette!" she replied, "Yes, very
+nice," and he found her simplicity delightful. Then he asked for some
+information about this Vinteuil; what else he had done, and at what
+period in his life he had composed the sonata;--what meaning the little
+phrase could have had for him, that was what Swann wanted most to know.
+
+But none of these people who professed to admire this musician (when
+Swann had said that the sonata was really charming Mme. Verdurin had
+exclaimed, "I quite believe it! Charming, indeed! But you don't dare to
+confess that you don't know Vinteuil's sonata; you have no right not to
+know it!"--and the painter had gone on with, "Ah, yes, it's a very fine
+bit of work, isn't it? Not, of course, if you want something 'obvious,'
+something 'popular,' but, I mean to say, it makes a very great
+impression on us artists."), none of them seemed ever to have asked
+himself these questions, for none of them was able to reply.
+
+Even to one or two particular remarks made by Swann on his favourite
+phrase, "D'you know, that's a funny thing; I had never noticed it; I may
+as well tell you that I don't much care about peering at things through
+a microscope, and pricking myself on pin-points of difference; no; we
+don't waste time splitting hairs in this house; why not? well, it's not
+a habit of ours, that's all," Mme. Verdurin replied, while Dr. Cottard
+gazed at her with open-mouthed admiration, and yearned to be able to
+follow her as she skipped lightly from one stepping-stone to another
+of her stock of ready-made phrases. Both he, however, and Mme. Cottard,
+with a kind of common sense which is shared by many people of humble
+origin, would always take care not to express an opinion, or to pretend
+to admire a piece of music which they would confess to each other, once
+they were safely at home, that they no more understood than they could
+understand the art of 'Master' Biche. Inasmuch as the public cannot
+recognise the charm, the beauty, even the outlines of nature save in the
+stereotyped impressions of an art which they have gradually assimilated,
+while an original artist starts by rejecting those impressions, so
+M. and Mme. Cottard, typical, in this respect, of the public, were
+incapable of finding, either in Vinteuil's sonata or in Biche's
+portraits, what constituted harmony, for them, in music or beauty in
+painting. It appeared to them, when the pianist played his sonata, as
+though he were striking haphazard from the piano a medley of notes which
+bore no relation to the musical forms to which they themselves were
+accustomed, and that the painter simply flung the colours haphazard upon
+his canvas. When, on one of these, they were able to distinguish a human
+form, they always found it coarsened and vulgarised (that is to say
+lacking all the elegance of the school of painting through whose
+spectacles they themselves were in the habit of seeing the people--real,
+living people, who passed them in the streets) and devoid of truth, as
+though M. Biche had not known how the human shoulder was constructed, or
+that a woman's hair was not, ordinarily, purple.
+
+And yet, when the 'faithful' were scattered out of earshot, the Doctor
+felt that the opportunity was too good to be missed, and so (while Mme.
+Verdurin was adding a final word of commendation of Vinteuil's sonata)
+like a would-be swimmer who jumps into the water, so as to learn, but
+chooses a moment when there are not too many people looking on:
+"Yes, indeed; he's what they call a musician _di primo cartello_!" he
+exclaimed, with a sudden determination.
+
+Swann discovered no more than that the recent publication of Vinteuil's
+sonata had caused a great stir among the most advanced school of
+musicians, but that it was still unknown to the general public.
+
+"I know some one, quite well, called Vinteuil," said Swann, thinking of
+the old music-master at Combray who had taught my grandmother's sisters.
+
+"Perhaps that's the man!" cried Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"Oh, no!" Swann burst out laughing. "If you had ever seen him for a
+moment you wouldn't put the question."
+
+"Then to put the question is to solve the problem?" the Doctor
+suggested.
+
+"But it may well be some relative," Swann went on. "That would be bad
+enough; but, after all, there is no reason why a genius shouldn't have
+a cousin who is a silly old fool. And if that should be so, I swear
+there's no known or unknown form of torture I wouldn't undergo to
+get the old fool to introduce me to the man who composed the sonata;
+starting with the torture of the old fool's company, which would be
+ghastly."
+
+The painter understood that Vinteuil was seriously ill at the moment,
+and that Dr. Potain despaired of his life.
+
+"What!" cried Mme. Verdurin, "Do people still call in Potain?"
+
+"Ah! Mme. Verdurin," Cottard simpered, "you forget that you are speaking
+of one of my colleagues--I should say, one of my masters."
+
+The painter had heard, somewhere, that Vinteuil was threatened with the
+loss of his reason. And he insisted that signs of this could be detected
+in certain passages in the sonata. This remark did not strike Swann as
+ridiculous; rather, it puzzled him. For, since a purely musical work
+contains none of those logical sequences, the interruption or confusion
+of which, in spoken or written language, is a proof of insanity, so
+insanity diagnosed in a sonata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as
+the insanity of a dog or a horse, although instances may be observed of
+these.
+
+"Don't speak to me about 'your masters'; you know ten times as much as
+he does!" Mme. Verdurin answered Dr. Cottard, in the tone of a woman who
+has the courage of her convictions, and is quite ready to stand up to
+anyone who disagrees with her. "Anyhow, you don't kill your patients!"
+
+"But, Madame, he is in the Academy." The Doctor smiled with bitter
+irony. "If a sick person prefers to die at the hands of one of the
+Princes of Science... It is far more smart to be able to say, 'Yes, I
+have Potain.'"
+
+"Oh, indeed! More smart, is it?" said Mme. Verdurin. "So there are
+fashions, nowadays, in illness, are there? I didn't know that.... Oh,
+you do make me laugh!" she screamed, suddenly, burying her face in her
+hands. "And here was I, poor thing, talking quite seriously, and never
+seeing that you were pulling my leg."
+
+As for M. Verdurin, finding it rather a strain to start laughing again
+over so small a matter, he was content with puffing out a cloud of smoke
+from his pipe, while he reflected sadly that he could never again hope
+to keep pace with his wife in her Atalanta-flights across the field of
+mirth.
+
+"D'you know; we like your friend so very much," said Mme. Verdurin,
+later, when Odette was bidding her good night. "He is so unaffected,
+quite charming. If they're all like that, the friends you want to bring
+here, by all means bring them."
+
+M. Verdurin remarked that Swann had failed, all the same, to appreciate
+the pianist's aunt.
+
+"I dare say he felt a little strange, poor man," suggested Mme.
+Verdurin. "You can't expect him to catch the tone of the house the first
+time he comes; like Cottard, who has been one of our little 'clan' now
+for years. The first time doesn't count; it's just for looking round and
+finding out things. Odette, he understands all right, he's to join us
+to-morrow at the Châtelet. Perhaps you might call for him and bring
+him."
+
+"No, he doesn't want that."
+
+"Oh, very well; just as you like. Provided he doesn't fail us at the
+last moment."
+
+Greatly to Mme. Verdurin's surprise, he never failed them. He would go
+to meet them, no matter where, at restaurants outside Paris (not that
+they went there much at first, for the season had not yet begun), and
+more frequently at the play, in which Mme. Verdurin delighted. One
+evening, when they were dining at home, he heard her complain that she
+had not one of those permits which would save her the trouble of waiting
+at doors and standing in crowds, and say how useful it would be to them
+at first-nights, and gala performances at the Opera, and what a nuisance
+it had been, not having one, on the day of Gambetta's funeral. Swann
+never spoke of his distinguished friends, but only of such as might be
+regarded as detrimental, whom, therefore, he thought it snobbish, and
+in not very good taste to conceal; while he frequented the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain he had come to include, in the latter class, all his
+friends in the official world of the Third Republic, and so broke in,
+without thinking: "I'll see to that, all right. You shall have it in
+time for the _Danicheff_ revival. I shall be lunching with the Prefect
+of Police to-morrow, as it happens, at the Elysée."
+
+"What's that? The Elysée?" Dr. Cottard roared in a voice of thunder.
+
+"Yes, at M. Grévy's," replied Swann, feeling a little awkward at the
+effect which his announcement had produced.
+
+"Are you often taken like that?" the painter asked Cottard, with
+mock-seriousness.
+
+As a rule, once an explanation had been given, Cottard would say: "Ah,
+good, good; that's all right, then," after which he would shew not the
+least trace of emotion. But this time Swann's last words, instead of the
+usual calming effect, had that of heating, instantly, to boiling-point
+his astonishment at the discovery that a man with whom he himself
+was actually sitting at table, a man who had no official position, no
+honours or distinction of any sort, was on visiting terms with the Head
+of the State.
+
+"What's that you say? M. Grévy? Do you know M. Grévy?" he demanded of
+Swann, in the stupid and incredulous tone of a constable on duty at the
+palace, when a stranger has come up and asked to see the President of
+the Republic; until, guessing from his words and manner what, as the
+newspapers say, 'it is a case of,' he assures the poor lunatic that he
+will be admitted at once, and points the way to the reception ward of
+the police infirmary.
+
+"I know him slightly; we have some friends in common" (Swann dared not
+add that one of these friends was the Prince of Wales). "Anyhow, he is
+very free with his invitations, and, I assure you, his luncheon-parties
+are not the least bit amusing; they're very simple affairs, too, you
+know; never more than eight at table," he went on, trying desperately
+to cut out everything that seemed to shew off his relations with the
+President in a light too dazzling for the Doctor's eyes.
+
+Whereupon Cottard, at once conforming in his mind to the literal
+interpretation of what Swann was saying, decided that invitations from
+M. Grévy were very little sought after, were sent out, in fact, into
+the highways and hedge-rows. And from that moment he never seemed at
+all surprised to hear that Swann, or anyone else, was 'always at
+the Elysée'; he even felt a little sorry for a man who had to go to
+luncheon-parties which, he himself admitted, were a bore.
+
+"Ah, good, good; that's quite all right then," he said, in the tone of
+a customs official who has been suspicious up to now, but, after hearing
+your explanations, stamps your passport and lets you proceed on your
+journey without troubling to examine your luggage.
+
+"I can well believe you don't find them amusing, those parties; indeed,
+it's very good of you to go to them!" said Mme. Verdurin, who regarded
+the President of the Republic only as a 'bore' to be especially dreaded,
+since he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion,
+which, if employed to captivate her 'faithful,' might easily make them
+'fail.' "It seems, he's as deaf as a post; and eats with his fingers."
+
+"Upon my word! Then it can't be much fun for you, going there." A
+note of pity sounded in the Doctor's voice; and then struck by the
+number--only eight at table--"Are these luncheons what you would
+describe as 'intimate'?" he inquired briskly, not so much out of idle
+curiosity as in his linguistic zeal.
+
+But so great and glorious a figure was the President of the French
+Republic in the eyes of Dr. Cottard that neither the modesty of Swann
+nor the spite of Mme. Verdurin could ever wholly efface that first
+impression, and he never sat down to dinner with the Verdurins without
+asking anxiously, "D'you think we shall see M. Swann here this evening?
+He is a personal friend of M. Grévy's. I suppose that means he's what
+you'd call a 'gentleman'?" He even went to the length of offering Swann
+a card of invitation to the Dental Exhibition.
+
+"This will let you in, and anyone you take with you," he explained, "but
+dogs are not admitted. I'm just warning you, you understand, because
+some friends of mine went there once, who hadn't been told, and there
+was the devil to pay."
+
+As for M. Verdurin, he did not fail to observe the distressing effect
+upon his wife of the discovery that Swann had influential friends of
+whom he had never spoken.
+
+If no arrangement had been made to 'go anywhere,' it was at the
+Verdurins' that Swann would find the 'little nucleus' assembled, but
+he never appeared there except in the evenings, and would hardly ever
+accept their invitations to dinner, in spite of Odette's entreaties.
+
+"I could dine with you alone somewhere, if you'd rather," she suggested.
+
+"But what about Mme. Verdurin?"
+
+"Oh, that's quite simple. I need only say that my dress wasn't ready, or
+that my cab came late. There is always some excuse."
+
+"How charming of you."
+
+But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette feel (by
+consenting to meet her only after dinner) that there were other
+pleasures which he preferred to that of her company, then the desire
+that she felt for his would be all the longer in reaching the point of
+satiety. Besides, as he infinitely preferred to Odette's style of beauty
+that of a little working girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with whom
+he happened to be simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the
+first part of the evening with her, knowing that he was sure to see
+Odette later on. For the same reason, he would never allow Odette to
+call for him at his house, to take him on to the Verdurins'. The little
+girl used to wait, not far from his door, at a street corner; Rémi, his
+coachman, knew where to stop; she would jump in beside him, and hold him
+in her arms until the carriage drew up at the Verdurins'. He would enter
+the drawing-room; and there, while Mme. Verdurin, pointing to the roses
+which he had sent her that morning, said: "I am furious with you!" and
+sent him to the place kept for him, by the side of Odette, the pianist
+would play to them--for their two selves, and for no one else--that
+little phrase by Vinteuil which was, so to speak, the national anthem of
+their love. He began, always, with a sustained tremolo from the violin
+part, which, for several bars, was unaccompanied, and filled all the
+foreground; until suddenly it seemed to be drawn aside, and--just as in
+those interiors by Pieter de Hooch, where the subject is set back a
+long way through the narrow framework of a half-opened door--infinitely
+remote, in colour quite different, velvety with the radiance of some
+intervening light, the little phrase appeared, dancing, pastoral,
+interpolated, episodic, belonging to another world. It passed, with
+simple and immortal movements, scattering on every side the bounties of
+its grace, smiling ineffably still; but Swann thought that he could now
+discern in it some disenchantment. It seemed to be aware how vain, how
+hollow was the happiness to which it shewed the way. In its airy grace
+there was, indeed, something definitely achieved, and complete in
+itself, like the mood of philosophic detachment which follows an
+outburst of vain regret. But little did that matter to him; he looked
+upon the sonata less in its own light--as what it might express, had,
+in fact, expressed to a certain musician, ignorant that any Swann or
+Odette, anywhere in the world, existed, when he composed it, and
+would express to all those who should hear it played in centuries
+to come--than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the
+Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same
+time, of himself--which bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that
+point he had (whimsically entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of
+getting some 'professional' to play over to him the whole sonata, of
+which he still knew no more than this one passage. "Why do you want the
+rest?" she had asked him. "Our little bit; that's all we need." He went
+farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by
+him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed
+to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had
+a meaning of its own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to
+themselves, just as in the jewels given to us, or even in the letters
+written to us by a woman with whom we are in love, we find fault with
+the 'water' of a stone, or with the words of a sentence because they are
+not fashioned exclusively from the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of
+a 'lass unparalleled.'
+
+It would happen, as often as not, that he had stayed so long outside,
+with his little girl, before going to the Verdurins' that, as soon as
+the little phrase had been rendered by the pianist, Swann would discover
+that it was almost time for Odette to go home. He used to take her back
+as far as the door of her little house in the Rue La Pérouse, behind the
+Arc de Triomphe. And it was perhaps on this account, and so as not to
+demand the monopoly of her favours, that he sacrificed the pleasure (not
+so essential to his well-being) of seeing her earlier in the evening,
+of arriving with her at the Verdurins', to the exercise of this other
+privilege, for which she was grateful, of their leaving together; a
+privilege which he valued all the more because, thanks to it, he had
+the feeling that no one else would see her, no one would thrust himself
+between them, no one could prevent him from remaining with her in
+spirit, after he had left her for the night.
+
+And so, night after night, she would be taken home in Swann's carriage;
+and one night, after she had got down, and while he stood at the gate
+and murmured "Till to-morrow, then!" she turned impulsively from him,
+plucked a last lingering chrysanthemum in the tiny garden which flanked
+the pathway from the street to her house, and as he went back to his
+carriage thrust it into his hand. He held it pressed to his lips during
+the drive home, and when, in due course, the flower withered, locked it
+away, like something very precious, in a secret drawer of his desk.
+
+He would escort her to her gate, but no farther. Twice only had he gone
+inside to take part in the ceremony--of such vital importance in her
+life--of 'afternoon tea.' The loneliness and emptiness of those
+short streets (consisting, almost entirely, of low-roofed houses,
+self-contained but not detached, their monotony interrupted here and
+there by the dark intrusion of some sinister little shop, at once
+an historical document and a sordid survival from the days when the
+district was still one of ill repute), the snow which had lain on the
+garden-beds or clung to the branches of the trees, the careless disarray
+of the season, the assertion, in this man-made city, of a state of
+nature, had all combined to add an element of mystery to the warmth, the
+flowers, the luxury which he had found inside.
+
+Passing by (on his left-hand side, and on what, although raised some way
+above the street, was the ground floor of the house) Odette's bedroom,
+which looked out to the back over another little street running parallel
+with her own, he had climbed a staircase that went straight up between
+dark painted walls, from which hung Oriental draperies, strings of
+Turkish beads, and a huge Japanese lantern, suspended by a silken cord
+from the ceiling (which last, however, so that her visitors should not
+have to complain of the want of any of the latest comforts of
+Western civilisation, was lighted by a gas-jet inside), to the two
+drawing-rooms, large and small. These were entered through a narrow
+lobby, the wall of which, chequered with the lozenges of a wooden
+trellis such as you see on garden walls, only gilded, was lined from
+end to end by a long rectangular box in which bloomed, as though in a
+hothouse, a row of large chrysanthemums, at that time still
+uncommon, though by no means so large as the mammoth blossoms which
+horticulturists have since succeeded in making grow. Swann was
+irritated, as a rule, by the sight of these flowers, which had then been
+'the rage' in Paris for about a year, but it had pleased him, on this
+occasion, to see the gloom of the little lobby shot with rays of pink
+and gold and white by the fragrant petals of these ephemeral stars,
+which kindle their cold fires in the murky atmosphere of winter
+afternoons. Odette had received him in a tea-gown of pink silk, which
+left her neck and arms bare. She had made him sit down beside her in one
+of the many mysterious little retreats which had been contrived in the
+various recesses of the room, sheltered by enormous palmtrees growing
+out of pots of Chinese porcelain, or by screens upon which were fastened
+photographs and fans and bows of ribbon. She had said at once, "You're
+not comfortable there; wait a minute, I'll arrange things for you," and
+with a titter of laughter, the complacency of which implied that
+some little invention of her own was being brought into play, she
+had installed behind his head and beneath his feet great cushions of
+Japanese silk, which she pummelled and buffeted as though determined to
+lavish on him all her riches, and regardless of their value. But when
+her footman began to come into the room, bringing, one after another,
+the innumerable lamps which (contained, mostly, in porcelain vases)
+burned singly or in pairs upon the different pieces of furniture as upon
+so many altars, rekindling in the twilight, already almost nocturnal, of
+this winter afternoon, the glow of a sunset more lasting, more roseate,
+more human--filling, perhaps, with romantic wonder the thoughts of
+some solitary lover, wandering in the street below and brought to a
+standstill before the mystery of the human presence which those lighted
+windows at once revealed and screened from sight--she had kept an eye
+sharply fixed on the servant, to see whether he set each of the lamps
+down in the place appointed it. She felt that, if he were to put
+even one of them where it ought not to be, the general effect of her
+drawing-room would be destroyed, and that her portrait, which rested
+upon a sloping easel draped with plush, would not catch the light. And
+so, with feverish impatience, she followed the man's clumsy movements,
+scolding him severely when he passed too close to a pair of beaupots,
+which she made a point of always tidying herself, in case the plants
+should be knocked over--and went across to them now to make sure that he
+had not broken off any of the flowers. She found something 'quaint' in
+the shape of each of her Chinese ornaments, and also in her orchids, the
+cattleyas especially (these being, with chrysanthemums, her favourite
+flowers), because they had the supreme merit of not looking in the least
+like other flowers, but of being made, apparently, out of scraps of silk
+or satin. "It looks just as though it had been cut out of the lining
+of my cloak," she said to Swann, pointing to an orchid, with a shade of
+respect in her voice for so 'smart' a flower, for this distinguished,
+unexpected sister whom nature had suddenly bestowed upon her, so far
+removed from her in the scale of existence, and yet so delicate, so
+refined, so much more worthy than many real women of admission to
+her drawing-room. As she drew his attention, now to the fiery-tongued
+dragons painted upon a bowl or stitched upon a fire-screen, now to a
+fleshy cluster of orchids, now to a dromedary of inlaid silver-work with
+ruby eyes, which kept company, upon her mantelpiece, with a toad carved
+in jade, she would pretend now to be shrinking from the ferocity of the
+monsters or laughing at their absurdity, now blushing at the indecency
+of the flowers, now carried away by an irresistible desire to run across
+and kiss the toad and dromedary, calling them 'darlings.' And these
+affectations were in sharp contrast to the sincerity of some of her
+attitudes, notably her devotion to Our Lady of the Laghetto who had
+once, when Odette was living at Nice, cured her of a mortal illness, and
+whose medal, in gold, she always carried on her person, attributing
+to it unlimited powers. She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon
+or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," went on, smiling, "A
+cloud!" And as he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you
+like it." This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to
+her, something precious, and love is so far obliged to find some
+justification for itself, some guarantee of its duration in pleasures
+which, on the contrary, would have no existence apart from love and must
+cease with its passing, that when he left her, at seven o'clock, to go
+and dress for the evening, all the way home, sitting bolt upright in
+his brougham, unable to repress the happiness with which the afternoon's
+adventure had filled him, he kept on repeating to himself: "What fun
+it would be to have a little woman like that in a place where one could
+always be certain of finding, what one never can be certain of finding,
+a really good cup of tea." An hour or so later he received a note from
+Odette, and at once recognised that florid handwriting, in which an
+affectation of British stiffness imposed an apparent discipline upon its
+shapeless characters, significant, perhaps, to less intimate eyes
+than his, of an untidiness of mind, a fragmentary education, a want of
+sincerity and decision. Swann had left his cigarette-case at her house.
+"Why," she wrote, "did you not forget your heart also? I should never
+have let you have that back."
+
+More important, perhaps, was a second visit which he paid her, a little
+later. On his way to the house, as always when he knew that they were to
+meet, he formed a picture of her in his mind; and the necessity, if he
+was to find any beauty in her face, of fixing his eyes on the fresh and
+rosy protuberance of her cheekbones, and of shutting out all the rest of
+those cheeks which were so often languorous and sallow, except when
+they were punctuated with little fiery spots, plunged him in acute
+depression, as proving that one's ideal is always unattainable, and
+one's actual happiness mediocre. He was taking her an engraving which
+she had asked to see. She was not very well; she received him, wearing
+a wrapper of mauve _crêpe de Chine_, which draped her bosom, like a
+mantle, with a richly embroidered web. As she stood there beside him,
+brushing his cheek with the loosened tresses of her hair, bending one
+knee in what was almost a dancer's pose, so that she could lean without
+tiring herself over the picture, at which she was gazing, with bended
+head, out of those great eyes, which seemed so weary and so sullen when
+there was nothing to animate her, Swann was struck by her resemblance to
+the figure of Zipporah, Jethro's Daughter, which is to be seen in one
+of the Sistine frescoes. He had always found a peculiar fascination
+in tracing in the paintings of the Old Masters, not merely the general
+characteristics of the people whom he encountered in his daily life, but
+rather what seems least susceptible of generalisation, the individual
+features of men and women whom he knew, as, for instance, in a bust
+of the Doge Loredan by Antonio Rizzo, the prominent cheekbones, the
+slanting eyebrows, in short, a speaking likeness to his own coachman
+Rémi; in the colouring of a Ghirlandaio, the nose of M. de Palancy; in a
+portrait by Tintoretto, the invasion of the plumpness of the cheek by an
+outcrop of whisker, the broken nose, the penetrating stare, the swollen
+eyelids of Dr. du Boulbon. Perhaps because he had always regretted,
+in his heart, that he had confined his attention to the social side of
+life, had talked, always, rather than acted, he felt that he might find
+a sort of indulgence bestowed upon him by those great artists, in his
+perception of the fact that they also had regarded with pleasure and had
+admitted into the canon of their works such types of physiognomy as give
+those works the strongest possible certificate of reality and trueness
+to life; a modern, almost a topical savour; perhaps, also, he had so far
+succumbed to the prevailing frivolity of the world of fashion that he
+felt the necessity of finding in an old masterpiece some such obvious
+and refreshing allusion to a person about whom jokes could be made and
+repeated and enjoyed to-day. Perhaps, on the other hand, he had
+retained enough of the artistic temperament to be able to find a genuine
+satisfaction in watching these individual features take on a more
+general significance when he saw them, uprooted and disembodied, in the
+abstract idea of similarity between an historic portrait and a modern
+original, whom it was not intended to represent. However that might be,
+and perhaps because the abundance of impressions which he, for some time
+past, had been receiving--though, indeed, they had come to him rather
+through the channel of his appreciation of music--had enriched his
+appetite for painting as well, it was with an unusual intensity
+of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his
+character and conduct, that Swann remarked Odette's resemblance to the
+Zipporah of that Alessandro de Mariano, to whom one shrinks from giving
+his more popular surname, now that 'Botticelli' suggests not so much the
+actual work of the Master as that false and banal conception of it which
+has of late obtained common currency. He no longer based his estimate
+of the merit of Odette's face on the more or less good quality of her
+cheeks, and the softness and sweetness--as of carnation-petals--which,
+he supposed, would greet his lips there, should he ever hazard an
+embrace, but regarded it rather as a skein of subtle and lovely silken
+threads, which his gazing eyes collected and wound together, following
+the curving line from the skein to the ball, where he mingled the
+cadence of her neck with the spring of her hair and the droop of her
+eyelids, as though from a portrait of herself, in which her type was
+made clearly intelligible.
+
+He stood gazing at her; traces of the old fresco were apparent in
+her face and limbs, and these he tried incessantly, afterwards, to
+recapture, both when he was with Odette, and when he was only thinking
+of her in her absence; and, albeit his admiration for the Florentine
+masterpiece was probably based upon his discovery that it had been
+reproduced in her, the similarity enhanced her beauty also, and rendered
+her more precious in his sight. Swann reproached himself with his
+failure, hitherto, to estimate at her true worth a creature whom the
+great Sandro would have adored, and counted himself fortunate that his
+pleasure in the contemplation of Odette found a justification in his own
+system of aesthetic. He told himself that, in choosing the thought of
+Odette as the inspiration of his dreams of ideal happiness, he was not,
+as he had until then supposed, falling back, merely, upon an expedient
+of doubtful and certainly inadequate value, since she contained in
+herself what satisfied the utmost refinement of his taste in art. He
+failed to observe that this quality would not naturally avail to bring
+Odette into the category of women whom he found desirable, simply
+because his desires had always run counter to his aesthetic taste. The
+words 'Florentine painting' were invaluable to Swann. They enabled him
+(gave him, as it were, a legal title) to introduce the image of Odette
+into a world of dreams and fancies which, until then, she had been
+debarred from entering, and where she assumed a new and nobler form. And
+whereas the mere sight of her in the flesh, by perpetually reviving his
+misgivings as to the quality of her face, her figure, the whole of her
+beauty, used to cool the ardour of his love, those misgivings were swept
+away and that love confirmed now that he could re-erect his estimate of
+her on the sure foundations of his aesthetic principles; while the kiss,
+the bodily surrender which would have seemed natural and but moderately
+attractive, had they been granted him by a creature of somewhat withered
+flesh and sluggish blood, coming, as now they came, to crown his
+adoration of a masterpiece in a gallery, must, it seemed, prove as
+exquisite as they would be supernatural.
+
+And when he was tempted to regret that, for months past, he had done
+nothing but visit Odette, he would assure himself that he was
+not unreasonable in giving up much of his time to the study of an
+inestimably precious work of art, cast for once in a new, a different,
+an especially charming metal, in an unmatched exemplar which he would
+contemplate at one moment with the humble, spiritual, disinterested mind
+of an artist, at another with the pride, the selfishness, the sensual
+thrill of a collector.
+
+On his study table, at which he worked, he had placed, as it were a
+photograph of Odette, a reproduction of Jethro's Daughter. He would
+gaze in admiration at the large eyes, the delicate features in which the
+imperfection of her skin might be surmised, the marvellous locks of hair
+that fell along her tired cheeks; and, adapting what he had already felt
+to be beautiful, on aesthetic grounds, to the idea of a living woman,
+he converted it into a series of physical merits which he congratulated
+himself on finding assembled in the person of one whom he might,
+ultimately, possess. The vague feeling of sympathy which attracts a
+spectator to a work of art, now that he knew the type, in warm flesh
+and blood, of Jethro's Daughter, became a desire which more than
+compensated, thenceforward, for that with which Odette's physical charms
+had at first failed to inspire him. When he had sat for a long time
+gazing at the Botticelli, he would think of his own living Botticelli,
+who seemed all the lovelier in contrast, and as he drew towards him
+the photograph of Zipporah he would imagine that he was holding Odette
+against his heart.
+
+It was not only Odette's indifference, however, that he must take pains
+to circumvent; it was also, not infrequently, his own; feeling that,
+since Odette had had every facility for seeing him, she seemed no longer
+to have very much to say to him when they did meet, he was afraid
+lest the manner--at once trivial, monotonous, and seemingly
+unalterable--which she now adopted when they were together should
+ultimately destroy in him that romantic hope, that a day might come when
+she would make avowal of her passion, by which hope alone he had become
+and would remain her lover. And so to alter, to give a fresh moral
+aspect to that Odette, of whose unchanging mood he was afraid of growing
+weary, he wrote, suddenly, a letter full of hinted discoveries and
+feigned indignation, which he sent off so that it should reach her
+before dinner-time. He knew that she would be frightened, and that she
+would reply, and he hoped that, when the fear of losing him clutched at
+her heart, it would force from her words such as he had never yet heard
+her utter: and he was right--by repeating this device he had won from
+her the most affectionate letters that she had, so far, written him, one
+of them (which she had sent to him at midday by a special messenger from
+the Maison Dorée--it was the day of the Paris-Murcie Fête given for
+the victims of the recent floods in Murcia) beginning "My dear, my hand
+trembles so that I can scarcely write----"; and these letters he had
+kept in the same drawer as the withered chrysanthemum. Or else, if she
+had not had time to write, when he arrived at the Verdurins' she would
+come running up to him with an "I've something to say to you!" and he
+would gaze curiously at the revelation in her face and speech of what
+she had hitherto kept concealed from him of her heart.
+
+Even as he drew near to the Verdurins' door, and caught sight of the
+great lamp-lit spaces of the drawing-room windows, whose shutters were
+never closed, he would begin to melt at the thought of the charming
+creature whom he would see, as he entered the room, basking in that
+golden light. Here and there the figures of the guests stood out, sharp
+and black, between lamp and window, shutting off the light, like those
+little pictures which one sees sometimes pasted here and there upon a
+glass screen, whose other panes are mere transparencies. He would try
+to make out Odette. And then, when he was once inside, without thinking,
+his eyes sparkled suddenly with such radiant happiness that M. Verdurin
+said to the painter: "H'm. Seems to be getting warm." Indeed, her
+presence gave the house what none other of the houses that he visited
+seemed to possess: a sort of tactual sense, a nervous system which
+ramified into each of its rooms and sent a constant stimulus to his
+heart.
+
+And so the simple and regular manifestations of a social organism,
+namely the 'little clan,' were transformed for Swann into a series of
+daily encounters with Odette, and enabled him to feign indifference to
+the prospect of seeing her, or even a desire not to see her; in doing
+which he incurred no very great risk since, even although he had written
+to her during the day, he would of necessity see her in the evening and
+accompany her home.
+
+But one evening, when, irritated by the thought of that inevitable dark
+drive together, he had taken his other 'little girl' all the way to the
+Bois, so as to delay as long as possible the moment of his appearance at
+the Verdurins', he was so late in reaching them that Odette, supposing
+that he did not intend to come, had already left. Seeing the room bare
+of her, Swann felt his heart wrung by sudden anguish; he shook with the
+sense that he was being deprived of a pleasure whose intensity he began
+then for the first time to estimate, having always, hitherto, had that
+certainty of finding it whenever he would, which (as in the case of
+all our pleasures) reduced, if it did not altogether blind him to its
+dimensions.
+
+"Did you notice the face he pulled when he saw that she wasn't here?" M.
+Verdurin asked his wife. "I think we may say that he's hooked."
+
+"The face he pulled?" exploded Dr. Cottard who, having left the house
+for a moment to visit a patient, had just returned to fetch his wife and
+did not know whom they were discussing.
+
+"D'you mean to say you didn't meet him on the doorstep--the loveliest of
+Swanns?"
+
+"No. M. Swann has been here?"
+
+"Just for a moment. We had a glimpse of a Swann tremendously agitated.
+In a state of nerves. You see, Odette had left."
+
+"You mean to say that she has gone the 'whole hog' with him; that she
+has 'burned her boats'?" inquired the Doctor cautiously, testing the
+meaning of his phrases.
+
+"Why, of course not; there's absolutely nothing in it; in fact, between
+you and me, I think she's making a great mistake, and behaving like a
+silly little fool, which she is, incidentally."
+
+"Come, come, come!" said M. Verdurin, "How on earth do you know that
+there's 'nothing in it'? We haven't been there to see, have we now?"
+
+"She would have told me," answered Mme. Verdurin with dignity. "I may
+say that she tells me everything. As she has no one else at present, I
+told her that she ought to live with him. She makes out that she can't;
+she admits, she was immensely attracted by him, at first; but he's
+always shy with her, and that makes her shy with him. Besides, she
+doesn't care for him in that way, she says; it's an ideal love,
+'Platonic,' you know; she's afraid of rubbing the bloom off--oh, I don't
+know half the things she says, how should I? And yet he's exactly the
+sort of man she wants."
+
+"I beg to differ from you," M. Verdurin courteously interrupted. "I am
+only half satisfied with the gentleman. I feel that he 'poses.'"
+
+Mme. Verdurin's whole body stiffened, her eyes stared blankly as though
+she had suddenly been turned into a statue; a device by means of which
+she might be supposed not to have caught the sound of that unutterable
+word which seemed to imply that it was possible for people to 'pose'
+in her house, and, therefore, that there were people in the world who
+'mattered more' than herself.
+
+"Anyhow, if there is nothing in it, I don't suppose it's because our
+friend believes in her virtue. And yet, you never know; he seems to
+believe in her intelligence. I don't know whether you heard the way he
+lectured her the other evening about Vinteuil's sonata. I am devoted
+to Odette, but really--to expound theories of aesthetic to her--the man
+must be a prize idiot."
+
+"Look here, I won't have you saying nasty things about Odette," broke in
+Mme. Verdurin in her 'spoiled child' manner. "She is charming."
+
+"There's no reason why she shouldn't be charming; we are not saying
+anything nasty about her, only that she is not the embodiment of either
+virtue or intellect. After all," he turned to the painter, "does it
+matter so very much whether she is virtuous or not? You can't tell; she
+might be a great deal less charming if she were."
+
+On the landing Swann had run into the Verdurins' butler, who had been
+somewhere else a moment earlier, when he arrived, and who had been asked
+by Odette to tell Swann (but that was at least an hour ago) that she
+would probably stop to drink a cup of chocolate at Prévost's on her
+way home. Swann set off at once for Prévost's, but every few yards
+his carriage was held up by others, or by people crossing the street,
+loathsome obstacles each of which he would gladly have crushed beneath
+his wheels, were it not that a policeman fumbling with a note-book would
+delay him even longer than the actual passage of the pedestrian. He
+counted the minutes feverishly, adding a few seconds to each so as to
+be quite certain that he had not given himself short measure, and so,
+possibly, exaggerated whatever chance there might actually be of his
+arriving at Prévost's in time, and of finding her still there. And then,
+in a moment of illumination, like a man in a fever who awakes from sleep
+and is conscious of the absurdity of the dream-shapes among which his
+mind has been wandering without any clear distinction between himself
+and them, Swann suddenly perceived how foreign to his nature were the
+thoughts which he had been revolving in his mind ever since he had heard
+at the Verdurins' that Odette had left, how novel the heartache from
+which he was suffering, but of which he was only now conscious, as
+though he had just woken up. What! all this disturbance simply because
+he would not see Odette, now, till to-morrow, exactly what he had been
+hoping, not an hour before, as he drove toward Mme. Verdurin's. He was
+obliged to admit also that now, as he sat in the same carriage and
+drove to Prévost's, he was no longer the same man, was no longer alone
+even--but that a new personality was there beside him, adhering to him,
+amalgamated with him, a creature from whom he might, perhaps, be unable
+to liberate himself, towards whom he might have to adopt some such
+stratagem as one uses to outwit a master or a malady. And yet, during
+this last moment in which he had felt that another, a fresh personality
+was thus conjoined with his own, life had seemed, somehow, more
+interesting.
+
+It was in vain that he assured himself that this possible meeting at
+Prévost's (the tension of waiting for which so ravished, stripped so
+bare the intervening moments that he could find nothing, not one idea,
+not one memory in his mind beneath which his troubled spirit might take
+shelter and repose) would probably, after all, should it take place, be
+much the same as all their meetings, of no great importance. As on every
+other evening, once he was in Odette's company, once he had begun to
+cast furtive glances at her changing countenance, and instantly to
+withdraw his eyes lest she should read in them the first symbols of
+desire and believe no more in his indifference, he would cease to
+be able even to think of her, so busy would he be in the search for
+pretexts which would enable him not to leave her immediately, and to
+assure himself, without betraying his concern, that he would find her
+again, next evening, at the Verdurins'; pretexts, that is to say, which
+would enable him to prolong for the time being, and to renew for one day
+more the disappointment, the torturing deception that must always come
+to him with the vain presence of this woman, whom he might approach, yet
+never dared embrace.
+
+She was not at Prevost's; he must search for her, then, in every
+restaurant upon the boulevards. To save time, while he went in one
+direction, he sent in the other his coachman Rémi (Rizzo's Doge Loredan)
+for whom he presently--after a fruitless search--found himself waiting
+at the spot where the carriage was to meet him. It did not appear, and
+Swann tantalised himself with alternate pictures of the approaching
+moment, as one in which Rémi would say to him: "Sir, the lady is there,"
+or as one in which Rémi would say to him: "Sir, the lady was not in
+any of the cafés." And so he saw himself faced by the close of his
+evening--a thing uniform, and yet bifurcated by the intervening accident
+which would either put an end to his agony by discovering Odette, or
+would oblige him to abandon any hope of finding her that night, to
+accept the necessity of returning home without having seen her.
+
+The coachman returned; but, as he drew up opposite him, Swann asked,
+not "Did you find the lady?" but "Remind me, to-morrow, to order in
+some more firewood. I am sure we must be running short." Perhaps he had
+persuaded himself that, if Rémi had at last found Odette in some café,
+where she was waiting for him still, then his night of misery was
+already obliterated by the realisation, begun already in his mind, of a
+night of joy, and that there was no need for him to hasten towards the
+attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place,
+which would not escape his grasp again. But it was also by the force of
+inertia; there was in his soul that want of adaptability which can be
+seen in the bodies of certain people who, when the moment comes to avoid
+a collision, to snatch their clothes out of reach of a flame, or to
+perform any other such necessary movement, take their time (as the
+saying is), begin by remaining for a moment in their original position,
+as though seeking to find in it a starting-point, a source of strength
+and motion. And probably, if the coachman had interrupted him with,
+"I have found the lady," he would have answered, "Oh, yes, of course;
+that's what I told you to do. I had quite forgotten," and would have
+continued to discuss his supply of firewood, so as to hide from his
+servant the emotion that he had felt, and to give himself time to break
+away from the thraldom of his anxieties and abandon himself to pleasure.
+
+The coachman came back, however, with the report that he could not find
+her anywhere, and added the advice, as an old and privileged servant, "I
+think, sir, that all we can do now is to go home."
+
+But the air of indifference which Swann could so lightly assume when
+Rémi uttered his final, unalterable response, fell from him like a
+cast-off cloak when he saw Rémi attempt to make him abandon hope and
+retire from the quest.
+
+"Certainly not!" he exclaimed. "We must find the lady. It is most
+important. She would be extremely put out--it's a business matter--and
+vexed with me if she didn't see me."
+
+"But I do not see how the lady can be vexed, sir," answered Rémi, "since
+it was she that went away without waiting for you, sir, and said she was
+going to Prévost's, and then wasn't there."
+
+Meanwhile the restaurants were closing, and their lights began to go
+out. Under the trees of the boulevards there were still a few people
+strolling to and fro, barely distinguishable in the gathering darkness.
+Now and then the ghost of a woman glided up to Swann, murmured a few
+words in his ear, asked him to take her home, and left him shuddering.
+Anxiously he explored every one of these vaguely seen shapes, as though
+among the phantoms of the dead, in the realms of darkness, he had been
+searching for a lost Eurydice.
+
+Among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the
+agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious
+as the great gust of agitation which, now and then, sweeps over the
+human spirit. For then the creature in whose company we are seeking
+amusement at the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided,
+that is the creature whom we shall henceforward love. It is not
+necessary that she should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or
+even as much as others. All that is necessary is that our taste for her
+should become exclusive. And that condition is fulfilled so soon as--in
+the moment when she has failed to meet us--for the pleasure which
+we were on the point of enjoying in her charming company is abruptly
+substituted an anxious torturing desire, whose object is the creature
+herself, an irrational, absurd desire, which the laws of civilised
+society make it impossible to satisfy and difficult to assuage--the
+insensate, agonising desire to possess her.
+
+Swann made Rémi drive him to such restaurants as were still open; it was
+the sole hypothesis, now, of that happiness which he had contemplated
+so calmly; he no longer concealed his agitation, the price he set upon
+their meeting, and promised, in case of success, to reward his coachman,
+as though, by inspiring in him a will to triumph which would reinforce
+his own, he could bring it to pass, by a miracle, that Odette--assuming
+that she had long since gone home to bed,--might yet be found seated in
+some restaurant on the boulevards. He pursued the quest as far as the
+Maison Dorée, burst twice into Tortoni's and, still without catching
+sight of her, was emerging from the Café Anglais, striding with haggard
+gaze towards his carriage, which was waiting for him at the corner of
+the Boulevard des Italiens, when he collided with a person coming in the
+opposite direction; it was Odette; she explained, later, that there had
+been no room at Prévost's, that she had gone, instead, to sup at the
+Maison Dorée, and had been sitting there in an alcove where he must have
+overlooked her, and that she was now looking for her carriage.
+
+She had so little expected to see him that she started back in alarm. As
+for him, he had ransacked the streets of Paris, not that he supposed
+it possible that he should find her, but because he would have suffered
+even more cruelly by abandoning the attempt. But now the joy (which, his
+reason had never ceased to assure him, was not, that evening at least,
+to be realised) was suddenly apparent, and more real than ever
+before; for he himself had contributed nothing to it by anticipating
+probabilities,--it remained integral and external to himself; there
+was no need for him to draw on his own resources to endow it with
+truth--'twas from itself that there emanated, 'twas itself that
+projected towards him that truth whose glorious rays melted and
+scattered like the cloud of a dream the sense of loneliness which had
+lowered over him, that truth upon which he had supported, nay founded,
+albeit unconsciously, his vision of bliss. So will a traveller, who has
+come down, on a day of glorious weather, to the Mediterranean shore, and
+is doubtful whether they still exist, those lands which he has left, let
+his eyes be dazzled, rather than cast a backward glance, by the radiance
+streaming towards him from the luminous and unfading azure at his feet.
+
+He climbed after her into the carriage which she had kept waiting, and
+ordered his own to follow.
+
+She had in her hand a bunch of cattleyas, and Swann could see, beneath
+the film of lace that covered her head, more of the same flowers
+fastened to a swansdown plume. She was wearing, under her cloak, a
+flowing gown of black velvet, caught up on one side so as to reveal a
+large triangular patch of her white silk skirt, with an 'insertion,'
+also of white silk, in the cleft of her low-necked bodice, in which were
+fastened a few more cattleyas. She had scarcely recovered from the shock
+which the sight of Swann had given her, when some obstacle made the
+horse start to one side. They were thrown forward from their seats; she
+uttered a cry, and fell back quivering and breathless.
+
+"It's all right," he assured her, "don't be frightened." And he slipped
+his arm round her shoulder, supporting her body against his own; then
+went on: "Whatever you do, don't utter a word; just make a sign, yes
+or no, or you'll be out of breath again. You won't mind if I put the
+flowers straight on your bodice; the jolt has loosened them. I'm afraid
+of their dropping out; I'm just going to fasten them a little more
+securely."
+
+She was not used to being treated with so much formality by men, and
+smiled as she answered: "No, not at all; I don't mind in the least."
+
+But he, chilled a little by her answer, perhaps, also, to bear out the
+pretence that he had been sincere in adopting the stratagem, or even
+because he was already beginning to believe that he had been, exclaimed:
+"No, no; you mustn't speak. You will be out of breath again. You can
+easily answer in signs; I shall understand. Really and truly now, you
+don't mind my doing this? Look, there is a little--I think it must be
+pollen, spilt over your dress,--may I brush it off with my hand? That's
+not too hard; I'm not hurting you, am I? I'm tickling you, perhaps, a
+little; but I don't want to touch the velvet in case I rub it the wrong
+way. But, don't you see, I really had to fasten the flowers; they would
+have fallen out if I hadn't. Like that, now; if I just push them a
+little farther down.... Seriously, I'm not annoying you, am I? And if
+I just sniff them to see whether they've really lost all their scent? I
+don't believe I ever smelt any before; may I? Tell the truth, now."
+
+Still smiling, she shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly, as who
+should say, "You're quite mad; you know very well that I like it."
+
+He slipped his other hand upwards along Odette's cheek; she fixed her
+eyes on him with that languishing and solemn air which marks the women
+of the old Florentine's paintings, in whose faces he had found the type
+of hers; swimming at the brink of her fringed lids, her brilliant eyes,
+large and finely drawn as theirs, seemed on the verge of breaking from
+her face and rolling down her cheeks like two great tears. She bent her
+neck, as all their necks may be seen to bend, in the pagan scenes as
+well as in the scriptural. And although her attitude was, doubtless,
+habitual and instinctive, one which she knew to be appropriate to such
+moments, and was careful not to forget to assume, she seemed to need all
+her strength to hold her face back, as though some invisible force
+were drawing it down towards Swann's. And Swann it was who, before she
+allowed her face, as though despite her efforts, to fall upon his lips,
+held it back for a moment longer, at a little distance between his
+hands. He had intended to leave time for her mind to overtake her body's
+movements, to recognise the dream which she had so long cherished and to
+assist at its realisation, like a mother invited as a spectator when
+a prize is given to the child whom she has reared and loves. Perhaps,
+moreover, Swann himself was fixing upon these features of an Odette not
+yet possessed, not even kissed by him, on whom he was looking now for
+the last time, that comprehensive gaze with which, on the day of his
+departure, a traveller strives to bear away with him in memory the view
+of a country to which he may never return.
+
+But he was so shy in approaching her that, after this evening which
+had begun by his arranging her cattleyas and had ended in her complete
+surrender, whether from fear of chilling her, or from reluctance to
+appear, even retrospectively, to have lied, or perhaps because he lacked
+the audacity to formulate a more urgent requirement than this (which
+could always be repeated, since it had not annoyed her on the first
+occasion), he resorted to the same pretext on the following days. If
+she had any cattleyas pinned to her bodice, he would say: "It is most
+unfortunate; the cattleyas don't need tucking in this evening; they've
+not been disturbed as they were the other night; I think, though, that
+this one isn't quite straight. May I see if they have more scent than
+the others?" Or else, if she had none: "Oh! no cattleyas this evening;
+then there's nothing for me to arrange." So that for some time there
+was no change from the procedure which he had followed on that first
+evening, when he had started by touching her throat, with his fingers
+first and then with his lips, but their caresses began invariably with
+this modest exploration. And long afterwards, when the arrangement (or,
+rather, the ritual pretence of an arrangement) of her cattleyas had
+quite fallen into desuetude, the metaphor "Do a cattleya," transmuted
+into a simple verb which they would employ without a thought of its
+original meaning when they wished to refer to the act of physical
+possession (in which, paradoxically, the possessor possesses nothing),
+survived to commemorate in their vocabulary the long forgotten custom
+from which it sprang. And yet possibly this particular manner of saying
+"to make love" had not the precise significance of its synonyms.
+However disillusioned we may be about women, however we may regard
+the possession of even the most divergent types as an invariable
+and monotonous experience, every detail of which is known and can be
+described in advance, it still becomes a fresh and stimulating pleasure
+if the women concerned be--or be thought to be--so difficult as to
+oblige us to base our attack upon some unrehearsed incident in our
+relations with them, as was originally for Swann the arrangement of the
+cattleyas. He trembled as he hoped, that evening, (but Odette, he told
+himself, if she were deceived by his stratagem, could not guess his
+intention) that it was the possession of this woman that would emerge
+for him from their large and richly coloured petals; and the pleasure
+which he already felt, and which Odette tolerated, he thought, perhaps
+only because she was not yet aware of it herself, seemed to him for that
+reason--as it might have seemed to the first man when he enjoyed it amid
+the flowers of the earthly paradise--a pleasure which had never before
+existed, which he was striving now to create, a pleasure--and the
+special name which he was to give to it preserved its identity--entirely
+individual and new.
+
+The ice once broken, every evening, when he had taken her home, he must
+follow her into the house; and often she would come out again in her
+dressing-gown, and escort him to his carriage, and would kiss him before
+the eyes of his coachman, saying: "What on earth does it matter what
+people see?" And on evenings when he did not go to the Verdurins' (which
+happened occasionally, now that he had opportunities of meeting Odette
+elsewhere), when--more and more rarely--he went into society, she would
+beg him to come to her on his way home, however late he might be. The
+season was spring, the nights clear and frosty. He would come away from
+an evening party, jump into his victoria, spread a rug over his knees,
+tell the friends who were leaving at the same time, and who insisted on
+his going home with them, that he could not, that he was not going
+in their direction; then the coachman would start off at a fast trot
+without further orders, knowing quite well where he had to go. His
+friends would be left marvelling, and, as a matter of fact, Swann was
+no longer the same man. No one ever received a letter from him now
+demanding an introduction to a woman. He had ceased to pay any attention
+to women, and kept away from the places in which they were ordinarily to
+be met. In a restaurant, or in the country, his manner was deliberately
+and directly the opposite of that by which, only a few days earlier,
+his friends would have recognised him, that manner which had seemed
+permanently and unalterably his own. To such an extent does passion
+manifest itself in us as a temporary and distinct character, which not
+only takes the place of our normal character but actually obliterates
+the signs by which that character has hitherto been discernible. On the
+other hand, there was one thing that was, now, invariable, namely that
+wherever Swann might be spending the evening, he never failed to go on
+afterwards to Odette. The interval of space separating her from him
+was one which he must as inevitably traverse as he must descend, by an
+irresistible gravitation, the steep slope of life itself. To be frank,
+as often as not, when he had stayed late at a party, he would have
+preferred to return home at once, without going so far out of his way,
+and to postpone their meeting until the morrow; but the very fact of his
+putting himself to such inconvenience at an abnormal hour in order to
+visit her, while he guessed that his friends, as he left them, were
+saying to one another: "He is tied hand and foot; there must certainly
+be a woman somewhere who insists on his going to her at all hours,"
+made him feel that he was leading the life of the class of men whose
+existence is coloured by a love-affair, and in whom the perpetual
+sacrifice which they are making of their comfort and of their practical
+interests has engendered a spiritual charm. Then, though he may not
+consciously have taken this into consideration, the certainty that she
+was waiting for him, that she was not anywhere or with anyone else, that
+he would see her before he went home, drew the sting from that anguish,
+forgotten, it is true, but latent and ever ready to be reawakened, which
+he had felt on the evening when Odette had left the Verdurins' before
+his arrival, an anguish the actual cessation of which was so agreeable
+that it might even be called a state of happiness. Perhaps it was to
+that hour of anguish that there must be attributed the importance which
+Odette had since assumed in his life. Other people are, as a rule, so
+immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the
+power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person
+seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with
+poetry, makes of our lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on
+which that person and ourselves are ever more or less in contact. Swann
+could not without anxiety ask himself what Odette would mean to him
+in the years that were to come. Sometimes, as he looked up from his
+victoria on those fine and frosty nights of early spring, and saw the
+dazzling moonbeams fall between his eyes and the deserted streets, he
+would think of that other face, gleaming and faintly roseate like the
+moon's, which had, one day, risen on the horizon of his mind and since
+then had shed upon the world that mysterious light in which he saw it
+bathed. If he arrived after the hour at which Odette sent her servants
+to bed, before ringing the bell at the gate of her little garden,
+he would go round first into the other street, over which, at the
+ground-level, among the windows (all exactly alike, but darkened) of
+the adjoining houses, shone the solitary lighted window of her room.
+He would rap upon the pane, and she would hear the signal, and answer,
+before running to meet him at the gate. He would find, lying open on the
+piano, some of her favourite music, the _Valse des Roses_, the _Pauvre
+Fou_ of Tagliafico (which, according to the instructions embodied in her
+will, was to be played at her funeral); but he would ask her, instead,
+to give him the little phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. It was true that
+Odette played vilely, but often the fairest impression that remains in
+our minds of a favourite air is one which has arisen out of a jumble
+of wrong notes struck by unskilful fingers upon a tuneless piano. The
+little phrase was associated still, in Swann's mind, with his love for
+Odette. He felt clearly that this love was something to which there were
+no corresponding external signs, whose meaning could not be proved by
+any but himself; he realised, too, that Odette's qualities were not such
+as to justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in
+her company. And often, when the cold government of reason stood
+unchallenged, he would readily have ceased to sacrifice so many of his
+intellectual and social interests to this imaginary pleasure. But the
+little phrase, as soon as it struck his ear, had the power to liberate
+in him the room that was needed to contain it; the proportions of
+Swann's soul were altered; a margin was left for a form of enjoyment
+which corresponded no more than his love for Odette to any external
+object, and yet was not, like his enjoyment of that love, purely
+individual, but assumed for him an objective reality superior to that
+of other concrete things. This thirst for an untasted charm, the little
+phrase would stimulate it anew in him, but without bringing him any
+definite gratification to assuage it. With the result that those parts
+of Swann's soul in which the little phrase had obliterated all care
+for material interests, those human considerations which affect all men
+alike, were left bare by it, blank pages on which he was at liberty to
+inscribe the name of Odette. Moreover, where Odette's affection might
+seem ever so little abrupt and disappointing, the little phrase would
+come to supplement it, to amalgamate with it its own mysterious essence.
+Watching Swann's face while he listened to the phrase, one would have
+said that he was inhaling an anaesthetic which allowed him to breathe
+more deeply. And the pleasure which the music gave him, which was
+shortly to create in him a real longing, was in fact closely akin,
+at such moments, to the pleasure which he would have derived from
+experimenting with perfumes, from entering into contract with a world
+for which we men were not created, which appears to lack form because
+our eyes cannot perceive it, to lack significance because it escapes
+our intelligence, to which we may attain by way of one sense only. Deep
+repose, mysterious refreshment for Swann,--for him whose eyes, although
+delicate interpreters of painting, whose mind, although an acute
+observer of manners, must bear for ever the indelible imprint of the
+barrenness of his life,--to feel himself transformed into a creature
+foreign to humanity, blinded, deprived of his logical faculty, almost
+a fantastic unicorn, a chimaera-like creature conscious of the world
+through his two ears alone. And as, notwithstanding, he sought in the
+little phrase for a meaning to which his intelligence could not descend,
+with what a strange frenzy of intoxication must he strip bare his
+innermost soul of the whole armour of reason, and make it pass,
+unattended, through the straining vessel, down into the dark filter of
+sound. He began to reckon up how much that was painful, perhaps even how
+much secret and unappeased sorrow underlay the sweetness of the phrase;
+and yet to him it brought no suffering. What matter though the phrase
+repeated that love is frail and fleeting, when his love was so strong!
+He played with the melancholy which the phrase diffused, he felt it
+stealing over him, but like a caress which only deepened and sweetened
+his sense of his own happiness. He would make Odette play him the phrase
+again, ten, twenty times on end, insisting that, while she played, she
+must never cease to kiss him. Every kiss provokes another. Ah, in those
+earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring into life. How
+closely, in their abundance, are they pressed one against another; until
+lovers would find it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour,
+as to count the flowers in a meadow in May. Then she would pretend to
+stop, saying: "How do you expect me to play when you keep on holding me?
+I can't do everything at once. Make up your mind what you want; am I to
+play the phrase or do you want to play with me?" Then he would become
+annoyed, and she would burst out with a laugh which was transformed, as
+it left her lips, and descended upon him in a shower of kisses. Or else
+she would look at him sulkily, and he would see once again a face worthy
+to figure in Botticelli's 'Life of Moses,' he would place it there,
+giving to Odette's neck the necessary inclination; and when he had
+finished her portrait in distemper, in the fifteenth century, on the
+wall of the Sixtine, the idea that she was, none the less, in the room
+with him still, by the piano, at that very moment, ready to be kissed
+and won, the idea of her material existence, of her being alive, would
+sweep over him with so violent an intoxication that, with eyes starting
+from his head and jaws that parted as though to devour her, he would
+fling himself upon this Botticelli maiden and kiss and bite her cheeks.
+And then, as soon as he had left the house, not without returning to
+kiss her once again, because he had forgotten to take away with him, in
+memory, some detail of her fragrance or of her features, while he drove
+home in his victoria, blessing the name of Odette who allowed him to pay
+her these daily visits, which, although they could not, he felt, bring
+any great happiness to her, still, by keeping him immune from the fever
+of jealousy--by removing from him every possibility of a fresh outbreak
+of the heart-sickness which had manifested itself in him that evening,
+when he had failed to find her at the Verdurins'--might help him to
+arrive, without any recurrence of those crises, of which the first had
+been so distressing that it must also be the last, at the termination of
+this strange series of hours in his life, hours almost enchanted, in the
+same manner as these other, following hours, in which he drove through a
+deserted Paris by the light of the moon: noticing as he drove home that
+the satellite had now changed its position, relatively to his own,
+and was almost touching the horizon; feeling that his love, also, was
+obedient to these immutable laws of nature, he asked himself whether
+this period, upon which he had entered, was to last much longer, whether
+presently his mind's eye would cease to behold that dear countenance,
+save as occupying a distant and diminished position, and on the verge of
+ceasing to shed on him the radiance of its charm. For Swann was finding
+in things once more, since he had fallen in love, the charm that he had
+found when, in his adolescence, he had fancied himself an artist; with
+this difference, that what charm lay in them now was conferred by Odette
+alone. He could feel reawakening in himself the inspirations of his
+boyhood, which had been dissipated among the frivolities of his later
+life, but they all bore, now, the reflection, the stamp of a particular
+being; and during the long hours which he now found a subtle pleasure
+in spending at home, alone with his convalescent spirit, he became
+gradually himself again, but himself in thraldom to another.
+
+He went to her only in the evenings, and knew nothing of how she spent
+her time during the day, any more than he knew of her past; so little,
+indeed, that he had not even the tiny, initial clue which, by allowing
+us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge.
+And so he never asked himself what she might be doing, or what her life
+had been. Only he smiled sometimes at the thought of how, some years
+earlier, when he still did not know her, some one had spoken to him of a
+woman who, if he remembered rightly, must certainly have been Odette,
+as of a 'tart,' a 'kept' woman, one of those women to whom he still
+attributed (having lived but little in their company) the entire set of
+characteristics, fundamentally perverse, with which they had been, for
+many years, endowed by the imagination of certain novelists. He would
+say to himself that one has, as often as not, only to take the exact
+counterpart of the reputation created by the world in order to judge a
+person fairly, when with such a character he contrasted that of Odette,
+so good, so simple, so enthusiastic in the pursuit of ideals, so nearly
+incapable of not telling the truth that, when he had once begged her, so
+that they might dine together alone, to write to Mme. Verdurin, saying
+that she was unwell, the next day he had seen her, face to face
+with Mme. Verdurin, who asked whether she had recovered, blushing,
+stammering, and, in spite of herself, revealing in every feature how
+painful, what a torture it was to her to act a lie; and, while in her
+answer she multiplied the fictitious details of an imaginary illness,
+seeming to ask pardon, by her suppliant look and her stricken accents,
+for the obvious falsehood of her words.
+
+On certain days, however, though these came seldom, she would call upon
+him in the afternoon, to interrupt his musings or the essay on Vermeer
+to which he had latterly returned. His servant would come in to say that
+Mme. de Crécy was in the small drawing-room. He would go in search of
+her, and, when he opened the door, on Odette's blushing countenance, as
+soon as she caught sight of Swann, would appear--changing the curve
+of her lips, the look in her eyes, the moulding of her cheeks--an
+all-absorbing smile. Once he was left alone he would see again that
+smile, and her smile of the day before, another with which she had
+greeted him sometime else, the smile which had been her answer, in the
+carriage that night, when he had asked her whether she objected to his
+rearranging her cattleyas; and the life of Odette at all other times,
+since he knew nothing of it, appeared to him upon a neutral and
+colourless background, like those sheets of sketches by Watteau upon
+which one sees, here and there, in every corner and in all directions,
+traced in three colours upon the buff paper, innumerable smiles. But,
+once in a while, illuminating a chink of that existence which Swann
+still saw as a complete blank, even if his mind assured him that it was
+not so, because he was unable to imagine anything that might occupy it,
+some friend who knew them both, and suspecting that they were in love,
+had not dared to tell him anything about her that was of the least
+importance, would describe Odette's figure, as he had seen her, that
+very morning, going on foot up the Rue Abbattucci, in a cape trimmed
+with skunks, wearing a Rembrandt hat, and a bunch of violets in her
+bosom. This simple outline reduced Swann to utter confusion by enabling
+him suddenly to perceive that Odette had an existence which was not
+wholly subordinated to his own; he burned to know whom she had been
+seeking to fascinate by this costume in which he had never seen her; he
+registered a vow to insist upon her telling him where she had been going
+at that intercepted moment, as though, in all the colourless life--a
+life almost nonexistent, since she was then invisible to him--of his
+mistress, there had been but a single incident apart from all those
+smiles directed towards himself; namely, her walking abroad beneath a
+Rembrandt hat, with a bunch of violets in her bosom.
+
+Except when he asked her for Vinteuil's little phrase instead of the
+_Valse des Roses_, Swann made no effort to induce her to play the things
+that he himself preferred, nor, in literature any more than in music, to
+correct the manifold errors of her taste. He fully realised that she was
+not intelligent. When she said how much she would like him to tell her
+about the great poets, she had imagined that she would suddenly get
+to know whole pages of romantic and heroic verse, in the style of the
+Vicomte de Borelli, only even more moving. As for Vermeer of Delft, she
+asked whether he had been made to suffer by a woman, if it was a woman
+that had inspired him, and once Swann had told her that no one knew, she
+had lost all interest in that painter. She would often say: "I'm sure,
+poetry; well, of course, there'd be nothing like it if it was all true,
+if the poets really believed the things they said. But as often as not
+you'll find there's no one so mean and calculating as those fellows. I
+know something about poetry. I had a friend, once, who was in love with
+a poet of sorts. In his verses he never spoke of anything but love, and
+heaven, and the stars. Oh! she was properly taken in! He had more than
+three hundred thousand francs out of her before he'd finished." If,
+then, Swann tried to shew her in what artistic beauty consisted, how one
+ought to appreciate poetry or painting, after a minute or two she would
+cease to listen, saying: "Yes... I never thought it would be like that."
+And he felt that her disappointment was so great that he preferred to
+lie to her, assuring her that what he had said was nothing, that he
+had only touched the surface, that he had not time to go into it all
+properly, that there was more in it than that. Then she would interrupt
+with a brisk, "More in it? What?... Do tell me!", but he did not tell
+her, for he realised how petty it would appear to her, and how different
+from what she had expected, less sensational and less touching; he was
+afraid, too, lest, disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the
+same time be disillusioned in the greater matter of love.
+
+With the result that she found Swann inferior, intellectually, to what
+she had supposed. "You're always so reserved; I can't make you out." She
+marvelled increasingly at his indifference to money, at his courtesy
+to everyone alike, at the delicacy of his mind. And indeed it happens,
+often enough, to a greater man than Swann ever was, to a scientist or
+artist, when he is not wholly misunderstood by the people among whom
+he lives, that the feeling in them which proves that they have been
+convinced of the superiority of his intellect is created not by any
+admiration for his ideas--for those are entirely beyond them--but by
+their respect for what they term his good qualities. There was also the
+respect with which Odette was inspired by the thought of Swann's social
+position, although she had no desire that he should attempt to secure
+invitations for herself. Perhaps she felt that such attempts would be
+bound to fail; perhaps, indeed, she feared lest, merely by speaking of
+her to his friends, he should provoke disclosures of an unwelcome kind.
+The fact remains that she had consistently held him to his promise never
+to mention her name. Her reason for not wishing to go into society was,
+she had told him, a quarrel which she had had, long ago, with another
+girl, who had avenged herself by saying nasty things about her. "But,"
+Swann objected, "surely, people don't all know your friend." "Yes,
+don't you see, it's like a spot of oil; people are so horrid." Swann was
+unable, frankly, to appreciate this point; on the other hand, he knew
+that such generalisations as "People are so horrid," and "A word of
+scandal spreads like a spot of oil," were generally accepted as true;
+there must, therefore, be cases to which they were literally applicable.
+Could Odette's case be one of these? He teased himself with the
+question, though not for long, for he too was subject to that mental
+oppression which had so weighed upon his father, whenever he was faced
+by a difficult problem. In any event, that world of society which
+concealed such terrors for Odette inspired her, probably, with no very
+great longing to enter it, since it was too far removed from the world
+which she already knew for her to be able to form any clear conception
+of it. At the same time, while in certain respects she had retained a
+genuine simplicity (she had, for instance, kept up a friendship with a
+little dressmaker, now retired from business, up whose steep and dark
+and fetid staircase she clambered almost every day), she still thirsted
+to be in the fashion, though her idea of it was not altogether that held
+by fashionable people. For the latter, fashion is a thing that emanates
+from a comparatively small number of leaders, who project it to a
+considerable distance--with more or less strength according as one
+is nearer to or farther from their intimate centre--over the widening
+circle of their friends and the friends of their friends, whose names
+form a sort of tabulated index. People 'in society' know this index by
+heart, they are gifted in such matters with an erudition from which they
+have extracted a sort of taste, of tact, so automatic in its operation
+that Swann, for example, without needing to draw upon his knowledge of
+the world, if he read in a newspaper the names of the people who had
+been guests at a dinner, could tell at once how fashionable the dinner
+had been, just as a man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can
+estimate exactly the literary merit of its author. But Odette was one
+of those persons (an extremely numerous class, whatever the fashionable
+world may think, and to be found in every section of society) who do
+not share this knowledge, but imagine fashion to be something of quite
+another kind, which assumes different aspects according to the circle to
+which they themselves belong, but has the special characteristic--common
+alike to the fashion of which Odette used to dream and to that before
+which Mme. Cottard bowed--of being directly accessible to all. The other
+kind, the fashion of 'fashionable people,' is, it must be admitted,
+accessible also; but there are inevitable delays. Odette would say of
+some one: "He never goes to any place that isn't really smart."
+
+And if Swann were to ask her what she meant by that, she would answer,
+with a touch of contempt, "Smart places! Why, good heavens, just fancy,
+at your age, having to be told what the smart places are in Paris! What
+do you expect me to say? Well, on Sunday mornings there's the Avenue de
+l'Impératrice, and round the lake at five o'clock, and on Thursdays
+the Eden-Théâtre, and the Hippodrome on Fridays; then there are the
+balls..."
+
+"What balls?"
+
+"Why, silly, the balls people give in Paris; the smart ones, I mean.
+Wait now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of
+the jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the
+best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears
+such swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a
+light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with
+that old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave
+a ball the other night, and all the smart people in Paris were there.
+I should have loved to go! but you had to shew your invitation at the
+door, and I couldn't get one anywhere. After all, I'm just as glad,
+now, that I didn't go; I should have been killed in the crush, and seen
+nothing. Still, just to be able to say one had been to Herbinger's ball.
+You know how vain I am! However, you may be quite certain that half the
+people who tell you they were there are telling stories.... But I am
+surprised that you weren't there, a regular 'tip-topper' like you."
+
+Swann made no attempt, however, to modify this conception of fashion;
+feeling that his own came no nearer to the truth, was just as fatuous,
+devoid of all importance, he saw no advantage to be gained by imparting
+it to his mistress, with the result that, after a few months, she ceased
+to take any interest in the people to whose houses he went, except
+when they were the means of his obtaining tickets for the paddock at
+race-meetings or first-nights at the theatre. She hoped that he would
+continue to cultivate such profitable acquaintances, but she had come to
+regard them as less smart since the day when she had passed the Marquise
+de Villeparisis in the street, wearing a black serge dress and a bonnet
+with strings.
+
+"But she looks like a pew-opener, like an old charwoman, darling! That a
+marquise! Goodness knows I'm not a marquise, but you'd have to pay me
+a lot of money before you'd get me to go about Paris rigged out like
+that!"
+
+Nor could she understand Swann's continuing to live in his house on the
+Quai d'Orléans, which, though she dared not tell him so, she considered
+unworthy of him.
+
+It was true that she claimed to be fond of 'antiques,' and used to
+assume a rapturous and knowing air when she confessed how she loved
+to spend the whole day 'rummaging' in second-hand shops, hunting for
+'bric-à-brac,' and things of the 'right date.' Although it was a point
+of honour, to which she obstinately clung, as though obeying some old
+family custom, that she should never answer any questions, never give
+any account of what she did during the daytime, she spoke to Swann once
+about a friend to whose house she had been invited, and had found that
+everything in it was 'of the period.' Swann could not get her to tell
+him what 'period' it was. Only after thinking the matter over she
+replied that it was 'mediaeval'; by which she meant that the walls were
+panelled. Some time later she spoke to him again of her friend, and
+added, in the hesitating but confident tone in which one refers to a
+person whom one has met somewhere, at dinner, the night before, of whom
+one had never heard until then, but whom one's hosts seemed to regard as
+some one so celebrated and important that one hopes that one's listener
+will know quite well who is meant, and will be duly impressed: "Her
+dining-room... is... eighteenth century!" Incidentally, she had thought
+it hideous, all bare, as though the house were still unfinished; women
+looked frightful in it, and it would never become the fashion. She
+mentioned it again, a third time, when she shewed Swann a card with the
+name and address of the man who had designed the dining-room, and whom
+she wanted to send for, when she had enough money, to see whether he
+could not do one for her too; not one like that, of course, but one
+of the sort she used to dream of, one which, unfortunately, her little
+house would not be large enough to contain, with tall sideboards,
+Renaissance furniture and fireplaces like the Château at Blois. It was
+on this occasion that she let out to Swann what she really thought of
+his abode on the Quai d'Orléans; he having ventured the criticism that
+her friend had indulged, not in the Louis XVI style, for, he went on,
+although that was not, of course, done, still it might be made charming,
+but in the 'Sham-Antique.'
+
+"You wouldn't have her live, like you, among a lot of broken-down chairs
+and threadbare carpets!" she exclaimed, the innate respectability of
+the middle-class housewife rising impulsively to the surface through the
+acquired dilettantism of the 'light woman.'
+
+People who enjoyed 'picking-up' things, who admired poetry, despised
+sordid calculations of profit and loss, and nourished ideals of honour
+and love, she placed in a class by themselves, superior to the rest of
+humanity. There was no need actually to have those tastes, provided
+one talked enough about them; when a man had told her at dinner that he
+loved to wander about and get his hands all covered with dust in the
+old furniture shops, that he would never be really appreciated in
+this commercial age, since he was not concerned about the things that
+interested it, and that he belonged to another generation altogether,
+she would come home saying: "Why, he's an adorable creature; so
+sensitive! I had no idea," and she would conceive for him a strong and
+sudden friendship. But, on the other hand, men who, like Swann, had
+these tastes but did not speak of them, left her cold. She was obliged,
+of course, to admit that Swann was most generous with his money, but she
+would add, pouting: "It's not the same thing, you see, with him,"
+and, as a matter of fact, what appealed to her imagination was not the
+practice of disinterestedness, but its vocabulary.
+
+Feeling that, often, he could not give her in reality the pleasures of
+which she dreamed, he tried at least to ensure that she should be happy
+in his company, tried not to contradict those vulgar ideas, that bad
+taste which she displayed on every possible occasion, which all the same
+he loved, as he could not help loving everything that came from her,
+which even fascinated him, for were they not so many more of those
+characteristic features, by virtue of which the essential qualities
+of the woman emerged, and were made visible? And so, when she was in a
+happy mood because she was going to see the _Reine Topaze_, or when her
+eyes grew serious, troubled, petulant, if she was afraid of missing the
+flower-show, or merely of not being in time for tea, with muffins and
+toast, at the Rue Royale tea-rooms, where she believed that regular
+attendance was indispensable, and set the seal upon a woman's
+certificate of 'smartness,' Swann, enraptured, as all of us are, at
+times, by the natural behaviour of a child, or by the likeness of a
+portrait, which appears to be on the point of speaking, would feel so
+distinctly the soul of his mistress rising to fill the outlines of her
+face that he could not refrain from going across and welcoming it
+with his lips. "Oh, then, so little Odette wants us to take her to the
+flower-show, does she? she wants to be admired, does she? very well, we
+will take her there, we can but obey her wishes." As Swann's sight was
+beginning to fail, he had to resign himself to a pair of spectacles,
+which he wore at home, when working, while to face the world he adopted
+a single eyeglass, as being less disfiguring. The first time that she
+saw it in his eye, she could not contain herself for joy: "I really do
+think--for a man, that is to say--it is tremendously smart! How nice you
+look with it! Every inch a gentleman. All you want now is a title!" she
+concluded, with a tinge of regret in her voice. He liked Odette to say
+these things, just as, if he had been in love with a Breton girl, he
+would have enjoyed seeing her in her coif and hearing her say that she
+believed in ghosts. Always until then, as is common among men whose
+taste for the fine arts develops independently of their sensuality, a
+grotesque disparity had existed between the satisfactions which he would
+accord to either taste simultaneously; yielding to the seduction of
+works of art which grew more and more subtle as the women in whose
+company he enjoyed them grew more illiterate and common, he would take a
+little servant-girl to a screened box in a theatre where there was some
+decadent piece which he had wished to see performed, or to an exhibition
+of impressionist painting, with the conviction, moreover, that an
+educated, 'society' woman would have understood them no better, but
+would not have managed to keep quiet about them so prettily. But, now
+that he was in love with Odette, all this was changed; to share her
+sympathies, to strive to be one with her in spirit was a task so
+attractive that he tried to find satisfaction in the things that she
+liked, and did find a pleasure, not only in copying her habits but in
+adopting her opinions, which was all the deeper because, as those habits
+and opinions sprang from no roots in her intelligence, they suggested
+to him nothing except that love, for the sake of which he had preferred
+them to his own. If he went again to _Serge Panine_, if he looked out
+for opportunities of going to watch Olivier Métra conducting, it was for
+the pleasure of being initiated into every one of the ideas in Odette's
+mind, of feeling that he had an equal share in all her tastes. This
+charm of drawing him closer to her, which her favourite plays and
+pictures and places possessed, struck him as being more mysterious than
+the intrinsic charm of more beautiful things and places, which appealed
+to him by their beauty, but without recalling her. Besides, having
+allowed the intellectual beliefs of his youth to grow faint, until his
+scepticism, as a finished 'man of the world,' had gradually penetrated
+them unawares, he held (or at least he had held for so long that he had
+fallen into the habit of saying) that the objects which we admire have
+no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of
+dates and castes, and consists in a series of fashions, the most vulgar
+of which are worth just as much as those which are regarded as the most
+refined. And as he had decided that the importance which Odette attached
+to receiving cards for a private view was not in itself any more
+ridiculous than the pleasure which he himself had at one time felt in
+going to luncheon with the Prince of Wales, so he did not think that the
+admiration which she professed for Monte-Carlo or for the Righi was any
+more unreasonable than his own liking for Holland (which she imagined
+as ugly) and for Versailles (which bored her to tears). And so he denied
+himself the pleasure of visiting those places, consoling himself with
+the reflection that it was for her sake that he wished to feel, to like
+nothing that was not equally felt and liked by her.
+
+Like everything else that formed part of Odette's environment, and was
+no more, in a sense, than the means whereby he might see and talk to her
+more often, he enjoyed the society of the Verdurins. With them, since,
+at the heart of all their entertainments, dinners, musical evenings,
+games, suppers in fancy dress, excursions to the country, theatre
+parties, even the infrequent 'big evenings' when they entertained
+'bores,' there were the presence of Odette, the sight of Odette,
+conversation with Odette, an inestimable boon which the Verdurins, by
+inviting him to their house, bestowed on Swann, he was happier in the
+little 'nucleus' than anywhere else, and tried to find some genuine
+merit in each of its members, imagining that his tastes would lead him
+to frequent their society for the rest of his life. Never daring to
+whisper to himself, lest he should doubt the truth of the suggestion,
+that he would always be in love with Odette, at least when he tried to
+suppose that he would always go to the Verdurins' (a proposition
+which, a priori, raised fewer fundamental objections on the part of his
+intelligence), he saw himself for the future continuing to meet Odette
+every evening; that did not, perhaps, come quite to the same thing as
+his being permanently in love with her, but for the moment while he was
+in love with her, to feel that he would not, one day, cease to see her
+was all that he could ask. "What a charming atmosphere!" he said to
+himself. "How entirely genuine life is to these people! They are far
+more intelligent, far more artistic, surely, than the people one knows.
+Mme. Verdurin, in spite of a few trifling exaggerations which are rather
+absurd, has a sincere love of painting and music! What a passion for
+works of art, what anxiety to give pleasure to artists! Her ideas about
+some of the people one knows are not quite right, but then their ideas
+about artistic circles are altogether wrong! Possibly I make no great
+intellectual demands upon conversation, but I am perfectly happy talking
+to Cottard, although he does trot out those idiotic puns. And as for
+the painter, if he is rather unpleasantly affected when he tries to be
+paradoxical, still he has one of the finest brains that I have ever come
+across. Besides, what is most important, one feels quite free there, one
+does what one likes without constraint or fuss. What a flow of humour
+there is every day in that drawing-room! Certainly, with a few rare
+exceptions, I never want to go anywhere else again. It will become more
+and more of a habit, and I shall spend the rest of my life among them."
+
+And as the qualities which he supposed to be an intrinsic part of
+the Verdurin character were no more, really, than their superficial
+reflection of the pleasure which had been enjoyed in their society by
+his love for Odette, those qualities became more serious, more profound,
+more vital, as that pleasure increased. Since Mme. Verdurin gave Swann,
+now and then, what alone could constitute his happiness; since, on an
+evening when he felt anxious because Odette had talked rather more to
+one of the party than to another, and, in a spasm of irritation, would
+not take the initiative by asking her whether she was coming home, Mme.
+Verdurin brought peace and joy to his troubled spirit by the spontaneous
+exclamation: "Odette! You'll see M. Swann home, won't you?"; since,
+when the summer holidays came, and after he had asked himself uneasily
+whether Odette might not leave Paris without him, whether he would still
+be able to see her every day, Mme. Verdurin was going to invite them
+both to spend the summer with her in the country; Swann, unconsciously
+allowing gratitude and self-interest to filter into his intelligence and
+to influence his ideas, went so far as to proclaim that Mme. Verdurin
+was "a great and noble soul." Should any of his old fellow-pupils in the
+Louvre school of painting speak to him of some rare or eminent artist,
+"I'd a hundred times rather," he would reply, "have the Verdurins." And,
+with a solemnity of diction which was new in him: "They are magnanimous
+creatures, and magnanimity is, after all, the one thing that matters,
+the one thing that gives us distinction here on earth. Look you, there
+are only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have
+reached an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all
+whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes,
+and, to make up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to
+leave them again as long as one lives. Very well!" he went on, with the
+slight emotion which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of
+what he is doing, he says something, not because it is true but because
+he enjoys saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words
+as though they came from some one else, "The die is now cast; I have
+elected to love none but magnanimous souls, and to live only in an
+atmosphere of magnanimity. You ask me whether Mme. Verdurin is really
+intelligent. I can assure you that she has given me proofs of a nobility
+of heart, of a loftiness of soul, to which no one could possibly
+attain--how could they?--without a corresponding loftiness of mind.
+Without question, she has a profound understanding of art. But it is
+not, perhaps, in that that she is most admirable; every little action,
+ingeniously, exquisitely kind, which she has performed for my sake,
+every friendly attention, simple little things, quite domestic and yet
+quite sublime, reveal a more profound comprehension of existence than
+all your textbooks of philosophy."
+
+* * *
+
+He might have reminded himself, all the same, that there were various
+old friends of his family who were just as simple as the Verdurins,
+companions of his early days who were just as fond of art, that he knew
+other 'great-hearted creatures,' and that, nevertheless, since he had
+cast his vote in favour of simplicity, the arts, and magnanimity, he had
+entirely ceased to see them. But these people did not know Odette, and,
+if they had known her, would never have thought of introducing her to
+him.
+
+And so there was probably not, in the whole of the Verdurin circle, a
+single one of the 'faithful' who loved them, or believed that he loved
+them, as dearly as did Swann. And yet, when M. Verdurin said that he was
+not satisfied with Swann, he had not only expressed his own sentiments,
+he had unwittingly discovered his wife's. Doubtless Swann had too
+particular an affection for Odette, as to which he had failed to take
+Mme. Verdurin daily into his confidence; doubtless the very discretion
+with which he availed himself of the Verdurins' hospitality, refraining,
+often, from coming to dine with them for a reason which they never
+suspected, and in place of which they saw only an anxiety on his part
+not to have to decline an invitation to the house of some 'bore' or
+other; doubtless, also, and despite all the precautions which he had
+taken to keep it from them, the gradual discovery which they were
+making of his brilliant position in society--doubtless all these things
+contributed to their general annoyance with Swann. But the real, the
+fundamental reason was quite different. What had happened was that they
+had at once discovered in him a locked door, a reserved, impenetrable
+chamber in which he still professed silently to himself that the
+Princesse de Sagan was not grotesque, and that Cottard's jokes were
+not amusing; in a word (and for all that he never once abandoned his
+friendly attitude towards them all, or revolted from their dogmas), they
+had discovered an impossibility of imposing those dogmas upon him, of
+entirely converting him to their faith, the like of which they had never
+come across in anyone before. They would have forgiven his going to the
+houses of 'bores' (to whom, as it happened, in his heart of hearts he
+infinitely preferred the Verdurins and all their little 'nucleus') had
+he consented to set a good example by openly renouncing those 'bores'
+in the presence of the 'faithful.' But that was an abjuration which, as
+they well knew, they were powerless to extort.
+
+What a difference was there in a 'newcomer' whom Odette had asked them
+to invite, although she herself had met him only a few times, and on
+whom they were building great hopes--the Comte de Forcheville! (It
+turned out that he was nothing more nor less than the brother-in-law of
+Saniette, a discovery which filled all the 'faithful' with amazement:
+the manners of the old palaeographer were so humble that they had always
+supposed him to be of a class inferior, socially, to their own, and
+had never expected to learn that he came of a rich and relatively
+aristocratic family.) Of course, Forcheville was enormously the 'swell,'
+which Swann was not or had quite ceased to be; of course, he would never
+dream of placing, as Swann now placed, the Verdurin circle above any
+other. But he lacked that natural refinement which prevented Swann from
+associating himself with the criticisms (too obviously false to be worth
+his notice) that Mme. Verdurin levelled at people whom he knew. As for
+the vulgar and affected tirades in which the painter sometimes indulged,
+the bag-man's pleasantries which Cottard used to hazard,--whereas
+Swann, who liked both men sincerely, could easily find excuses for these
+without having either the courage or the hypocrisy to applaud them,
+Forcheville, on the other hand, was on an intellectual level which
+permitted him to be stupified, amazed by the invective (without in the
+least understanding what it all was about), and to be frankly delighted
+by the wit. And the very first dinner at the Verdurins' at which
+Forcheville was present threw a glaring light upon all the differences
+between them, made his qualities start into prominence and precipitated
+the disgrace of Swann.
+
+There was, at this dinner, besides the usual party, a professor from
+the Sorbonne, one Brichot, who had met M. and Mme. Verdurin at a
+watering-place somewhere, and, if his duties at the university and his
+other works of scholarship had not left him with very little time
+to spare, would gladly have come to them more often. For he had that
+curiosity, that superstitious outlook on life, which, combined with a
+certain amount of scepticism with regard to the object of their studies,
+earn for men of intelligence, whatever their profession, for doctors
+who do not believe in medicine, for schoolmasters who do not believe in
+Latin exercises, the reputation of having broad, brilliant, and indeed
+superior minds. He affected, when at Mme. Verdurin's, to choose his
+illustrations from among the most topical subjects of the day, when he
+spoke of philosophy or history, principally because he regarded those
+sciences as no more, really, than a preparation for life itself, and
+imagined that he was seeing put into practice by the 'little clan'
+what hitherto he had known only from books; and also, perhaps,
+because, having had drilled into him as a boy, and having unconsciously
+preserved, a feeling of reverence for certain subjects, he thought that
+he was casting aside the scholar's gown when he ventured to treat those
+subjects with a conversational licence, which seemed so to him only
+because the folds of the gown still clung.
+
+Early in the course of the dinner, when M. de Forcheville, seated on the
+right of Mme. Verdurin, who, in the 'newcomer's' honour, had taken great
+pains with her toilet, observed to her: "Quite original, that white
+dress," the Doctor, who had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was
+he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a "de," and was
+on the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as
+to come into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective
+'_blanche_' and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out,
+"_Blanche_? Blanche of Castile?" then, without moving his head, shot
+a furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the
+whole. While Swann, by the painful and futile effort which he made to
+smile, testified that he thought the pun absurd, Forcheville had shewn
+at once that he could appreciate its subtlety, and that he was a man of
+the world, by keeping within its proper limits a mirth the spontaneity
+of which had charmed Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"What are you to say of a scientist like that?" she asked Forcheville.
+"You can't talk seriously to him for two minutes on end. Is that the
+sort of thing you tell them at your hospital?" she went on, turning to
+the Doctor. "They must have some pretty lively times there, if that's
+the case. I can see that I shall have to get taken in as a patient!"
+
+"I think I heard the Doctor speak of that wicked old humbug, Blanche of
+Castile, if I may so express myself. Am I not right, Madame?" Brichot
+appealed to Mme. Verdurin, who, swooning with merriment, her eyes
+tightly closed, had buried her face in her two hands, from between
+which, now and then, escaped a muffled scream.
+
+"Good gracious, Madame, I would not dream of shocking the
+reverent-minded, if there are any such around this table, _sub rosa_...
+I recognise, moreover, that our ineffable and Athenian--oh, how
+infinitely Athenian--Republic is capable of honouring, in the person of
+that obscurantist old she-Capet, the first of our chiefs of police. Yes,
+indeed, my dear host, yes, indeed!" he repeated in his ringing voice,
+which sounded a separate note for each syllable, in reply to a protest
+by M. Verdurin. "The Chronicle of Saint Denis, and the authenticity of
+its information is beyond question, leaves us no room for doubt on that
+point. No one could be more fitly chosen as Patron by a secularising
+proletariat than that mother of a Saint, who let him see some pretty
+fishy saints besides, as Suger says, and other great St. Bernards of the
+sort; for with her it was a case of taking just what you pleased."
+
+"Who is that gentleman?" Forcheville asked Mme. Verdurin. "He seems to
+speak with great authority."
+
+"What! Do you mean to say you don't know the famous Brichot? Why, he's
+celebrated all over Europe."
+
+"Oh, that's Bréchot, is it?" exclaimed Forcheville, who had not quite
+caught the name. "You must tell me all about him"; he went on, fastening
+a pair of goggle eyes on the celebrity. "It's always interesting to
+meet well-known people at dinner. But, I say, you ask us to very select
+parties here. No dull evenings in this house, I'm sure."
+
+"Well, you know what it is really," said Mme. Verdurin modestly.
+"They feel safe here. They can talk about whatever they like, and the
+conversation goes off like fireworks. Now Brichot, this evening, is
+nothing. I've seen him, don't you know, when he's been with me, simply
+dazzling; you'd want to go on your knees to him. Well, with anyone else
+he's not the same man, he's not in the least witty, you have to drag the
+words out of him, he's even boring."
+
+"That's strange," remarked Forcheville with fitting astonishment.
+
+A sort of wit like Brichot's would have been regarded as out-and-out
+stupidity by the people among whom Swann had spent his early life,
+for all that it is quite compatible with real intelligence. And the
+intelligence of the Professor's vigorous and well-nourished brain might
+easily have been envied by many of the people in society who seemed
+witty enough to Swann. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into
+him their likes and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained
+to their ordinary social existence, including that annex to social
+existence which belongs, strictly speaking, to the domain of
+intelligence, namely, conversation, that Swann could not see anything
+in Brichot's pleasantries; to him they were merely pedantic, vulgar,
+and disgustingly coarse. He was shocked, too, being accustomed to
+good manners, by the rude, almost barrack-room tone which this
+student-in-arms adopted, no matter to whom he was speaking. Finally,
+perhaps, he had lost all patience that evening as he watched Mme.
+Verdurin welcoming, with such unnecessary warmth, this Forcheville
+fellow, whom it had been Odette's unaccountable idea to bring to the
+house. Feeling a little awkward, with Swann there also, she had asked
+him on her arrival: "What do you think of my guest?"
+
+And he, suddenly realising for the first time that Forcheville, whom
+he had known for years, could actually attract a woman, and was quite a
+good specimen of a man, had retorted: "Beastly!" He had, certainly,
+no idea of being jealous of Odette, but did not feel quite so happy as
+usual, and when Brichot, having begun to tell them the story of Blanche
+of Castile's mother, who, according to him, "had been with Henry
+Plantagenet for years before they were married," tried to prompt Swann
+to beg him to continue the story, by interjecting "Isn't that so, M.
+Swann?" in the martial accents which one uses in order to get down to
+the level of an unintelligent rustic or to put the 'fear of God' into
+a trooper, Swann cut his story short, to the intense fury of their
+hostess, by begging to be excused for taking so little interest in
+Blanche of Castile, as he had something that he wished to ask the
+painter. He, it appeared, had been that afternoon to an exhibition of
+the work of another artist, also a friend of Mme. Verdurin, who had
+recently died, and Swann wished to find out from him (for he valued
+his discrimination) whether there had really been anything more in this
+later work than the virtuosity which had struck people so forcibly in
+his earlier exhibitions.
+
+"From that point of view it was extraordinary, but it did not seem to me
+to be a form of art which you could call 'elevated,'" said Swann with a
+smile.
+
+"Elevated... to the height of an Institute!" interrupted Cottard,
+raising his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table burst out
+laughing.
+
+"What did I tell you?" said Mme. Verdurin to Forcheville. "It's simply
+impossible to be serious with him. When you least expect it, out he
+comes with a joke."
+
+But she observed that Swann, and Swann alone, had not unbent. For one
+thing he was none too well pleased with Cottard for having secured a
+laugh at his expense in front of Forcheville. But the painter, instead
+of replying in a way that might have interested Swann, as he would
+probably have done had they been alone together, preferred to win the
+easy admiration of the rest by exercising his wit upon the talent of
+their dead friend.
+
+"I went up to one of them," he began, "just to see how it was done; I
+stuck my nose into it. Yes, I don't think! Impossible to say whether
+it was done with glue, with soap, with sealing-wax, with sunshine, with
+leaven, with excrem..."
+
+"And one make twelve!" shouted the Doctor, wittily, but just too late,
+for no one saw the point of his interruption.
+
+"It looks as though it were done with nothing at all," resumed the
+painter. "No more chance of discovering the trick than there is in the
+'Night Watch,' or the 'Regents,' and it's even bigger work than either
+Rembrandt or Hals ever did. It's all there,--and yet, no, I'll take my
+oath it isn't."
+
+Then, just as singers who have reached the highest note in their
+compass, proceed to hum the rest of the air in falsetto, he had to be
+satisfied with murmuring, smiling the while, as if, after all, there had
+been something irresistibly amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting:
+"It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your
+breath; you feel ticklish all over--and not the faintest clue to how
+it's done. The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring-trick, it's
+a miracle," bursting outright into laughter, "it's dishonest!" Then
+stopping, solemnly raising his head, pitching his voice on a double-bass
+note which he struggled to bring into harmony, he concluded, "And it's
+so loyal!"
+
+Except at the moment when he had called it "bigger than the 'Night
+Watch,'" a blasphemy which had called forth an instant protest from Mme.
+Verdurin, who regarded the 'Night Watch' as the supreme masterpiece of
+the universe (conjointly with the 'Ninth' and the 'Samothrace'), and at
+the word "excrement," which had made Forcheville throw a sweeping glance
+round the table to see whether it was 'all right,' before he allowed his
+lips to curve in a prudish and conciliatory smile, all the party
+(save Swann) had kept their fascinated and adoring eyes fixed upon the
+painter.
+
+"I do so love him when he goes up in the air like that!" cried
+Mme. Verdurin, the moment that he had finished, enraptured that the
+table-talk should have proved so entertaining on the very night that
+Forcheville was dining with them for the first time. "Hallo, you!" she
+turned to her husband, "what's the matter with you, sitting there gaping
+like a great animal? You know, though, don't you," she apologised
+for him to the painter, "that he can talk quite well when he chooses;
+anybody would think it was the first time he had ever listened to you.
+If you had only seen him while you were speaking; he was just drinking
+it all in. And to-morrow he will tell us everything you said, without
+missing a word."
+
+"No, really, I'm not joking!" protested the painter, enchanted by the
+success of his speech. "You all look as if you thought I was pulling
+your legs, that it was just a trick. I'll take you to see the show, and
+then you can say whether I've been exaggerating; I'll bet you anything
+you like, you'll come away more 'up in the air' than I am!"
+
+"But we don't suppose for a moment that you're exaggerating; we only
+want you to go on with your dinner, and my husband too. Give M. Biche
+some more sole, can't you see his has got cold? We're not in any hurry;
+you're dashing round as if the house was on fire. Wait a little; don't
+serve the salad just yet."
+
+Mme. Cottard, who was a shy woman and spoke but seldom, was not lacking,
+for all that, in self-assurance when a happy inspiration put the right
+word in her mouth. She felt that it would be well received; the thought
+gave her confidence, and what she was doing was done with the object not
+so much of shining herself, as of helping her husband on in his career.
+And so she did not allow the word 'salad,' which Mme. Verdurin had just
+uttered, to pass unchallenged.
+
+"It's not a Japanese salad, is it?" she whispered, turning towards
+Odette.
+
+And then, in her joy and confusion at the combination of neatness
+and daring which there had been in making so discreet and yet so
+unmistakable an allusion to the new and brilliantly successful play by
+Dumas, she broke down in a charming, girlish laugh, not very loud, but
+so irresistible that it was some time before she could control it.
+
+"Who is that lady? She seems devilish clever," said Forcheville.
+
+"No, it is not. But we will have one for you if you will all come to
+dinner on Friday."
+
+"You will think me dreadfully provincial, sir," said Mme. Cottard to
+Swann, "but, do you know, I haven't been yet to this famous _Francillon_
+that everybody's talking about. The Doctor has been (I remember now,
+he told me what a very great pleasure it had been to him to spend the
+evening with you there) and I must confess, I don't see much sense in
+spending money on seats for him to take me, when he's seen the play
+already. Of course an evening at the Théâtre-Français is never wasted,
+really; the acting's so good there always; but we have some very nice
+friends," (Mme. Cottard would hardly ever utter a proper name, but
+restricted herself to "some friends of ours" or "one of my friends," as
+being more 'distinguished,' speaking in an affected tone and with all
+the importance of a person who need give names only when she chooses)
+"who often have a box, and are kind enough to take us to all the
+new pieces that are worth going to, and so I'm certain to see this
+_Francillon_ sooner or later, and then I shall know what to think. But I
+do feel such a fool about it, I must confess, for, whenever I pay a
+call anywhere, I find everybody talking--it's only natural--about that
+wretched Japanese salad. Really and truly, one's beginning to get just a
+little tired of hearing about it," she went on, seeing that Swann seemed
+less interested than she had hoped in so burning a topic. "I must admit,
+though, that it's sometimes quite amusing, the way they joke about it:
+I've got a friend, now, who is most original, though she's really a
+beautiful woman, most popular in society, goes everywhere, and she tells
+me that she got her cook to make one of these Japanese salads, putting
+in everything that young M. Dumas says you're to put in, in the play.
+Then she asked just a few friends to come and taste it. I was not among
+the favoured few, I'm sorry to say. But she told us all about it on her
+next 'day'; it seems it was quite horrible, she made us all laugh
+till we cried. I don't know; perhaps it was the way she told it," Mme.
+Cottard added doubtfully, seeing that Swann still looked grave.
+
+And, imagining that it was, perhaps, because he had not been amused by
+_Francillon_: "Well, I daresay I shall be disappointed with it, after
+all. I don't suppose it's as good as the piece Mme. de Crécy worships,
+_Serge Panine_. There's a play, if you like; so deep, makes you
+think! But just fancy giving a receipt for a salad on the stage of the
+Théâtre-Français! Now, _Serge Panine_--! But then, it's like everything
+that comes from the pen of M. Georges Ohnet, it's so well written. I
+wonder if you know the _Maître des Forges_, which I like even better
+than _Serge Panine_."
+
+"Pardon me," said Swann with polite irony, "but I can assure you that
+my want of admiration is almost equally divided between those
+masterpieces."
+
+"Really, now; that's very interesting. And what don't you like about
+them? Won't you ever change your mind? Perhaps you think he's a little
+too sad. Well, well, what I always say is, one should never argue about
+plays or novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things, and what
+may be horrible to you is, perhaps, just what I like best."
+
+She was interrupted by Forcheville's addressing Swann. What had happened
+was that, while Mme. Cottard was discussing _Francillon_, Forcheville
+had been expressing to Mme. Verdurin his admiration for what he called
+the "little speech" of the painter. "Your friend has such a flow of
+language, such a memory!" he had said to her when the painter had
+come to a standstill, "I've seldom seen anything like it. He'd make a
+first-rate preacher. By Jove, I wish I was like that. What with him and
+M. Bréchot you've drawn two lucky numbers to-night; though I'm not so
+sure that, simply as a speaker, this one doesn't knock spots off the
+Professor. It comes more naturally with him, less like reading from a
+book. Of course, the way he goes on, he does use some words that are
+a bit realistic, and all that; but that's quite the thing nowadays;
+anyhow, it's not often I've seen a man hold the floor as cleverly as
+that, 'hold the spittoon,' as we used to say in the regiment, where, by
+the way, we had a man he rather reminds me of. You could take anything
+you liked--I don't know what--this glass, say; and he'd talk away about
+it for hours; no, not this glass; that's a silly thing to say, I'm
+sorry; but something a little bigger, like the battle of Waterloo, or
+anything of that sort, he'd tell you things you simply wouldn't believe.
+Why, Swann was in the regiment then; he must have known him."
+
+"Do you see much of M. Swann?" asked Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"Oh dear, no!" he answered, and then, thinking that if he made himself
+pleasant to Swann he might find favour with Odette, he decided to
+take this opportunity of flattering him by speaking of his fashionable
+friends, but speaking as a man of the world himself, in a tone of
+good-natured criticism, and not as though he were congratulating Swann
+upon some undeserved good fortune: "Isn't that so, Swann? I never see
+anything of you, do I?--But then, where on earth is one to see him? The
+creature spends all his time shut up with the La Trémoïlles, with the
+Laumes and all that lot!" The imputation would have been false at any
+time, and was all the more so, now that for at least a year Swann had
+given up going to almost any house but the Verdurins'. But the mere
+names of families whom the Verdurins did not know were received by them
+in a reproachful silence. M. Verdurin, dreading the painful impression
+which the mention of these 'bores,' especially when flung at her in this
+tactless fashion, and in front of all the 'faithful,' was bound to
+make on his wife, cast a covert glance at her, instinct with anxious
+solicitude. He saw then that in her fixed resolution to take no notice,
+to have escaped contact, altogether, with the news which had just been
+addressed to her, not merely to remain dumb but to have been deaf
+as well, as we pretend to be when a friend who has been in the wrong
+attempts to slip into his conversation some excuse which we should
+appear to be accepting, should we appear to have heard it without
+protesting, or when some one utters the name of an enemy, the very
+mention of whom in our presence is forbidden; Mme. Verdurin, so that
+her silence should have the appearance, not of consent but of the
+unconscious silence which inanimate objects preserve, had suddenly
+emptied her face of all life, of all mobility; her rounded forehead was
+nothing, now, but an exquisite study in high relief, which the name of
+those La Trémoïlles, with whom Swann was always 'shut up,' had failed
+to penetrate; her nose, just perceptibly wrinkled in a frown, exposed to
+view two dark cavities that were, surely, modelled from life. You would
+have said that her half-opened lips were just about to speak. It was
+all no more, however, than a wax cast, a mask in plaster, the sculptor's
+design for a monument, a bust to be exhibited in the Palace of Industry,
+where the public would most certainly gather in front of it and marvel
+to see how the sculptor, in expressing the unchallengeable dignity of
+the Verdurins, as opposed to that of the La Trémoïlles or Laumes, whose
+equals (if not, indeed, their betters) they were, and the equals and
+betters of all other 'bores' upon the face of the earth, had managed to
+invest with a majesty that was almost Papal the whiteness and rigidity
+of his stone. But the marble at last grew animated and let it be
+understood that it didn't do to be at all squeamish if one went to that
+house, since the woman was always tipsy and the husband so uneducated
+that he called a corridor a 'collidor'!
+
+"You'd need to pay me a lot of money before I'd let any of that lot set
+foot inside my house," Mme. Verdurin concluded, gazing imperially down
+on Swann.
+
+She could scarcely have expected him to capitulate so completely as to
+echo the holy simplicity of the pianist's aunt, who at once exclaimed:
+"To think of that, now! What surprises me is that they can get anybody
+to go near them; I'm sure I should be afraid; one can't be too careful.
+How can people be so common as to go running after them?"
+
+But he might, at least, have replied, like Forcheville: "Gad, she's a
+duchess; there are still plenty of people who are impressed by that sort
+of thing," which would at least have permitted Mme. Verdurin the final
+retort, "And a lot of good may it do them!" Instead of which, Swann
+merely smiled, in a manner which shewed, quite clearly, that he could
+not, of course, take such an absurd suggestion seriously. M. Verdurin,
+who was still casting furtive and intermittent glances at his wife,
+could see with regret, and could understand only too well that she was
+now inflamed with the passion of a Grand Inquisitor who cannot succeed
+in stamping out a heresy; and so, in the hope of bringing Swann round
+to a retractation (for the courage of one's opinions is always a form of
+calculating cowardice in the eyes of the 'other side'), he broke in:
+
+"Tell us frankly, now, what you think of them yourself. We shan't repeat
+it to them, you may be sure."
+
+To which Swann answered: "Why, I'm not in the least afraid of the
+Duchess (if it is of the La Trémoïlles that you're speaking). I can
+assure you that everyone likes going to see her. I don't go so far as
+to say that she's at all 'deep'--" he pronounced the word as if it meant
+something ridiculous, for his speech kept the traces of certain mental
+habits which the recent change in his life, a rejuvenation illustrated
+by his passion for music, had inclined him temporarily to discard,
+so that at times he would actually state his views with considerable
+warmth--"but I am quite sincere when I say that she is intelligent,
+while her husband is positively a bookworm. They are charming people."
+
+His explanation was terribly effective; Mme. Verdurin now realised that
+this one state of unbelief would prevent her 'little nucleus' from ever
+attaining to complete unanimity, and was unable to restrain herself, in
+her fury at the obstinacy of this wretch who could not see what anguish
+his words were causing her, but cried aloud, from the depths of her
+tortured heart, "You may think so if you wish, but at least you need not
+say so to us."
+
+"It all depends upon what you call intelligence." Forcheville felt that
+it was his turn to be brilliant. "Come now, Swann, tell us what you mean
+by intelligence."
+
+"There," cried Odette, "that's one of the big things I beg him to tell
+me about, and he never will."
+
+"Oh, but..." protested Swann.
+
+"Oh, but nonsense!" said Odette.
+
+"A water-butt?" asked the Doctor.
+
+"To you," pursued Forcheville, "does intelligence mean what they call
+clever talk; you know, the sort of people who worm their way into
+society?"
+
+"Finish your sweet, so that they can take your plate away!" said Mme.
+Verdurin sourly to Saniette, who was lost in thought and had stopped
+eating. And then, perhaps a little ashamed of her rudeness, "It doesn't
+matter; take your time about it; there's no hurry; I only reminded you
+because of the others, you know; it keeps the servants back."
+
+"There is," began Brichot, with a resonant smack upon every syllable, "a
+rather curious definition of intelligence by that pleasing old anarchist
+Fénelon..."
+
+"Just listen to this!" Mme. Verdurin rallied Forcheville and the Doctor.
+"He's going to give us Fénelon's definition of intelligence. That's
+interesting. It's not often you get a chance of hearing that!"
+
+But Brichot was keeping Fénelon's definition until Swann should
+have given his own. Swann remained silent, and, by this fresh act of
+recreancy, spoiled the brilliant tournament of dialectic which Mme.
+Verdurin was rejoicing at being able to offer to Forcheville.
+
+"You see, it's just the same as with me!" Odette was peevish. "I'm not
+at all sorry to see that I'm not the only one he doesn't find quite up
+to his level."
+
+"These de La Trémouailles whom Mme. Verdurin has exhibited to us as so
+little to be desired," inquired Brichot, articulating vigorously, "are
+they, by any chance, descended from the couple whom that worthy old
+snob, Sévigné, said she was delighted to know, because it was so good
+for her peasants? True, the Marquise had another reason, which in her
+case probably came first, for she was a thorough journalist at heart,
+and always on the look-out for 'copy.' And, in the journal which she
+used to send regularly to her daughter, it was Mme. de La Trémouaille,
+kept well-informed through all her grand connections, who supplied the
+foreign politics."
+
+"Oh dear, no. I'm quite sure they aren't the same family," said Mme.
+Verdurin desperately.
+
+Saniette who, ever since he had surrendered his untouched plate to the
+butler, had been plunged once more in silent meditation, emerged finally
+to tell them, with a nervous laugh, a story of how he had once dined
+with the Duc de La Trémoïlle, the point of which was that the Duke
+did not know that George Sand was the pseudonym of a woman. Swann,
+who really liked Saniette, felt bound to supply him with a few facts
+illustrative of the Duke's culture, which would prove that such
+ignorance on his part was literally impossible; but suddenly he stopped
+short; he had realised, as he was speaking, that Saniette needed no
+proof, but knew already that the story was untrue for the simple reason
+that he had at that moment invented it. The worthy man suffered acutely
+from the Verdurins' always finding him so dull; and as he was conscious
+of having been more than ordinarily morose this evening, he had made up
+his mind that he would succeed in being amusing, at least once, before
+the end of dinner. He surrendered so quickly, looked so wretched at the
+sight of his castle in ruins, and replied in so craven a tone to Swann,
+appealing to him not to persist in a refutation which was already
+superfluous, "All right; all right; anyhow, even if I have made a
+mistake that's not a crime, I hope," that Swann longed to be able
+to console him by insisting that the story was indubitably true and
+exquisitely funny. The Doctor, who had been listening, had an idea that
+it was the right moment to interject "_Se non è vero_," but he was not
+quite certain of the words, and was afraid of being caught out.
+
+After dinner, Forcheville went up to the Doctor. "She can't have been
+at all bad looking, Mme. Verdurin; anyhow, she's a woman you can really
+talk to; that's all I want. Of course she's getting a bit broad in the
+beam. But Mme. de Crécy! There's a little woman who knows what's what,
+all right. Upon my word and soul, you can see at a glance she's got
+the American eye, that girl has. We are speaking of Mme. de Crécy," he
+explained, as M. Verdurin joined them, his pipe in his mouth. "I should
+say that, as a specimen of the female form--"
+
+"I'd rather have it in my bed than a clap of thunder!" the words came
+tumbling from Cottard, who had for some time been waiting in vain until
+Forcheville should pause for breath, so that he might get in his hoary
+old joke, a chance for which might not, he feared, come again, if the
+conversation should take a different turn; and he produced it now with
+that excessive spontaneity and confidence which may often be noticed
+attempting to cover up the coldness, and the slight flutter of emotion,
+inseparable from a prepared recitation. Forcheville knew and saw the
+joke, and was thoroughly amused. As for M. Verdurin, he was unsparing
+of his merriment, having recently discovered a way of expressing it by
+a symbol, different from his wife's, but equally simple and obvious.
+Scarcely had he begun the movement of head and shoulders of a man
+who was 'shaking with laughter' than he would begin also to cough, as
+though, in laughing too violently, he had swallowed a mouthful of smoke
+from his pipe. And by keeping the pipe firmly in his mouth he could
+prolong indefinitely the dumb-show of suffocation and hilarity. So he
+and Mme. Verdurin (who, at the other side of the room, where the painter
+was telling her a story, was shutting her eyes preparatory to flinging
+her face into her hands) resembled two masks in a theatre, each
+representing Comedy, but in a different way.
+
+M. Verdurin had been wiser than he knew in not taking his pipe out of
+his mouth, for Cottard, having occasion to leave the room for a moment,
+murmured a witty euphemism which he had recently acquired and repeated
+now whenever he had to go to the place in question: "I must just go and
+see the Duc d'Aumale for a minute," so drolly, that M. Verdurin's cough
+began all over again.
+
+"Now, then, take your pipe out of your mouth; can't you see, you'll
+choke if you try to bottle up your laughter like that," counselled Mme.
+Verdurin, as she came round with a tray of liqueurs.
+
+"What a delightful man your husband is; he has the wit of a dozen!"
+declared Forcheville to Mme. Cottard. "Thank you, thank you, an old
+soldier like me can never say 'No' to a drink."
+
+"M. de Forcheville thinks Odette charming," M. Verdurin told his wife.
+
+"Why, do you know, she wants so much to meet you again some day at
+luncheon. We must arrange it, but don't on any account let Swann hear
+about it. He spoils everything, don't you know. I don't mean to say that
+you're not to come to dinner too, of course; we hope to see you very
+often. Now that the warm weather's coming, we're going to have dinner
+out of doors whenever we can. That won't bore you, will it, a quiet
+little dinner, now and then, in the Bois? Splendid, splendid, that will
+be quite delightful....
+
+"Aren't you going to do any work this evening, I say?" she screamed
+suddenly to the little pianist, seeing an opportunity for displaying,
+before a 'newcomer' of Forcheville's importance, at once her unfailing
+wit and her despotic power over the 'faithful.'
+
+"M. de Forcheville was just going to say something dreadful about you,"
+Mme. Cottard warned her husband as he reappeared in the room. And he,
+still following up the idea of Forcheville's noble birth, which had
+obsessed him all through dinner, began again with: "I am treating a
+Baroness just now, Baroness Putbus; weren't there some Putbuses in the
+Crusades? Anyhow they've got a lake in Pomerania that's ten times the
+size of the Place de la Concorde. I am treating her for dry arthritis;
+she's a charming woman. Mme. Verdurin knows her too, I believe."
+
+Which enabled Forcheville, a moment later, finding himself alone with
+Mme. Cottard, to complete his favourable verdict on her husband with:
+"He's an interesting man, too; you can see that he knows some good
+people. Gad! but they get to know a lot of things, those doctors."
+
+"D'you want me to play the phrase from the sonata for M. Swann?" asked
+the pianist.
+
+"What the devil's that? Not the sonata-snake, I hope!" shouted M. de
+Forcheville, hoping to create an effect. But Dr. Cottard, who had
+never heard this pun, missed the point of it, and imagined that M. de
+Forcheville had made a mistake. He dashed in boldly to correct it: "No,
+no. The word isn't _serpent-à-sonates_, it's _serpent-à-sonnettes_!" he
+explained in a tone at once zealous, impatient, and triumphant.
+
+Forcheville explained the joke to him. The Doctor blushed.
+
+"You'll admit it's not bad, eh, Doctor?"
+
+"Oh! I've known it for ages."
+
+Then they were silenced; heralded by the waving tremolo of the
+violin-part, which formed a bristling bodyguard of sound two octaves
+above it--and as in a mountainous country, against the seeming
+immobility of a vertically falling torrent, one may distinguish, two
+hundred feet below, the tiny form of a woman walking in the valley--the
+little phrase had just appeared, distant but graceful, protected by
+the long, gradual unfurling of its transparent, incessant and sonorous
+curtain. And Swann, in his heart of hearts, turned to it, spoke to it as
+to a confidant in the secret of his love, as to a friend of Odette who
+would assure him that he need pay no attention to this Forcheville.
+
+"Ah! you've come too late!" Mme. Verdurin greeted one of the 'faithful,'
+whose invitation had been only 'to look in after dinner,' "we've been
+having a simply incomparable Brichot! You never heard such eloquence!
+But he's gone. Isn't that so, M. Swann? I believe it's the first time
+you've met him," she went on, to emphasize the fact that it was to her
+that Swann owed the introduction. "Isn't that so; wasn't he delicious,
+our Brichot?"
+
+Swann bowed politely.
+
+"No? You weren't interested?" she asked dryly.
+
+"Oh, but I assure you, I was quite enthralled. He is perhaps a little
+too peremptory, a little too jovial for my taste. I should like to see
+him a little less confident at times, a little more tolerant, but one
+feels that he knows a great deal, and on the whole he seems a very sound
+fellow."
+
+The party broke up very late. Cottard's first words to his wife were: "I
+have rarely seen Mme. Verdurin in such form as she was to-night."
+
+"What exactly is your Mme. Verdurin? A bit of a bad hat, eh?" said
+Forcheville to the painter, to whom he had offered a 'lift.' Odette
+watched his departure with regret; she dared not refuse to let Swann
+take her home, but she was moody and irritable in the carriage, and,
+when he asked whether he might come in, replied, "I suppose so," with an
+impatient shrug of her shoulders. When they had all gone, Mme. Verdurin
+said to her husband: "Did you notice the way Swann laughed, such an
+idiotic laugh, when we spoke about Mme. La Trémoïlle?"
+
+She had remarked, more than once, how Swann and Forcheville suppressed
+the particle 'de' before that lady's name. Never doubting that it was
+done on purpose, to shew that they were not afraid of a title, she had
+made up her mind to imitate their arrogance, but had not quite
+grasped what grammatical form it ought to take. Moreover, the natural
+corruptness of her speech overcoming her implacable republicanism,
+she still said instinctively "the de La Trémoïlles," or, rather (by
+an abbreviation sanctified by the usage of music-hall singers and the
+writers of the 'captions' beneath caricatures, who elide the 'de'),
+"the d'La Trémoïlles," but she corrected herself at once to "Madame La
+Trémoïlle.--The _Duchess_, as Swann calls her," she added ironically,
+with a smile which proved that she was merely quoting, and would not,
+herself, accept the least responsibility for a classification so puerile
+and absurd.
+
+"I don't mind saying that I thought him extremely stupid."
+
+M. Verdurin took it up. "He's not sincere. He's a crafty customer,
+always hovering between one side and the other. He's always trying to
+run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. What a difference between
+him and Forcheville. There, at least, you have a man who tells you
+straight out what he thinks. Either you agree with him or you don't.
+Not like the other fellow, who's never definitely fish or fowl. Did you
+notice, by the way, that Odette seemed all out for Forcheville, and I
+don't blame her, either. And then, after all, if Swann tries to come
+the man of fashion over us, the champion of distressed Duchesses, at any
+rate the other man has got a title; he's always Comte de Forcheville!"
+he let the words slip delicately from his lips, as though, familiar with
+every page of the history of that dignity, he were making a scrupulously
+exact estimate of its value, in relation to others of the sort.
+
+"I don't mind saying," Mme. Verdurin went on, "that he saw fit to utter
+some most venomous, and quite absurd insinuations against Brichot.
+Naturally, once he saw that Brichot was popular in this house, it was a
+way of hitting back at us, of spoiling our party. I know his sort, the
+dear, good friend of the family, who pulls you all to pieces on the
+stairs as he's going away."
+
+"Didn't I say so?" retorted her husband. "He's simply a failure; a poor
+little wretch who goes through life mad with jealousy of anything that's
+at all big."
+
+Had the truth been known, there was not one of the 'faithful' who was
+not infinitely more malicious than Swann; but the others would all take
+the precaution of tempering their malice with obvious pleasantries, with
+little sparks of emotion and cordiality; while the least indication of
+reserve on Swann's part, undraped in any such conventional formula
+as "Of course, I don't want to say anything--" to which he would have
+scorned to descend, appeared to them a deliberate act of treachery.
+There are certain original and distinguished authors in whom the least
+'freedom of speech' is thought revolting because they have not begun
+by flattering the public taste, and serving up to it the commonplace
+expressions to which it is used; it was by the same process that Swann
+infuriated M. Verdurin. In his case as in theirs it was the novelty
+of his language which led his audience to suspect the blackness of his
+designs.
+
+Swann was still unconscious of the disgrace that threatened him at the
+Verdurins', and continued to regard all their absurdities in the most
+rosy light, through the admiring eyes of love.
+
+As a rule he made no appointments with Odette except for the evenings;
+he was afraid of her growing tired of him if he visited her during the
+day as well; at the same time he was reluctant to forfeit, even for
+an hour, the place that he held in her thoughts, and so was constantly
+looking out for an opportunity of claiming her attention, in any way
+that would not be displeasing to her. If, in a florist's or a jeweller's
+window, a plant or an ornament caught his eye, he would at once think
+of sending them to Odette, imagining that the pleasure which the casual
+sight of them had given him would instinctively be felt, also, by her,
+and would increase her affection for himself; and he would order them to
+be taken at once to the Rue La pérouse, so as to accelerate the moment
+in which, as she received an offering from him, he might feel himself,
+in a sense, transported into her presence. He was particularly anxious,
+always, that she should receive these presents before she went out
+for the evening, so that her sense of gratitude towards him might give
+additional tenderness to her welcome when he arrived at the Verdurins',
+might even--for all he knew--if the shopkeeper made haste, bring him a
+letter from her before dinner, or herself, in person, upon his doorstep,
+come on a little extraordinary visit of thanks. As in an earlier phase,
+when he had experimented with the reflex action of anger and contempt
+upon her character, he sought now by that of gratification to elicit
+from her fresh particles of her intimate feelings, which she had never
+yet revealed.
+
+Often she was embarrassed by lack of money, and under pressure from
+a creditor would come to him for assistance. He enjoyed this, as he
+enjoyed everything which could impress Odette with his love for herself,
+or merely with his influence, with the extent of the use that she might
+make of him. Probably if anyone had said to him, at the beginning, "It's
+your position that attracts her," or at this stage, "It's your money
+that she's really in love with," he would not have believed the
+suggestion, nor would he have been greatly distressed by the thought
+that people supposed her to be attached to him, that people felt them
+to be united by any ties so binding as those of snobbishness or wealth.
+But even if he had accepted the possibility, it might not have caused
+him any suffering to discover that Odette's love for him was based on a
+foundation more lasting than mere affection, or any attractive qualities
+which she might have found in him; on a sound, commercial interest; an
+interest which would postpone for ever the fatal day on which she might
+be tempted to bring their relations to an end. For the moment, while
+he lavished presents upon her, and performed all manner of services,
+he could rely on advantages not contained in his person, or in his
+intellect, could forego the endless, killing effort to make himself
+attractive. And this delight in being a lover, in living by love alone,
+of the reality of which he was inclined to be doubtful, the price which,
+in the long run, he must pay for it, as a dilettante in immaterial
+sensations, enhanced its value in his eyes--as one sees people who are
+doubtful whether the sight of the sea and the sound of its waves are
+really enjoyable, become convinced that they are, as also of the rare
+quality and absolute detachment of their own taste, when they have
+agreed to pay several pounds a day for a room in an hotel, from which
+that sight and that sound may be enjoyed.
+
+One day, when reflections of this order had brought him once again to
+the memory of the time when some one had spoken to him of Odette as of
+a 'kept' woman, and when, once again, he had amused himself with
+contrasting that strange personification, the 'kept' woman--an
+iridescent mixture of unknown and demoniacal qualities, embroidered,
+as in some fantasy of Gustave Moreau, with poison-dripping flowers,
+interwoven with precious jewels--with that Odette upon whose face he
+had watched the passage of the same expressions of pity for a sufferer,
+resentment of an act of injustice, gratitude for an act of kindness,
+which he had seen, in earlier days, on his own mother's face, and on
+the faces of friends; that Odette, whose conversation had so frequently
+turned on the things that he himself knew better than anyone, his
+collections, his room, his old servant, his banker, who kept all his
+title-deeds and bonds;--the thought of the banker reminded him that he
+must call on him shortly, to draw some money. And indeed, if, during the
+current month, he were to come less liberally to the aid of Odette in
+her financial difficulties than in the month before, when he had given
+her five thousand francs, if he refrained from offering her a diamond
+necklace for which she longed, he would be allowing her admiration for
+his generosity to decline, that gratitude which had made him so happy,
+and would even be running the risk of her imagining that his love
+for her (as she saw its visible manifestations grow fewer) had itself
+diminished. And then, suddenly, he asked himself whether that was not
+precisely what was implied by 'keeping' a woman (as if, in fact, that
+idea of 'keeping' could be derived from elements not at all mysterious
+nor perverse, but belonging to the intimate routine of his daily life,
+such as that thousand-franc note, a familiar and domestic object, torn
+in places and mended with gummed paper, which his valet, after paying
+the household accounts and the rent, had locked up in a drawer in
+the old writing-desk whence he had extracted it to send it, with four
+others, to Odette) and whether it was not possible to apply to Odette,
+since he had known her (for he never imagined for a moment that she
+could ever have taken a penny from anyone else, before), that title,
+which he had believed so wholly inapplicable to her, of 'kept' woman. He
+could not explore the idea further, for a sudden access of that mental
+lethargy which was, with him, congenital, intermittent and providential,
+happened, at that moment, to extinguish every particle of light in his
+brain, as instantaneously as, at a later period, when electric lighting
+had been everywhere installed, it became possible, merely by fingering
+a switch, to cut off all the supply of light from a house. His mind
+fumbled, for a moment, in the darkness, he took off his spectacles,
+wiped the glasses, passed his hands over his eyes, but saw no light
+until he found himself face to face with a wholly different idea, the
+realisation that he must endeavour, in the coming month, to send Odette
+six or seven thousand-franc notes instead of five, simply as a surprise
+for her and to give her pleasure.
+
+In the evening, when he did not stay at home until it was time to meet
+Odette at the Verdurins', or rather at one of the open-air restaurants
+which they liked to frequent in the Bois and especially at Saint-Cloud,
+he would go to dine in one of those fashionable houses in which, at one
+time, he had been a constant guest. He did not wish to lose touch with
+people who, for all that he knew, might be of use, some day, to Odette,
+and thanks to whom he was often, in the meantime, able to procure for
+her some privilege or pleasure. Besides, he had been used for so long to
+the refinement and comfort of good society that, side by side with his
+contempt, there had grown up also a desperate need for it, with the
+result that, when he had reached the point after which the humblest
+lodgings appeared to him as precisely on a par with the most princely
+mansions, his senses were so thoroughly accustomed to the latter that he
+could not enter the former without a feeling of acute discomfort. He
+had the same regard--to a degree of identity which they would never have
+suspected--for the little families with small incomes who asked him to
+dances in their flats ("straight upstairs to the fifth floor, and the
+door on the left") as for the Princesse de Parme, who gave the most
+splendid parties in Paris; but he had not the feeling of being actually
+'at the ball' when he found himself herded with the fathers of families
+in the bedroom of the lady of the house, while the spectacle of
+wash-hand-stands covered over with towels, and of beds converted into
+cloak-rooms, with a mass of hats and great-coats sprawling over their
+counterpanes, gave him the same stifling sensation that, nowadays,
+people who have been used for half a lifetime to electric light derive
+from a smoking lamp or a candle that needs to be snuffed. If he were
+dining out, he would order his carriage for half-past seven; while he
+changed his clothes, he would be wondering, all the time, about Odette,
+and in this way was never alone, for the constant thought of Odette
+gave to the moments in which he was separated from her the same peculiar
+charm as to those in which she was at his side. He would get into his
+carriage and drive off, but he knew that this thought had jumped in
+after him and had settled down upon his knee, like a pet animal which
+he might take everywhere, and would keep with him at the dinner-table,
+unobserved by his fellow-guests. He would stroke and fondle it, warm
+himself with it, and, as a feeling of languor swept over him, would
+give way to a slight shuddering movement which contracted his throat
+and nostrils--a new experience, this,--as he fastened the bunch of
+columbines in his buttonhole. He had for some time been feeling neither
+well nor happy, especially since Odette had brought Forcheville to the
+Verdurins', and he would have liked to go away for a while to rest in
+the country. But he could never summon up courage to leave Paris, even
+for a day, while Odette was there. The weather was warm; it was the
+finest part of the spring. And for all that he was driving through a
+city of stone to immure himself in a house without grass or garden, what
+was incessantly before his eyes was a park which he owned, near Combray,
+where, at four in the afternoon, before coming to the asparagus-bed,
+thanks to the breeze that was wafted across the fields from Méséglise,
+he could enjoy the fragrant coolness of the air as well beneath an
+arbour of hornbeams in the garden as by the bank of the pond, fringed
+with forget-me-not and iris; and where, when he sat down to dinner,
+trained and twined by the gardener's skilful hand, there ran all about
+his table currant-bush and rose.
+
+After dinner, if he had an early appointment in the Bois or at
+Saint-Cloud, he would rise from table and leave the house so
+abruptly--especially if it threatened to rain, and so to scatter the
+'faithful' before their normal time--that on one occasion the Princesse
+des Laumes (at whose house dinner had been so late that Swann had left
+before the coffee came in, to join the Verdurins on the Island in the
+Bois) observed:
+
+"Really, if Swann were thirty years older, and had diabetes, there might
+be some excuse for his running away like that. He seems to look upon us
+all as a joke."
+
+He persuaded himself that the spring-time charm, which he could not go
+down to Combray to enjoy, he would find at least on the Ile des Cygnes
+or at Saint-Cloud. But as he could think only of Odette, he would
+return home not knowing even if he had tasted the fragrance of the young
+leaves, or if the moon had been shining. He would be welcomed by the
+little phrase from the sonata, played in the garden on the restaurant
+piano. If there was none in the garden, the Verdurins would have taken
+immense pains to have a piano brought out either from a private room
+or from the restaurant itself; not because Swann was now restored to
+favour; far from it. But the idea of arranging an ingenious form of
+entertainment for some one, even for some one whom they disliked, would
+stimulate them, during the time spent in its preparation, to a momentary
+sense of cordiality and affection. Now and then he would remind himself
+that another fine spring evening was drawing to a close, and would force
+himself to notice the trees and the sky. But the state of excitement
+into which Odette's presence never failed to throw him, added to a
+feverish ailment which, for some time now, had scarcely left him,
+robbed him of that sense of quiet and comfort which is an indispensable
+background to the impressions that we derive from nature.
+
+One evening, when Swann had consented to dine with the Verdurins, and
+had mentioned during dinner that he had to attend, next day, the annual
+banquet of an old comrades' association, Odette had at once exclaimed
+across the table, in front of everyone, in front of Forcheville, who was
+now one of the 'faithful,' in front of the painter, in front of Cottard:
+
+"Yes, I know, you have your banquet to-morrow; I sha'n't see you, then,
+till I get home; don't be too late."
+
+And although Swann had never yet taken offence, at all seriously,
+at Odette's demonstrations of friendship for one or other of the
+'faithful,' he felt an exquisite pleasure on hearing her thus avow,
+before them all, with that calm immodesty, the fact that they saw each
+other regularly every evening, his privileged position in her house, and
+her own preference for him which it implied. It was true that Swann had
+often reflected that Odette was in no way a remarkable woman; and in
+the supremacy which he wielded over a creature so distinctly inferior to
+himself there was nothing that especially flattered him when he heard
+it proclaimed to all the 'faithful'; but since he had observed that,
+to several other men than himself, Odette seemed a fascinating and
+desirable woman, the attraction which her body held for him had aroused
+a painful longing to secure the absolute mastery of even the tiniest
+particles of her heart. And he had begun to attach an incalculable value
+to those moments passed in her house in the evenings, when he held her
+upon his knee, made her tell him what she thought about this or that,
+and counted over that treasure to which, alone of all his earthly
+possessions, he still clung. And so, after this dinner, drawing her
+aside, he took care to thank her effusively, seeking to indicate to
+her by the extent of his gratitude the corresponding intensity of
+the pleasures which it was in her power to bestow on him, the supreme
+pleasure being to guarantee him immunity, for as long as his love should
+last and he remain vulnerable, from the assaults of jealousy.
+
+When he came away from his banquet, the next evening, it was pouring
+rain, and he had nothing but his victoria. A friend offered to take
+him home in a closed carriage, and as Odette, by the fact of her having
+invited him to come, had given him an assurance that she was expecting
+no one else, he could, with a quiet mind and an untroubled heart, rather
+than set off thus in the rain, have gone home and to bed. But perhaps,
+if she saw that he seemed not to adhere to his resolution to end every
+evening, without exception, in her company, she might grow careless, and
+fail to keep free for him just the one evening on which he particularly
+desired it.
+
+It was after eleven when he reached her door, and as he made his apology
+for having been unable to come away earlier, she complained that it was
+indeed very late; the storm had made her unwell, her head ached, and
+she warned him that she would not let him stay longer than half an hour,
+that at midnight she would send him away; a little while later she felt
+tired and wished to sleep.
+
+"No cattleya, then, to-night?" he asked, "and I've been looking forward
+so to a nice little cattleya."
+
+But she was irresponsive; saying nervously: "No, dear, no cattleya
+tonight. Can't you see, I'm not well?"
+
+"It might have done you good, but I won't bother you."
+
+She begged him to put out the light before he went; he drew the curtains
+close round her bed and left her. But, when he was in his own house
+again, the idea suddenly struck him that, perhaps, Odette was expecting
+some one else that evening, that she had merely pretended to be tired,
+that she had asked him to put the light out only so that he should
+suppose that she was going to sleep, that the moment he had left
+the house she had lighted it again, and had reopened her door to the
+stranger who was to be her guest for the night. He looked at his watch.
+It was about an hour and a half since he had left her; he went out, took
+a cab, and stopped it close to her house, in a little street running at
+right angles to that other street, which lay at the back of her house,
+and along which he used to go, sometimes, to tap upon her bedroom
+window, for her to let him in. He left his cab; the streets were all
+deserted and dark; he walked a few yards and came out almost opposite
+her house. Amid the glimmering blackness of all the row of windows, the
+lights in which had long since been put out, he saw one, and only one,
+from which overflowed, between the slats of its shutters, dosed like a
+wine-press over its mysterious golden juice, the light that filled the
+room within, a light which on so many evenings, as soon as he saw it,
+far off, as he turned into the street, had rejoiced his heart with its
+message: "She is there--expecting you," and now tortured him with: "She
+is there with the man she was expecting." He must know who; he tiptoed
+along by the wall until he reached the window, but between the slanting
+bars of the shutters he could see nothing; he could hear, only, in the
+silence of the night, the murmur of conversation. What agony he suffered
+as he watched that light, in whose golden atmosphere were moving, behind
+the closed sash, the unseen and detested pair, as he listened to that
+murmur which revealed the presence of the man who had crept in after his
+own departure, the perfidy of Odette, and the pleasures which she was at
+that moment tasting with the stranger.
+
+And yet he was not sorry that he had come; the torment which had forced
+him to leave his own house had lost its sharpness when it lost its
+uncertainty, now that Odette's other life, of which he had had, at that
+first moment, a sudden helpless suspicion, was definitely there, almost
+within his grasp, before his eyes, in the full glare of the lamp-light,
+caught and kept there, an unwitting prisoner, in that room into which,
+when he would, he might force his way to surprise and seize it; or
+rather he would tap upon the shutters, as he had often done when he had
+come there very late, and by that signal Odette would at least learn
+that he knew, that he had seen the light and had heard the voices; while
+he himself, who a moment ago had been picturing her as laughing at him,
+as sharing with that other the knowledge of how effectively he had been
+tricked, now it was he that saw them, confident and persistent in
+their error, tricked and trapped by none other than himself, whom they
+believed to be a mile away, but who was there, in person, there with a
+plan, there with the knowledge that he was going, in another minute, to
+tap upon the shutter. And, perhaps, what he felt (almost an agreeable
+feeling) at that moment was something more than relief at the solution
+of a doubt, at the soothing of a pain; was an intellectual pleasure.
+If, since he had fallen in love, things had recovered a little of the
+delicate attraction that they had had for him long ago--though only when
+a light was shed upon them by a thought, a memory of Odette--now it was
+another of the faculties, prominent in the studious days of his youth,
+that Odette had quickened with new life, the passion for truth, but for
+a truth which, too, was interposed between himself and his mistress,
+receiving its light from her alone, a private and personal truth the
+sole object of which (an infinitely precious object, and one almost
+impersonal in its absolute beauty) was Odette--Odette in her activities,
+her environment, her projects, and her past. At every other period in
+his life, the little everyday words and actions of another person had
+always seemed wholly valueless to Swann; if gossip about such things
+were repeated to him, he would dismiss it as insignificant, and while he
+listened it was only the lowest, the most commonplace part of his
+mind that was interested; at such moments he felt utterly dull and
+uninspired. But in this strange phase of love the personality of another
+person becomes so enlarged, so deepened, that the curiosity which
+he could now feel aroused in himself, to know the least details of a
+woman's daily occupation, was the same thirst for knowledge with which
+he had once studied history. And all manner of actions, from which,
+until now, he would have recoiled in shame, such as spying, to-night,
+outside a window, to-morrow, for all he knew, putting adroitly
+provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants, listening
+at doors, seemed to him, now, to be precisely on a level with the
+deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the interpretation
+of old monuments, that was to say, so many different methods of
+scientific investigation, each one having a definite intellectual value
+and being legitimately employable in the search for truth.
+
+As his hand stole out towards the shutters he felt a pang of shame at
+the thought that Odette would now know that he had suspected her, that
+he had returned, that he had posted himself outside her window. She
+had often told him what a horror she had of jealous men, of lovers who
+spied. What he was going to do would be extremely awkward, and she would
+detest him for ever after, whereas now, for the moment, for so long as
+he refrained from knocking, perhaps even in the act of infidelity, she
+loved him still. How often is not the prospect of future happiness
+thus sacrificed to one's impatient insistence upon an immediate
+gratification. But his desire to know the truth was stronger, and seemed
+to him nobler than his desire for her. He knew that the true story
+of certain events, which he would have given his life to be able to
+reconstruct accurately and in full, was to be read within that window,
+streaked with bars of light, as within the illuminated, golden boards of
+one of those precious manuscripts, by whose wealth of artistic treasures
+the scholar who consults them cannot remain unmoved. He yearned for
+the satisfaction of knowing the truth which so impassioned him in that
+brief, fleeting, precious transcript, on that translucent page, so warm,
+so beautiful. And besides, the advantage which he felt--which he so
+desperately wanted to feel--that he had over them, lay perhaps not so
+much in knowing as in being able to shew them that he knew. He drew
+himself up on tiptoe. He knocked. They had not heard; he knocked again;
+louder; their conversation ceased. A man's voice--he strained his ears
+to distinguish whose, among such of Odette's friends as he knew, the
+voice could be--asked:
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+He could not be certain of the voice. He knocked once again. The window
+first, then the shutters were thrown open. It was too late, now, to
+retire, and since she must know all, so as not to seem too contemptible,
+too jealous and inquisitive, he called out in a careless, hearty,
+welcoming tone:
+
+"Please don't bother; I just happened to be passing, and saw the light.
+I wanted to know if you were feeling better."
+
+He looked up. Two old gentlemen stood facing him, in the window, one
+of them with a lamp in his hand; and beyond them he could see into
+the room, a room that he had never seen before. Having fallen into the
+habit, when he came late to Odette, of identifying her window by
+the fact that it was the only one still lighted in a row of windows
+otherwise all alike, he had been misled, this time, by the light, and
+had knocked at the window beyond hers, in the adjoining house. He made
+what apology he could and hurried home, overjoyed that the satisfaction
+of his curiosity had preserved their love intact, and that, having
+feigned for so long, when in Odette's company, a sort of indifference,
+he had not now, by a demonstration of jealousy, given her that proof
+of the excess of his own passion which, in a pair of lovers, fully and
+finally dispenses the recipient from the obligation to love the other
+enough. He never spoke to her of this misadventure, he ceased even to
+think of it himself. But now and then his thoughts in their wandering
+course would come upon this memory where it lay unobserved, would
+startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down into his consciousness,
+and leave him aching with a sharp, far-rooted pain. As though this had
+been a bodily pain, Swann's mind was powerless to alleviate it; in the
+case of bodily pain, however, since it is independent of the mind, the
+mind can dwell upon it, can note that it has diminished, that it has
+momentarily ceased. But with this mental pain, the mind, merely by
+recalling it, created it afresh. To determine not to think of it was but
+to think of it still, to suffer from it still. And when, in conversation
+with his friends, he forgot his sufferings, suddenly a word casually
+uttered would make him change countenance as a wounded man does when a
+clumsy hand has touched his aching limb. When he came away from Odette,
+he was happy, he felt calm, he recalled the smile with which, in gentle
+mockery, she had spoken to him of this man or of that, a smile which was
+all tenderness for himself; he recalled the gravity of her head which
+she seemed to have lifted from its axis to let it droop and fall, as
+though against her will, upon his lips, as she had done on that first
+evening in the carriage; her languishing gaze at him while she lay
+nestling in his arms, her bended head seeming to recede between her
+shoulders, as though shrinking from the cold.
+
+But then, at once, his jealousy, as it had been the shadow of his love,
+presented him with the complement, with the converse of that new smile
+with which she had greeted him that very evening,--with which, now,
+perversely, she was mocking Swann while she tendered her love to
+another--of that lowering of her head, but lowered now to fall on other
+lips, and (but bestowed upon a stranger) of all the marks of affection
+that she had shewn to him. And all these voluptuous memories which he
+bore away from her house were, as one might say, but so many sketches,
+rough plans, like the schemes of decoration which a designer submits to
+one in outline, enabling Swann to form an idea of the various attitudes,
+aflame or faint with passion, which she was capable of adopting for
+others. With the result that he came to regret every pleasure that he
+tasted in her company, every new caress that he invented (and had been
+so imprudent as to point out to her how delightful it was), every fresh
+charm that he found in her, for he knew that, a moment later, they
+would go to enrich the collection of instruments in his secret
+torture-chamber.
+
+A fresh turn was given to the screw when Swann recalled a sudden
+expression which he had intercepted, a few days earlier, and for the
+first time, in Odette's eyes. It was after dinner at the Verdurins'.
+Whether it was because Forcheville, aware that Saniette, his
+brother-in-law, was not in favour with them, had decided to make a butt
+of him, and to shine at his expense, or because he had been annoyed
+by some awkward remark which Saniette had made to him, although it had
+passed unnoticed by the rest of the party who knew nothing of whatever
+tactless allusion it might conceal, or possibly because he had been for
+some time looking out for an opportunity of securing the expulsion from
+the house of a fellow-guest who knew rather too much about him, and
+whom he knew to be so nice-minded that he himself could not help feeling
+embarrassed at times merely by his presence in the room, Forcheville
+replied to Saniette's tactless utterance with such a volley of abuse,
+going out of his way to insult him, emboldened, the louder he shouted,
+by the fear, the pain, the entreaties of his victim, that the poor
+creature, after asking Mme. Verdurin whether he should stay and
+receiving no answer, had left the house in stammering confusion and with
+tears in his eyes. Odette had looked on, impassive, at this scene; but
+when the door had closed behind Saniette, she had forced the normal
+expression of her face down, as the saying is, by several pegs, so as to
+bring herself on to the same level of vulgarity as Forcheville; her eyes
+had sparkled with a malicious smile of congratulation upon his audacity,
+of ironical pity for the poor wretch who had been its victim; she
+had darted at him a look of complicity in the crime, which so clearly
+implied: "That's finished him off, or I'm very much mistaken. Did you
+see what a fool he looked? He was actually crying," that Forcheville,
+when his eyes met hers, sobered in a moment from the anger, or pretended
+anger with which he was still flushed, smiled as he explained: "He need
+only have made himself pleasant and he'd have been here still; a good
+scolding does a man no harm, at any time."
+
+One day when Swann had gone out early in the afternoon to pay a call,
+and had failed to find the person at home whom he wished to see, it
+occurred to him to go, instead, to Odette, at an hour when, although he
+never went to her house then as a rule, he knew that she was always at
+home, resting or writing letters until tea-time, and would enjoy seeing
+her for a moment, if it did not disturb her. The porter told him that he
+believed Odette to be in; Swann rang the bell, thought that he heard a
+sound, that he heard footsteps, but no one came to the door. Anxious and
+annoyed, he went round to the other little street, at the back of her
+house, and stood beneath her bedroom window; the curtains were drawn and
+he could see nothing; he knocked loudly upon the pane, he shouted; still
+no one came. He could see that the neighbours were staring at him. He
+turned away, thinking that, after all, he had perhaps been mistaken in
+believing that he heard footsteps; but he remained so preoccupied with
+the suspicion that he could turn his mind to nothing else. After waiting
+for an hour, he returned. He found her at home; she told him that she
+had been in the house when he rang, but had been asleep; the bell had
+awakened her; she had guessed that it must be Swann, and had run out
+to meet him, but he had already gone. She had, of course, heard him
+knocking at the window. Swann could at once detect in this story one of
+those fragments of literal truth which liars, when taken by surprise,
+console themselves by introducing into the composition of the falsehood
+which they have to invent, thinking that it can be safely incorporated,
+and will lend the whole story an air of verisimilitude. It was true
+that, when Odette had just done something which she did not wish to
+disclose, she would take pains to conceal it in a secret place in her
+heart. But as soon as she found herself face to face with the man to
+whom she was obliged to lie, she became uneasy, all her ideas melted
+like wax before a flame, her inventive and her reasoning faculties
+were paralysed, she might ransack her brain but would find only a void;
+still, she must say something, and there lay within her reach precisely
+the fact which she had wished to conceal, which, being the truth, was
+the one thing that had remained. She broke off from it a tiny fragment,
+of no importance in itself, assuring herself that, after all, it was
+the best thing to do, since it was a detail of the truth, and less
+dangerous, therefore, than a falsehood. "At any rate, this is true,"
+she said to herself; "that's always something to the good; he may make
+inquiries; he will see that this is true; it won't be this, anyhow, that
+will give me away." But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she
+had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth
+had sharp edges which could not be made to fit in, except to those
+contiguous fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily
+detached it, edges which, whatever the fictitious details in which she
+might embed it, would continue to shew, by their overlapping angles and
+by the gaps which she had forgotten to fill, that its proper place was
+elsewhere.
+
+"She admits that she heard me ring, and then knock, that she knew it was
+myself, that she wanted to see me," Swann thought to himself. "But that
+doesn't correspond with the fact that she did not let me in."
+
+He did not, however, draw her attention to this inconsistency, for he
+thought that, if left to herself, Odette might perhaps produce some
+falsehood which would give him a faint indication of the truth; she
+spoke; he did not interrupt her, he gathered up, with an eager and
+sorrowful piety, the words that fell from her lips, feeling (and rightly
+feeling, since she was hiding the truth behind them as she spoke) that,
+like the veil of a sanctuary, they kept a vague imprint, traced a
+faint outline of that infinitely precious and, alas, undiscoverable
+truth;--what she had been doing, that afternoon, at three o'clock, when
+he had called,--a truth of which he would never possess any more than
+these falsifications, illegible and divine traces, a truth which would
+exist henceforward only in the secretive memory of this creature, who
+would contemplate it in utter ignorance of its value, but would never
+yield it up to him. It was true that he had, now and then, a strong
+suspicion that Odette's daily activities were not in themselves
+passionately interesting, and that such relations as she might have with
+other men did not exhale, naturally, in a universal sense, or for every
+rational being, a spirit of morbid gloom capable of infecting with
+fever or of inciting to suicide. He realised, at such moments, that that
+interest, that gloom, existed in him only as a malady might exist, and
+that, once he was cured of the malady, the actions of Odette, the kisses
+that she might have bestowed, would become once again as innocuous as
+those of countless other women. But the consciousness that the painful
+curiosity with which Swann now studied them had its origin only in
+himself was not enough to make him decide that it was unreasonable to
+regard that curiosity as important, and to take every possible step
+to satisfy it. Swann had, in fact, reached an age the philosophy of
+which--supported, in his case, by the current philosophy of the day, as
+well as by that of the circle in which he had spent most of his life,
+the group that surrounded the Princesse des Laumes, in which one's
+intelligence was understood to increase with the strength of one's
+disbelief in everything, and nothing real and incontestable was to be
+discovered, except the individual tastes of each of its members--is no
+longer that of youth, but a positive, almost a medical philosophy, the
+philosophy of men who, instead of fixing their aspirations upon external
+objects, endeavour to separate from the accumulation of the years
+already spent a definite residue of habits and passions which they
+can regard as characteristic and permanent, and with which they will
+deliberately arrange, before anything else, that the kind of existence
+which they choose to adopt shall not prove inharmonious. Swann deemed
+it wise to make allowance in his life for the suffering which he derived
+from not knowing what Odette had done, just as he made allowance for the
+impetus which a damp climate always gave to his eczema; to anticipate
+in his budget the expenditure of a considerable sum on procuring, with
+regard to the daily occupations of Odette, information the lack of
+which would make him unhappy, just as he reserved a margin for the
+gratification of other tastes from which he knew that pleasure was to be
+expected (at least, before he had fallen in love) such as his taste for
+collecting things, or for good cooking.
+
+When he proposed to take leave of Odette, and to return home, she begged
+him to stay a little longer, and even detained him forcibly, seizing him
+by the arm as he was opening the door to go. But he gave no thought to
+that, for, among the crowd of gestures and speeches and other little
+incidents which go to make up a conversation, it is inevitable that we
+should pass (without noticing anything that arouses our interest) by
+those that hide a truth for which our suspicions are blindly searching,
+whereas we stop to examine others beneath which nothing lies concealed.
+She kept on saying: "What a dreadful pity; you never by any chance come
+in the afternoon, and the one time you do come then I miss you." He knew
+very well that she was not sufficiently in love with him to be so
+keenly distressed merely at having missed his visit, but as she was a
+good-natured woman, anxious to give him pleasure, and often sorry when
+she had done anything that annoyed him, he found it quite natural that
+she should be sorry, on this occasion, that she had deprived him of that
+pleasure of spending an hour in her company, which was so very great a
+pleasure, if not to herself, at any rate to him. All the same, it was a
+matter of so little importance that her air of unrelieved sorrow began
+at length to bewilder him. She reminded him, even more than was
+usual, of the faces of some of the women created by the painter of
+the Primavera.' She had, at that moment, their downcast, heartbroken
+expression, which seems ready to succumb beneath the burden of a grief
+too heavy to be borne, when they are merely allowing the Infant Jesus to
+play with a pomegranate, or watching Moses pour water into a trough. He
+had seen the same sorrow once before on her face, but when, he could
+no longer say. Then, suddenly, he remembered it; it was when Odette had
+lied, in apologising to Mme. Verdurin on the evening after the dinner
+from which she had stayed away on a pretext of illness, but really so
+that she might be alone with Swann. Surely, even had she been the most
+scrupulous of women, she could hardly have felt remorse for so innocent
+a lie. But the lies which Odette ordinarily told were less innocent, and
+served to prevent discoveries which might have involved her in the most
+terrible difficulties with one or another of her friends. And so, when
+she lied, smitten with fear, feeling herself to be but feebly armed for
+her defence, unconfident of success, she was inclined to weep from sheer
+exhaustion, as children weep sometimes when they have not slept. She
+knew, also, that her lie, as a rule, was doing a serious injury to the
+man to whom she was telling it, and that she might find herself at
+his mercy if she told it badly. Therefore she felt at once humble and
+culpable in his presence. And when she had to tell an insignificant,
+social lie its hazardous associations, and the memories which it
+recalled, would leave her weak with a sense of exhaustion and penitent
+with a consciousness of wrongdoing.
+
+What depressing lie was she now concocting for Swann's benefit, to give
+her that pained expression, that plaintive voice, which seemed to falter
+beneath the effort that she was forcing herself to make, and to plead
+for pardon? He had an idea that it was not merely the truth about what
+had occurred that afternoon that she was endeavouring to hide from him,
+but something more immediate, something, possibly, which had not yet
+happened, but might happen now at any time, and, when it did, would
+throw a light upon that earlier event. At that moment, he heard the
+front-door bell ring. Odette never stopped speaking, but her words
+dwindled into an inarticulate moan. Her regret at not having seen Swann
+that afternoon, at not having opened the door to him, had melted into a
+universal despair.
+
+He could hear the gate being closed, and the sound of a carriage, as
+though some one were going away--probably the person whom Swann must on
+no account meet--after being told that Odette was not at home. And then,
+when he reflected that, merely by coming at an hour when he was not in
+the habit of coming, he had managed to disturb so many arrangements of
+which she did not wish him to know, he had a feeling of discouragement
+that amounted, almost, to distress. But since he was in love with
+Odette, since he was in the habit of turning all his thoughts towards
+her, the pity with which he might have been inspired for himself he felt
+for her only, and murmured: "Poor darling!" When finally he left her,
+she took up several letters which were lying on the table, and asked him
+if he would be so good as to post them for her. He walked along to the
+post-office, took the letters from his pocket, and, before dropping each
+of them into the box, scanned its address. They were all to tradesmen,
+except the last, which was to Forcheville. He kept it in his hand. "If
+I saw what was in this," he argued, "I should know what she calls him,
+what she says to him, whether there really is anything between them.
+Perhaps, if I don't look inside, I shall be lacking in delicacy towards
+Odette, since in this way alone I can rid myself of a suspicion which
+is, perhaps, a calumny on her, which must, in any case, cause her
+suffering, and which can never possibly be set at rest, once the letter
+is posted."
+
+He left the post-office and went home, but he had kept the last letter
+in his pocket. He lighted a candle, and held up close to its flame the
+envelope which he had not dared to open. At first he could distinguish
+nothing, but the envelope was thin, and by pressing it down on to the
+stiff card which it enclosed he was able, through the transparent paper,
+to read the concluding words. They were a coldly formal signature. If,
+instead of its being himself who was looking at a letter addressed to
+Forcheville, it had been Forcheville who had read a letter addressed
+to Swann, he might have found words in it of another, a far more tender
+kind! He took a firm hold of the card, which was sliding to and fro, the
+envelope being too large for it and then, by moving it with his finger
+and thumb, brought one line after another beneath the part of the
+envelope where the paper was not doubled, through which alone it was
+possible to read.
+
+In spite of all these manoeuvres he could not make it out clearly. Not
+that it mattered, for he had seen enough to assure himself that the
+letter was about some trifling incident of no importance, and had
+nothing at all to do with love; it was something to do with Odette's
+uncle. Swann had read quite plainly at the beginning of the line "I
+was right," but did not understand what Odette had been right in doing,
+until suddenly a word which he had not been able, at first, to decipher,
+came to light and made the whole sentence intelligible: "I was right to
+open the door; it was my uncle." To open the door! Then Forcheville had
+been there when Swann rang the bell, and she had sent him away; hence
+the sound that Swann had heard.
+
+After that he read the whole letter; at the end she apologised for
+having treated Forcheville with so little ceremony, and reminded him
+that he had left his cigarette-case at her house, precisely what she
+had written to Swann after one of his first visits. But to Swann she had
+added: "Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never have let
+you have that back." To Forcheville nothing of that sort; no allusion
+that could suggest any intrigue between them. And, really, he was
+obliged to admit that in all this business Forcheville had been worse
+treated than himself, since Odette was writing to him to make him
+believe that her visitor had been an uncle. From which it followed that
+he, Swann, was the man to whom she attached importance, and for whose
+sake she had sent the other away. And yet, if there had been nothing
+between Odette and Forcheville, why not have opened the door at once,
+why have said, "I was right to open the door; it was my uncle." Right?
+if she was doing nothing wrong at that moment how could Forcheville
+possibly have accounted for her not opening the door? For a time Swann
+stood still there, heartbroken, bewildered, and yet happy; gazing at
+this envelope which Odette had handed to him without a scruple, so
+absolute was her trust in his honour; through its transparent window
+there had been disclosed to him, with the secret history of an incident
+which he had despaired of ever being able to learn, a fragment of the
+life of Odette, seen as through a narrow, luminous incision, cut into
+its surface without her knowledge. Then his jealousy rejoiced at the
+discovery, as though that jealousy had had an independent existence,
+fiercely egotistical, gluttonous of every thing that would feed its
+vitality, even at the expense of Swann himself. Now it had food in
+store, and Swann could begin to grow uneasy afresh every evening, over
+the visits that Odette had received about five o'clock, and could
+seek to discover where Forcheville had been at that hour. For Swann's
+affection for Odette still preserved the form which had been imposed on
+it, from the beginning, by his ignorance of the occupations in which she
+passed her days, as well as by the mental lethargy which prevented him
+from supplementing that ignorance by imagination. He was not jealous, at
+first, of the whole of Odette's life, but of those moments only in which
+an incident, which he had perhaps misinterpreted, had led him to suppose
+that Odette might have played him false. His jealousy, like an octopus
+which throws out a first, then a second, and finally a third tentacle,
+fastened itself irremovably first to that moment, five o'clock in
+the afternoon, then to another, then to another again. But Swann was
+incapable of inventing his sufferings. They were only the memory, the
+perpetuation of a suffering that had come to him from without.
+
+From without, however, everything brought him fresh suffering. He
+decided to separate Odette from Forcheville, by taking her away for a
+few days to the south. But he imagined that she was coveted by every
+male person in the hotel, and that she coveted them in return. And so
+he, who, in old days, when he travelled, used always to seek out new
+people and crowded places, might now be seen fleeing savagely from human
+society as if it had cruelly injured him. And how could he not have
+turned misanthrope, when in every man he saw a potential lover for
+Odette? Thus his jealousy did even more than the happy, passionate
+desire which he had originally felt for Odette had done to alter Swann's
+character, completely changing, in the eyes of the world, even the
+outward signs by which that character had been intelligible.
+
+A month after the evening on which he had intercepted and read Odette's
+letter to Forcheville, Swann went to a dinner which the Verdurins were
+giving in the Bois. As the party was breaking up he noticed a series of
+whispered discussions between Mme. Verdurin and several of her guests,
+and thought that he heard the pianist being reminded to come next day to
+a party at Chatou; now he, Swann, had not been invited to any party.
+
+The Verdurins had spoken only in whispers, and in vague terms, but the
+painter, perhaps without thinking, shouted out: "There must be no lights
+of any sort, and he must play the Moonlight Sonata in the dark, for us
+to see by."
+
+Mme. Verdurin, seeing that Swann was within earshot, assumed that
+expression in which the two-fold desire to make the speaker be quiet and
+to preserve, oneself, an appearance of guilelessness in the eyes of the
+listener, is neutralised in an intense vacuity; in which the unflinching
+signs of intelligent complicity are overlaid by the smiles of innocence,
+an expression invariably adopted by anyone who has noticed a blunder,
+the enormity of which is thereby at once revealed if not to those who
+have made it, at any rate to him in whose hearing it ought not to have
+been made. Odette seemed suddenly to be in despair, as though she had
+decided not to struggle any longer against the crushing difficulties of
+life, and Swann was anxiously counting the minutes that still separated
+him from the point at which, after leaving the restaurant, while he
+drove her home, he would be able to ask for an explanation, to make her
+promise, either that she would not go to Chatou next day, or that she
+would procure an invitation for him also, and to lull to rest in her
+arms the anguish that still tormented him. At last the carriages were
+ordered. Mme. Verdurin said to Swann:
+
+"Good-bye, then. We shall see you soon, I hope," trying, by the
+friendliness of her manner and the constraint of her smile, to prevent
+him from noticing that she was not saying, as she would always have
+until then:
+
+"To-morrow, then, at Chatou, and at my house the day after." M. and Mme.
+Verdurin made Forcheville get into their carriage; Swann's was drawn up
+behind it, and he waited for theirs to start before helping Odette into
+his own.
+
+"Odette, we'll take you," said Mme. Verdurin, "we've kept a little
+corner specially for you, beside M. de Forcheville."
+
+"Yes, Mme. Verdurin," said Odette meekly.
+
+"What! I thought I was to take you home," cried Swann, flinging
+discretion to the winds, for the carriage-door hung open, time was
+precious, and he could not, in his present state, go home without her.
+
+"But Mme. Verdurin has asked me..."
+
+"That's all right, you can quite well go home alone; we've left you like
+this dozens of times," said Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"But I had something important to tell Mme. de Crécy."
+
+"Very well, you can write it to her instead."
+
+"Good-bye," said Odette, holding out her hand.
+
+He tried hard to smile, but could only succeed in looking utterly
+dejected.
+
+"What do you think of the airs that Swann is pleased to put on with
+us?" Mme. Verdurin asked her husband when they had reached home. "I was
+afraid he was going to eat me, simply because we offered to take Odette
+back. It really is too bad, that sort of thing. Why doesn't he say,
+straight out, that we keep a disorderly house? I can't conceive how
+Odette can stand such manners. He positively seems to be saying, all the
+time, 'You belong to me!' I shall tell Odette exactly what I think about
+it all, and I hope she will have the sense to understand me." A moment
+later she added, inarticulate with rage: "No, but, don't you see, the
+filthy creature..." using unconsciously, and perhaps in satisfaction of
+the same obscure need to justify herself--like Françoise at Combray when
+the chicken refused to die--the very words which the last convulsions of
+an inoffensive animal in its death agony wring from the peasant who is
+engaged in taking its life. And when Mme. Verdurin's carriage had moved
+on, and Swann's took its place, his coachman, catching sight of his
+face, asked whether he was unwell, or had heard bad news.
+
+Swann sent him away; he preferred to walk, and it was on foot, through
+the Bois, that he came home. He talked to himself, aloud, and in
+the same slightly affected tone which he had been used to adopt
+when describing the charms of the 'little nucleus' and extolling the
+magnanimity of the Verdurins. But just as the conversation, the smiles,
+the kisses of Odette became as odious to him as he had once found
+them charming, if they were diverted to others than himself, so the
+Verdurins' drawing-room, which, not an hour before, had still seemed
+to him amusing, inspired with a genuine feeling for art and even with
+a sort of moral aristocracy, now that it was another than himself whom
+Odette was going to meet there, to love there without restraint, laid
+bare to him all its absurdities, its stupidity, its shame.
+
+He drew a fanciful picture, at which he shuddered in disgust, of the
+party next evening at Chatou. "Imagine going to Chatou, of all places!
+Like a lot of drapers after closing time! Upon my word, these people are
+sublime in their smugness; they can't really exist; they must all have
+come out of one of Labiche's plays!"
+
+The Cottards would be there; possibly Brichot. "Could anything be more
+grotesque than the lives of these little creatures, hanging on to one
+another like that. They'd imagine they were utterly lost, upon my soul
+they would, if they didn't all meet again to-morrow at _Chatou_!"
+Alas! there would be the painter there also, the painter who enjoyed
+match-making, who would invite Forcheville to come with Odette to his
+studio. He could see Odette, in a dress far too smart for the country,
+"for she is so vulgar in that way, and, poor little thing, she is such a
+fool!"
+
+He could hear the jokes that Mme. Verdurin would make after dinner,
+jokes which, whoever the 'bore' might be at whom they were aimed,
+had always amused him because he could watch Odette laughing at them,
+laughing with him, her laughter almost a part of his. Now he felt that
+it was possibly at him that they would make Odette laugh. "What a fetid
+form of humour!" he exclaimed, twisting his mouth into an expression of
+disgust so violent that he could feel the muscles of his throat stiffen
+against his collar. "How, in God's name, can a creature made in His
+image find anything to laugh at in those nauseating witticisms? The
+least sensitive nose must be driven away in horror from such stale
+exhalations. It is really impossible to believe that any human being is
+incapable of understanding that, in allowing herself merely to smile at
+the expense of a fellow-creature who has loyally held out his hand
+to her, she is casting herself into a mire from which it will be
+impossible, with the best will in the world, ever to rescue her. I dwell
+so many miles above the puddles in which these filthy little vermin
+sprawl and crawl and bawl their cheap obscenities, that I cannot
+possibly be spattered by the witticisms of a Verdurin!" he cried,
+tossing up his head and arrogantly straightening his body. "God knows
+that I have honestly attempted to pull Odette out of that sewer, and to
+teach her to breathe a nobler and a purer air. But human patience has
+its limits, and mine is at an end," he concluded, as though this sacred
+mission to tear Odette away from an atmosphere of sarcasms dated from
+longer than a few minutes ago, as though he had not undertaken it only
+since it had occurred to him that those sarcasms might, perchance, be
+directed at himself, and might have the effect of detaching Odette from
+him.
+
+He could see the pianist sitting down to play the Moonlight Sonata, and
+the grimaces of Mme. Verdurin, in terrified anticipation of the wrecking
+of her nerves by Beethoven's music. "Idiot, liar!" he shouted, "and a
+creature like that imagines that she's fond of _Art_!" She would say to
+Odette, after deftly insinuating a few words of praise for Forcheville,
+as she had so often done for himself: "You can make room for M. de
+Forcheville there, can't you, Odette?"... '"In the dark!' Codfish!
+Pander!"... 'Pander' was the name he applied also to the music which
+would invite them to sit in silence, to dream together, to gaze in each
+other's eyes, to feel for each other's hands. He felt that there was
+much to be said, after all, for a sternly censorous attitude towards
+the arts, such as Plato adopted, and Bossuet, and the old school of
+education in France.
+
+In a word, the life which they led at the Verdurins', which he had so
+often described as 'genuine,' seemed to him now the worst possible form
+of life, and their 'little nucleus' the most degraded class of society.
+"It really is," he repeated, "beneath the lowest rung of the social
+ladder, the nethermost circle of Dante. Beyond a doubt, the august words
+of the Florentine refer to the Verdurins! When one comes to think of it,
+surely people 'in society' (and, though one may find fault with them now
+and then, still, after all they are a very different matter from that
+gang of blackmailers) shew a profound sagacity in refusing to know
+them, or even to dirty the tips of their fingers with them. What a sound
+intuition there is in that '_Noli me tangere_' motto of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain."
+
+He had long since emerged from the paths and avenues of the Bois, he had
+almost reached his own house, and still, for he had not yet thrown off
+the intoxication of grief, or his whim of insincerity, but was ever more
+and more exhilarated by the false intonation, the artificial sonority
+of his own voice, he continued to perorate aloud in the silence of the
+night: "People 'in society' have their failings, as no one knows better
+than I; but, after all, they are people to whom some things, at least,
+are impossible. So-and-so" (a fashionable woman whom he had known)
+"was far from being perfect, but, after all, one did find in her a
+fundamental delicacy, a loyalty in her conduct which made her, whatever
+happened, incapable of a felony, which fixes a vast gulf between her and
+an old hag like Verdurin. Verdurin! What a name! Oh, there's something
+complete about them, something almost fine in their trueness to type;
+they're the most perfect specimens of their disgusting class! Thank God,
+it was high time that I stopped condescending to promiscuous intercourse
+with such infamy, such dung."
+
+But, just as the virtues which he had still attributed, an hour or so
+earlier, to the Verdurins, would not have sufficed, even although the
+Verdurins had actually possessed them, if they had not also favoured
+and protected his love, to excite Swann to that state of intoxication
+in which he waxed tender over their magnanimity, an intoxication which,
+even when disseminated through the medium of other persons, could
+have come to him from Odette alone;--so the immorality (had it really
+existed) which he now found in the Verdurins would have been powerless,
+if they had not invited Odette with Forcheville and without him, to
+unstop the vials of his wrath and to make him scarify their 'infamy.'
+Doubtless Swann's voice shewed a finer perspicacity than his own when it
+refused to utter those words full of disgust at the Verdurins and their
+circle, and of joy at his having shaken himself free of it, save in an
+artificial and rhetorical tone, and as though his words had been chosen
+rather to appease his anger than to express his thoughts. The latter, in
+fact, while he abandoned himself to invective, were probably, though he
+did not know it, occupied with a wholly different matter, for once he
+had reached his house, no sooner had he closed the front-door behind him
+than he suddenly struck his forehead, and, making his servant open the
+door again, dashed out into the street shouting, in a voice which,
+this time, was quite natural; "I believe I have found a way of getting
+invited to the dinner at Chatou to-morrow!" But it must have been a
+bad way, for M. Swann was not invited; Dr. Cottard, who, having been
+summoned to attend a serious case in the country, had not seen the
+Verdurins for some days, and had been prevented from appearing at
+Chatou, said, on the evening after this dinner, as he sat down to table
+at their house:
+
+"Why, aren't we going to see M. Swann this evening? He is quite what you
+might call a personal friend..." "I sincerely trust that we sha'n't!"
+cried Mme. Verdurin. "Heaven preserve us from him; he's too deadly for
+words, a stupid, ill-bred boor."
+
+On hearing these words Cottard exhibited an intense astonishment blended
+with entire submission, as though in the face of a scientific truth
+which contradicted everything that he had previously believed, but was
+supported by an irresistible weight of evidence; with timorous
+emotion he bowed his head over his plate, and merely replied:
+"Oh--oh--oh--oh--oh!" traversing, in an orderly retirement of his
+forces, into the depths of his being, along a descending scale, the
+whole compass of his voice. After which there was no more talk of Swann
+at the Verdurins'.
+
+And so that drawing-room which had brought Swann and Odette together
+became an obstacle in the way of their meeting. She no longer said to
+him, as she had said in the early days of their love: "We shall meet,
+anyhow, to-morrow evening; there's a supper-party at the Verdurins',"
+but "We sha'n't be able to meet to-morrow evening; there's a
+supper-party at the Verdurins'." Or else the Verdurins were taking her
+to the Opéra-Comique, to see _Une Nuit de Cléopâtre_, and Swann could
+read in her eyes that terror lest he should ask her not to go, which,
+but a little time before, he could not have refrained from greeting
+with a kiss as it flitted across the face of his mistress, but which now
+exasperated him. "Yet I'm not really angry," he assured himself, "when I
+see how she longs to run away and scratch from maggots in that
+dunghill of cacophony. I'm disappointed; not for myself, but for her;
+disappointed to find that, after living for more than six months in
+daily contact with myself, she has not been capable of improving her
+mind even to the point of spontaneously eradicating from it a taste for
+Victor Massé! More than that, to find that she has not arrived at the
+stage of understanding that there are evenings on which anyone with
+the least shade of refinement of feeling should be willing to forego
+an amusement when she is asked to do so. She ought to have the sense to
+say: 'I shall not go,' if it were only from policy, since it is by what
+she answers now that the quality of her soul will be determined once and
+for all." And having persuaded himself that it was solely, after all,
+in order that he might arrive at a favourable estimate of Odette's
+spiritual worth that he wished her to stay at home with him that evening
+instead of going to the Opéra-Comique, he adopted the same line of
+reasoning with her, with the same degree of insincerity as he had
+used with himself, or even with a degree more, for in her case he was
+yielding also to the desire to capture her by her own self-esteem.
+
+"I swear to you," he told her, shortly before she was to leave for the
+theatre, "that, in asking you not to go, I should hope, were I a
+selfish man, for nothing so much as that you should refuse, for I have
+a thousand other things to do this evening, and I shall feel that I have
+been tricked and trapped myself, and shall be thoroughly annoyed, if,
+after all, you tell me that you are not going. But my occupations, my
+pleasures are not everything; I must think of you also. A day may come
+when, seeing me irrevocably sundered from you, you will be entitled to
+reproach me with not having warned you at the decisive hour in which
+I felt that I was going to pass judgment on you, one of those stern
+judgments which love cannot long resist. You see, your _Nuit de
+Cléopâtre_ (what a title!) has no bearing on the point. What I must know
+is whether you are indeed one of those creatures in the lowest grade of
+mentality and even of charm, one of those contemptible creatures who are
+incapable of foregoing a pleasure. For if you are such, how could anyone
+love you, for you are not even a person, a definite, imperfect, but at
+least perceptible entity. You are a formless water that will trickle
+down any slope that it may come upon, a fish devoid of memory, incapable
+of thought, which all its life long in its aquarium will continue to
+dash itself, a hundred times a day, against a wall of glass, always
+mistaking it for water. Do you realise that your answer will have the
+effect--I do not say of making me cease from that moment to love you,
+that goes without saying, but of making you less attractive to my
+eyes when I realise that you are not a person, that you are beneath
+everything in the world and have not the intelligence to raise yourself
+one inch higher? Obviously, I should have preferred to ask you, as
+though it had been a matter of little or no importance, to give up your
+_Nuit de Cléopâtre_ (since you compel me to sully my lips with so abject
+a name), in the hope that you would go to it none the less. But, since
+I had resolved to weigh you in the balance, to make so grave an issue
+depend upon your answer, I considered it more honourable to give you due
+warning."
+
+Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emotion and uncertainty.
+Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it
+was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes
+which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying
+any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not
+make unless they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in
+love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in
+love later on. And so, she would have heard Swann out with the utmost
+tranquillity had she not noticed that it was growing late, and that if
+he went on speaking for any length of time she would "never" as she told
+him with a fond smile, obstinate but slightly abashed, "get there in
+time for the Overture."
+
+On other occasions he had assured himself that the one thing which,
+more than anything else, would make him cease to love her, would be her
+refusal to abandon the habit of lying. "Even from the point of view of
+coquetry, pure and simple," he had told her, "can't you see how much
+of your attraction you throw away when you stoop to lying? By a frank
+admission--how many faults you might redeem! Really, you are far less
+intelligent than I supposed!" In vain, however, did Swann expound to
+her thus all the reasons that she had for not lying; they might have
+succeeded in overthrowing any universal system of mendacity, but Odette
+had no such system; she contented herself, merely, whenever she wished
+Swann to remain in ignorance of anything that she had done, with not
+telling him of it. So that a lie was, to her, something to be used only
+as a special expedient; and the one thing that could make her decide
+whether she should avail herself of a lie or not was a reason which,
+too, was of a special and contingent order, namely the risk of Swann's
+discovering that she had not told him the truth.
+
+Physically, she was passing through an unfortunate phase; she was
+growing stouter, and the expressive, sorrowful charm, the surprised,
+wistful expressions which she had formerly had, seemed to have vanished
+with her first youth, with the result that she became most precious to
+Swann at the very moment when he found her distinctly less good-looking.
+He would gaze at her for hours on end, trying to recapture the charm
+which he had once seen in her and could not find again. And yet the
+knowledge that, within this new and strange chrysalis, it was still
+Odette that lurked, still the same volatile temperament, artful and
+evasive, was enough to keep Swann seeking, with as much passion as ever,
+to captivate her. Then he would look at photographs of her, taken two
+years before, and would remember how exquisite she had been. And that
+would console him, a little, for all the sufferings that he voluntarily
+endured on her account.
+
+When the Verdurins took her off to Saint-Germain, or to Chatou, or to
+Meulan, as often as not, if the weather was fine, they would propose
+to remain there for the night, and not go home until next day. Mme.
+Verdurin would endeavour to set at rest the scruples of the pianist,
+whose aunt had remained in Paris: "She will be only too glad to be rid
+of you for a day. How on earth could she be anxious, when she knows
+you're with us? Anyhow, I'll take you all under my wing; she can put the
+blame on me."
+
+If this attempt failed, M. Verdurin would set off across country until
+he came to a telegraph office or some other kind of messenger, after
+first finding out which of the 'faithful' had anyone whom they must
+warn. But Odette would thank him, and assure him that she had no message
+for anyone, for she had told Swann, once and for all, that she could
+not possibly send messages to him, before all those people, without
+compromising herself. Sometimes she would be absent for several days
+on end, when the Verdurins took her to see the tombs at Dreux, or to
+Compiègne, on the painter's advice, to watch the sun setting through the
+forest--after which they went on to the Château of Pierrefonds.
+
+"To think that she could visit really historic buildings with me, who
+have spent ten years in the study of architecture, who am constantly
+bombarded, by people who really count, to take them over Beauvais or
+Saint-Loup-de-Naud, and refuse to take anyone but her; and instead of
+that she trundles off with the lowest, the most brutally degraded
+of creatures, to go into ecstasies over the petrified excretions of
+Louis-Philippe and Viollet-le-Duc! One hardly needs much knowledge
+of art, I should say, to do that; though, surely, even without any
+particularly refined sense of smell, one would not deliberately choose
+to spend a holiday in the latrines, so as to be within range of their
+fragrant exhalations."
+
+But when she had set off for Dreux or Pierrefonds--alas, without
+allowing him to appear there, as though by accident, at her side, for,
+as she said, that would "create a dreadful impression,"--he would plunge
+into the most intoxicating romance in the lover's library, the railway
+timetable, from which he learned the ways of joining her there in the
+afternoon, in the evening, even in the morning. The ways? More than
+that, the authority, the right to join her. For, after all, the
+time-table, and the trains themselves, were not meant for dogs. If the
+public were carefully informed, by means of printed advertisements, that
+at eight o'clock in the morning a train started for Pierrefonds which
+arrived there at ten, that could only be because going to Pierrefonds
+was a lawful act, for which permission from Odette would be superfluous;
+an act, moreover, which might be performed from a motive altogether
+different from the desire to see Odette, since persons who had never
+even heard of her performed it daily, and in such numbers as justified
+the labour and expense of stoking the engines.
+
+So it came to this; that she could not prevent him from going to
+Pierrefonds if he chose to do so. Now that was precisely what he found
+that he did choose to do, and would at that moment be doing were he,
+like the travelling public, not acquainted with Odette. For a long
+time past he had wanted to form a more definite impression of
+Viollet-le-Duc's work as a restorer. And the weather being what it was,
+he felt an overwhelming desire to spend the day roaming in the forest of
+Compiègne.
+
+It was, indeed, a piece of bad luck that she had forbidden him access
+to the one spot that tempted him to-day. To-day! Why, if he went down
+there, in defiance of her prohibition, he would be able to see her that
+very day! But then, whereas, if she had met, at Pierrefonds, some one
+who did not matter, she would have hailed him with obvious pleasure:
+"What, you here?" and would have invited him to come and see her at the
+hotel where she was staying with the Verdurins, if, on the other hand,
+it was himself, Swann, that she encountered there, she would be annoyed,
+would complain that she was being followed, would love him less in
+consequence, might even turn away in anger when she caught sight of him.
+"So, then, I am not to be allowed to go away for a day anywhere!" she
+would reproach him on her return, whereas in fact it was he himself who
+was not allowed to go.
+
+He had had the sudden idea, so as to contrive to visit Compiègne and
+Pierrefonds without letting it be supposed that his object was to meet
+Odette, of securing an invitation from one of his friends, the Marquis
+de Forestelle, who had a country house in that neighbourhood. This
+friend, to whom Swann suggested the plan without disclosing its
+ulterior purpose, was beside himself with joy; he did not conceal his
+astonishment at Swann's consenting at last, after fifteen years, to come
+down and visit his property, and since he did not (he told him) wish
+to stay there, promised to spend some days, at least, in taking him for
+walks and excursions in the district. Swann imagined himself down there
+already with M. de Forestelle. Even before he saw Odette, even if he did
+not succeed in seeing her there, what a joy it would be to set foot on
+that soil where, not knowing the exact spot in which, at any moment, she
+was to be found, he would feel all around him the thrilling possibility
+of her suddenly appearing: in the courtyard of the Château, now
+beautiful in his eyes since it was on her account that he had gone to
+visit it; in all the streets of the town, which struck him as romantic;
+down every ride of the forest, roseate with the deep and tender glow of
+sunset;--innumerable and alternative hiding-places, to which would fly
+simultaneously for refuge, in the uncertain ubiquity of his hopes, his
+happy, vagabond and divided heart. "We mustn't, on any account," he
+would warn M. de Forestelle, "run across Odette and the Verdurins. I
+have just heard that they are at Pierrefonds, of all places, to-day. One
+has plenty of time to see them in Paris; it would hardly be worth while
+coming down here if one couldn't go a yard without meeting them." And
+his host would fail to understand why, once they had reached the place,
+Swann would change his plans twenty times in an hour, inspect the
+dining-rooms of all the hotels in Compiègne without being able to make
+up his mind to settle down in any of them, although he had found no
+trace anywhere of the Verdurins, seeming to be in search of what he had
+claimed to be most anxious to avoid, and would in fact avoid, the moment
+he found it, for if he had come upon the little 'group,' he would have
+hastened away at once with studied indifference, satisfied that he had
+seen Odette and she him, especially that she had seen him when he was
+not, apparently, thinking about her. But no; she would guess at
+once that it was for her sake that he had come there. And when M. de
+Forestelle came to fetch him, and it was time to start, he excused
+himself: "No, I'm afraid not; I can't go to Pierrefonds to-day. You see,
+Odette is there." And Swann was happy in spite of everything in feeling
+that if he, alone among mortals, had not the right to go to Pierrefonds
+that day, it was because he was in fact, for Odette, some one who
+differed from all other mortals, her lover; and because that restriction
+which for him alone was set upon the universal right to travel freely
+where one would, was but one of the many forms of that slavery, that
+love which was so dear to him. Decidedly, it was better not to risk a
+quarrel with her, to be patient, to wait for her return. He spent his
+days in poring over a map of the forest of Compiègne, as though it
+had been that of the 'Pays du Tendre'; he surrounded himself with
+photographs of the Château of Pierrefonds. When the day dawned on which
+it was possible that she might return, he opened the time-table
+again, calculated what train she must have taken, and, should she have
+postponed her departure, what trains were still left for her to take. He
+did not leave the house, for fear of missing a telegram, he did not go
+to bed, in case, having come by the last train, she decided to surprise
+him with a midnight visit. Yes! The front-door bell rang. There seemed
+some delay in opening the door, he wanted to awaken the porter, he
+leaned out of the window to shout to Odette, if it was Odette, for
+in spite of the orders which he had gone downstairs a dozen times to
+deliver in person, they were quite capable of telling her that he was
+not at home. It was only a servant coming in. He noticed the incessant
+rumble of passing carriages, to which he had never before paid any
+attention. He could hear them, one after another, a long way off, coming
+nearer, passing his door without stopping, and bearing away into the
+distance a message which was not for him. He waited all night, to no
+purpose, for the Verdurins had returned unexpectedly, and Odette had
+been in Paris since midday; it had not occurred to her to tell him; not
+knowing what to do with herself she had spent the evening alone at a
+theatre, had long since gone home to bed, and was peacefully asleep.
+
+As a matter of fact, she had never given him a thought. And such moments
+as these, in which she forgot Swann's very existence, were of more value
+to Odette, did more to attach him to her, than all her infidelities. For
+in this way Swann was kept in that state of painful agitation which had
+once before been effective in making his interest blossom into love, on
+the night when he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins' and had
+hunted for her all evening. And he did not have (as I had, afterwards,
+at Combray in my childhood) happy days in which to forget the sufferings
+that would return with the night. For his days, Swann must pass them
+without Odette; and as he told himself, now and then, to allow so pretty
+a woman to go out by herself in Paris was just as rash as to leave a
+case filled with jewels in the middle of the street. In this mood he
+would scowl furiously at the passers-by, as though they were so many
+pickpockets. But their faces--a collective and formless mass--escaped
+the grasp of his imagination, and so failed to feed the flame of his
+jealousy. The effort exhausted Swann's brain, until, passing his hand
+over his eyes, he cried out: "Heaven help me!" as people, after lashing
+themselves into an intellectual frenzy in their endeavours to master the
+problem of the reality of the external world, or that of the immortality
+of the soul, afford relief to their weary brains by an unreasoning
+act of faith. But the thought of his absent mistress was incessantly,
+indissolubly blended with all the simplest actions of Swann's daily
+life--when he took his meals, opened his letters, went for a walk or
+to bed--by the fact of his regret at having to perform those actions
+without her; like those initials of Philibert the Fair which, in the
+church of Brou, because of her grief, her longing for him, Margaret of
+Austria intertwined everywhere with her own. On some days, instead of
+staying at home, he would go for luncheon to a restaurant not far off,
+to which he had been attracted, some time before, by the excellence of
+its cookery, but to which he now went only for one of those reasons,
+at once mystical and absurd, which people call 'romantic'; because this
+restaurant (which, by the way, still exists) bore the same name as the
+street in which Odette lived: the Lapérouse. Sometimes, when she had
+been away on a short visit somewhere, several days would elapse before
+she thought of letting him know that she had returned to Paris. And
+then she would say quite simply, without taking (as she would once have
+taken) the precaution of covering herself, at all costs, with a little
+fragment borrowed from the truth, that she had just, at that very
+moment, arrived by the morning train. What she said was a falsehood;
+at least for Odette it was a falsehood, inconsistent, lacking (what it
+would have had, if true) the support of her memory of her actual arrival
+at the station; she was even prevented from forming a mental picture of
+what she was saying, while she said it, by the contradictory picture, in
+her mind, of whatever quite different thing she had indeed been doing at
+the moment when she pretended to have been alighting from the train. In
+Swann's mind, however, these words, meeting no opposition, settled
+and hardened until they assumed the indestructibility of a truth so
+indubitable that, if some friend happened to tell him that he had
+come by the same train and had not seen Odette, Swann would have been
+convinced that it was his friend who had made a mistake as to the day or
+hour, since his version did not agree with the words uttered by Odette.
+These words had never appeared to him false except when, before hearing
+them, he had suspected that they were going to be. For him to believe
+that she was lying, an anticipatory suspicion was indispensable. It was
+also, however, sufficient. Given that, everything that Odette might say
+appeared to him suspect. Did she mention a name: it was obviously that
+of one of her lovers; once this supposition had taken shape, he would
+spend weeks in tormenting himself; on one occasion he even approached a
+firm of 'inquiry agents' to find out the address and the occupation of
+the unknown rival who would give him no peace until he could be proved
+to have gone abroad, and who (he ultimately learned) was an uncle of
+Odette, and had been dead for twenty years.
+
+Although she would not allow him, as a rule, to meet her at public
+gatherings, saying that people would talk, it happened occasionally
+that, at an evening party to which he and she had each been invited--at
+Forcheville's, at the painter's, or at a charity ball given in one of
+the Ministries--he found himself in the same room with her. He could
+see her, but dared not remain for fear of annoying her by seeming to be
+spying upon the pleasures which she tasted in other company, pleasures
+which--while he drove home in utter loneliness, and went to bed,
+as anxiously as I myself was to go to bed, some years later, on the
+evenings when he came to dine with us at Combray--seemed illimitable to
+him since he had not been able to see their end. And, once or twice,
+he derived from such evenings that kind of happiness which one would be
+inclined (did it not originate in so violent a reaction from an anxiety
+abruptly terminated) to call peaceful, since it consists in a pacifying
+of the mind: he had looked in for a moment at a revel in the painter's
+studio, and was getting ready to go home; he was leaving behind him
+Odette, transformed into a brilliant stranger, surrounded by men to whom
+her glances and her gaiety, which were not for him, seemed to hint at
+some voluptuous pleasure to be enjoyed there or elsewhere (possibly at
+the Bal des Incohérents, to which he trembled to think that she might be
+going on afterwards) which made Swann more jealous than the thought of
+their actual physical union, since it was more difficult to imagine; he
+was opening the door to go, when he heard himself called back in these
+words (which, by cutting off from the party that possible ending which
+had so appalled him, made the party itself seem innocent in retrospect,
+made Odette's return home a thing no longer inconceivable and terrible,
+but tender and familiar, a thing that kept close to his side, like
+a part of his own daily life, in his carriage; a thing that stripped
+Odette herself of the excess of brilliance and gaiety in her appearance,
+shewed that it was only a disguise which she had assumed for a moment,
+for his sake and not in view of any mysterious pleasures, a disguise of
+which she had already wearied)--in these words, which Odette flung out
+after him as he was crossing the threshold: "Can't you wait a minute for
+me? I'm just going; we'll drive back together and you can drop me." It
+was true that on one occasion Forcheville had asked to be driven home at
+the same time, but when, on reaching Odette's gate, he had begged to be
+allowed to come in too, she had replied, with a finger pointed at Swann:
+"Ah! That depends on this gentleman. You must ask him. Very well, you
+may come in, just for a minute, if you insist, but you mustn't stay
+long, for, I warn you, he likes to sit and talk quietly with me, and
+he's not at all pleased if I have visitors when he's here. Oh, if you
+only knew the creature as I know him; isn't that so, my love, there's no
+one that really knows you, is there, except me?"
+
+And Swann was, perhaps, even more touched by the spectacle of her
+addressing him thus, in front of Forcheville, not only in these tender
+words of predilection, but also with certain criticisms, such as: "I
+feel sure you haven't written yet to your friends, about dining with
+them on Sunday. You needn't go if you don't want to, but you might at
+least be polite," or "Now, have you left your essay on Vermeer here, so
+that you can do a little more to it to-morrow? What a lazy-bones! I'm
+going to make you work, I can tell you," which proved that Odette kept
+herself in touch with his social engagements and his literary work, that
+they had indeed a life in common. And as she spoke she bestowed on him a
+smile which he interpreted as meaning that she was entirely his.
+
+And then, while she was making them some orangeade, suddenly, just as
+when the reflector of a lamp that is badly fitted begins by casting
+all round an object, on the wall beyond it, huge and fantastic shadows
+which, in time, contract and are lost in the shadow of the object
+itself, all the terrible and disturbing ideas which he had formed of
+Odette melted away and vanished in the charming creature who stood there
+before his eyes. He had the sudden suspicion that this hour spent in
+Odette's house, in the lamp-light, was, perhaps, after all, not an
+artificial hour, invented for his special use (with the object of
+concealing that frightening and delicious thing which was incessantly
+in his thoughts without his ever being able to form a satisfactory
+impression of it, an hour of Odette's real life, of her life when he was
+not there, looking on) with theatrical properties and pasteboard fruits,
+but was perhaps a genuine hour of Odette's life; that, if he himself
+had not been there, she would have pulled forward the same armchair for
+Forcheville, would have poured out for him, not any unknown brew, but
+precisely that orangeade which she was now offering to them both; that
+the world inhabited by Odette was not that other world, fearful and
+supernatural, in which he spent his time in placing her--and which
+existed, perhaps, only in his imagination, but the real universe,
+exhaling no special atmosphere of gloom, comprising that table at which
+he might sit down, presently, and write, and this drink which he was
+being permitted, now, to taste; all the objects which he contemplated
+with as much curiosity and admiration as gratitude, for if, in absorbing
+his dreams, they had delivered him from an obsession, they themselves
+were, in turn, enriched by the absorption; they shewed him the palpable
+realisation of his fancies, and they interested his mind; they took
+shape and grew solid before his eyes, and at the same time they soothed
+his troubled heart. Ah! had fate but allowed him to share a single
+dwelling with Odette, so that in her house he should be in his own; if,
+when asking his servant what there would be for luncheon, it had been
+Odette's bill of fare that he had learned from the reply; if, when
+Odette wished to go for a walk, in the morning, along the Avenue du
+Bois-de-Boulogne, his duty as a good husband had obliged him, though he
+had no desire to go out, to accompany her, carrying her cloak when she
+was too warm; and in the evening, after dinner, if she wished to stay at
+home, and not to dress, if he had been forced to stay beside her, to
+do what she asked; then how completely would all the trivial details
+of Swann's life, which seemed to him now so gloomy, simply because they
+would, at the same time, have formed part of the life of Odette, have
+taken on--like that lamp, that orangeade, that armchair, which had
+absorbed so much of his dreams, which materialised so much of his
+longing,--a sort of superabundant sweetness and a mysterious solidity.
+
+And yet he was inclined to suspect that the state for which he so much
+longed was a calm, a peace, which would not have created an atmosphere
+favourable to his love. When Odette ceased to be for him a creature
+always absent, regretted, imagined; when the feeling that he had for her
+was no longer the same mysterious disturbance that was wrought in him by
+the phrase from the sonata, but constant affection and gratitude, when
+those normal relations were established between them which would put an
+end to his melancholy madness; then, no doubt, the actions of Odette's
+daily life would appear to him as being of but little intrinsic
+interest--as he had several times, already, felt that they might be,
+on the day, for instance, when he had read, through its envelope, her
+letter to Forcheville. Examining his complaint with as much scientific
+detachment as if he had inoculated himself with it in order to study
+its effects, he told himself that, when he was cured of it, what Odette
+might or might not do would be indifferent to him. But in his morbid
+state, to tell the truth, he feared death itself no more than such a
+recovery, which would, in fact, amount to the death of all that he then
+was.
+
+After these quiet evenings, Swann's suspicions would be temporarily
+lulled; he would bless the name of Odette, and next day, in the morning,
+would order the most attractive jewels to be sent to her, because her
+kindnesses to him overnight had excited either his gratitude, or the
+desire to see them repeated, or a paroxysm of love for her which had
+need of some such outlet.
+
+But at other times, grief would again take hold of him; he would imagine
+that Odette was Forcheville's mistress, and that, when they had both sat
+watching him from the depths of the Verdurins' landau, in the Bois, on
+the evening before the party at Chatou to which he had not been invited,
+while he implored her in vain, with that look of despair on his face
+which even his coachman had noticed, to come home with him, and then
+turned away, solitary, crushed,--she must have employed, to draw
+Forcheville's attention to him, while she murmured: "Do look at him,
+storming!" the same glance, brilliant, malicious, sidelong, cunning, as
+on the evening when Forcheville had driven Saniette from the Verdurins'.
+
+At such times Swann detested her. "But I've been a fool, too," he would
+argue. "I'm paying for other men's pleasures with my money. All the
+same, she'd better take care, and not pull the string too often, for
+I might very well stop giving her anything at all. At any rate, we'd
+better knock off supplementary favours for the time being. To think
+that, only yesterday, when she said she would like to go to Bayreuth
+for the season, I was such an ass as to offer to take one of those jolly
+little places the King of Bavaria has there, for the two of us. However
+she didn't seem particularly keen; she hasn't said yes or no yet. Let's
+hope that she'll refuse. Good God! Think of listening to Wagner for a
+fortnight on end with her, who takes about as much interest in music as
+a fish does in little apples; it will be fun!" And his hatred, like
+his love, needing to manifest itself in action, he amused himself with
+urging his evil imaginings further and further, because, thanks to the
+perfidies with which he charged Odette, he detested her still more, and
+would be able, if it turned out--as he tried to convince himself--that
+she was indeed guilty of them, to take the opportunity of punishing her,
+emptying upon her the overflowing vials of his wrath. In this way, he
+went so far as to suppose that he was going to receive a letter from
+her, in which she would ask him for money to take the house at Bayreuth,
+but with the warning that he was not to come there himself, as she had
+promised Forcheville and the Verdurins to invite them. Oh, how he
+would have loved it, had it been conceivable that she would have
+that audacity. What joy he would have in refusing, in drawing up that
+vindictive reply, the terms of which he amused himself by selecting and
+declaiming aloud, as though he had actually received her letter.
+
+The very next day, her letter came. She wrote that the Verdurins and
+their friends had expressed a desire to be present at these performances
+of Wagner, and that, if he would be so good as to send her the money,
+she would be able at last, after going so often to their house, to have
+the pleasure of entertaining the Verdurins in hers. Of him she said not
+a word; it was to be taken for granted that their presence at Bayreuth
+would be a bar to his.
+
+Then that annihilating answer, every word of which he had carefully
+rehearsed overnight, without venturing to hope that it could ever be
+used, he had the satisfaction of having it conveyed to her. Alas! he
+felt only too certain that with the money which she had, or could easily
+procure, she would be able, all the same, to take a house at Bayreuth,
+since she wished to do so, she who was incapable of distinguishing
+between Bach and Clapisson. Let her take it, then; she would have to
+live in it more frugally, that was all. No means (as there would have
+been if he had replied by sending her several thousand-franc notes) of
+organising, each evening, in her hired castle, those exquisite little
+suppers, after which she might perhaps be seized by the whim (which,
+it was possible, had never yet seized her) of falling into the arms of
+Forcheville. At any rate, this loathsome expedition, it would not be
+Swann who had to pay for it. Ah! if he could only manage to prevent
+it, if she could sprain her ankle before starting, if the driver of the
+carriage which was to take her to the station would consent (no matter
+how great the bribe) to smuggle her to some place where she could be
+kept for a time in seclusion, that perfidious woman, her eyes tinselled
+with a smile of complicity for Forcheville, which was what Odette had
+become for Swann in the last forty-eight hours.
+
+But she was never that for very long; after a few days the shining,
+crafty eyes lost their brightness and their duplicity, that picture of
+an execrable Odette saying to Forcheville: "Look at him storming!" began
+to grow pale and to dissolve. Then gradually reappeared and rose before
+him, softly radiant, the face of the other Odette, of that Odette who
+also turned with a smile to Forcheville, but with a smile in which there
+was nothing but affection for Swann, when she said: "You mustn't stay
+long, for this gentleman doesn't much like my having visitors when he's
+here. Oh! if you only knew the creature as I know him!" that same smile
+with which she used to thank Swann for some instance of his courtesy
+which she prized so highly, for some advice for which she had asked him
+in one of those grave crises in her life, when she could turn to him
+alone.
+
+Then, to this other Odette, he would ask himself what could have induced
+him to write that outrageous letter, of which, probably, until then,
+she had never supposed him capable, a letter which must have lowered him
+from the high, from the supreme place which, by his generosity, by his
+loyalty, he had won for himself in her esteem. He would become less dear
+to her, since it was for those qualities, which she found neither in
+Forcheville nor in any other, that she loved him. It was for them that
+Odette so often shewed him a reciprocal kindness, which counted for less
+than nothing in his moments of jealousy, because it was not a sign of
+reciprocal desire, was indeed a proof rather of affection than of love,
+but the importance of which he began once more to feel in proportion as
+the spontaneous relaxation of his suspicions, often accelerated by the
+distraction brought to him by reading about art or by the conversation
+of a friend, rendered his passion less exacting of reciprocities.
+
+Now that, after this swing of the pendulum, Odette had naturally
+returned to the place from which Swann's jealousy had for the moment
+driven her, in the angle in which he found her charming, he pictured her
+to himself as full of tenderness, with a look of consent in her eyes,
+and so beautiful that he could not refrain from moving his lips towards
+her, as though she had actually been in the room for him to kiss; and
+he preserved a sense of gratitude to her for that bewitching, kindly
+glance, as strong as though she had really looked thus at him, and it
+had not been merely his imagination that had portrayed it in order to
+satisfy his desire.
+
+What distress he must have caused her! Certainly he found adequate
+reasons for his resentment, but they would not have been sufficient to
+make him feel that resentment, if he had not so passionately loved her.
+Had he not nourished grievances, just as serious, against other women,
+to whom he would, none the less, render willing service to-day, feeling
+no anger towards them because he no longer loved them? If the day ever
+came when he would find himself in the same state of indifference with
+regard to Odette, he would then understand that it was his jealousy
+alone which had led him to find something atrocious, unpardonable, in
+this desire (after all, so natural a desire, springing from a childlike
+ingenuousness and also from a certain delicacy in her nature) to be
+able, in her turn, when an occasion offered, to repay the Verdurins for
+their hospitality, and to play the hostess in a house of her own.
+
+He returned to the other point of view--opposite to that of his love
+and of his jealousy, to which he resorted at times by a sort of mental
+equity, and in order to make allowance for different eventualities--from
+which he tried to form a fresh judgment of Odette, based on the
+supposition that he had never been in love with her, that she was to him
+just a woman like other women, that her life had not been (whenever he
+himself was not present) different, a texture woven in secret apart from
+him, and warped against him.
+
+Wherefore believe that she would enjoy down there with Forcheville or
+with other men intoxicating pleasures which she had never known with
+him, and which his jealousy alone had fabricated in all their elements?
+At Bayreuth, as in Paris, if it should happen that Forcheville thought
+of him at all, it would only be as of some one who counted for a great
+deal in the life of Odette, some one for whom he was obliged to make
+way, when they met in her house. If Forcheville and she scored a
+triumph by being down there together in spite of him, it was he who had
+engineered that triumph by striving in vain to prevent her from going
+there, whereas if he had approved of her plan, which for that matter was
+quite defensible, she would have had the appearance of being there by
+his counsel, she would have felt herself sent there, housed there by
+him, and for the pleasure which she derived from entertaining those
+people who had so often entertained her, it was to him that she would
+have had to acknowledge her indebtedness.
+
+And if--instead of letting her go off thus, at cross-purposes with him,
+without having seen him again--he were to send her this money, if he
+were to encourage her to take this journey, and to go out of his way to
+make it comfortable and pleasant for her, she would come running to him,
+happy, grateful, and he would have the joy--the sight of her face--which
+he had not known for nearly a week, a joy which none other could
+replace. For the moment that Swann was able to form a picture of her
+without revulsion, that he could see once again the friendliness in
+her smile, and that the desire to tear her away from every rival was
+no longer imposed by his jealousy upon his love, that love once again
+became, more than anything, a taste for the sensations which Odette's
+person gave him, for the pleasure which he found in admiring, as one
+might a spectacle, or in questioning, as one might a phenomenon, the
+birth of one of her glances, the formation of one of her smiles, the
+utterance of an intonation of her voice. And this pleasure, different
+from every other, had in the end created in him a need of her, which
+she alone, by her presence or by her letters, could assuage, almost as
+disinterested, almost as artistic, as perverse as another need which
+characterised this new period in Swann's life, when the sereness,
+the depression of the preceding years had been followed by a sort of
+spiritual superabundance, without his knowing to what he owed this
+unlooked-for enrichment of his life, any more than a person in delicate
+health who from a certain moment grows stronger, puts on flesh, and
+seems for a time to be on the road to a complete recovery:--this
+other need, which, too, developed in him independently of the visible,
+material world, was the need to listen to music and to learn to know it.
+
+And so, by the chemical process of his malady, after he had created
+jealousy out of his love, he began again to generate tenderness, pity
+for Odette. She had become once more the old Odette, charming and kind.
+He was full of remorse for having treated her harshly. He wished her to
+come to him, and, before she came, he wished to have already procured
+for her some pleasure, so as to watch her gratitude taking shape in her
+face and moulding her smile.
+
+So, too, Odette, certain of seeing him come to her in a few days,
+as tender and submissive as before, and plead with her for a
+reconciliation, became inured, was no longer afraid of displeasing him,
+or even of making him angry, and refused him, whenever it suited her,
+the favours by which he set most store.
+
+Perhaps she did not realise how sincere he had been with her during
+their quarrel, when he had told her that he would not send her any
+money, but would do what he could to hurt her. Perhaps she did not
+realise, either, how sincere he still was, if not with her, at any rate
+with himself, on other occasions when, for the sake of their future
+relations, to shew Odette that he was capable of doing without her, that
+a rupture was still possible between them, he decided to wait some time
+before going to see her again.
+
+Sometimes several days had elapsed, during which she had caused him no
+fresh anxiety; and as, from the next few visits which he would pay her,
+he knew that he was likely to derive not any great pleasure, but, more
+probably, some annoyance which would put an end to the state of calm in
+which he found himself, he wrote to her that he was very busy, and
+would not be able to see her on any of the days that he had suggested.
+Meanwhile, a letter from her, crossing his, asked him to postpone one of
+those very meetings. He asked himself, why; his suspicions, his grief,
+again took hold of him. He could no longer abide, in the new state of
+agitation into which he found himself plunged, by the arrangements which
+he had made in his preceding state of comparative calm; he would run
+to find her, and would insist upon seeing her on each of the following
+days. And even if she had not written first, if she merely acknowledged
+his letter, it was enough to make him unable to rest without seeing
+her. For, upsetting all Swann's calculations, Odette's acceptance had
+entirely changed his attitude. Like everyone who possesses something
+precious, so as to know what would happen if he ceased for a moment to
+possess it, he had detached the precious object from his mind, leaving,
+as he thought, everything else in the same state as when it was there.
+But the absence of one part from a whole is not only that, it is not
+simply a partial omission, it is a disturbance of all the other parts, a
+new state which it was impossible to foresee from the old.
+
+But at other times--when Odette was on the point of going away for a
+holiday--it was after some trifling quarrel for which he had chosen the
+pretext, that he decided not to write to her and not to see her until
+her return, giving the appearance (and expecting the reward) of
+a serious rupture, which she would perhaps regard as final, to a
+separation, the greater part of which was inevitable, since she was
+going away, which, in fact, he was merely allowing to start a little
+sooner than it must. At once he could imagine Odette, puzzled, anxious,
+distressed at having received neither visit nor letter from him and this
+picture of her, by calming his jealousy, made it easy for him to break
+himself of the habit of seeing her. At odd moments, no doubt, in the
+furthest recesses of his brain, where his determination had thrust
+it away, and thanks to the length of the interval, the three weeks'
+separation to which he had agreed, it was with pleasure that he would
+consider the idea that he would see Odette again on her return; but it
+was also with so little impatience that he began to ask himself whether
+he would not readily consent to the doubling of the period of so easy an
+abstinence. It had lasted, so far, but three days, a much shorter time
+than he had often, before, passed without seeing Odette, and without
+having, as on this occasion he had, premeditated a separation. And
+yet, there and then, some tiny trace of contrariety in his mind, or
+of weakness in his body,--by inciting him to regard the present as an
+exceptional moment, one not to be governed by the rules, one in which
+prudence itself would allow him to take advantage of the soothing
+effects of a pleasure and to give his will (until the time should come
+when its efforts might serve any purpose) a holiday--suspended the
+action of his will, which ceased to exert its inhibitive control; or,
+without that even, the thought of some information for which he had
+forgotten to ask Odette, such as if she had decided in what colour she
+would have her carriage repainted, or, with regard to some investment,
+whether they were 'ordinary' or 'preference' shares that she wished him
+to buy (for it was all very well to shew her that he could live without
+seeing her, but if, after that, the carriage had to be painted over
+again, if the shares produced no dividend, a fine lot of good he would
+have done),--and suddenly, like a stretched piece of elastic which is
+let go, or the air in a pneumatic machine which is ripped open, the idea
+of seeing her again, from the remote point in time to which it had been
+attached, sprang back into the field of the present and of immediate
+possibilities.
+
+It sprang back thus without meeting any further resistance, so
+irresistible, in fact, that Swann had been far less unhappy in watching
+the end gradually approaching, day by day, of the fortnight which he
+must spend apart from Odette, than he was when kept waiting ten minutes
+while his coachman brought round the carriage which was to take him to
+her, minutes which he passed in transports of impatience and joy, in
+which he recaptured a thousand times over, to lavish on it all the
+wealth of his affection, that idea of his meeting with Odette, which, by
+so abrupt a repercussion, at a moment when he supposed it so remote, was
+once more present and on the very surface of his consciousness. The fact
+was that this idea no longer found, as an obstacle in its course, the
+desire to contrive without further delay to resist its coming, which
+had ceased to have any place in Swann's mind since, having proved to
+himself--or so, at least, he believed--that he was so easily capable of
+resisting it, he no longer saw any inconvenience in postponing a plan of
+separation which he was now certain of being able to put into operation
+whenever he would. Furthermore, this idea of seeing her again came back
+to him adorned with a novelty, a seductiveness, armed with a virulence,
+all of which long habit had enfeebled, but which had acquired new vigour
+during this privation, not of three days but of a fortnight (for a
+period of abstinence may be calculated, by anticipation, as having
+lasted already until the final date assigned to it), and had converted
+what had been, until then, a pleasure in store, which could easily be
+sacrificed, into an unlooked-for happiness which he was powerless to
+resist. Finally, the idea returned to him with its beauty enhanced by
+his own ignorance of what Odette might have thought, might, perhaps,
+have done on finding that he shewed no sign of life, with the result
+that he was going now to meet with the entrancing revelation of an
+Odette almost unknown.
+
+But she, just as she had supposed that his refusal to send her money was
+only a feint, saw nothing but a pretext in the question which he came,
+now, to ask her, about the repainting of her carriage, or the purchase
+of stock. For she could not reconstruct the several phases of these
+crises through which he passed, and in the general idea which she formed
+of them she made no attempt to understand their mechanism, looking only
+to what she knew beforehand, their necessary, never-failing and always
+identical termination. An imperfect idea (though possibly all the more
+profound in consequence), if one were to judge it from the point of
+view of Swann, who would doubtless have considered that Odette failed
+to understand him, just as a morphinomaniac or a consumptive, each
+persuaded that he has been thrown back, one by some outside event,
+at the moment when he was just going to shake himself free from his
+inveterate habit, the other by an accidental indisposition at the
+moment when he was just going to be finally cured, feels himself to be
+misunderstood by the doctor who does not attach the same importance
+to these pretended contingencies, mere disguises, according to him,
+assumed, so as to be perceptible by his patients, by the vice of one
+and the morbid state of the other, which in reality have never ceased
+to weigh heavily and incurably upon them while they were nursing their
+dreams of normality and health. And, as a matter of fact, Swann's
+love had reached that stage at which the physician and (in the case of
+certain affections) the boldest of surgeons ask themselves whether
+to deprive a patient of his vice or to rid him of his malady is still
+reasonable, or indeed possible.
+
+Certainly, of the extent of this love Swann had no direct knowledge.
+When he sought to measure it, it happened sometimes that he found it
+diminished, shrunken almost to nothing; for instance, the very moderate
+liking, amounting almost to dislike, which, in the days before he was
+in love with Odette, he had felt for her expressive features, her faded
+complexion, returned on certain days. "Really, I am making distinct
+headway," he would tell himself on the morrow, "when I come to think it
+over carefully, I find out that I got hardly any pleasure, last night,
+out of being in bed with her; it's an odd thing, but I actually thought
+her ugly." And certainly he was sincere, but his love extended a long
+way beyond the province of physical desire. Odette's person, indeed,
+no longer held any great place in it. When his eyes fell upon the
+photograph of Odette on his table, or when she came to see him, he
+had difficulty in identifying her face, either in the flesh or on the
+pasteboard, with the painful and continuous anxiety which dwelt in his
+mind. He would say to himself, almost with astonishment, "It is she!" as
+when suddenly some one shews us in a detached, externalised form one
+of our own maladies, and we find in it no resemblance to what we are
+suffering. "She?"--he tried to ask himself what that meant; for it
+is something like love, like death (rather than like those vague
+conceptions of maladies), a thing which one repeatedly calls in
+question, in order to make oneself probe further into it, in the fear
+that the question will find no answer, that the substance will escape
+our grasp--the mystery of personality. And this malady, which was
+Swann's love, had so far multiplied, was so closely interwoven with all
+his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his
+sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so
+entirely one with him that it would have been impossible to wrest it
+away without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his case
+was past operation.
+
+By this love Swann had been so far detached from all other interests
+that when by chance he reappeared in the world of fashion, reminding
+himself that his social relations, like a beautifully wrought setting
+(although she would not have been able to form any very exact estimate
+of its worth), might, still, add a little to his own value in Odette's
+eyes (as indeed they might have done had they not been cheapened by his
+love itself, which for Odette depreciated everything that it touched by
+seeming to denounce such things as less precious than itself), he would
+feel there, simultaneously with his distress at being in places and
+among people that she did not know, the same detached sense of pleasure
+as he would have derived from a novel or a painting in which were
+depicted the amusements of a leisured class; just as, at home, he used
+to enjoy the thought of the smooth efficiency of his household, the
+smartness of his own wardrobe and of his servants' liveries, the
+soundness of his investments, with the same relish as when he read in
+Saint-Simon, who was one of his favourite authors, of the machinery of
+daily life at Versailles, what Mme. de Maintenon ate and drank, or the
+shrewd avarice and great pomp of Lulli. And in the small extent to which
+this detachment was not absolute, the reason for this new pleasure which
+Swann was tasting was that he could emigrate for a moment into those few
+and distant parts of himself which had remained almost foreign to his
+love and to his pain. In this respect the personality, with which my
+great-aunt endowed him, of 'young Swann,' as distinct from the more
+individual personality of Charles Swann, was that in which he now most
+delighted. Once when, because it was the birthday of the Princesse de
+Parme (and because she could often be of use, indirectly, to Odette,
+by letting her have seats for galas and jubilees and all that sort of
+thing), he had decided to send her a basket of fruit, and was not quite
+sure where or how to order it, he had entrusted the task to a cousin of
+his mother who, delighted to be doing a commission for him, had written
+to him, laying stress on the fact that she had not chosen all the fruit
+at the same place, but the grapes from Crapote, whose speciality they
+were, the strawberries from Jauret, the pears from Chevet, who always
+had the best, am soon, "every fruit visited and examined, one by one,
+by myself." And in the sequel, by the cordiality with which the
+Princess thanked him, he had been able to judge of the flavour of the
+strawberries and of the ripeness of the pears. But, most of all, that
+"every fruit visited and examined one by one, by myself" had brought
+balm to his sufferings by carrying his mind off to a region which he
+rarely visited, although it was his by right, as the heir of a rich
+and respectable middle-class family in which had been handed down from
+generation to generation the knowledge of the 'right places' and the art
+of ordering things from shops.
+
+Of a truth, he had too long forgotten that he was 'young Swann' not to
+feel, when he assumed that part again for a moment, a keener pleasure
+than he was capable of feeling at other times--when, indeed, he was
+grown sick of pleasure; and if the friendliness of the middle-class
+people, for whom he had never been anything else than 'young Swann,' was
+less animated than that of the aristocrats (though more flattering, for
+all that, since in the middle-class mind friendship is inseparable from
+respect), no letter from a Royal Personage, offering him some princely
+entertainment, could ever be so attractive to Swann as the letter which
+asked him to be a witness, or merely to be present at a wedding in the
+family of some old friends of his parents; some of whom had 'kept up'
+with him, like my grandfather, who, the year before these events, had
+invited him to my mother's wedding, while others barely knew him by
+sight, but were, they thought, in duty bound to shew civility to the
+son, to the worthy successor of the late M. Swann.
+
+But, by virtue of his intimacy, already time-honoured, with so many of
+them, the people of fashion, in a certain sense, were also a part of his
+house, his service, and his family. He felt, when his mind dwelt upon
+his brilliant connections, the same external support, the same solid
+comfort as when he looked at the fine estate, the fine silver, the
+fine table-linen which had come down to him from his forebears. And the
+thought that, if he were seized by a sudden illness and confined to the
+house, the people whom his valet would instinctively run to find would
+be the Duc de Chartres, the Prince de Reuss, the Duc de Luxembourg
+and the Baron de Charlus, brought him the same consolation as our old
+Françoise derived from the knowledge that she would, one day, be buried
+in her own fine clothes, marked with her name, not darned at all (or so
+exquisitely darned that it merely enhanced one's idea of the skill and
+patience of the seamstress), a shroud from the constant image of which
+in her mind's eye she drew a certain satisfactory sense, if not actually
+of wealth and prosperity, at any rate of self-esteem. But most of
+all,--since in every one of his actions and thoughts which had reference
+to Odette, Swann was constantly subdued and swayed by the unconfessed
+feeling that he was, perhaps not less dear, but at least less welcome
+to her than anyone, even the most wearisome of the Verdurins'
+'faithful,'--when he betook himself to a world in which he was the
+paramount example of taste, a man whom no pains were spared to attract,
+whom people were genuinely sorry not to see, he began once again to
+believe in the existence of a happier life, almost to feel an appetite
+for it, as an invalid may feel who has been in bed for months and on a
+strict diet, when he picks up a newspaper and reads the account of an
+official banquet or the advertisement of a cruise round Sicily.
+
+If he was obliged to make excuses to his fashionable friends for not
+paying them visits, it was precisely for the visits that he did pay her
+that he sought to excuse himself to Odette. He still paid them (asking
+himself at the end of each month whether, seeing that he had perhaps
+exhausted her patience, and had certainly gone rather often to see her,
+it would be enough if he sent her four thousand francs), and for each
+visit he found a pretext, a present that he had to bring her, some
+information which she required, M. de Charlus, whom he had met actually
+going to her house, and who had insisted upon Swann's accompanying him.
+And, failing any excuse, he would beg M. de Charlus to go to her
+at once, and to tell her, as though spontaneously, in the course of
+conversation, that he had just remembered something that he had to say
+to Swann, and would she please send a message to Swann's house asking
+him to come to her then and there; but as a rule Swann waited at home
+in vain, and M. de Charlus informed him, later in the evening, that his
+device had not proved successful. With the result that, if she was now
+frequently away from Paris, even when she was there he scarcely saw her;
+that she who, when she was in love with him, used to say, "I am always
+free" and "What can it matter to me, what other people think?" now,
+whenever he wanted to see her, appealed to the proprieties or pleaded
+some engagement. When he spoke of going to a charity entertainment, or a
+private view, or a first-night at which she was to be present, she would
+expostulate that he wished to advertise their relations in public, that
+he was treating her like a woman off the streets. Things came to such a
+pitch that, in an effort to save himself from being altogether forbidden
+to meet her anywhere, Swann, remembering that she knew and was deeply
+attached to my great-uncle Adolphe, whose friend he himself also
+had been, went one day to see him in his little flat in the Rue
+de Bellechasse, to ask him to use his influence with Odette. As it
+happened, she invariably adopted, when she spoke to Swann about my
+uncle, a poetical tone, saying: "Ah, he! He is not in the least
+like you; it is an exquisite thing, a great, a beautiful thing, his
+friendship for me. He's not the sort of man who would have so little
+consideration for me as to let himself be seen with me everywhere in
+public." This was embarrassing for Swann, who did not know quite to what
+rhetorical pitch he should screw himself up in speaking of Odette to my
+uncle. He began by alluding to her excellence, _a priori_, the axiom
+of her seraphic super-humanity, the revelation of her inexpressible
+virtues, no conception of which could possibly be formed. "I should
+like to speak to you about her," he went on, "you, who know what a woman
+supreme above all women, what an adorable being, what an angel Odette
+is. But you know, also, what life is in Paris. Everyone doesn't see
+Odette in the light in which you and I have been privileged to see her.
+And so there are people who think that I am behaving rather foolishly;
+she won't even allow me to meet her out of doors, at the theatre. Now
+you, in whom she has such enormous confidence, couldn't you say a few
+words for me to her, just to assure her that she exaggerates the harm
+which my bowing to her in the street might do her?"
+
+My uncle advised Swann not to see Odette for some days, after which she
+would love him all the more; he advised Odette to let Swann meet her
+everywhere, and as often as he pleased. A few days later Odette told
+Swann that she had just had a rude awakening; she had discovered that
+my uncle was the same as other men; he had tried to take her by assault.
+She calmed Swann, who, at first, was for rushing out to challenge my
+uncle to a duel, but he refused to shake hands with him when they met
+again. He regretted this rupture all the more because he had hoped, if
+he had met my uncle Adolphe again sometimes and had contrived to talk
+things over with him in strict confidence, to be able to get him to
+throw a light on certain rumours with regard to the life that Odette had
+led, in the old days, at Nice. For my uncle Adolphe used to spend the
+winter there, and Swann thought that it might indeed have been there,
+perhaps, that he had first known Odette. The few words which some one
+had let fall, in his hearing, about a man who, it appeared, had been
+Odette's lover, had left Swann dumbfounded. But the very things which he
+would, before knowing them, have regarded as the most terrible to
+learn and the most impossible to believe, were, once he knew them,
+incorporated for all time in the general mass of his sorrow; he admitted
+them, he could no longer have understood their not existing. Only,
+each one of them in its passage traced an indelible line, altering the
+picture that he had formed of his mistress. At one time indeed he felt
+that he could understand that this moral 'lightness,' of which he would
+never have suspected Odette, was perfectly well known, and that at Baden
+or Nice, when she had gone, in the past, to spend several months in
+one or the other place, she had enjoyed a sort of amorous notoriety.
+He attempted, in order to question them, to get into touch again with
+certain men of that stamp; but these were aware that he knew Odette,
+and, besides, he was afraid of putting the thought of her into their
+heads, of setting them once more upon her track. But he, to whom,
+up till then, nothing could have seemed so tedious as was all that
+pertained to the cosmopolitan life of Baden or of Nice, now that
+he learned that Odette had, perhaps, led a 'gay' life once in those
+pleasure-cities, although he could never find out whether it had been
+solely to satisfy a want of money which, thanks to himself, she no
+longer felt, or from some capricious instinct which might, at any
+moment, revive in her, he would lean, in impotent anguish, blinded and
+dizzy, over the bottomless abyss into which had passed, in which had
+been engulfed those years of his own, early in MacMahon's _Septennat_,
+in which one spent the winter on the Promenade des Anglais, the summer
+beneath the limes of Baden, and would find in those years a sad but
+splendid profundity, such as a poet might have lent to them; and he
+would have devoted to the reconstruction of all the insignificant
+details that made up the daily round on the Côte d'Azur in those days,
+if it could have helped him to understand something that still baffled
+him in the smile or in the eyes of Odette, more enthusiasm than does
+the aesthete who ransacks the extant documents of fifteenth-century
+Florence, so as to try to penetrate further into the soul of the
+Primavera, the fair Vanna or the Venus of Botticelli. He would sit,
+often, without saying a word to her, only gazing at her and dreaming;
+and she would comment: "You do look sad!" It was not very long since,
+from the idea that she was an excellent creature, comparable to the best
+women that he had known, he had passed to that of her being 'kept'; and
+yet already, by an inverse process, he had returned from the Odette de
+Crécy, perhaps too well known to the holiday-makers, to the 'ladies'
+men' of Nice and Baden, to this face, the expression on which was so
+often gentle, to this nature so eminently human. He would ask himself:
+"What does it mean, after all, to say that everyone at Nice knows who
+Odette de Crécy is? Reputations of that sort, even when they're true,
+are always based upon other people's ideas"; he would reflect that this
+legend--even if it were authentic--was something external to Odette,
+was not inherent in her like a mischievous and ineradicable personality;
+that the creature who might have been led astray was a woman with frank
+eyes, a heart full of pity for the sufferings of others, a docile body
+which he had pressed tightly in his arms and explored with his fingers,
+a woman of whom he might one day come into absolute possession if he
+succeeded in making himself indispensable to her. There she was,
+often tired, her face left blank for the nonce by that eager, feverish
+preoccupation with the unknown things which made Swann suffer; she would
+push back her hair with both hands; her forehead, her whole face would
+seem to grow larger; then, suddenly, some ordinary human thought, some
+worthy sentiment such as is to be found in all creatures when, in a
+moment of rest or meditation, they are free to express themselves, would
+flash out from her eyes like a ray of gold. And immediately the whole of
+her face would light up like a grey landscape, swathed in clouds which,
+suddenly, are swept away and the dull scene transfigured, at the moment
+of the sun's setting. The life which occupied Odette at such times, even
+the future which she seemed to be dreamily regarding, Swann could have
+shared with her. No evil disturbance seemed to have left any effect on
+them. Rare as they became, those moments did not occur in vain. By the
+process of memory, Swann joined the fragments together, abolished the
+intervals between them, cast, as in molten gold, the image of an Odette
+compact of kindness and tranquillity, for whom he was to make, later on
+(as we shall see in the second part of this story) sacrifices which the
+other Odette would never have won from him. But how rare those moments
+were, and how seldom he now saw her! Even in regard to their evening
+meetings, she would never tell him until the last minute whether she
+would be able to see him, for, reckoning on his being always free, she
+wished first to be certain that no one else would offer to come to her.
+She would plead that she was obliged to wait for an answer which was of
+the very greatest importance, and if, even after she had made Swann
+come to her house, any of her friends asked her, half-way through the
+evening, to join them at some theatre, or at supper afterwards, she
+would jump for joy and dress herself with all speed. As her toilet
+progressed, every movement that she made brought Swann nearer to the
+moment when he would have to part from her, when she would fly off with
+irresistible force; and when at length she was ready, and, plunging into
+her mirror a last glance strained and brightened by her anxiety to look
+well, smeared a little salve on her lips, fixed a stray loci of hair
+over her brow, and called for her cloak of sky-blue silk with golden
+tassels, Swann would be looking so wretched that she would be unable to
+restrain a gesture of impatience as she flung at him: "So that is how
+you thank me for keeping you here till the last minute! And I thought
+I was being so nice to you. Well, I shall know better another time!"
+Sometimes, at the risk of annoying her, he made up his mind that he
+would find out where she had gone, and even dreamed of a defensive
+alliance with Forcheville, who might perhaps have been able to tell him.
+But anyhow, when he knew with whom she was spending the evening, it
+was very seldom that he could not discover, among all his innumerable
+acquaintance, some one who knew--if only indirectly--the man with
+whom she had gone out, and could easily obtain this or that piece of
+information about him. And while he was writing to one of his friends,
+asking him to try to get a little light thrown upon some point or other,
+he would feel a sense of relief on ceasing to vex himself with questions
+to which there was no answer and transferring to some one else the
+strain of interrogation. It is true that Swann was little the wiser for
+such information as he did receive. To know a thing does not enable us,
+always, to prevent its happening, but after all the things that we know
+we do hold, if not in our hands, at any rate in our minds, where we can
+dispose of them as we choose, which gives us the illusion of a sort of
+power to control them. He was quite happy whenever M. de Charlus was
+with Odette. He knew that between M. de Charlus and her nothing untoward
+could ever happen, that when M. de Charlus went anywhere with her, it
+was out of friendship for himself, and that he would make no difficulty
+about telling him everything that she had done. Sometimes she had
+declared so emphatically to Swann that it was impossible for him to see
+her on a particular evening, she seemed to be looking forward so keenly
+to some outing, that Swann attached a very real importance to the fact
+that M. de Charlus was free to accompany her. Next day, without daring
+to put many questions to M. de Charlus, he would force him, by appearing
+not quite to understand his first answers, to give him more, after each
+of which he would feel himself increasingly relieved, for he very
+soon learned that Odette had spent her evening in the most innocent of
+dissipations.
+
+"But what do you mean, my dear Mémé, I don't quite understand.... You
+didn't go straight from her house to the Musée Grévin? Surely you went
+somewhere else first? No? That is very odd! You don't know how amusing
+you are, my dear Mémé. But what an odd idea of hers to go on to the Chat
+Noir afterwards; it was her idea, I suppose? No? Yours? That's strange.
+After all, it wasn't a bad idea; she must have known dozens of people
+there? No? She never spoke to a soul? How extraordinary! Then you sat
+there like that, just you and she, all by yourselves? I can picture you,
+sitting there! You are a worthy fellow, my dear Mémé; I'm exceedingly
+fond of you."
+
+Swann was now quite at ease. To him, who had so often happened, when
+talking to friends who knew nothing of his love, friends to whom he
+hardly listened, to hear certain detached sentences (as, for instance,
+"I saw Mme. de Crécy yesterday; she was with a man I didn't know."),
+sentences which dropped into his heart and passed at once into a solid
+state, grew hard as stalagmites, and seared and tore him as they lay
+there irremovable,--how charming, by way of contrast, were the words:
+"She didn't know a soul; she never spoke to a soul." How freely they
+coursed through him, how fluid they were, how vaporous, how easy to
+breathe! And yet, a moment later, he was telling himself that Odette
+must find him very dull if those were the pleasures that she preferred
+to his company. And their very insignificance, though it reassured him,
+pained him as if her enjoyment of them had been an act of treachery.
+
+Even when he could not discover where she had gone, it would have
+sufficed to alleviate the anguish that he then felt, for which Odette's
+presence, the charm of her company, was the sole specific (a specific
+which in the long run served, like many other remedies, to aggravate the
+disease, but at least brought temporary relief to his sufferings), it
+would have sufficed, had Odette only permitted him to remain in her
+house while she was out, to wait there until that hour of her return,
+into whose stillness and peace would flow, to be mingled and lost there,
+all memory of those intervening hours which some sorcery, some cursed
+spell had made him imagine as, somehow, different from the rest. But she
+would not; he must return home; he forced himself, on the way, to form
+various plans, ceased to think of Odette; he even reached the stage,
+while he undressed, of turning over all sorts of happy ideas in his
+mind: it was with a light heart, buoyed with the anticipation of going
+to see some favourite work of art on the morrow, that he jumped into
+bed and turned out the light; but no sooner had he made himself ready
+to sleep, relaxing a self-control of which he was not even conscious,
+so habitual had it become, than an icy shudder convulsed his body and he
+burst into sobs. He did not wish to know why, but dried his eyes, saying
+with a smile: "This is delightful; I'm becoming neurasthenic." After
+which he could not save himself from utter exhaustion at the thought
+that, next day, he must begin afresh his attempt to find out what Odette
+had been doing, must use all his influence to contrive to see her. This
+compulsion to an activity without respite, without variety, without
+result, was so cruel a scourge that one day, noticing a swelling over
+his stomach, he felt an actual joy in the idea that he had, perhaps, a
+tumour which would prove fatal, that he need not concern himself with
+anything further, that it was his malady which was going to govern his
+life, to make a plaything of him, until the not-distant end. If indeed,
+at this period, it often happened that, though without admitting it even
+to himself, he longed for death, it was in order to escape not so
+much from the keenness of his sufferings as from the monotony of his
+struggle.
+
+And yet he would have wished to live until the time came when he no
+longer loved her, when she would have no reason for lying to him, when
+at length he might learn from her whether, on the day when he had gone
+to see her in the afternoon, she had or had not been in the arms of
+Forcheville. Often for several days on end the suspicion that she was
+in love with some one else would distract his mind from the question
+of Forcheville, making it almost immaterial to him, like those new
+developments of a continuous state of ill-health which seem for a little
+time to have delivered us from their predecessors. There were even
+days when he was not tormented by any suspicion. He fancied that he was
+cured. But next morning, when he awoke, he felt in the same place
+the same pain, a sensation which, the day before, he had, as it were,
+diluted in the torrent of different impressions. But it had not stirred
+from its place. Indeed, it was the sharpness of this pain that had
+awakened him.
+
+Since Odette never gave him any information as to those vastly important
+matters which took up so much of her time every day (albeit he had lived
+long enough in the world to know that such matters are never anything
+else than pleasures) he could not sustain for any length of time the
+effort to imagine them; his brain would become a void; then he would
+pass a finger over his tired eyelids, in the same way as he might have
+wiped his eyeglass, and would cease altogether to think. There
+emerged, however, from this unexplored tract, certain occupations which
+reappeared from time to time, vaguely connected by Odette with some
+obligation towards distant relatives or old friends who, inasmuch as
+they were the only people whom she was in the habit of mentioning
+as preventing her from seeing him, seemed to Swann to compose the
+necessary, unalterable setting of her life. Because of the tone in which
+she referred, from time to time, to "the day when I go with my friend
+to the Hippodrome," if, when he felt unwell and had thought, "Perhaps
+Odette would be kind and come to see me," he remembered, suddenly, that
+it was one of those very days, he would correct himself with an "Oh,
+no! It's not worth while asking her to come; I should have thought of it
+before, this is the day when she goes with her friend to the Hippodrome.
+We must confine ourselves to what is possible; no use wasting our time
+in proposing things that can't be accepted and are declined in
+advance." And this duty that was incumbent upon Odette, of going to the
+Hippodrome, to which Swann thus gave way, seemed to him to be not merely
+ineluctable in itself; but the mark of necessity which stamped it seemed
+to make plausible and legitimate everything that was even remotely
+connected with it. If, when Odette, in the street, had acknowledged the
+salute of a passer-by, which had aroused Swann's jealousy, she replied
+to his questions by associating the stranger with any of the two or
+three paramount duties of which she had often spoken to him; if, for
+instance, she said: "That's a gentleman who was in my friend's box the
+other day; the one I go to the Hippodrome with," that explanation would
+set Swann's suspicions at rest; it was, after all, inevitable that
+this friend should have other guests than Odette in her box at the
+Hippodrome, but he had never sought to form or succeeded in forming any
+coherent impression of them. Oh! how he would have loved to know her,
+that friend who went to the Hippodrome, how he would have loved her to
+invite him there with Odette. How readily he would have sacrificed
+all his acquaintance for no matter what person who was in the habit of
+seeing Odette, were she but a manicurist or a girl out of a shop. He
+would have taken more trouble, incurred more expense for them than for
+queens. Would they not have supplied him, out of what was contained in
+their knowledge of the life of Odette, with the one potent anodyne for
+his pain? With what joy would he have hastened to spend his days with
+one or other of those humble folk with whom Odette kept up friendly
+relations, either with some ulterior motive or from genuine simplicity
+of nature. How willingly would he have fixed his abode for ever in the
+attics of some sordid but enviable house, where Odette went but never
+took him, and where, if he had lived with the little retired dressmaker,
+whose lover he would readily have pretended to be, he would have been
+visited by Odette almost daily. In those regions, that were almost
+slums, what a modest existence, abject, if you please, but delightful,
+nourished by tranquillity and happiness, he would have consented to lead
+indefinitely.
+
+It sometimes happened, again, that, when, after meeting Swann, she saw
+some man approaching whom he did not know, he could distinguish upon
+Odette's face that look of sorrow which she had worn on the day when he
+had come to her while Forcheville was there. But this was rare; for, on
+the days when, in spite of all that she had to do, and of her dread
+of what people would think, she did actually manage to see Swann, the
+predominant quality in her attitude, now, was self-assurance; a striking
+contrast, perhaps an unconscious revenge for, perhaps a natural reaction
+from the timorous emotion which, in the early days of their friendship,
+she had felt in his presence, and even in his absence, when she began a
+letter to him with the words: "My dear, my hand trembles so that I can
+scarcely write." (So, at least, she pretended, and a little of that
+emotion must have been sincere, or she would not have been anxious to
+enlarge and emphasise it.) So Swann had been pleasing to her then. Our
+hands do not tremble except for ourselves, or for those whom we love.
+When they have ceased to control our happiness how peaceful, how easy,
+how bold do we become in their presence! In speaking to him, in writing
+to him now, she no longer employed those words by which she had
+sought to give herself the illusion that he belonged to her, creating
+opportunities for saying "my" and "mine" when she referred to him: "You
+are all that I have in the world; it is the perfume of our friendship, I
+shall keep it," nor spoke to him of the future, of death itself, as of
+a single adventure which they would have to share. In those early days,
+whatever he might say to her, she would answer admiringly: "You know,
+you will never be like other people!"--she would gaze at his long,
+slightly bald head, of which people who know only of his successes
+used to think: "He's not regularly good-looking, if you like, but he is
+smart; that tuft, that eyeglass, that smile!" and, with more curiosity
+perhaps to know him as he really was than desire to become his mistress,
+she would sigh:
+
+"I do wish I could find out what there is in that head of yours!"
+
+But, now, whatever he might say, she would answer, in a tone sometimes
+of irritation, sometimes indulgent: "Ah! so you never will be like other
+people!"
+
+She would gaze at his head, which was hardly aged at all by his recent
+anxieties (though people now thought of it, by the same mental process
+which enables one to discover the meaning of a piece of symphonic music
+of which one has read the programme, or the 'likenesses' in a child
+whose family one has known: "He's not positively ugly, if you like,
+but he is really rather absurd; that eyeglass, that tuft, that smile!"
+realising in their imagination, fed by suggestion, the invisible
+boundary which divides, at a few months' interval, the head of an ardent
+lover from a cuckold's), and would say:
+
+"Oh, I do wish I could change you; put some sense into that head of
+yours."
+
+Always ready to believe in the truth of what he hoped, if it was only
+Odette's way of behaving to him that left room for doubt, he would fling
+himself greedily upon her words: "You can if you like," he would tell
+her.
+
+And he tried to explain to her that to comfort him, to control him, to
+make him work would be a noble task, to which numbers of other women
+asked for nothing better than to be allowed to devote themselves, though
+it is only fair to add that in those other women's hands the noble
+task would have seemed to Swann nothing more than an indiscreet and
+intolerable usurpation of his freedom of action. "If she didn't love me,
+just a little," he told himself, "she would not wish to have me altered.
+To alter me, she will have to see me more often." And so he was able to
+trace, in these faults which she found in him, a proof at least of
+her interest, perhaps even of her love; and, in fact, she gave him so
+little, now, of the last, that he was obliged to regard as proofs of
+her interest in him the various things which, every now and then, she
+forbade him to do. One day she announced that she did not care for his
+coachman, who, she thought, was perhaps setting Swann against her, and,
+anyhow, did not shew that promptness and deference to Swann's orders
+which she would have liked to see. She felt that he wanted to hear her
+say: "Don't have him again when you come to me," just as he might have
+wanted her to kiss him. So, being in a good temper, she said it; and he
+was deeply moved. That evening, when talking to M. de Charlus, with whom
+he had the satisfaction of being able to speak of her openly (for the
+most trivial remarks that he uttered now, even to people who had never
+heard of her, had always some sort of reference to Odette), he said to
+him:
+
+"I believe, all the same, that she loves me; she is so nice to me now,
+and she certainly takes an interest in what I do."
+
+And if, when he was starting off for her house, getting into his
+carriage with a friend whom he was to drop somewhere on the way,
+his friend said: "Hullo! that isn't Loredan on the box?" with what
+melancholy joy would Swann answer him:
+
+"Oh! Good heavens, no! I can tell you, I daren't take Loredan when I
+go to the Rue La Pérouse; Odette doesn't like me to have Loredan, she
+thinks he doesn't suit me. What on earth is one to do? Women, you know,
+women. My dear fellow, she would be furious. Oh, lord, yes; I've only to
+take Rémi there; I should never hear the last of it!"
+
+These new manners, indifferent, listless, irritable, which Odette now
+adopted with Swann, undoubtedly made him suffer; but he did not realise
+how much he suffered; since it had been with a regular progression, day
+after day, that Odette had chilled towards him, it was only by directly
+contrasting what she was to-day with what she had been at first that he
+could have measured the extent of the change that had taken place. Now
+this change was his deep, his secret wound, which pained him day and
+night, and whenever he felt that his thoughts were straying too near it,
+he would quickly turn them into another channel for fear of being made
+to suffer too keenly. He might say to himself in a vague way: "There
+was a time when Odette loved me more," but he never formed any definite
+picture of that time. Just as he had in his study a cupboard at which he
+contrived never to look, which he turned aside to avoid passing whenever
+he entered or left the room, because in one of its drawers he had locked
+away the chrysanthemum which she had given him on one of those first
+evenings when he had taken her home in his carriage, and the letters in
+which she said: "Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never
+have let you have that back," and "At whatever hour of the day or night
+you may need me, just send me a word, and dispose of me as you please,"
+so there was a place in his heart to which he would never allow his
+thoughts to trespass too near, forcing them, if need be, to evade it by
+a long course of reasoning so that they should not have to pass within
+reach of it; the place in which lingered his memories of happy days.
+
+But his so meticulous prudence was defeated one evening when he had gone
+out to a party.
+
+It was at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte's, on the last, for that season,
+of the evenings on which she invited people to listen to the musicians
+who would serve, later on, for her charity concerts. Swann, who had
+intended to go to each of the previous evenings in turn, but had never
+been able to make up his mind, received, while he was dressing for this
+party, a visit from the Baron de Charlus, who came with an offer to
+go with him to the Marquise's, if his company could be of any use in
+helping Swann not to feel quite so bored when he got there, to be a
+little less unhappy. But Swann had thanked him with:
+
+"You can't conceive how glad I should be of your company. But the
+greatest pleasure that you can give me will be if you will go instead
+to see Odette. You know what a splendid influence you have over her. I
+don't suppose she'll be going anywhere this evening, unless she goes to
+see her old dressmaker, and I'm sure she would be delighted if you went
+with her there. In any case, you'll find her at home before then. Try
+to keep her amused, and also to give her a little sound advice. If you
+could arrange something for to-morrow which would please her, something
+that we could all three do together. Try to put out a feeler, too, for
+the summer; see if there's anything she wants to do, a cruise that we
+might all three take; anything you can think of. I don't count upon
+seeing her to-night, myself; still if she would like me to come, or
+if you find a loophole, you've only to send me a line at Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte's up till midnight; after that I shall be here. Ever so
+many thanks for all you are doing for me--you know what I feel about
+you!"
+
+His friend promised to go and do as Swann wished as soon as he had
+deposited him at the door of the Saint-Euverte house, where he arrived
+soothed by the thought that M. de Charlus would be spending the evening
+in the Rue La Pérouse, but in a state of melancholy indifference to
+everything that did not involve Odette, and in particular to the details
+of fashionable life, a state which invested them with the charm that is
+to be found in anything which, being no longer an object of our desire,
+appears to us in its own guise. On alighting from his carriage, in the
+foreground of that fictitious summary of their domestic existence which
+hostesses are pleased to offer to their guests on ceremonial occasions,
+and in which they shew a great regard for accuracy of costume and
+setting, Swann was amused to discover the heirs and successors of
+Balzac's 'tigers'--now 'grooms'--. who normally followed their mistress
+when she walked abroad, but now, hatted and booted, were posted out
+of doors, in front of the house on the gravelled drive, or outside the
+stables, as gardeners might be drawn up for inspection at the ends of
+their several flower-beds. The peculiar tendency which he had always
+had to look for analogies between living people and the portraits
+in galleries reasserted itself here, but in a more positive and more
+general form; it was society as a whole, now that he was detached
+from it, which presented itself to him in a series of pictures. In the
+cloak-room, into which, in the old days, when he was still a man of
+fashion, he would have gone in his overcoat, to emerge from it in
+evening dress, but without any impression of what had occurred there,
+his mind having been, during the minute or two that he had spent in
+it, either still at the party which he had just left, or already at the
+party into which he was just about to be ushered, he now noticed, for
+the first time, roused by the unexpected arrival of so belated a guest,
+the scattered pack of splendid effortless animals, the enormous footmen
+who were drowsing here and there upon benches and chests, until,
+pointing their noble greyhound profiles, they towered upon their feet
+and gathered in a circle round about him.
+
+One of them, of a particularly ferocious aspect, and not unlike the
+headsman in certain Renaissance pictures which represent executions,
+tortures, and the like, advanced upon him with an implacable air to take
+his 'things.' But the harshness of his steely glare was compensated by
+the softness of his cotton gloves, so effectively that, as he approached
+Swann, he seemed to be exhibiting at once an utter contempt for his
+person and the most tender regard for his hat. He took it with a care to
+which the precision of his movements imparted something that was almost
+over-fastidious, and with a delicacy that was rendered almost touching
+by the evidence of his splendid strength. Then he passed it to one of
+his satellites, a novice and timid, who was expressing the panic that
+overpowered him by casting furious glances in every direction, and
+displayed all the dumb agitation of a wild animal in the first hours of
+its captivity.
+
+A few feet away, a strapping great lad in livery stood musing,
+motionless, statuesque, useless, like that purely decorative warrior
+whom one sees in the most tumultuous of Mantegna's paintings, lost in
+dreams, leaning upon his shield, while all around him are fighting and
+bloodshed and death; detached from the group of his companions who were
+thronging about Swann, he seemed as determined to remain unconcerned in
+the scene, which he followed vaguely with his cruel, greenish eyes, as
+if it had been the Massacre of the Innocents or the Martyrdom of Saint
+James. He seemed precisely to have sprung from that vanished race--if,
+indeed, it ever existed, save in the reredos of San Zeno and the
+frescoes of the Eremitani, where Swann had come in contact with it, and
+where it still dreams--fruit of the impregnation of a classical statue
+by some one of the Master's Paduan models, or of Albert Duerer's Saxons.
+And the locks of his reddish hair, crinkled by nature, but glued to his
+head by brilliantine, were treated broadly as they are in that Greek
+sculpture which the Mantuan painter never ceased to study, and which,
+if in its creator's purpose it represents but man, manages at least to
+extract from man's simple outlines such a variety of richness, borrowed,
+as it were, from the whole of animated nature, that a head of hair,
+by the glossy undulation and beak-like points of its curls, or in the
+overlaying of the florid triple diadem of its brushed tresses, can
+suggest at once a bunch of seaweed, a brood of fledgling doves, a bed of
+hyacinths and a serpent's writhing back. Others again, no less colossal,
+were disposed upon the steps of a monumental staircase which, by their
+decorative presence and marmorean immobility, was made worthy to be
+named, like that god-crowned ascent in the Palace of the Doges, the
+'Staircase of the Giants,' and on which Swann now set foot, saddened by
+the thought that Odette had never climbed it. Ah, with what joy would
+he, on the other hand, have raced up the dark, evil-smelling, breakneck
+flights to the little dressmaker's, in whose attic he would so gladly
+have paid the price of a weekly stage-box at the Opera for the right to
+spend the evening there when Odette came, and other days too, for the
+privilege of talking about her, of living among people whom she was in
+the habit of seeing when he was not there, and who, on that account,
+seemed to keep secret among themselves some part of the life of his
+mistress more real, more inaccessible and more mysterious than anything
+that he knew. Whereas upon that pestilential, enviable staircase to
+the old dressmaker's, since there was no other, no service stair in the
+building, one saw in the evening outside every door an empty, unwashed
+milk-can set out, in readiness for the morning round, upon the door-mat;
+on the despicable, enormous staircase which Swann was at that moment
+climbing, on either side of him, at different levels, before each
+anfractuosity made in its walls by the window of the porter's lodge or
+the entrance to a set of rooms, representing the departments of indoor
+service which they controlled, and doing homage for them to the guests,
+a gate-keeper, a major-domo, a steward (worthy men who spent the rest
+of the week in semi-independence in their own domains, dined there by
+themselves like small shopkeepers, and might to-morrow lapse to the
+plebeian service of some successful doctor or industrial magnate),
+scrupulous in carrying out to the letter all the instructions that had
+been heaped upon them before they were allowed to don the brilliant
+livery which they wore only at long intervals, and in which they did not
+feel altogether at their ease, stood each in the arcade of his doorway,
+their splendid pomp tempered by a democratic good-fellowship, like
+saints in their niches, and a gigantic usher, dressed Swiss Guard
+fashion, like the beadle in a church, struck the pavement with his staff
+as each fresh arrival passed him. Coming to the top of the staircase, up
+which he had been followed by a servant with a pallid countenance and
+a small pigtail clubbed at the back of his head, like one of Goya's
+sacristans or a tabellion in an old play, Swann passed by an office in
+which the lackeys, seated like notaries before their massive registers,
+rose solemnly to their feet and inscribed his name. He next crossed a
+little hall which--just as certain rooms are arranged by their owners
+to serve as the setting for a single work of art (from which they
+take their name), and, in their studied bareness, contain nothing else
+besides--displayed to him as he entered it, like some priceless effigy
+by Benvenuto Cellini of an armed watchman, a young footman, his body
+slightly bent forward, rearing above his crimson gorget an even more
+crimson face, from which seemed to burst forth torrents of fire,
+timidity and zeal, who, as he pierced the Aubusson tapestries that
+screened the door of the room in which the music was being given with
+his impetuous, vigilant, desperate gaze, appeared, with a soldierly
+impassibility or a supernatural faith--an allegory of alarums,
+incarnation of alertness, commemoration of a riot--to be looking out,
+angel or sentinel, from the tower of dungeon or cathedral, for the
+approach of the enemy or for the hour of Judgment. Swann had now only to
+enter the concert-room, the doors of which were thrown open to him by an
+usher loaded with chains, who bowed low before him as though tendering
+to him the keys of a conquered city. But he thought of the house
+in which at that very moment he might have been, if Odette had but
+permitted, and the remembered glimpse of an empty milk-can upon a
+door-mat wrung his heart.
+
+He speedily recovered his sense of the general ugliness of the human
+male when, on the other side of the tapestry curtain, the spectacle of
+the servants gave place to that of the guests. But even this ugliness of
+faces, which of course were mostly familiar to him, seemed something new
+and uncanny, now that their features,--instead of being to him symbols
+of practical utility in the identification of this or that man, who
+until then had represented merely so many pleasures to be sought after,
+boredoms to be avoided, or courtesies to be acknowledged--were at rest,
+measurable by aesthetic co-ordinates alone, in the autonomy of their
+curves and angles. And in these men, in the thick of whom Swann now
+found himself packed, there was nothing (even to the monocle which many
+of them wore, and which, previously, would, at the most, have enabled
+Swann to say that so-and-so wore a monocle) which, no longer restricted
+to the general connotation of a habit, the same in all of them, did not
+now strike him with a sense of individuality in each. Perhaps because
+he did not regard General de Froberville and the Marquis de Bréaute, who
+were talking together just inside the door, as anything more than two
+figures in a picture, whereas they were the old and useful friends who
+had put him up for the Jockey Club and had supported him in duels, the
+General's monocle, stuck like a shell-splinter in his common, scarred,
+victorious, overbearing face, in the middle of a forehead which it
+left half-blinded, like the single-eyed flashing front of the Cyclops,
+appeared to Swann as a monstrous wound which it might have been glorious
+to receive but which it was certainly not decent to expose, while
+that which M. de Bréaute wore, as a festive badge, with his pearl-grey
+gloves, his crush hat and white tie, substituting it for the familiar
+pair of glasses (as Swann himself did) when he went out to places, bore,
+glued to its other side, like a specimen prepared on a slide for the
+microscope, an infinitesimal gaze that swarmed with friendly feeling and
+never ceased to twinkle at the loftiness of ceilings, the delightfulness
+of parties, the interestingness of programmes and the excellence of
+refreshments.
+
+"Hallo! you here! why, it's ages since I've seen you," the General
+greeted Swann and, noticing the look of strain on his face and
+concluding that it was perhaps a serious illness that had kept him away,
+went on, "You're looking well, old man!" while M. de Bréauté turned
+with, "My dear fellow, what on earth are you doing here?" to a 'society
+novelist' who had just fitted into the angle of eyebrow and cheek his
+own monocle, the sole instrument that he used in his psychological
+investigations and remorseless analyses of character, and who now
+replied, with an air of mystery and importance, rolling the 'r':--"I am
+observing!"
+
+The Marquis de Forestelle's monocle was minute and rimless, and, by
+enforcing an incessant and painful contraction of the eye over which it
+was incrusted like a superfluous cartilage, the presence of which there
+was inexplicable and its substance unimaginable, it gave to his face a
+melancholy refinement, and led women to suppose him capable of suffering
+terribly when in love. But that of M. de Saint-Candé, girdled, like
+Saturn, with an enormous ring, was the centre of gravity of a face which
+composed itself afresh every moment in relation to the glass, while
+his thrusting red nose and swollen sarcastic lips endeavoured by their
+grimaces to rise to the level of the steady flame of wit that sparkled
+in the polished disk, and saw itself preferred to the most ravishing
+eyes in the world by the smart, depraved young women whom it set
+dreaming of artificial charms and a refinement of sensual bliss; and
+then, behind him, M. de Palancy, who with his huge carp's head and
+goggling eyes moved slowly up and down the stream of festive gatherings,
+unlocking his great mandibles at every moment as though in search of
+his orientation, had the air of carrying about upon his person only an
+accidental and perhaps purely symbolical fragment of the glass wall of
+his aquarium, a part intended to suggest the whole which recalled to
+Swann, a fervent admirer of Giotto's Vices and Virtues at Padua, that
+Injustice by whose side a leafy bough evokes the idea of the forests
+that enshroud his secret lair.
+
+Swann had gone forward into the room, under pressure from Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte and in order to listen to an aria from _Orfeo_ which was
+being rendered on the flute, and had taken up a position in a corner
+from which, unfortunately, his horizon was bounded by two ladies of
+'uncertain' age, seated side by side, the Marquise de Cambremer and the
+Vicomtesse de Franquetot, who, because they were cousins, used to spend
+their time at parties in wandering through the rooms, each clutching her
+bag and followed by her daughter, hunting for one another like people at
+a railway station, and could never be at rest until they had reserved,
+by marking them with their fans or handkerchiefs, two adjacent chairs;
+Mme. de Cambremer, since she knew scarcely anyone, being all the more
+glad of a companion, while Mme. de Franquetot, who, on the contrary,
+was extremely popular, thought it effective and original to shew all
+her fine friends that she preferred to their company that of an obscure
+country cousin with whom she had childish memories in common. Filled
+with ironical melancholy, Swann watched them as they listened to the
+pianoforte intermezzo (Liszt's 'Saint Francis preaching to the birds')
+which came after the flute, and followed the virtuoso in his dizzy
+flight; Mme. de Franquetot anxiously, her eyes starting from her head,
+as though the keys over which his fingers skipped with such agility were
+a series of trapezes, from any one of which he might come crashing,
+a hundred feet, to the ground, stealing now and then a glance of
+astonishment and unbelief at her companion, as who should say: "It isn't
+possible, I would never have believed that a human being could do all
+that!"; Mme. de Cambremer, as a woman who had received a sound musical
+education, beating time with her head--transformed for the nonce into
+the pendulum of a metronome, the sweep and rapidity of whose movements
+from one shoulder to the other (performed with that look of wild
+abandonment in her eye which a sufferer shews who is no longer able to
+analyse his pain, nor anxious to master it, and says merely "I can't
+help it") so increased that at every moment her diamond earrings caught
+in the trimming of her bodice, and she was obliged to put straight the
+bunch of black grapes which she had in her hair, though without any
+interruption of her constantly accelerated motion. On the other side
+(and a little way in front) of Mme. de Franquetot, was the Marquise de
+Gallardon, absorbed in her favourite meditation, namely upon her own
+kinship with the Guermantes family, from which she derived both publicly
+and in private a good deal of glory not unmingled with shame, the most
+brilliant ornaments of that house remaining somewhat aloof from her,
+perhaps because she was just a tiresome old woman, or because she was a
+scandalous old woman, or because she came of an inferior branch of the
+family, or very possibly for no reason at all. When she found herself
+seated next to some one whom she did not know, as she was at this moment
+next to Mme. de Franquetot, she suffered acutely from the feeling that
+her own consciousness of her Guermantes connection could not be made
+externally manifest in visible character like those which, in the
+mosaics in Byzantine churches, placed one beneath another, inscribe in a
+vertical column by the side of some Sacred Personage the words which he
+is supposed to be uttering. At this moment she was pondering the fact
+that she had never received an invitation, or even call, from her young
+cousin the Princesse des Laumes, during the six years that had already
+elapsed since the latter's marriage. The thought filled her with
+anger--and with pride; for, by virtue of having told everyone who
+expressed surprise at never seeing her at Mme. des Laumes's, that it
+was because of the risk of meeting the Princesse Mathilde there--a
+degradation which her own family, the truest and bluest of Legitimists,
+would never have forgiven her, she had come gradually to believe that
+this actually was the reason for her not visiting her young cousin. She
+remembered, it is true, that she had several times inquired of Mme. des
+Laumes how they might contrive to meet, but she remembered it only in
+a confused way, and besides did more than neutralise this slightly
+humiliating reminiscence by murmuring, "After all, it isn't for me to
+take the first step; I am at least twenty years older than she is." And
+fortified by these unspoken words she flung her shoulders proudly back
+until they seemed to part company with her bust, while her head, which
+lay almost horizontally upon them, made one think of the 'stuck-on' head
+of a pheasant which is brought to the table regally adorned with its
+feathers. Not that she in the least degree resembled a pheasant, having
+been endowed by nature with a short and squat and masculine figure; but
+successive mortifications had given her a backward tilt, such as one may
+observe in trees which have taken root on the very edge of a precipice
+and are forced to grow backwards to preserve their balance. Since she
+was obliged, in order to console herself for not being quite on a level
+with the rest of the Guermantes, to repeat to herself incessantly that
+it was owing to the uncompromising rigidity of her principles and pride
+that she saw so little of them, the constant iteration had gradually
+remoulded her body, and had given her a sort of 'bearing' which was
+accepted by the plebeian as a sign of breeding, and even kindled, at
+times, a momentary spark in the jaded eyes of old gentlemen in clubs.
+Had anyone subjected Mme. de Gallardon's conversation to that form of
+analysis which by noting the relative frequency of its several terms
+would furnish him with the key to a ciphered message, he would at
+once have remarked that no expression, not even the commonest forms
+of speech, occurred in it nearly so often as "at my cousins the
+Guermantes's," "at my aunt Guermantes's," "Elzéar de Guermantes's
+health," "my cousin Guermantes's box." If anyone spoke to her of a
+distinguished personage, she would reply that, although she was not
+personally acquainted with him, she had seen him hundreds of times at
+her aunt Guermantes's, but she would utter this reply in so icy a tone,
+with such a hollow sound, that it was at once quite clear that if
+she did not know the celebrity personally that was because of all the
+obstinate, ineradicable principles against which her arching shoulders
+were stretched back to rest, as on one of those ladders on which
+gymnastic instructors make us 'extend' so as to develop the expansion of
+our chests.
+
+At this moment the Princesse des Laumes, who had not been expected to
+appear at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's that evening, did in fact arrive. To
+shew that she did not wish any special attention, in a house to which
+she had come by an act of condescension, to be paid to her superior
+rank, she had entered the room with her arms pressed close to her sides,
+even when there was no crowd to be squeezed through, no one attempting
+to get past her; staying purposely at the back, with the air of being
+in her proper place, like a king who stands in the waiting procession at
+the doors of a theatre where the management have not been warned of his
+coming; and strictly limiting her field of vision--so as not to seem to
+be advertising her presence and claiming the consideration that was her
+due--to the study of a pattern in the carpet or of her own skirt, she
+stood there on the spot which had struck her as the most modest (and
+from which, as she very well knew, a cry of rapture from Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte would extricate her as soon as her presence there was
+noticed), next to Mme. de Cambremer, whom, however, she did not know.
+She observed the dumb-show by which her neighbour was expressing her
+passion for music, but she refrained from copying it. This was not to
+say that, for once that she had consented to spend a few minutes in Mme.
+de Saint-Euverte's house, the Princesse des Laumes would not have wished
+(so that the act of politeness to her hostess which she had performed by
+coming might, so to speak, 'count double') to shew herself as friendly
+and obliging as possible. But she had a natural horror of what she
+called 'exaggerating,' and always made a point of letting people see
+that she 'simply must not' indulge in any display of emotion that was
+not in keeping with the tone of the circle in which she moved, although
+such displays never failed to make an impression upon her, by virtue of
+that spirit of imitation, akin to timidity, which is developed in the
+most self-confident persons, by contact with an unfamiliar environment,
+even though it be inferior to their own. She began to ask herself
+whether these gesticulations might not, perhaps, be a necessary
+concomitant of the piece of music that was being played, a piece which,
+it might be, was in a different category from all the music that she had
+ever heard before; and whether to abstain from them was not a sign of
+her own inability to understand the music, and of discourtesy towards
+the lady of the house; with the result that, in order to express by a
+compromise both of her contradictory inclinations in turn, at one moment
+she would merely straighten her shoulder-straps or feel in her golden
+hair for the little balls of coral or of pink enamel, frosted with tiny
+diamonds, which formed its simple but effective ornament, studying, with
+a cold interest, her impassioned neighbour, while at another she would
+beat time for a few bars with her fan, but, so as not to forfeit her
+independence, she would beat a different time from the pianist's. When
+he had finished the Liszt Intermezzo and had begun a Prelude by Chopin,
+Mme. de Cambremer turned to Mme. de Franquetot with a tender smile,
+full of intimate reminiscence, as well as of satisfaction (that of
+a competent judge) with the performance. She had been taught in her
+girlhood to fondle and cherish those long-necked, sinuous creatures,
+the phrases of Chopin, so free, so flexible, so tactile, which begin by
+seeking their ultimate resting-place somewhere beyond and far wide of
+the direction in which they started, the point which one might have
+expected them to reach, phrases which divert themselves in those
+fantastic bypaths only to return more deliberately--with a more
+premeditated reaction, with more precision, as on a crystal bowl which,
+if you strike it, will ring and throb until you cry aloud in anguish--to
+clutch at one's heart.
+
+Brought up in a provincial household with few friends or visitors,
+hardly ever invited to a ball, she had fuddled her mind, in the solitude
+of her old manor-house, over setting the pace, now crawling-slow, now
+passionate, whirling, breathless, for all those imaginary waltzing
+couples, gathering them like flowers, leaving the ball-room for a moment
+to listen, where the wind sighed among the pine-trees, on the shore of
+the lake, and seeing of a sudden advancing towards her, more different
+from anything one had ever dreamed of than earthly lovers are, a slender
+young man, whose voice was resonant and strange and false, in white
+gloves. But nowadays the old-fashioned beauty of this music seemed
+to have become a trifle stale. Having forfeited, some years back, the
+esteem of 'really musical' people, it had lost its distinction and its
+charm, and even those whose taste was frankly bad had ceased to find in
+it more than a moderate pleasure to which they hardly liked to confess.
+Mme. de Cambremer cast a furtive glance behind her. She knew that her
+young daughter-in-law (full of respect for her new and noble family,
+except in such matters as related to the intellect, upon which, having
+'got as far' as Harmony and the Greek alphabet, she was specially
+enlightened) despised Chopin, and fell quite ill when she heard him
+played. But finding herself free from the scrutiny of this Wagnerian,
+who was sitting, at some distance, in a group of her own contemporaries,
+Mme. de Cambremer let herself drift upon a stream of exquisite memories
+and sensations. The Princesse des Laumes was touched also. Though
+without any natural gift for music, she had received, some fifteen
+years earlier, the instruction which a music-mistress of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain, a woman of genius who had been, towards the end of
+her life, reduced to penury, had started, at seventy, to give to the
+daughters and granddaughters of her old pupils. This lady was now dead.
+But her method, an echo of her charming touch, came to life now and
+then in the fingers of her pupils, even of those who had been in other
+respects quite mediocre, had given up music, and hardly ever opened a
+piano. And so Mme. des Laumes could let her head sway to and fro, fully
+aware of the cause, with a perfect appreciation of the manner in which
+the pianist was rendering this Prelude, since she knew it by heart. The
+closing notes of the phrase that he had begun sounded already on her
+lips. And she murmured "How charming it is!" with a stress on the
+opening consonants of the adjective, a token of her refinement by which
+she felt her lips so romantically compressed, like the petals of a
+beautiful, budding flower, that she instinctively brought her eyes into
+harmony, illuminating them for a moment with a vague and sentimental
+gaze. Meanwhile Mme. de Gallardon had arrived at the point of saying to
+herself how annoying it was that she had so few opportunities of meeting
+the Princesse des Laumes, for she meant to teach her a lesson by not
+acknowledging her bow. She did not know that her cousin was in the room.
+A movement of Mme. Franquetot's head disclosed the Princess. At once
+Mme. de Gallardon dashed towards her, upsetting all her neighbours;
+although determined to preserve a distant and glacial manner which
+should remind everyone present that she had no desire to remain on
+friendly terms with a person in whose house one might find oneself, any
+day, cheek by jowl with the Princesse Mathilde, and to whom it was not
+her duty to make advances since she was not 'of her generation,'
+she felt bound to modify this air of dignity and reserve by some
+non-committal remark which would justify her overture and would force
+the Princess to engage in conversation; and so, when she reached her
+cousin, Mme. de Gallardon, with a stern countenance and one hand thrust
+out as though she were trying to 'force' a card, began with: "How is
+your husband?" in the same anxious tone that she would have used if the
+Prince had been seriously ill. The Princess, breaking into a laugh which
+was one of her characteristics, and was intended at once to shew the
+rest of an assembly that she was making fun of some one and also to
+enhance her own beauty by concentrating her features around her animated
+lips and sparkling eyes, answered: "Why; he's never been better in his
+life!" And she went on laughing.
+
+Mme. de Gallardon then drew herself up and, chilling her expression
+still further, perhaps because she was still uneasy about the Prince's
+health, said to her cousin:
+
+"Oriane," (at once Mme. des Laumes looked with amused astonishment
+towards an invisible third, whom she seemed to call to witness that she
+had never authorised Mme. de Gallardon to use her Christian name) "I
+should be so pleased if you would look in, just for a minute, to-morrow
+evening, to hear a quintet, with the clarinet, by Mozart. I should like
+to have your opinion of it."
+
+She seemed not so much to be issuing an invitation as to be asking
+favour, and to want the Princess's opinion of the Mozart quintet just
+as though it had been a dish invented by a new cook, whose talent it
+was most important that an epicure should come to judge.
+
+"But I know that quintet quite well. I can tell you now--that I adore
+it."
+
+"You know, my husband isn't at all well; it's his liver. He would like
+so much to see you," Mme. de Gallardon resumed, making it now a corporal
+work of charity for the Princess to appear at her party.
+
+The Princess never liked to tell people that she would not go to their
+houses. Every day she would write to express her regret at having
+been kept away--by the sudden arrival of her husband's mother, by an
+invitation from his brother, by the Opera, by some excursion to the
+country--from some party to which she had never for a moment dreamed of
+going. In this way she gave many people the satisfaction of feeling that
+she was on intimate terms with them, that she would gladly have come to
+their houses, and that she had been prevented from doing so only by some
+princely occurrence which they were flattered to find competing with
+their own humble entertainment. And then, as she belonged to that
+witty 'Guermantes set'--in which there survived something of the
+alert mentality, stripped of all commonplace phrases and conventional
+sentiments, which dated from Mérimée, and found its final expression in
+the plays of Meilhac and Halévy--she adapted its formula so as to suit
+even her social engagements, transposed it into the courtesy which was
+always struggling to be positive and precise, to approximate itself to
+the plain truth. She would never develop at any length to a hostess the
+expression of her anxiety to be present at her party; she found it more
+pleasant to disclose to her all the various little incidents on which it
+would depend whether it was or was not possible for her to come.
+
+"Listen, and I'll explain," she began to Mme. de Gallardon. "To-morrow
+evening I must go to a friend of mine, who has been pestering me to fix
+a day for ages. If she takes us to the theatre afterwards, then I can't
+possibly come to you, much as I should love to; but if we just stay in
+the house, I know there won't be anyone else there, so I can slip away."
+
+"Tell me, have you seen your friend M. Swann?"
+
+"No! my precious Charles! I never knew he was here. Where is he? I must
+catch his eye."
+
+"It's a funny thing that he should come to old Saint-Euverte's," Mme. de
+Gallardon went on. "Oh, I know he's very clever," meaning by that 'very
+cunning,' "but that makes no difference; fancy a Jew here, and she the
+sister and sister-in-law of two Archbishops."
+
+"I am ashamed to confess that I am not in the least shocked," said the
+Princesse des Laumes.
+
+"I know he's a converted Jew, and all that, and his parents and
+grandparents before him. But they do say that the converted ones are
+worse about their religion than the practising ones, that it's all just
+a pretence; is that true, d'you think?"
+
+"I can throw no light at all on the matter."
+
+The pianist, who was 'down' to play two pieces by Chopin, after
+finishing the Prelude had at once attacked a Polonaise. But once Mme.
+de Gallardon had informed her cousin that Swann was in the room, Chopin
+himself might have risen from the grave and played all his works in
+turn without Mme. des Laumes's paying him the slightest attention. She
+belonged to that one of the two divisions of the human race in which the
+untiring curiosity which the other half feels about the people whom it
+does not know is replaced by an unfailing interest in the people whom it
+does. As with many women of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the presence, in
+any room in which she might find herself, of another member of her set,
+even although she had nothing in particular to say to him, would occupy
+her mind to the exclusion of every other consideration. From that
+moment, in the hope that Swann would catch sight of her, the Princess
+could do nothing but (like a tame white mouse when a lump of sugar is
+put down before its nose and then taken away) turn her face, in which
+were crowded a thousand signs of intimate connivance, none of them with
+the least relevance to the sentiment underlying Chopin's music, in the
+direction where Swann was, and, if he moved, divert accordingly the
+course of her magnetic smile.
+
+"Oriane, don't be angry with me," resumed Mme. de Gallardon, who could
+never restrain herself from sacrificing her highest social ambitions,
+and the hope that she might one day emerge into a light that would
+dazzle the world, to the immediate and secret satisfaction of saying
+something disagreeable, "people do say about your M. Swann that he's the
+sort of man one can't have in the house; is that true?"
+
+"Why, you, of all people, ought to know that it's true," replied the
+Princesse des Laumes, "for you must have asked him a hundred times, and
+he's never been to your house once."
+
+And leaving her cousin mortified afresh, she broke out again into a
+laugh which scandalised everyone who was trying to listen to the music,
+but attracted the attention of Mme. de Saint-Euverte, who had stayed,
+out of politeness, near the piano, and caught sight of the Princess now
+for the first time. Mme. de Saint-Euverte was all the more delighted
+to see Mme. des Laumes, as she imagined her to be still at Guermantes,
+looking after her father-in-law, who was ill.
+
+"My dear Princess, you here?"
+
+"Yes, I tucked myself away in a corner, and I've been hearing such
+lovely things."
+
+"What, you've been in the room quite a time?"
+
+"Oh, yes, quite a long time, which seemed very short; it was only long
+because I couldn't see you."
+
+Mme. de Saint-Euverte offered her own chair to the Princess, who
+declined it with:
+
+"Oh, please, no! Why should you? It doesn't matter in the least where
+I sit." And deliberately picking out, so as the better to display the
+simplicity of a really great lady, a low seat without a back: "There
+now, that hassock, that's all I want. It will make me keep my back
+straight. Oh! Good heavens, I'm making a noise again; they'll be telling
+you to have me 'chucked out'."
+
+Meanwhile, the pianist having doubled his speed, the emotion of the
+music-lovers was reaching its climax, a servant was handing refreshments
+about on a salver, and was making the spoons rattle, and, as on every
+other 'party-night', Mme. de Saint-Euverte was making signs to him,
+which he never saw, to leave the room. A recent bride, who had been told
+that a young woman ought never to appear bored, was smiling vigorously,
+trying to catch her hostess's eye so as to flash a token of her
+gratitude for the other's having 'thought of her' in connection with so
+delightful an entertainment. And yet, although she remained more calm
+than Mme. de Franquetot, it was not without some uneasiness that she
+followed the flying fingers; what alarmed her being not the pianist's
+fate but the piano's, on which a lighted candle, jumping at each
+_fortissimo_, threatened, if not to set its shade on fire, at least to
+spill wax upon the ebony. At last she could contain herself no longer,
+and, running up the two steps of the platform on which the piano stood,
+flung herself on the candle to adjust its sconce. But scarcely had her
+hand come within reach of it when, on a final chord, the piece finished,
+and the pianist rose to his feet. Nevertheless the bold initiative shewn
+by this young woman and the moment of blushing confusion between her
+and the pianist which resulted from it, produced an impression that was
+favourable on the whole.
+
+"Did you see what that girl did just now, Princess?" asked General de
+Froberville, who had come up to Mme. des Laumes as her hostess left her
+for a moment. "Odd, wasn't it? Is she one of the performers?"
+
+"No, she's a little Mme. de Cambremer," replied the Princess carelessly,
+and then, with more animation: "I am only repeating what I heard just
+now, myself; I haven't the faintest notion who said it, it was some one
+behind me who said that they were neighbours of Mme. de Saint-Euverte in
+the country, but I don't believe anyone knows them, really. They must be
+'country cousins'! By the way, I don't know whether you're particularly
+'well-up' in the brilliant society which we see before us, because I've
+no idea who all these astonishing people can be. What do you suppose
+they do with themselves when they're not at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's
+parties? She must have ordered them in with the musicians and the chairs
+and the food. 'Universal providers,' you know. You must admit, they're
+rather splendid, General. But can she really have the courage to hire
+the same 'supers' every week? It isn't possible!"
+
+"Oh, but Cambremer is quite a good name; old, too," protested the
+General.
+
+"I see no objection to its being old," the Princess answered dryly, "but
+whatever else it is it's not euphonious," she went on, isolating the
+word euphonious as though between inverted commas, a little affectation
+to which the Guermantes set were addicted.
+
+"You think not, eh! She's a regular little peach, though," said the
+General, whose eyes never strayed from Mme. de Cambremer. "Don't you
+agree with me, Princess?"
+
+"She thrusts herself forward too much; I think, in so young a woman,
+that's not very nice--for I don't suppose she's my generation," replied
+Mme. des Laumes (the last word being common, it appeared, to Gallardon
+and Guermantes). And then, seeing that M. de Froberville was still
+gazing at Mme. de Cambremer, she added, half out of malice towards the
+lady, half wishing to oblige the General: "Not very nice... for her
+husband! I am sorry that I do not know her, since she seems to attract
+you so much; I might have introduced you to her," said the Princess,
+who, if she had known the young woman, would most probably have done
+nothing of the sort. "And now I must say good night, because one of
+my friends is having a birthday party, and I must go and wish her many
+happy returns," she explained, modestly and with truth, reducing the
+fashionable gathering to which she was going to the simple proportions
+of a ceremony which would be boring in the extreme, but at which she was
+obliged to be present, and there would be something touching about her
+appearance. "Besides, I must pick up Basin. While I've been here, he's
+gone to see those friends of his--you know them too, I'm sure,--who are
+called after a bridge--oh, yes, the Iénas."
+
+"It was a battle before it was a bridge, Princess; it was a victory!"
+said the General. "I mean to say, to an old soldier like me," he went
+on, wiping his monocle and replacing it, as though he were laying
+a fresh dressing on the raw wound underneath, while the Princess
+instinctively looked away, "that Empire nobility, well, of course, it's
+not the same thing, but, after all, taking it as it is, it's very fine
+of its kind; they were people who really did fight like heroes."
+
+"But I have the deepest respect for heroes," the Princess assented,
+though with a faint trace of irony. "If I don't go with Basin to see
+this Princesse d'Iéna, it isn't for that, at all; it's simply because
+I don't know them. Basin knows them; he worships them. Oh, no, it's not
+what you think; he's not in love with her. I've nothing to set my face
+against! Besides, what good has it ever done when I have set my face
+against them?" she queried sadly, for the whole world knew that,
+ever since the day upon which the Prince des Laumes had married his
+fascinating cousin, he had been consistently unfaithful to her. "Anyhow,
+it isn't that at all. They're people he has known for ever so long, they
+do him very well, and that suits me down to the ground. But I must tell
+you what he's told me about their house; it's quite enough. Can you
+imagine it, all their furniture is 'Empire'!"
+
+"But, my dear Princess, that's only natural; it belonged to their
+grandparents."
+
+"I don't quite say it didn't, but that doesn't make it any less ugly. I
+quite understand that people can't always have nice things, but at least
+they needn't have things that are merely grotesque. What do you say?
+I can think of nothing more devastating, more utterly smug than that
+hideous style--cabinets covered all over with swans' heads, like
+bath-taps!"
+
+"But I believe, all the same, that they've got some lovely things; why,
+they must have that famous mosaic table on which the Treaty of..."
+
+"Oh, I don't deny, they may have things that are interesting enough
+from the historic point of view. But things like that can't, ever, be
+beautiful ... because they're simply horrible! I've got things like that
+myself, that came to Basin from the Montesquious. Only, they're up in
+the attics at Guermantes, where nobody ever sees them. But, after all,
+that's not the point, I would fly to see them, with Basin; I would even
+go to see them among all their sphinxes and brasses, if I knew them,
+but--I don't know them! D'you know, I was always taught, when I was a
+little girl, that it was not polite to call on people one didn't know."
+She assumed a tone of childish gravity. "And so I am just doing what
+I was taught to do. Can't you see those good people, with a totally
+strange woman bursting into their house? Why, I might get a most hostile
+reception."
+
+And she coquettishly enhanced the charm of the smile which the idea had
+brought to her lips, by giving to her blue eyes, which were fixed on the
+General, a gentle, dreamy expression.
+
+"My dear Princess, you know that they'd be simply wild with joy."
+
+"No, why?" she inquired, with the utmost vivacity, either so as to seem
+unaware that it would be because she was one of the first ladies in
+France, or so as to have the pleasure of hearing the General tell
+her so. "Why? How can you tell? Perhaps they would think it the most
+unpleasant thing that could possibly happen. I know nothing about them,
+but if they're anything like me, I find it quite boring enough to see
+the people I do know; I'm sure if I had to see people I didn't know
+as well, even if they had 'fought like heroes,' I should go stark mad.
+Besides, except when it's an old friend like you, whom one knows quite
+apart from that, I'm not sure that 'heroism' takes one very far in
+society. It's often quite boring enough to have to give a dinner-party,
+but if one had to offer one's arm to Spartacus, to let him take one
+down...! Really, no; it would never be Vercingetorix I should send for,
+to make a fourteenth. I feel sure, I should keep him for really big
+'crushes.' And as I never give any..."
+
+"Ah! Princess, it's easy to see you're not a Guermantes for nothing. You
+have your share of it, all right, the 'wit of the Guermantes'!"
+
+"But people always talk about the wit of the Guermantes; I never could
+make out why. Do you really know any others who have it?" she rallied
+him, with a rippling flow of laughter, her features concentrated, yoked
+to the service of her animation, her eyes sparkling, blazing with
+a radiant sunshine of gaiety which could be kindled only by such
+speeches--even if the Princess had to make them herself--as were in
+praise of her wit or of her beauty. "Look, there's Swann talking to your
+Cambremer woman; over there, beside old Saint-Euverte, don't you see
+him? Ask him to introduce you. But hurry up, he seems to be just going!"
+
+"Did you notice how dreadfully ill he's looking?" asked the General.
+
+"My precious Charles? Ah, he's coming at last; I was beginning to think
+he didn't want to see me!"
+
+Swann was extremely fond of the Princesse des Laumes, and the sight of
+her recalled to him Guermantes, a property close to Combray, and all
+that country which he so dearly loved and had ceased to visit, so as not
+to be separated from Odette. Slipping into the manner, half-artistic,
+half-amorous--with which he could always manage to amuse the Princess--a
+manner which came to him quite naturally whenever he dipped for a moment
+into the old social atmosphere, and wishing also to express in words,
+for his own satisfaction, the longing that he felt for the country:
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, or rather intoned, in such a way as to be audible at
+once to Mme. de Saint-Euverte, to whom he spoke, and to Mme. des Laumes,
+for whom he was speaking, "Behold our charming Princess! See, she has
+come up on purpose from Guermantes to hear Saint Francis preach to the
+birds, and has only just had time, like a dear little tit-mouse, to go
+and pick a few little hips and haws and put them in her hair; there are
+even some drops of dew upon them still, a little of the hoar-frost
+which must be making the Duchess, down there, shiver. It is very pretty
+indeed, my dear Princess."
+
+"What! The Princess came up on purpose from Guermantes? But that's too
+wonderful! I never knew; I'm quite bewildered," Mme. de Saint-Euverte
+protested with quaint simplicity, being but little accustomed to Swann's
+way of speaking. And then, examining the Princess's headdress,
+"Why, you're quite right; it is copied from... what shall I say, not
+chestnuts, no,--oh, it's a delightful idea, but how can the Princess
+have known what was going to be on my programme? The musicians didn't
+tell me, even."
+
+Swann, who was accustomed, when he was with a woman whom he had kept
+up the habit of addressing in terms of gallantry, to pay her delicate
+compliments which most other people would not and need not understand,
+did not condescend to explain to Mme. de Saint-Euverte that he had
+been speaking metaphorically. As for the Princess, she was in fits of
+laughter, both because Swann's wit was highly appreciated by her set,
+and because she could never hear a compliment addressed to herself
+without finding it exquisitely subtle and irresistibly amusing.
+
+"Indeed! I'm delighted, Charles, if my little hips and haws meet with
+your approval. But tell me, why did you bow to that Cambremer person,
+are you also her neighbour in the country?"
+
+Mme. de Saint-Euverte, seeing that the Princess seemed quite happy
+talking to Swann, had drifted away.
+
+"But you are, yourself, Princess!"
+
+"I! Why, they must have 'countries' everywhere, those creatures! Don't I
+wish I had!"
+
+"No, not the Cambremers; her own people. She was a Legrandin, and used
+to come to Combray. I don't know whether you are aware that you are
+Comtesse de Combray, and that the Chapter owes you a due."
+
+"I don't know what the Chapter owes me, but I do know that I'm 'touched'
+for a hundred francs, every year, by the Curé, which is a due that I
+could very well do without. But surely these Cambremers have rather a
+startling name. It ends just in time, but it ends badly!" she said with
+a laugh.
+
+"It begins no better." Swann took the point.
+
+"Yes; that double abbreviation!"
+
+"Some one very angry and very proper who didn't dare to finish the first
+word."
+
+"But since he couldn't stop himself beginning the second, he'd have done
+better to finish the first and be done with it. We are indulging in
+the most refined form of humour, my dear Charles, in the very best of
+taste--but how tiresome it is that I never see you now," she went on in
+a coaxing tone, "I do so love talking to you. Just imagine, I could not
+make that idiot Froberville see that there was anything funny about the
+name Cambremer. Do agree that life is a dreadful business. It's only
+when I see you that I stop feeling bored."
+
+Which was probably not true. But Swann and the Princess had the same way
+of looking at the little things of life--the effect, if not the cause of
+which was a close analogy between their modes of expression and even of
+pronunciation. This similarity was not striking because no two things
+could have been more unlike than their voices. But if one took the
+trouble to imagine Swann's utterances divested of the sonority that
+enwrapped them, of the moustache from under which they emerged, one
+found that they were the same phrases, the same inflexions, that they
+had the 'tone' of the Guermantes set. On important matters, Swann and
+the Princess had not an idea in common. But since Swann had become so
+melancholy, and was always in that trembling condition which precedes
+a flood of tears, he had the same need to speak about his grief that
+a murderer has to tell some one about his crime. And when he heard
+the Princess say that life was a dreadful business, he felt as much
+comforted as if she had spoken to him of Odette.
+
+"Yes, life is a dreadful business! We must meet more often, my dear
+friend. What is so nice about you is that you are not cheerful. We could
+spend a most pleasant evening together."
+
+"I'm sure we could; why not come down to Guermantes? My mother-in-law
+would be wild with joy. It's supposed to be very ugly down there, but
+I must say, I find the neighborhood not at all unattractive; I have a
+horror of 'picturesque spots'."
+
+"I know it well, it's delightful!" replied Swann. "It's almost too
+beautiful, too much alive for me just at present; it's a country to
+be happy in. It's perhaps because I have lived there, but things there
+speak to me so. As soon as a breath of wind gets up, and the cornfields
+begin to stir, I feel that some one is going to appear suddenly, that
+I am going to hear some news; and those little houses by the water's
+edge... I should be quite wretched!"
+
+"Oh! my dearest Charles, do take care; there's that appalling Rampillon
+woman; she's seen me; hide me somewhere, do tell me again, quickly, what
+it was that happened to her; I get so mixed up; she's just married off
+her daughter, or her lover (I never can remember),--perhaps both--to
+each other! Oh, no, I remember now, she's been dropped by her Prince...
+Pretend to be talking, so that the poor old Berenice sha'n't come and
+invite me to dinner. Anyhow, I'm going. Listen, my dearest Charles, now
+that I have seen you, once in a blue moon, won't you let me carry you
+off and take you to the Princesse de Parme's, who would be so pleased
+to see you (you know), and Basin too, for that matter; he's meeting me
+there. If one didn't get news of you, sometimes, from Mémé... Remember,
+I never see you at all now!"
+
+Swann declined. Having told M. de Charlus that, on leaving Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte's, he would go straight home, he did not care to run the
+risk, by going on now to the Princesse de Parme's, of missing a message
+which he had, all the time, been hoping to see brought in to him by one
+of the footmen, during the party, and which he was perhaps going to find
+left with his own porter, at home.
+
+"Poor Swann," said Mme. des Laumes that night to her husband; "he is
+always charming, but he does look so dreadfully unhappy. You will see
+for yourself, for he has promised to dine with us one of these days. I
+do feel that it's really absurd that a man of his intelligence should
+let himself be made to suffer by a creature of that kind, who isn't even
+interesting, for they tell me, she's an absolute idiot!" she concluded
+with the wisdom invariably shewn by people who, not being in love
+themselves, feel that a clever man ought to be unhappy only about such
+persons as are worth his while; which is rather like being astonished
+that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so
+insignificant a creature as the common bacillus.
+
+Swann now wished to go home, but, just as he was making his escape,
+General de Froberville caught him and asked for an introduction to Mme.
+de Cambremer, and he was obliged to go back into the room to look for
+her.
+
+"I say, Swann, I'd rather be married to that little woman than killed by
+savages, what do you say?"
+
+The words 'killed by savages' pierced Swann's aching heart; and at once
+he felt the need of continuing the conversation. "Ah!" he began, "some
+fine lives have been lost in that way... There was, you remember, that
+explorer whose remains Dumont d'Urville brought back, La Pérouse..."
+(and he was at once happy again, as though he had named Odette). "He was
+a fine character, and interests me very much, does La Pérouse," he ended
+sadly.
+
+"Oh, yes, of course, La Pérouse," said the General. "It's quite a
+well-known name. There's a street called that."
+
+"Do you know anyone in the Rue La Pérouse?" asked Swann excitedly.
+
+"Only Mme. de Chanlivault, the sister of that good fellow Chaussepierre.
+She gave a most amusing theatre-party the other evening. That's a house
+that will be really smart some day, you'll see!"
+
+"Oh, so she lives in the Rue La Pérouse. It's attractive; I like that
+street; it's so sombre."
+
+"Indeed it isn't. You can't have been in it for a long time; it's not at
+all sombre now; they're beginning to build all round there."
+
+When Swann did finally introduce M. de Froberville to the young Mme. de
+Cambremer, since it was the first time that she had heard the General's
+name, she hastily outlined upon her lips the smile of joy and surprise
+with which she would have greeted him if she had never, in the whole
+of her life, heard anything else; for, as she did not yet know all the
+friends of her new family, whenever anyone was presented to her, she
+assumed that he must be one of them, and thinking that she would shew
+her tact by appearing to have heard 'such a lot about him' since her
+marriage, she would hold out her hand with an air of hesitation which
+was meant as a proof at once of the inculcated reserve which she had to
+overcome and of the spontaneous friendliness which successfully overcame
+it. And so her parents-in-law, whom she still regarded as the most
+eminent pair in France, declared that she was an angel; all the more
+that they preferred to appear, in marrying her to their son, to have
+yielded to the attraction rather of her natural charm than of her
+considerable fortune.
+
+"It's easy to see that you're a musician heart and soul, Madame," said
+the General, alluding to the incident of the candle.
+
+Meanwhile the concert had begun again, and Swann saw that he could not
+now go before the end of the new number. He suffered greatly from being
+shut up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded
+him all the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love, incapable,
+had they known of it, of taking any interest, or of doing more than
+smile at it as at some childish joke, or deplore it as an act of
+insanity, they made it appear to him in the aspect of a subjective
+state which existed for himself alone, whose reality there was nothing
+external to confirm; he suffered overwhelmingly, to the point at which
+even the sound of the instruments made him want to cry, from having to
+prolong his exile in this place to which Odette would never come, in
+which no one, nothing was aware of her existence, from which she was
+entirely absent.
+
+But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition tore
+him with such anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart. What
+had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes,
+on which it rested as though expecting something, an expectancy which
+it prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes, in the exaltation
+with which it already saw the expected object approaching, and with a
+desperate effort to continue until its arrival, to welcome it before
+itself expired, to keep the way open for a moment longer, with all its
+remaining strength, that the stranger might enter in, as one holds a
+door open that would otherwise automatically close. And before Swann had
+had time to understand what was happening, to think: "It is the little
+phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. I mustn't listen!", all his memories of
+the days when Odette had been in love with him, which he had succeeded,
+up till that evening, in keeping invisible in the depths of his being,
+deceived by this sudden reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they
+supposed, had dawned again, had awakened from their slumber, had taken
+wing and risen to sing maddeningly in his ears, without pity for his
+present desolation, the forgotten strains of happiness.
+
+In place of the abstract expressions "the time when I was happy," "the
+time when I was loved," which he had often used until then, and without
+much suffering, for his intelligence had not embodied in them anything
+of the past save fictitious extracts which preserved none of the
+reality, he now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the
+peculiar, volatile essence of that lost happiness; he could see it all;
+the snowy, curled petals of the chrysanthemum which she had tossed
+after him into his carriage, which he had kept pressed to his lips, the
+address 'Maison Dorée,' embossed on the note-paper on which he had read
+"My hand trembles so as I write to you," the frowning contraction of her
+eyebrows when she said pleadingly: "You won't let it be very long before
+you send for me?"; he could smell the heated iron of the barber whom he
+used to have in to singe his hair while Loredan went to fetch the little
+working girl; could feel the torrents of rain which fell so often that
+spring, the ice-cold homeward drive in his victoria, by moonlight; all
+the network of mental habits, of seasonable impressions, of sensory
+reactions, which had extended over a series of weeks its uniform meshes,
+by which his body now found itself inextricably held. At that time he
+had been satisfying a sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures
+of those people who lived for love alone. He had supposed that he could
+stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also;
+how small a thing the actual charm of Odette was now in comparison with
+that formidable terror which extended it like a cloudy halo all around
+her, that enormous anguish of not knowing at every hour of the day and
+night what she had been doing, of not possessing her wholly, at all
+times and in all places! Alas, he recalled the accents in which she had
+exclaimed: "But I can see you at any time; I am always free!"--she, who
+was never free now; the interest, the curiosity that she had shewn in
+his life, her passionate desire that he should do her the favour--of
+which it was he who, then, had felt suspicious, as of a possibly tedious
+waste of his time and disturbance of his arrangements--of granting her
+access to his study; how she had been obliged to beg that he would let
+her take him to the Verdurins'; and, when he did allow her to come to
+him once a month, how she had first, before he would let himself be
+swayed, had to repeat what a joy it would be to her, that custom of
+their seeing each other daily, for which she had longed at a time when
+to him it had seemed only a tiresome distraction, for which, since that
+time, she had conceived a distaste and had definitely broken herself
+of it, while it had become for him so insatiable, so dolorous a need.
+Little had he suspected how truly he spoke when, on their third meeting,
+as she repeated: "But why don't you let me come to you oftener?" he had
+told her, laughing, and in a vein of gallantry, that it was for fear of
+forming a hopeless passion. Now, alas, it still happened at times that
+she wrote to him from a restaurant or hotel, on paper which bore a
+printed address, but printed in letters of fire that seared his heart.
+"Written from the Hôtel Vouillemont. What on earth can she have gone
+there for? With whom? What happened there?" He remembered the gas-jets
+that were being extinguished along the Boulevard des Italiens when he
+had met her, when all hope was gone among the errant shades upon that
+night which had seemed to him almost supernatural and which now (that
+night of a period when he had not even to ask himself whether he would
+be annoying her by looking for her and by finding her, so certain was he
+that she knew no greater happiness than to see him and to let him take
+her home) belonged indeed to a mysterious world to which one never may
+return again once its doors are closed. And Swann could distinguish,
+standing, motionless, before that scene of happiness in which it lived
+again, a wretched figure which filled him with such pity, because he
+did not at first recognise who it was, that he must lower his head,
+lest anyone should observe that his eyes were filled with tears. It was
+himself.
+
+When he had realised this, his pity ceased; he was jealous, now, of that
+other self whom she had loved, he was jealous of those men of whom he
+had so often said, without much suffering: "Perhaps she's in love with
+them," now that he had exchanged the vague idea of loving, in
+which there is no love, for the petals of the chrysanthemum and the
+'letter-heading' of the Maison d'Or; for they were full of love.
+And then, his anguish becoming too keen, he passed his hand over his
+forehead, let the monocle drop from his eye, and wiped its glass. And
+doubtless, if he had caught sight of himself at that moment, he would
+have added to the collection of the monocles which he had already
+identified, this one which he removed, like an importunate, worrying
+thought, from his head, while from its misty surface, with his
+handkerchief, he sought to obliterate his cares.
+
+There are in the music of the violin--if one does not see the instrument
+itself, and so cannot relate what one hears to its form, which modifies
+the fullness of the sound--accents which are so closely akin to those
+of certain contralto voices, that one has the illusion that a singer has
+taken her place amid the orchestra. One raises one's eyes; one sees only
+the wooden case, magical as a Chinese box; but, at moments, one is
+still tricked by the deceiving appeal of the Siren; at times, too, one
+believes that one is listening to a captive spirit, struggling in the
+darkness of its masterful box, a box quivering with enchantment, like a
+devil immersed in a stoup of holy water; sometimes, again, it is in the
+air, at large, like a pure and supernatural creature that reveals to the
+ear, as it passes, its invisible message.
+
+As though the musicians were not nearly so much playing the little
+phrase as performing the rites on which it insisted before it would
+consent to appear, as proceeding to utter the incantations necessary
+to procure, and to prolong for a few moments, the miracle of its
+apparition, Swann, who was no more able now to see it than if it had
+belonged to a world of ultra-violet light, who experienced something
+like the refreshing sense of a metamorphosis in the momentary blindness
+with which he had been struck as he approached it, Swann felt that it
+was present, like a protective goddess, a confidant of his love, who, so
+as to be able to come to him through the crowd, and to draw him aside to
+speak to him, had disguised herself in this sweeping cloak of sound. And
+as she passed him, light, soothing, as softly murmured as the perfume
+of a flower, telling him what she had to say, every word of which
+he closely scanned, sorry to see them fly away so fast, he made
+involuntarily with his lips the motion of kissing, as it went by him,
+the harmonious, fleeting form.
+
+He felt that he was no longer in exile and alone since she, who
+addressed herself to him, spoke to him in a whisper of Odette. For he
+had no longer, as of old, the impression that Odette and he were not
+known to the little phrase. Had it not often been the witness of their
+joys? True that, as often, it had warned him of their frailty. And
+indeed, whereas, in that distant time, he had divined an element of
+suffering in its smile, in its limpid and disillusioned intonation,
+to-night he found there rather the charm of a resignation that was
+almost gay. Of those sorrows, of which the little phrase had spoken
+to him then, which he had seen it--without his being touched by them
+himself--carry past him, smiling, on its sinuous and rapid course, of
+those sorrows which were now become his own, without his having any hope
+of being, ever, delivered from them, it seemed to say to him, as once
+it had said of his happiness: "What does all that matter; it is all
+nothing." And Swann's thoughts were borne for the first time on a wave
+of pity and tenderness towards that Vinteuil, towards that unknown,
+exalted brother who also must have suffered so greatly; what could his
+life have been? From the depths of what well of sorrow could he have
+drawn that god-like strength, that unlimited power of creation?
+
+When it was the little phrase that spoke to him of the vanity of his
+sufferings, Swann found a sweetness in that very wisdom which, but a
+little while back, had seemed to him intolerable when he thought that
+he could read it on the faces of indifferent strangers, who would regard
+his love as a digression that was without importance. 'Twas because the
+little phrase, unlike them, whatever opinion it might hold on the short
+duration of these states of the soul, saw in them something not, as
+everyone else saw, less serious than the events of everyday life, but,
+on the contrary, so far superior to everyday life as to be alone worthy
+of the trouble of expressing it. Those graces of an intimate sorrow,
+'twas them that the phrase endeavoured to imitate, to create anew; and
+even their essence, for all that it consists in being incommunicable and
+in appearing trivial to everyone save him who has experience of them,
+the little phrase had captured, had rendered visible. So much so that it
+made their value be confessed, their divine sweetness be tasted by
+all those same onlookers--provided only that they were in any sense
+musical--who, the next moment, would ignore, would disown them in real
+life, in every individual love that came into being beneath their eyes.
+Doubtless the form in which it had codified those graces could not be
+analysed into any logical elements. But ever since, more than a year
+before, discovering to him many of the riches of his own soul, the love
+of music had been born, and for a time at least had dwelt in him, Swann
+had regarded musical _motifs_ as actual ideas, of another world, of
+another order, ideas veiled in shadows, unknown, impenetrable by
+the human mind, which none the less were perfectly distinct one from
+another, unequal among themselves in value and in significance. When,
+after that first evening at the Verdurins', he had had the little
+phrase played over to him again, and had sought to disentangle from his
+confused impressions how it was that, like a perfume or a caress,
+it swept over and enveloped him, he had observed that it was to the
+closeness of the intervals between the five notes which composed it and
+to the constant repetition of two of them that was due that impression
+of a frigid, a contracted sweetness; but in reality he knew that he
+was basing this conclusion not upon the phrase itself, but merely upon
+certain equivalents, substituted (for his mind's convenience) for the
+mysterious entity of which he had become aware, before ever he knew the
+Verdurins, at that earlier party, when for the first time he had heard
+the sonata played. He knew that his memory of the piano falsified still
+further the perspective in which he saw the music, that the field
+open to the musician is not a miserable stave of seven notes, but an
+immeasurable keyboard (still, almost all of it, unknown), on which,
+here and there only, separated by the gross darkness of its unexplored
+tracts, some few among the millions of keys, keys of tenderness, of
+passion, of courage, of serenity, which compose it, each one differing
+from all the rest as one universe differs from another, have been
+discovered by certain great artists who do us the service, when they
+awaken in us the emotion corresponding to the theme which they have
+found, of shewing us what richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to
+us, in that great black impenetrable night, discouraging exploration,
+of our soul, which we have been content to regard as valueless and
+waste and void. Vinteuil had been one of those musicians. In his little
+phrase, albeit it presented to the mind's eye a clouded surface, there
+was contained, one felt, a matter so consistent, so explicit, to which
+the phrase gave so new, so original a force, that those who had once
+heard it preserved the memory of it in the treasure-chamber of
+their minds. Swann would repair to it as to a conception of love and
+happiness, of which at once he knew as well in what respects it was
+peculiar as he would know of the _Princesse de Clèves_, or of _René_,
+should either of those titles occur to him. Even when he was not
+thinking of the little phrase, it existed, latent, in his mind, in the
+same way as certain other conceptions without material equivalent, such
+as our notions of light, of sound, of perspective, of bodily desire, the
+rich possessions wherewith our inner temple is diversified and adorned.
+Perhaps we shall lose them, perhaps they will be obliterated, if we
+return to nothing in the dust. But so long as we are alive, we can no
+more bring ourselves to a state in which we shall not have known
+them than we can with regard to any material object, than we can, for
+example, doubt the luminosity of a lamp that has just been lighted, in
+view of the changed aspect of everything in the room, from which has
+vanished even the memory of the darkness. In that way Vinteuil's phrase,
+like some theme, say, in _Tristan_, which represents to us also a
+certain acquisition of sentiment, has espoused our mortal state, had
+endued a vesture of humanity that was affecting enough. Its destiny was
+linked, for the future, with that of the human soul, of which it was one
+of the special, the most distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being
+that is the true state, and all our dream of life is without existence;
+but, if so, we feel that it must be that these phrases of music, these
+conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either.
+We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who
+shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something
+less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain.
+
+So Swann was not mistaken in believing that the phrase of the sonata
+did, really, exist. Human as it was from this point of view, it
+belonged, none the less, to an order of supernatural creatures whom we
+have never seen, but whom, in spite of that, we recognise and acclaim
+with rapture when some explorer of the unseen contrives to coax one
+forth, to bring it down from that divine world to which he has access
+to shine for a brief moment in the firmament of ours. This was what
+Vinteuil had done for the little phrase. Swann felt that the composer
+had been content (with the musical instruments at his disposal) to
+draw aside its veil, to make it visible, following and respecting its
+outlines with a hand so loving, so prudent, so delicate and so sure,
+that the sound altered at every moment, blunting itself to indicate a
+shadow, springing back into life when it must follow the curve of some
+more bold projection. And one proof that Swann was not mistaken when he
+believed in the real existence of this phrase, was that anyone with an
+ear at all delicate for music would at once have detected the imposture
+had Vinteuil, endowed with less power to see and to render its forms,
+sought to dissemble (by adding a line, here and there, of his own
+invention) the dimness of his vision or the feebleness of his hand.
+
+The phrase had disappeared. Swann knew that it would come again at the
+end of the last movement, after a long passage which Mme. Verdurin's
+pianist always 'skipped.' There were in this passage some admirable
+ideas which Swann had not distinguished on first hearing the sonata, and
+which he now perceived, as if they had, in the cloakroom of his memory,
+divested themselves of their uniform disguise of novelty. Swann listened
+to all the scattered themes which entered into the composition of
+the phrase, as its premises enter into the inevitable conclusion of a
+syllogism; he was assisting at the mystery of its birth. "Audacity,"
+he exclaimed to himself, "as inspired, perhaps, as a Lavoisier's or an
+Ampere's, the audacity of a Vinteuil making experiment, discovering
+the secret laws that govern an unknown force, driving across a region
+unexplored towards the one possible goal the invisible team in which he
+has placed his trust and which he never may discern!" How charming
+the dialogue which Swann now heard between piano and violin, at the
+beginning of the last passage. The suppression of human speech, so far
+from letting fancy reign there uncontrolled (as one might have thought),
+had eliminated it altogether. Never was spoken language of such
+inflexible necessity, never had it known questions so pertinent, such
+obvious replies. At first the piano complained alone, like a bird
+deserted by its mate; the violin heard and answered it, as from a
+neighbouring tree. It was as at the first beginning of the world, as
+if there were not yet but these twain upon the earth, or rather in this
+world closed against all the rest, so fashioned by the logic of its
+creator that in it there should never be any but themselves; the world
+of this sonata. Was it a bird, was it the soul, not yet made perfect, of
+the little phrase, was it a fairy, invisibly somewhere lamenting, whose
+plaint the piano heard and tenderly repeated? Its cries were so sudden
+that the violinist must snatch up his bow and race to catch them as they
+came. Marvellous bird! The violinist seemed to wish to charm, to tame,
+to woo, to win it. Already it had passed into his soul, already the
+little phrase which it evoked shook like a medium's the body of the
+violinist, 'possessed' indeed. Swann knew that the phrase was going to
+speak to him once again. And his personality was now so divided that
+the strain of waiting for the imminent moment when he would find himself
+face to face, once more, with the phrase, convulsed him in one of those
+sobs which a fine line of poetry or a piece of alarming news will wring
+from us, not when we are alone, but when we repeat one or the other to
+a friend, in whom we see ourselves reflected, like a third person, whose
+probable emotion softens him. It reappeared, but this time to remain
+poised in the air, and to sport there for a moment only, as though
+immobile, and shortly to expire. And so Swann lost nothing of the
+precious time for which it lingered. It was still there, like an
+iridescent bubble that floats for a while unbroken. As a rainbow, when
+its brightness fades, seems to subside, then soars again and, before it
+is extinguished, is glorified with greater splendour than it has ever
+shewn; so to the two colours which the phrase had hitherto allowed to
+appear it added others now, chords shot with every hue in the prism, and
+made them sing. Swann dared not move, and would have liked to compel all
+the other people in the room to remain still also, as if the slightest
+movement might embarrass the magic presence, supernatural, delicious,
+frail, that would so easily vanish. But no one, as it happened, dreamed
+of speaking. The ineffable utterance of one solitary man, absent,
+perhaps dead (Swann did not know whether Vinteuil were still alive),
+breathed out above the rites of those two hierophants, sufficed to
+arrest the attention of three hundred minds, and made of that stage on
+which a soul was thus called into being one of the noblest altars on
+which a supernatural ceremony could be performed. It followed that, when
+the phrase at last was finished, and only its fragmentary echoes floated
+among the subsequent themes which had already taken its place, if Swann
+at first was annoyed to see the Comtesse de Monteriender, famed for her
+imbecilities, lean over towards him to confide in him her impressions,
+before even the sonata had come to an end; he could not refrain from
+smiling, and perhaps also found an underlying sense, which she was
+incapable of perceiving, in the words that she used. Dazzled by the
+virtuosity of the performers, the Comtesse exclaimed to Swann: "It's
+astonishing! I have never seen anything to beat it..." But a scrupulous
+regard for accuracy making her correct her first assertion, she added
+the reservation: "anything to beat it... since the table-turning!"
+
+From that evening, Swann understood that the feeling which Odette had
+once had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would
+not be realised now. And the days on which, by a lucky chance, she had
+once more shewn herself kind and loving to him, or if she had paid him
+any attention, he recorded those apparent and misleading signs of
+a slight movement on her part towards him with the same tender and
+sceptical solicitude, the desperate joy that people reveal who, when
+they are nursing a friend in the last days of an incurable malady,
+relate, as significant facts of infinite value: "Yesterday he went
+through his accounts himself, and actually corrected a mistake that we
+had made in adding them up; he ate an egg to-day and seemed quite to
+enjoy it, if he digests it properly we shall try him with a cutlet
+to-morrow,"--although they themselves know that these things are
+meaningless on the eve of an inevitable death. No doubt Swann was
+assured that if he had now been living at a distance from Odette he
+would gradually have lost all interest in her, so that he would have
+been glad to learn that she was leaving Paris for ever; he would have
+had the courage to remain there; but he had not the courage to go.
+
+He had often thought of going. Now that he was once again at work upon
+his essay on Vermeer, he wanted to return, for a few days at least, to
+The Hague, to Dresden, to Brunswick. He was certain that a 'Toilet of
+Diana' which had been acquired by the Mauritshuis at the Goldschmidt
+sale as a Nicholas Maes was in reality a Vermeer. And he would have
+liked to be able to examine the picture on the spot, so as to strengthen
+his conviction. But to leave Paris while Odette was there, and even when
+she was not there--for in strange places where our sensations have not
+been numbed by habit, we refresh, we revive an old pain--was for him so
+cruel a project that he felt himself to be capable of entertaining it
+incessantly in his mind only because he knew himself to be resolute in
+his determination never to put it into effect. But it would happen
+that, while he was asleep, the intention to travel would reawaken in him
+(without his remembering that this particular tour was impossible) and
+would be realised. One night he dreamed that he was going away for a
+year; leaning from the window of the train towards a young man on the
+platform who wept as he bade him farewell, he was seeking to persuade
+this young man to come away also. The train began to move; he awoke
+in alarm, and remembered that he was not going away, that he would see
+Odette that evening, and next day and almost every day. And then, being
+still deeply moved by his dream, he would thank heaven for those special
+circumstances which made him independent, thanks to which he could
+remain in Odette's vicinity, and could even succeed in making her allow
+him to see her sometimes; and, counting over the list of his advantages:
+his social position--his fortune, from which she stood too often in
+need of assistance not to shrink from the prospect of a definite rupture
+(having even, so people said, an ulterior plan of getting him to marry
+her)--his friendship with M. de Charlus, which, it must be confessed,
+had never won him any very great favour from Odette, but which gave him
+the pleasant feeling that she was always hearing complimentary things
+said about him by this common friend for whom she had so great an
+esteem--and even his own intelligence, the whole of which he employed in
+weaving, every day, a fresh plot which would make his presence, if not
+agreeable, at any rate necessary to Odette--he thought of what might
+have happened to him if all these advantages had been lacking, he
+thought that, if he had been, like so many other men, poor and humble,
+without resources, forced to undertake any task that might be offered to
+him, or tied down by parents or by a wife, he might have been obliged
+to part from Odette, that that dream, the terror of which was still so
+recent, might well have been true; and he said to himself: "People don't
+know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they
+are." But he reflected that this existence had lasted already for
+several years, that all that he could now hope for was that it should
+last for ever, that he would sacrifice his work, his pleasures, his
+friends, in fact the whole of his life to the daily expectation of a
+meeting which, when it occurred, would bring him no happiness; and he
+asked himself whether he was not mistaken, whether the circumstances
+that had favoured their relations and had prevented a final rupture had
+not done a disservice to his career, whether the outcome to be
+desired was not that as to which he rejoiced that it happened only in
+dreams--his own departure; and he said to himself that people did not
+know when they were unhappy, that they were never so happy as they
+supposed.
+
+Sometimes he hoped that she would die, painlessly, in some accident, she
+who was out of doors in the streets, crossing busy thoroughfares,
+from morning to night. And as she always returned safe and sound, he
+marvelled at the strength, at the suppleness of the human body, which
+was able continually to hold in check, to outwit all the perils that
+environed it (which to Swann seemed innumerable, since his own secret
+desire had strewn them in her path), and so allowed its occupant, the
+soul, to abandon itself, day after day, and almost with impunity, to its
+career of mendacity, to the pursuit of pleasure. And Swann felt a very
+cordial sympathy with that Mahomet II whose portrait by Bellini he
+admired, who, on finding that he had fallen madly in love with one of
+his wives, stabbed her, in order, as his Venetian biographer artlessly
+relates, to recover his spiritual freedom. Then he would be ashamed
+of thinking thus only of himself, and his own sufferings would seem to
+deserve no pity now that he himself was disposing so cheaply of Odette's
+very life.
+
+Since he was unable to separate himself from her without a subsequent
+return, if at least he had seen her continuously and without separations
+his grief would ultimately have been assuaged, and his love would,
+perhaps, have died. And from the moment when she did not wish to leave
+Paris for ever he had hoped that she would never go. As he knew that her
+one prolonged absence, every year, was in August and September, he had
+abundant opportunity, several months in advance, to dissociate from it
+the grim picture of her absence throughout Eternity which was lodged in
+him by anticipation, and which, consisting of days closely akin to the
+days through which he was then passing, floated in a cold transparency
+in his mind, which it saddened and depressed, though without causing him
+any intolerable pain. But that conception of the future, that flowing
+stream, colourless and unconfined, a single word from Odette sufficed
+to penetrate through all Swann's defences, and like a block of ice
+immobilised it, congealed its fluidity, made it freeze altogether; and
+Swann felt himself suddenly filled with an enormous and unbreakable mass
+which pressed on the inner walls of his consciousness until he was fain
+to burst asunder; for Odette had said casually, watching him with a
+malicious smile: "Forcheville is going for a fine trip at Whitsuntide.
+He's going to Egypt!" and Swann had at once understood that this meant:
+"I am going to Egypt at Whitsuntide with Forcheville." And, in fact,
+if, a few days later, Swann began: "About that trip that you told me you
+were going to take with Forcheville," she would answer carelessly: "Yes,
+my dear boy, we're starting on the 19th; we'll send you a 'view' of the
+Pyramids." Then he was determined to know whether she was Forcheville's
+mistress, to ask her point-blank, to insist upon her telling him. He
+knew that there were some perjuries which, being so superstitious, she
+would not commit, and besides, the fear, which had hitherto restrained
+his curiosity, of making Odette angry if he questioned her, of making
+himself odious, had ceased to exist now that he had lost all hope of
+ever being loved by her.
+
+One day he received an anonymous letter which told him that Odette had
+been the mistress of countless men (several of whom it named, among
+them Forcheville, M. de Bréauté and the painter) and women, and that she
+frequented houses of ill-fame. He was tormented by the discovery that
+there was to be numbered among his friends a creature capable of
+sending him such a letter (for certain details betrayed in the writer a
+familiarity with his private life). He wondered who it could be. But he
+had never had any suspicion with regard to the unknown actions of other
+people, those which had no visible connection with what they said.
+And when he wanted to know whether it was rather beneath the apparent
+character of M. de Charlus, or of M. des Laumes, or of M. d'Orsan that
+he must place the untravelled region in which this ignoble action might
+have had its birth; as none of these men had ever, in conversation
+with Swann, suggested that he approved of anonymous letters, and as
+everything that they had ever said to him implied that they strongly
+disapproved, he saw no further reason for associating this infamy with
+the character of any one of them more than with the rest. M. de Charlus
+was somewhat inclined to eccentricity, but he was fundamentally good and
+kind; M. des Laumes was a trifle dry, but wholesome and straight. As for
+M. d'Orsan, Swann had never met anyone who, even in the most depressing
+circumstances, would come to him with a more heartfelt utterance, would
+act more properly or with more discretion. So much so that he was unable
+to understand the rather indelicate part commonly attributed to M.
+d'Orsan in his relations with a certain wealthy woman, and that whenever
+he thought of him he was obliged to set that evil reputation on one
+side, as irreconcilable with so many unmistakable proofs of his genuine
+sincerity and refinement. For a moment Swann felt that his mind was
+becoming clouded, and he thought of something else so as to recover
+a little light; until he had the courage to return to those other
+reflections. But then, after not having been able to suspect anyone, he
+was forced to suspect everyone that he knew. After all, M. de Charlus
+might be most fond of him, might be most good-natured; but he was a
+neuropath; to-morrow, perhaps, he would burst into tears on hearing that
+Swann was ill; and to-day, from jealousy, or in anger, or carried away
+by some sudden idea, he might have wished to do him a deliberate injury.
+Really, that kind of man was the worst of all. The Prince des Laumes
+was, certainly, far less devoted to Swann than was M. de Charlus. But
+for that very reason he had not the same susceptibility with regard to
+him; and besides, his was a nature which, though, no doubt, it was cold,
+was as incapable of a base as of a magnanimous action. Swann regretted
+that he had formed no attachments in his life except to such people.
+Then he reflected that what prevents men from doing harm to their
+neighbours is fellow-feeling, that he could not, in the last resort,
+answer for any but men whose natures were analogous to his own, as was,
+so far as the heart went, that of M. de Charlus. The mere thought of
+causing Swann so much distress would have been revolting to him. But
+with a man who was insensible, of another order of humanity, as was the
+Prince des Laumes, how was one to foresee the actions to which he might
+be led by the promptings of a different nature? To have a good heart was
+everything, and M. de Charlus had one. But M. d'Orsan was not lacking
+in that either, and his relations with Swann--cordial, but scarcely
+intimate, arising from the pleasure which, as they held the same views
+about everything, they found in talking together--were more quiescent
+than the enthusiastic affection of M. de Charlus, who was apt to be
+led into passionate activity, good or evil. If there was anyone by
+whom Swann felt that he had always been understood, and (with delicacy)
+loved, it was M. d'Orsan. Yes, but the life he led; it could hardly be
+called honourable. Swann regretted that he had never taken any notice
+of those rumours, that he himself had admitted, jestingly, that he had
+never felt so keen a sense of sympathy, or of respect, as when he was
+in thoroughly 'detrimental' society. "It is not for nothing," he now
+assured himself, "that when people pass judgment upon their neighbour,
+their finding is based upon his actions. It is those alone that are
+significant, and not at all what we say or what we think. Charlus and
+des Laumes may have this or that fault, but they are men of honour.
+Orsan, perhaps, has not the same faults, but he is not a man of honour.
+He may have acted dishonourably once again." Then he suspected Rémi,
+who, it was true, could only have inspired the letter, but he now felt
+himself, for a moment, to be on the right track. To begin with, Loredan
+had his own reasons for wishing harm to Odette. And then, how were we
+not to suppose that our servants, living in a situation inferior to our
+own, adding to our fortunes and to our frailties imaginary riches and
+vices for which they at once envied and despised us, should not find
+themselves led by fate to act in a manner abhorrent to people of our own
+class? He also suspected my grandfather. On every occasion when Swann
+had asked him to do him any service, had he not invariably declined?
+Besides, with his ideas of middle-class respectability, he might have
+thought that he was acting for Swann's good. He suspected, in turn,
+Bergotte, the painter, the Verdurins; paused for a moment to admire
+once again the wisdom of people in society, who refused to mix in the
+artistic circles in which such things were possible, were, perhaps, even
+openly avowed, as excellent jokes; but then he recalled the marks of
+honesty that were to be observed in those Bohemians, and contrasted them
+with the life of expedients, often bordering on fraudulence, to which
+the want of money, the craving for luxury, the corrupting influence of
+their pleasures often drove members of the aristocracy. In a word, this
+anonymous letter proved that he himself knew a human being capable of
+the most infamous conduct, but he could see no reason why that infamy
+should lurk in the depths--which no strange eye might explore--of
+the warm heart rather than the cold, the artist's rather than the
+business-man's, the noble's rather than the flunkey's. What criterion
+ought one to adopt, in order to judge one's fellows? After all, there
+was not a single one of the people whom he knew who might not, in
+certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful action. Must he then
+cease to see them all? His mind grew clouded; he passed his hands two
+or three times across his brow, wiped his glasses with his handkerchief,
+and remembering that, after all, men who were as good as himself
+frequented the society of M. de Charlus, the Prince des Laumes and
+the rest, he persuaded himself that this meant, if not that they were
+incapable of shameful actions, at least that it was a necessity in human
+life, to which everyone must submit, to frequent the society of people
+who were, perhaps, not incapable of such actions. And he continued to
+shake hands with all the friends whom he had suspected, with the purely
+formal reservation that each one of them had, possibly, been seeking to
+drive him to despair. As for the actual contents of the letter, they
+did not disturb him; for in not one of the charges which it formulated
+against Odette could he see the least vestige of fact. Like many other
+men, Swann had a naturally lazy mind, and was slow in invention. He knew
+quite well as a general truth, that human life is full of contrasts, but
+in the case of any one human being he imagined all that part of his or
+her life with which he was not familiar as being identical with the
+part with which he was. He imagined what was kept secret from him in the
+light of what was revealed. At such times as he spent with Odette,
+if their conversation turned upon an indelicate act committed, or
+an indelicate sentiment expressed by some third person, she would
+ruthlessly condemn the culprit by virtue of the same moral principles
+which Swann had always heard expressed by his own parents, and to which
+he himself had remained loyal; and then, she would arrange her flowers,
+would sip her tea, would shew an interest in his work. So Swann extended
+those habits to fill the rest of her life, he reconstructed those
+actions when he wished to form a picture of the moments in which he and
+she were apart. If anyone had portrayed her to him as she was, or rather
+as she had been for so long with himself, but had substituted some
+other man, he would have been distressed, for such a portrait would have
+struck him as lifelike. But to suppose that she went to bad houses,
+that she abandoned herself to orgies with other women, that she led
+the crapulous existence of the most abject, the most contemptible of
+mortals--would be an insane wandering of the mind, for the realisation
+of which, thank heaven, the chrysanthemums that he could imagine, the
+daily cups of tea, the virtuous indignation left neither time nor
+place. Only, now and again, he gave Odette to understand that people
+maliciously kept him informed of everything that she did; and making
+opportune use of some detail--insignificant but true--which he had
+accidentally learned, as though it were the sole fragment which he would
+allow, in spite of himself, to pass his lips, out of the numberless
+other fragments of that complete reconstruction of her daily life which
+he carried secretly in his mind, he led her to suppose that he was
+perfectly informed upon matters, which, in reality, he neither knew nor
+suspected, for if he often adjured Odette never to swerve from or make
+alteration of the truth, that was only, whether he realised it or no, in
+order that Odette should tell him everything that she did. No doubt, as
+he used to assure Odette, he loved sincerity, but only as he might
+love a pander who could keep him in touch with the daily life of his
+mistress. Moreover, his love of sincerity, not being disinterested, had
+not improved his character. The truth which he cherished was that which
+Odette would tell him; but he himself, in order to extract that truth
+from her, was not afraid to have recourse to falsehood, that very
+falsehood which he never ceased to depict to Odette as leading every
+human creature down to utter degradation. In a word, he lied as much
+as did Odette, because, while more unhappy than she, he was no less
+egotistical. And she, when she heard him repeating thus to her the
+things that she had done, would stare at him with a look of distrust
+and, at all hazards, of indignation, so as not to appear to be
+humiliated, and to be blushing for her actions. One day, after the
+longest period of calm through which he had yet been able to exist
+without being overtaken by an attack of jealousy, he had accepted an
+invitation to spend the evening at the theatre with the Princesse des
+Laumes. Having opened his newspaper to find out what was being
+played, the sight of the title--_Les Filles de Marbre_, by Théodore
+Barrière,--struck him so cruel a blow that he recoiled instinctively
+from it and turned his head away. Illuminated, as though by a row of
+footlights, in the new surroundings in which it now appeared, that word
+'marble,' which he had lost the power to distinguish, so often had it
+passed, in print, beneath his eyes, had suddenly become visible once
+again, and had at once brought back to his mind the story which Odette
+had told him, long ago, of a visit which she had paid to the Salon at
+the Palais d'Industrie with Mme. Verdurin, who had said to her, "Take
+care, now! I know how to melt you, all right. You're not made of
+marble." Odette had assured him that it was only a joke, and he had
+not attached any importance to it at the time. But he had had more
+confidence in her then than he had now. And the anonymous letter
+referred explicitly to relations of that sort. Without daring to lift
+his eyes to the newspaper, he opened it, turned the page so as not to
+see again the words, _Filles de Marbre_, and began to read mechanically
+the news from the provinces. There had been a storm in the Channel,
+and damage was reported from Dieppe, Cabourg, Beuzeval.... Suddenly he
+recoiled again in horror.
+
+The name of Beuzeval had suggested to him that of another place in the
+same district, Beuzeville, which carried also, bound to it by a hyphen,
+a second name, to wit Bréauté, which he had often seen on maps, but
+without ever previously remarking that it was the same name as that
+borne by his friend M. de Bréauté, whom the anonymous letter accused of
+having been Odette's lover. After all, when it came to M. de Bréauté,
+there was nothing improbable in the charge; but so far as Mme. Verdurin
+was concerned, it was a sheer impossibility. From the fact that Odette
+did occasionally tell a lie, it was not fair to conclude that she never,
+by any chance, told the truth, and in these bantering conversations
+with Mme. Verdurin which she herself had repeated to Swann, he could
+recognize those meaningless and dangerous pleasantries which, in their
+inexperience of life and ignorance of vice, women often utter (thereby
+certifying their own innocence), who--as, for instance, Odette,--would
+be the last people in the world to feel any undue affection for one
+another. Whereas, on the other hand, the indignation with which she
+had scattered the suspicions which she had unintentionally brought into
+being, for a moment, in his mind by her story, fitted in with everything
+that he knew of the tastes, the temperament of his mistress. But at
+that moment, by an inspiration of jealousy, analogous to the inspiration
+which reveals to a poet or a philosopher, who has nothing, so far, but
+an odd pair of rhymes or a detached observation, the idea or the natural
+law which will give power, mastery to his work, Swann recalled for the
+first time a remark which Odette had made to him, at least two years
+before: "Oh, Mme. Verdurin, she won't hear of anything just now but me.
+I'm a 'love,' if you please, and she kisses me, and wants me to go with
+her everywhere, and call her by her Christian name." So far from seeing
+in these expressions any connection with the absurd insinuations,
+intended to create an atmosphere of vice, which Odette had since
+repeated to him, he had welcomed them as a proof of Mme. Verdurin's
+warm-hearted and generous friendship. But now this old memory of her
+affection for Odette had coalesced suddenly with his more recent memory
+of her unseemly conversation. He could no longer separate them in his
+mind, and he saw them blended in reality, the affection imparting a
+certain seriousness and importance to the pleasantries which, in return,
+spoiled the affection of its innocence. He went to see Odette. He sat
+down, keeping at a distance from her. He did not dare to embrace her,
+not knowing whether in her, in himself, it would be affection or anger
+that a kiss would provoke. He sat there silent, watching their love
+expire. Suddenly he made up his mind.
+
+"Odette, my darling," he began, "I know, I am being simply odious, but I
+must ask you a few questions. You remember what I once thought about you
+and Mme. Verdurin? Tell me, was it true? Have you, with her or anyone
+else, ever?"
+
+She shook her head, pursing her lips together; a sign which people
+commonly employ to signify that they are not going, because it would
+bore them to go, when some one has asked, "Are you coming to watch the
+procession go by?", or "Will you be at the review?". But this shake of
+the head, which is thus commonly used to decline participation in
+an event that has yet to come, imparts for that reason an element of
+uncertainty to the denial of participation in an event that is past.
+Furthermore, it suggests reasons of personal convenience, rather than
+any definite repudiation, any moral impossibility. When he saw Odette
+thus make him a sign that the insinuation was false, he realised that it
+was quite possibly true.
+
+"I have told you, I never did; you know quite well," she added, seeming
+angry and uncomfortable.
+
+"Yes, I know all that; but are you quite sure? Don't say to me, 'You
+know quite well'; say, 'I have never done anything of that sort with any
+woman.'"
+
+She repeated his words like a lesson learned by rote, and as though she
+hoped, thereby, to be rid of him: "I have never done anything of that
+sort with any woman."
+
+"Can you swear it to me on your Laghetto medal?"
+
+Swann knew that Odette would never perjure herself on that.
+
+"Oh, you do make me so miserable," she cried, with a jerk of her body
+as though to shake herself free of the constraint of his question. "Have
+you nearly done? What is the matter with you to-day? You seem to have
+made up your mind that I am to be forced to hate you, to curse you!
+Look, I was anxious to be friends with you again, for us to have a nice
+time together, like the old days; and this is all the thanks I get!"
+
+However, he would not let her go, but sat there like a surgeon who waits
+for a spasm to subside that has interrupted his operation but need not
+make him abandon it.
+
+"You are quite wrong in supposing that I bear you the least ill-will in
+the world, Odette," he began with a persuasive and deceitful gentleness.
+"I never speak to you except of what I already know, and I always know a
+great deal more than I say. But you alone can mollify by your confession
+what makes me hate you so long as it has been reported to me only by
+other people. My anger with you is never due to your actions--I can
+and do forgive you everything because I love you--but to your
+untruthfulness, the ridiculous untruthfulness which makes you persist in
+denying things which I know to be true. How can you expect that I shall
+continue to love you, when I see you maintain, when I hear you swear to
+me a thing which I know to be false? Odette, do not prolong this moment
+which is torturing us both. If you are willing to end it at once, you
+shall be free of it for ever. Tell me, upon your medal, yes or no,
+whether you have ever done those things."
+
+"How on earth can I tell?" she was furious. "Perhaps I have, ever so
+long ago, when I didn't know what I was doing, perhaps two or three
+times."
+
+Swann had prepared himself for all possibilities. Reality must,
+therefore, be something which bears no relation to possibilities,
+any more than the stab of a knife in one's body bears to the gradual
+movement of the clouds overhead, since those words "two or three times"
+carved, as it were, a cross upon the living tissues of his heart. A
+strange thing, indeed, that those words, "two or three times," nothing
+more than a few words, words uttered in the air, at a distance, could so
+lacerate a man's heart, as if they had actually pierced it, could sicken
+a man, like a poison that he had drunk. Instinctively Swann thought of
+the remark that he had heard at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's: "I have never
+seen anything to beat it since the table-turning." The agony that he now
+suffered in no way resembled what he had supposed. Not only because, in
+the hours when he most entirely mistrusted her, he had rarely imagined
+such a culmination of evil, but because, even when he did imagine that
+offence, it remained vague, uncertain, was not clothed in the particular
+horror which had escaped with the words "perhaps two or three times,"
+was not armed with that specific cruelty, as different from anything
+that he had known as a new malady by which one is attacked for the first
+time. And yet this Odette, from whom all this evil sprang, was no less
+dear to him, was, on the contrary, more precious, as if, in proportion
+as his sufferings increased, there increased at the same time the price
+of the sedative, of the antidote which this woman alone possessed. He
+wished to pay her more attention, as one attends to a disease which
+one discovers, suddenly, to have grown more serious. He wished that
+the horrible thing which, she had told him, she had done "two or three
+times" might be prevented from occurring again. To ensure that, he must
+watch over Odette. People often say that, by pointing out to a man the
+faults of his mistress, you succeed only in strengthening his attachment
+to her, because he does not believe you; yet how much more so if he
+does! But, Swann asked himself, how could he manage to protect her? He
+might perhaps be able to preserve her from the contamination of any
+one woman, but there were hundreds of other women; and he realised how
+insane had been his ambition when he had begun (on the evening when
+he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins') to desire the
+possession--as if that were ever possible--of another person. Happily
+for Swann, beneath the mass of suffering which had invaded his soul like
+a conquering horde of barbarians, there lay a natural foundation, older,
+more placid, and silently laborious, like the cells of an injured organ
+which at once set to work to repair the damaged tissues, or the muscles
+of a paralysed limb which tend to recover their former movements. These
+older, these autochthonous in-dwellers in his soul absorbed all Swann's
+strength, for a while, in that obscure task of reparation which gives
+one an illusory sense of repose during convalescence, or after an
+operation. This time it was not so much--as it ordinarily was--in
+Swann's brain that the slackening of tension due to exhaustion took
+effect, it was rather in his heart. But all the things in life that have
+once existed tend to recur, and, like a dying animal that is once more
+stirred by the throes of a convulsion which was, apparently, ended, upon
+Swann's heart, spared for a moment only, the same agony returned of its
+own accord to trace the same cross again. He remembered those moonlit
+evenings, when, leaning back in the victoria that was taking him to
+the Rue La Pérouse, he would cultivate with voluptuous enjoyment the
+emotions of a man in love, ignorant of the poisoned fruit that such
+emotions must inevitably bear. But all those thoughts lasted for no more
+than a second, the time that it took him to raise his hand to his heart,
+to draw breath again and to contrive to smile, so as to dissemble
+his torment. Already he had begun to put further questions. For his
+jealousy, which had taken an amount of trouble, such as no enemy would
+have incurred, to strike him this mortal blow, to make him forcibly
+acquainted with the most cruel pain that he had ever known, his jealousy
+was not satisfied that he had yet suffered enough, and sought to expose
+his bosom to an even deeper wound. Like an evil deity, his jealousy was
+inspiring Swann, was thrusting him on towards destruction. It was not
+his fault, but Odette's alone, if at first his punishment was not more
+severe.
+
+"My darling," he began again, "it's all over now; was it with anyone I
+know?"
+
+"No, I swear it wasn't; besides, I think I exaggerated, I never really
+went as far as that."
+
+He smiled, and resumed with: "Just as you like. It doesn't really
+matter, but it's unfortunate that you can't give me any name. If I were
+able to form an idea of the person that would prevent my ever thinking
+of her again. I say it for your own sake, because then I shouldn't
+bother you any more about it. It's so soothing to be able to form a
+clear picture of things in one's mind. What is really terrible is what
+one cannot imagine. But you've been so sweet to me; I don't want to tire
+you. I do thank you, with all my heart, for all the good that you have
+done me. I've quite finished now. Only one word more: how many times?"
+
+"Oh, Charles! can't you see, you're killing me? It's all ever so long
+ago. I've never given it a thought. Anyone would say that you were
+positively trying to put those ideas into my head again. And then you'd
+be a lot better off!" she concluded, with unconscious stupidity but with
+intentional malice.
+
+"I only wished to know whether it had been since I knew you. It's only
+natural. Did it happen here, ever? You can't give me any particular
+evening, so that I can remind myself what I was doing at the time? You
+understand, surely, that it's not possible that you don't remember with
+whom, Odette, my love."
+
+"But I don't know; really, I don't. I think it was in the Bois, one
+evening when you came to meet us on the Island. You had been dining with
+the Princesse des Laumes," she added, happy to be able to furnish him
+with an exact detail, which testified to her veracity. "At the next
+table there was a woman whom I hadn't seen for ever so long. She said to
+me, 'Come along round behind the rock, there, and look at the moonlight
+on the water!' At first I just yawned, and said, 'No, I'm too tired,
+and I'm quite happy where I am, thank you.' She swore there'd never been
+anything like it in the way of moonlight. 'I've heard that tale before,'
+I said to her; you see, I knew quite well what she was after." Odette
+narrated this episode almost as if it were a joke, either because it
+appeared to her to be quite natural, or because she thought that she was
+thereby minimising its importance, or else so as not to appear ashamed.
+But, catching sight of Swann's face, she changed her tone, and:
+
+"You are a fiend!" she flung at him, "you enjoy tormenting me, making me
+tell you lies, just so that you'll leave me in peace."
+
+This second blow struck at Swann was even more excruciating than the
+first. Never had he supposed it to have been so recent an affair, hidden
+from his eyes that had been too innocent to discern it, not in a past
+which he had never known, but in evenings which he so well remembered,
+which he had lived through with Odette, of which he had supposed himself
+to have such an intimate, such an exhaustive knowledge, and which now
+assumed, retrospectively, an aspect of cunning and deceit and cruelty.
+In the midst of them parted, suddenly, a gaping chasm, that moment on
+the Island in the Bois de Boulogne. Without being intelligent, Odette
+had the charm of being natural. She had recounted, she had acted the
+little scene with so much simplicity that Swann, as he gasped for
+breath, could vividly see it: Odette yawning, the "rock there,"... He
+could hear her answer--alas, how lightheartedly--"I've heard that tale
+before!" He felt that she would tell him nothing more that evening, that
+no further revelation was to be expected for the present. He was silent
+for a time, then said to her:
+
+"My poor darling, you must forgive me; I know, I am hurting you
+dreadfully, but it's all over now; I shall never think of it again."
+
+But she saw that his eyes remained fixed upon the things that he did not
+know, and on that past era of their love, monotonous and soothing in his
+memory because it was vague, and now rent, as with a sword-wound, by the
+news of that minute on the Island in the Bois, by moonlight, while he
+was dining with the Princesse des Laumes. But he had so far acquired
+the habit of finding life interesting--of marvelling at the strange
+discoveries that there were to be made in it--that even while he was
+suffering so acutely that he did not believe it possible to endure such
+agony for any length of time, he was saying to himself: "Life is indeed
+astonishing, and holds some fine surprises; it appears that vice is far
+more common than one has been led to believe. Here is a woman in whom
+I had absolute confidence, who looks so simple, so honest, who, in any
+case, even allowing that her morals are not strict, seemed quite normal
+and healthy in her tastes and inclinations. I receive a most improbable
+accusation, I question her, and the little that she admits reveals far
+more than I could ever have suspected." But he could not confine himself
+to these detached observations. He sought to form an exact estimate of
+the importance of what she had just told him, so as to know whether he
+might conclude that she had done these things often, and was likely to
+do them again. He repeated her words to himself: "I knew quite well what
+she was after." "Two or three times." "I've heard that tale before." But
+they did not reappear in his memory unarmed; each of them held a knife
+with which it stabbed him afresh. For a long time, like a sick man
+who cannot restrain himself from attempting, every minute, to make the
+movement that, he knows, will hurt him, he kept on murmuring to himself:
+"I'm quite happy where I am, thank you," "I've heard that tale before,"
+but the pain was so intense that he was obliged to stop. He was amazed
+to find that actions which he had always, hitherto, judged so lightly,
+had dismissed, indeed, with a laugh, should have become as serious to
+him as a disease which might easily prove fatal. He knew any number
+of women whom he could ask to keep an eye on Odette, but how was he to
+expect them to adjust themselves to his new point of view, and not to
+remain at that which for so long had been his own, which had always
+guided him in his voluptuous existence; not to say to him with a smile:
+"You jealous monster, wanting to rob other people of their pleasure!"
+By what trap-door, suddenly lowered, had he (who had never found, in the
+old days, in his love for Odette, any but the most refined of pleasures)
+been precipitated into this new circle of hell from which he could not
+see how he was ever to escape. Poor Odette! He wished her no harm. She
+was but half to blame. Had he not been told that it was her own mother
+who had sold her, when she was still little more than a child, at Nice,
+to a wealthy Englishman? But what an agonising truth was now contained
+for him in those lines of Alfred de Vigny's _Journal d'un Poète_ which
+he had previously read without emotion: "When one feels oneself smitten
+by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself, 'What are 'her
+surroundings? What has been her life?' All one's future happiness lies
+in the answer." Swann was astonished that such simple phrases, spelt
+over in his mind as, "I've heard that tale before," or "I knew quite
+well what she was after," could cause him so much pain. But he realised
+that what he had mistaken for simple phrases were indeed parts of the
+panoply which held and could inflict on him the anguish that he had felt
+while Odette was telling her story. For it was the same anguish that he
+now was feeling afresh. It was no good, his knowing now,--indeed, it
+was no good, as time went on, his having partly forgotten and altogether
+forgiven the offence--whenever he repeated her words his old anguish
+refashioned him as he had been before Odette began to speak: ignorant,
+trustful; his merciless jealousy placed him once again, so that he might
+be effectively wounded by Odette's admission, in the position of a man
+who does not yet know the truth; and after several months this old story
+would still dumbfounder him, like a sudden revelation. He marvelled
+at the terrible recreative power of his memory. It was only by the
+weakening of that generative force, whose fecundity diminishes as age
+creeps over one, that he could hope for a relaxation of his torments.
+But, as soon as the power that any one of Odette's sentences had to make
+Swann suffer seemed to be nearly exhausted, lo and behold another, one
+of those to which he had hitherto paid least attention, almost a
+new sentence, came to relieve the first, and to strike at him with
+undiminished force. The memory of the evening on which he had dined with
+the Princesse des Laumes was painful to him, but it was no more than
+the centre, the core of his pain. That radiated vaguely round about it,
+overflowing into all the preceding and following days. And on whatever
+point in it he might intend his memory to rest, it was the whole of that
+season, during which the Verdurins had so often gone to dine upon the
+Island in the Bois, that sprang back to hurt him. So violently, that by
+slow degrees the curiosity which his jealousy was ever exciting in him
+was neutralised by his fear of the fresh tortures which he would be
+inflicting upon himself were he to satisfy it. He recognised that all
+the period of Odette's life which had elapsed before she first met him,
+a period of which he had never sought to form any picture in his mind,
+was not the featureless abstraction which he could vaguely see, but had
+consisted of so many definite, dated years, each crowded with concrete
+incidents. But were he to learn more of them, he feared lest her past,
+now colourless, fluid and supportable, might assume a tangible, an
+obscene form, with individual and diabolical features. And he continued
+to refrain from seeking a conception of it, not any longer now from
+laziness of mind, but from fear of suffering. He hoped that, some day,
+he might be able to hear the Island in the Bois, or the Princesse des
+Laumes mentioned without feeling any twinge of that old rending pain;
+meanwhile he thought it imprudent to provoke Odette into furnishing him
+with fresh sentences, with the names of more places and people and of
+different events, which, when his malady was still scarcely healed,
+would make it break out again in another form.
+
+But, often enough, the things that he did not know, that he dreaded,
+now, to learn, it was Odette herself who, spontaneously and without
+thought of what she did, revealed them to him; for the gap which her
+vices made between her actual life and the comparatively innocent life
+which Swann had believed, and often still believed his mistress to lead,
+was far wider than she knew. A vicious person, always affecting the same
+air of virtue before people whom he is anxious to keep from having any
+suspicion of his vices, has no register, no gauge at hand from which
+he may ascertain how far those vices (their continuous growth being
+imperceptible by himself) have gradually segregated him from the normal
+ways of life. In the course of their cohabitation, in Odette's mind,
+with the memory of those of her actions which she concealed from Swann,
+her other, her innocuous actions were gradually coloured, infected
+by these, without her being able to detect anything strange in them,
+without their causing any explosion in the particular region of herself
+in which she made them live, but when she related them to Swann, he was
+overwhelmed by the revelation of the duplicity to which they pointed.
+One day, he was trying--without hurting Odette--to discover from her
+whether she had ever had any dealings with procuresses. He was, as a
+matter of fact, convinced that she had not; the anonymous letter had
+put the idea into his mind, but in a purely mechanical way; it had been
+received there with no credulity, but it had, for all that, remained
+there, and Swann, wishing to be rid of the burden--a dead weight, but
+none the less disturbing--of this suspicion, hoped that Odette would now
+extirpate it for ever.
+
+"Oh dear, no! Not that they don't simply persecute me to go to them,"
+her smile revealed a gratified vanity which she no longer saw that it
+was impossible should appear legitimate to Swann. "There was one of them
+waited more than two hours for me yesterday, said she would give me any
+money I asked. It seems, there's an Ambassador who said to her, 'I'll
+kill myself if you don't bring her to me'--meaning me! They told her I'd
+gone out, but she waited and waited, and in the end I had to go myself
+and speak to her, before she'd go away. I do wish you could have seen
+the way I tackled her; my maid was in the next room, listening, and told
+me I shouted fit to bring the house down:--'But when you hear me say
+that I don't want to! The idea of such a thing, I don't like it at all!
+I should hope I'm still free to do as I please and when I please and
+where I please! If I needed the money, I could understand...' The porter
+has orders not to let her in again; he will tell her that I am out of
+town. Oh, I do wish I could have had you hidden somewhere in the room
+while I was talking to her. I know, you'd have been pleased, my dear.
+There's some good in your little Odette, you see, after all, though
+people do say such dreadful things about her."
+
+Besides, her very admissions--when she made any--of faults which she
+supposed him to have discovered, rather served Swann as a starting-point
+for fresh doubts than they put an end to the old. For her admissions
+never exactly coincided with his doubts. In vain might Odette expurgate
+her confession of all its essential part, there would remain in the
+accessories something which Swann had never yet imagined, which crushed
+him anew, and was to enable him to alter the terms of the problem of his
+jealousy. And these admissions he could never forget. His spirit carried
+them along, cast them aside, then cradled them again in its bosom, like
+corpses in a river. And they poisoned it.
+
+She spoke to him once of a visit that Forcheville had paid her on the
+day of the Paris-Murcie Fête. "What! you knew him as long ago as that?
+Oh, yes, of course you did," he corrected himself, so as not to shew
+that he had been ignorant of the fact. And suddenly he began to tremble
+at the thought that, on the day of the Paris-Murcie Fête, when he had
+received that letter which he had so carefully preserved, she had been
+having luncheon, perhaps, with Forcheville at the Maison d'Or. She swore
+that she had not. "Still, the Maison d'Or reminds me of something or
+other which, I knew at the time, wasn't true," he pursued, hoping to
+frighten her. "Yes, that I hadn't been there at all that evening when I
+told you I had just come from there, and you had been looking for me
+at Prévost's," she replied (judging by his manner that he knew) with a
+firmness that was based not so much upon cynicism as upon timidity, a
+fear of crossing Swann, which her own self-respect made her anxious to
+conceal, and a desire to shew him that she could be perfectly frank if
+she chose. And so she struck him with all the sharpness and force of a
+headsman wielding his axe, and yet could not be charged with cruelty,
+since she was quite unconscious of hurting him; she even began to laugh,
+though this may perhaps, it is true, have been chiefly to keep him from
+thinking that she was ashamed, at all, or confused. "It's quite true, I
+hadn't been to the Maison Dorée. I was coming away from Forcheville's. I
+had, really, been to Prévost's--that wasn't a story--and he met me there
+and asked me to come in and look at his prints. But some one else came
+to see him. I told you that I was coming from the Maison d'Or because I
+was afraid you might be angry with me. It was rather nice of me, really,
+don't you see? I admit, I did wrong, but at least I'm telling you all
+about it now, a'n't I? What have I to gain by not telling you, straight,
+that I lunched with him on the day of the Paris-Murcie Fête, if it were
+true? Especially as at that time we didn't know one another quite so
+well as we do now, did we, dear?"
+
+He smiled back at her with the sudden, craven weakness of the utterly
+spiritless creature which these crushing words had made of him. And so,
+even in the months of which he had never dared to think again, because
+they had been too happy, in those months when she had loved him, she was
+already lying to him! Besides that moment (that first evening on which
+they had "done a cattleya") when she had told him that she was coming
+from the Maison Dorée, how many others must there have been, each
+of them covering a falsehood of which Swann had had no suspicion. He
+recalled how she had said to him once: "I need only tell Mme. Verdurin
+that my dress wasn't ready, or that my cab came late. There is always
+some excuse." From himself too, probably, many times when she had glibly
+uttered such words as explain a delay or justify an alteration of the
+hour fixed for a meeting, those moments must have hidden, without his
+having the least inkling of it at the time, an engagement that she had
+had with some other man, some man to whom she had said: "I need only
+tell Swann that my dress wasn't ready, or that my cab came late. There
+is always some excuse." And beneath all his most pleasant memories,
+beneath the simplest words that Odette had ever spoken to him in those
+old days, words which he had believed as though they were the words of
+a Gospel, beneath her daily actions which she had recounted to him,
+beneath the most ordinary places, her dressmaker's flat, the Avenue du
+Bois, the Hippodrome, he could feel (dissembled there, by virtue of that
+temporal superfluity which, after the most detailed account of how a day
+has been spent, always leaves something over, that may serve as a hiding
+place for certain unconfessed actions), he could feel the insinuation of
+a possible undercurrent of falsehood which debased for him all that
+had remained most precious, his happiest evenings, the Rue La Pérouse
+itself, which Odette must constantly have been leaving at other hours
+than those of which she told him; extending the power of the dark horror
+that had gripped him when he had heard her admission with regard to
+the Maison Dorée, and, like the obscene creatures in the 'Desolation of
+Nineveh,' shattering, stone by stone, the whole edifice of his past....
+If, now, he turned aside whenever his memory repeated the cruel name of
+the Maison Dorée it was because that name recalled to him, no longer,
+as, such a little time since, at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's party, the good
+fortune which he long had lost, but a misfortune of which he was now
+first aware. Then it befell the Maison Dorée, as it had befallen the
+Island in the Bois, that gradually its name ceased to trouble him.
+For what we suppose to be our love, our jealousy are, neither of them,
+single, continuous and individual passions. They are composed of an
+infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each of which is
+ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multitude they give us the
+impression of continuity, the illusion of unity. The life of Swann's
+love, the fidelity of his jealousy, were formed out of death, of
+infidelity, of innumerable desires, innumerable doubts, all of which
+had Odette for their object. If he had remained for any length of time
+without seeing her, those that died would not have been replaced by
+others. But the presence of Odette continued to sow in Swann's heart
+alternate seeds of love and suspicion.
+
+On certain evenings she would suddenly resume towards him a kindness of
+which she would warn him sternly that he must take immediate advantage,
+under penalty of not seeing it repeated for years to come; he must
+instantly accompany her home, to "do a cattleya," and the desire
+which she pretended to have for him was so sudden, so inexplicable, so
+imperious, the kisses which she lavished on him were so demonstrative
+and so unfamiliar, that this brutal and unnatural fondness made Swann
+just as unhappy as any lie or unkind action. One evening when he had
+thus, in obedience to her command, gone home with her, and while she was
+interspersing her kisses with passionate words, in strange contrast to
+her habitual coldness, he thought suddenly that he heard a sound; he
+rose, searched everywhere and found nobody, but he had not the courage
+to return to his place by her side; whereupon she, in a towering
+rage, broke a vase, with "I never can do anything right with you,
+you impossible person!" And he was left uncertain whether she had not
+actually had some man concealed in the room, whose jealousy she had
+wished to wound, or else to inflame his senses.
+
+Sometimes he repaired to 'gay' houses, hoping to learn something about
+Odette, although he dared not mention her name. "I have a little thing
+here, you're sure to like," the 'manageress' would greet him, and he
+would stay for an hour or so, talking dolefully to some poor girl who
+sat there astonished that he went no further. One of them, who was still
+quite young and attractive, said to him once, "Of course, what I should
+like would be to find a real friend, then he might be quite certain,
+I should never go with any other men again." "Indeed, do you think it
+possible for a woman really to be touched by a man's being in love with
+her, and never to be unfaithful to him?" asked Swann anxiously. "Why,
+surely! It all depends on their characters!" Swann could not help making
+the same remarks to these girls as would have delighted the Princesse
+des Laumes. To the one who was in search of a friend he said, with a
+smile: "But how nice of you, you've put on blue eyes, to go with
+your sash." "And you too, you've got blue cuffs on." "What a charming
+conversation we are having, for a place of this sort! I'm not boring
+you, am I; or keeping you?" "No, I've nothing to do, thank you. If you
+bored me I should say so. But I love hearing you talk." "I am highly
+flattered.... Aren't we behaving prettily?" he asked the 'manageress,'
+who had just looked in. "Why, yes, that's just what I was saying to
+myself, how sensibly they're behaving! But that's how it is! People come
+to my house now, just to talk. The Prince was telling me, only the other
+day, that he's far more comfortable here than with his wife. It seems
+that, nowadays, all the society ladies are like that; a perfect scandal,
+I call it. But I'll leave you in peace now, I know when I'm not wanted,"
+she ended discreetly, and left Swann with the girl who had the blue
+eyes. But presently he rose and said good-bye to her. She had ceased to
+interest him. She did not know Odette.
+
+The painter having been ill, Dr. Cottard recommended a sea-voyage;
+several of the 'faithful' spoke of accompanying him; the Verdurins
+could not face the prospect of being left alone in Paris, so first of
+all hired, and finally purchased a yacht; thus Odette was constantly
+going on a cruise. Whenever she had been away for any length of time,
+Swann would feel that he was beginning to detach himself from her, but,
+as though this moral distance were proportionate to the physical
+distance between them, whenever he heard that Odette had returned to
+Paris, he could not rest without seeing her. Once, when they had gone
+away, as everyone thought, for a month only, either they succumbed to a
+series of temptations, or else M. Verdurin had cunningly arranged
+everything beforehand, to please his wife, and disclosed his plans to
+the 'faithful' only as time went on; anyhow, from Algiers they flitted
+to Tunis; then to Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor. They had
+been absent for nearly a year, and Swann felt perfectly at ease and
+almost happy. Albeit M. Verdurin had endeavoured to persuade the
+pianist and Dr. Cottard that their respective aunt and patients had no
+need of them, and that, in any event, it was most rash to allow Mme.
+Cottard to return to Paris, where, Mme. Verdurin assured him, a
+revolution had just broken out, he was obliged to grant them their
+liberty at Constantinople. And the painter came home with them. One
+day, shortly after the return of these four travellers, Swann, seeing
+an omnibus approach him, labelled 'Luxembourg,' and having some
+business there, had jumped on to it and had found himself sitting
+opposite Mme. Cottard, who was paying a round of visits to people whose
+'day' it was, in full review order, with a plume in her hat, a silk
+dress, a muff, an umbrella (which would do for a parasol if the rain
+kept off), a card-case, and a pair of white gloves fresh from the
+cleaners. Wearing these badges of rank, she would, in fine weather, go
+on foot from one house to another in the same neighbourhood, but when
+she had to proceed to another district, would make use of a
+transfer-ticket on the omnibus. For the first minute or two, until the
+natural courtesy of the woman broke through the starched surface of the
+doctor's-wife, not being certain, either, whether she ought to mention
+the Verdurins before Swann, she produced, quite naturally, in her slow
+and awkward, but not unattractive voice, which, every now and then, was
+completely drowned by the rattling of the omnibus, topics selected from
+those which she had picked up and would repeat in each of the score of
+houses up the stairs of which she clambered in the course of an
+afternoon.
+
+"I needn't ask you, M. Swann, whether a man so much in the movement as
+yourself has been to the Mirlitons, to see the portrait by Machard that
+the whole of Paris is running after. Well, and what do you think of it?
+Whose camp are you in, those who bless or those who curse? It's the
+same in every house in Paris now, no one will speak of anything else but
+Machard's portrait; you aren't smart, you aren't really cultured, you
+aren't up-to-date unless you give an opinion on Machard's portrait."
+
+Swann having replied that he had not seen this portrait, Mme. Cottard
+was afraid that she might have hurt his feelings by obliging him to
+confess the omission.
+
+"Oh, that's quite all right! At least you have the courage to be quite
+frank about it. You don't consider yourself disgraced because you
+haven't seen Machard's portrait. I do think that so nice of you. Well
+now, I have seen it; opinion is divided, you know, there are some people
+who find it rather laboured, like whipped cream, they say; but I think
+it's just ideal. Of course, she's not a bit like the blue and yellow
+ladies that our friend Biche paints. That's quite clear. But I must tell
+you, perfectly frankly (you'll think me dreadfully old-fashioned, but I
+always say just what I think), that I don't understand his work. I can
+quite see the good points there are in his portrait of my husband; oh,
+dear me, yes; and it's certainly less odd than most of what he does,
+but even then he had to give the poor man a blue moustache! But Machard!
+Just listen to this now, the husband of my friend, I am on my way to see
+at this very moment (which has given me the very great pleasure of your
+company), has promised her that, if he is elected to the Academy (he
+is one of the Doctor's colleagues), he will get Machard to paint her
+portrait. So she's got something to look forward to! I have another
+friend who insists that she'd rather have Leloir. I'm only a wretched
+Philistine, and I've no doubt Leloir has perhaps more knowledge of
+painting even than Machard. But I do think that the most important
+thing about a portrait, especially when it's going to cost ten thousand
+francs, is that it should be like, and a pleasant likeness, if you know
+what I mean."
+
+Having exhausted this topic, to which she had been inspired by the
+loftiness of her plume, the monogram on her card-case, the little number
+inked inside each of her gloves by the cleaner, and the difficulty of
+speaking to Swann about the Verdurins, Mme. Cottard, seeing that they
+had still a long way to go before they would reach the corner of the
+Rue Bonaparte, where the conductor was to set her down, listened to the
+promptings of her heart, which counselled other words than these.
+
+"Your ears must have been burning," she ventured, "while we were on the
+yacht with Mme. Verdurin. We were talking about you all the time."
+
+Swann was genuinely astonished, for he supposed that his name was never
+uttered in the Verdurins' presence.
+
+"You see," Mme. Cottard went on, "Mme. de Crécy was there; need I say
+more? When Odette is anywhere it's never long before she begins talking
+about you. And you know quite well, it isn't nasty things she says.
+What! you don't believe me!" she went on, noticing that Svrann looked
+sceptical. And, carried away by the sincerity of her conviction, without
+putting any evil meaning into the word, which she used purely in the
+sense in which one employs it to speak of the affection that unites a
+pair of friends: "Why, she _adores_ you! No, indeed; I'm sure it would
+never do to say anything against you when she was about; one would soon
+be taught one's place! Whatever we might be doing, if we were looking at
+a picture, for instance, she would say, 'If only we had him here, he's
+the man who could tell us whether it's genuine or not. There's no one
+like him for that.' And all day long she would be saying, 'What can
+he be doing just now? I do hope, he's doing a little work! It's too
+dreadful that a fellow with such gifts as he has should be so lazy.'
+(Forgive me, won't you.) 'I can see him this very moment; he's thinking
+of us, he's wondering where we are.' Indeed, she used an expression
+which I thought very pretty at the time. M. Verdurin asked her, 'How in
+the world can you see what he's doing, when he's a thousand miles away?'
+And Odette answered, 'Nothing is impossible to the eye of a friend.'
+
+"No, I assure you, I'm not saying it just to flatter you; you have a
+true friend in her, such as one doesn't often find. I can tell you,
+besides, in case you don't know it, that you're the only one. Mme.
+Verdurin told me as much herself on our last day with them (one talks
+more freely, don't you know, before a parting), 'I don't say that Odette
+isn't fond of us, but anything that we may say to her counts for very
+little beside what Swann might say.' Oh, mercy, there's the conductor
+stopping for me; here have I been chatting away to you, and would have
+gone right past the Rue Bonaparte, and never noticed... Will you be so
+very kind as to tell me whether my plume is straight?"
+
+And Mme. Cottard withdrew from her muff, to offer it to Swann, a
+white-gloved hand from which there floated, with a transfer-ticket, an
+atmosphere of fashionable life that pervaded the omnibus, blended with
+the harsher fragrance of newly cleaned kid. And Swann felt himself
+overflowing with gratitude to her, as well as to Mme. Verdurin (and
+almost to Odette, for the feeling that he now entertained for her was
+no longer tinged with pain, was scarcely even to be described, now,
+as love), while from the platform of the omnibus he followed her with
+loving eyes, as she gallantly threaded her way along the Rue Bonaparte,
+her plume erect, her skirt held up in one hand, while in the other she
+clasped her umbrella and her card-case, so that its monogram could be
+seen, her muff dancing in the air before her as she went.
+
+To compete with and so to stimulate the moribund feelings that Swann had
+for Odette, Mme. Cottard, a wiser physician, in this case, than ever
+her husband would have been, had grafted among them others more normal,
+feelings of gratitude, of friendship, which in Swann's mind were to make
+Odette seem again more human (more like other women, since other women
+could inspire the same feelings in him), were to hasten her final
+transformation back into that Odette, loved with an undisturbed
+affection, who had taken him home one evening after a revel at the
+painter's, to drink orangeade with Forcheville, that Odette with whom
+Swann had calculated that he might live in happiness.
+
+In former times, having often thought with terror that a day must come
+when he would cease to be in love with Odette, he had determined to
+keep a sharp look-out, and as soon as he felt that love was beginning to
+escape him, to cling tightly to it and to hold it back. But now, to the
+faintness of his love there corresponded a simultaneous faintness in
+his desire to remain her lover. For a man cannot change, that is to say
+become another person, while he continues to obey the dictates of the
+self which he has ceased to be. Occasionally the name, if it caught
+his eye in a newspaper, of one of the men whom he supposed to have been
+Odette's lovers, reawakened his jealousy. But it was very slight, and,
+inasmuch as it proved to him that he had not completely emerged from
+that period in which he had so keenly suffered--though in it he had also
+known a way of feeling so intensely happy--and that the accidents of his
+course might still enable him to catch an occasional glimpse, stealthily
+and at a distance, of its beauties, this jealousy gave him, if anything,
+an agreeable thrill, as to the sad Parisian, when he has left Venice
+behind him and must return to France, a last mosquito proves that
+Italy and summer are still not too remote. But, as a rule, with this
+particular period of his life from which he was emerging, when he made
+an effort, if not to remain in it, at least to obtain, while still he
+might, an uninterrupted view of it, he discovered that already it was
+too late; he would have looked back to distinguish, as it might be
+a landscape that was about to disappear, that love from which he had
+departed, but it is so difficult to enter into a state of complete
+duality and to present to oneself the lifelike spectacle of a feeling
+which one has ceased to possess, that very soon, the clouds gathering
+in his brain, he could see nothing, he would abandon the attempt, would
+take the glasses from his nose and wipe them; and he told himself that
+he would do better to rest for a little, that there would be time enough
+later on, and settled back into his corner with as little curiosity,
+with as much torpor as the drowsy traveller who pulls his cap down over
+his eyes so as to get some sleep in the railway-carriage that is drawing
+him, he feels, faster and faster, out of the country in which he has
+lived for so long, and which he vowed that he would not allow to slip
+away from him without looking out to bid it a last farewell. Indeed,
+like the same traveller, if he does not awake until he has crossed the
+frontier and is again in France, when Swann happened to alight, close
+at hand, upon something which proved that Forcheville had been Odette's
+lover, he discovered that it caused him no pain, that love was now
+utterly remote, and he regretted that he had had no warning of the
+moment in which he had emerged from it for ever. And just as, before
+kissing Odette for the first time, he had sought to imprint upon his
+memory the face that for so long had been familiar, before it was
+altered by the additional memory of their kiss, so he could have
+wished--in thought at least--to have been in a position to bid farewell,
+while she still existed, to that Odette who had inspired love in him and
+jealousy, to that Odette who had caused him so to suffer, and whom now
+he would never see again. He was mistaken. He was destined to see
+her once again, a few weeks later. It was while he was asleep, in the
+twilight of a dream. He was walking with Mme. Verdurin, Dr. Cottard,
+a young man in a fez whom he failed to identify, the painter, Odette,
+Napoleon III and my grandfather, along a path which followed the line
+of the coast, and overhung the sea, now at a great height, now by a few
+feet only, so that they were continually going up and down; those of the
+party who had reached the downward slope were no longer visible to those
+who were still climbing; what little daylight yet remained was failing,
+and it seemed as though a black night was immediately to fall on them.
+Now and then the waves dashed against the cliff, and Swann could feel on
+his cheek a shower of freezing spray. Odette told him to wipe this off,
+but he could not, and felt confused and helpless in her company, as well
+as because he was in his nightshirt. He hoped that, in the darkness,
+this might pass unnoticed; Mme. Verdurin, however, fixed her astonished
+gaze upon him for an endless moment, in which he saw her face change
+its shape, her nose grow longer, while beneath it there sprouted a heavy
+moustache. He turned away to examine Odette; her cheeks were pale, with
+little fiery spots, her features drawn and ringed with shadows; but she
+looked back at him with eyes welling with affection, ready to detach
+themselves like tears and to fall upon his face, and he felt that he
+loved her so much that he would have liked to carry her off with him
+at once. Suddenly Odette turned her wrist, glanced at a tiny watch,
+and said: "I must go." She took leave of everyone, in the same formal
+manner, without taking Swann aside, without telling him where they were
+to meet that evening, or next day. He dared not ask, he would have liked
+to follow her, he was obliged, without turning back in her direction,
+to answer with a smile some question by Mme. Verdurin; but his heart was
+frantically beating, he felt that he now hated Odette, he would gladly
+have crushed those eyes which, a moment ago, he had loved so dearly,
+have torn the blood into those lifeless cheeks. He continued to climb
+with Mme. Verdurin, that is to say that each step took him farther from
+Odette, who was going downhill, and in the other direction. A second
+passed and it was many hours since she had left him. The painter
+remarked to Swann that Napoleon III had eclipsed himself immediately
+after Odette. "They had obviously arranged it between them," he added;
+"they must have agreed to meet at the foot of the cliff, but they
+wouldn't say good-bye together; it might have looked odd. She is his
+mistress." The strange young man burst into tears. Swann endeavoured to
+console him. "After all, she is quite right," he said to the young man,
+drying his eyes for him and taking off the fez to make him feel more
+at ease. "I've advised her to do that, myself, a dozen times. Why be
+so distressed? He was obviously the man to understand her." So Swann
+reasoned with himself, for the young man whom he had failed, at
+first, to identify, was himself also; like certain novelists, he had
+distributed his own personality between two characters, him who was the
+'first person' in the dream, and another whom he saw before him, capped
+with a fez.
+
+As for Napoleon III, it was to Forcheville that some vague association
+of ideas, then a certain modification of the Baron's usual physiognomy,
+and lastly the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honour across his breast,
+had made Swann give that name; but actually, and in everything that the
+person who appeared in his dream represented and recalled to him, it was
+indeed Forcheville. For, from an incomplete and changing set of images,
+Swann in his sleep drew false deductions, enjoying, at the same time,
+such creative power that he was able to reproduce himself by a simple
+act of division, like certain lower organisms; with the warmth that he
+felt in his own palm he modelled the hollow of a strange hand which he
+thought that he was clasping, and out of feelings and impressions of
+which he was not yet conscious, he brought about sudden vicissitudes
+which, by a chain of logical sequences, would produce, at definite
+points in his dream, the person required to receive his love or to
+startle him awake. In an instant night grew black about him; an alarum
+rang, the inhabitants ran past him, escaping from their blazing houses;
+he could hear the thunder of the surging waves, and also of his own
+heart, which, with equal violence, was anxiously beating in his breast.
+Suddenly the speed of these palpitations redoubled, he felt a pain, a
+nausea that were inexplicable; a peasant, dreadfully burned, flung at
+him as he passed: "Come and ask Charlus where Odette spent the night
+with her friend. He used to go about with her, and she tells him
+everything. It was they that started the fire." It was his valet, come
+to awaken him, and saying:--
+
+"Sir, it is eight o'clock, and the barber is here. I have told him to
+call again in an hour."
+
+But these words, as they dived down through the waves of sleep in which
+Swann was submerged, did not reach his consciousness without undergoing
+that refraction which turns a ray of light, at the bottom of a bowl of
+water, into another sun; just as, a moment earlier, the sound of
+the door-bell, swelling in the depths of his abyss of sleep into the
+clangour of an alarum, had engendered the episode of the fire. Meanwhile
+the scenery of his dream-stage scattered in dust, he opened his eyes,
+heard for the last time the boom of a wave in the sea, grown very
+distant. He touched his cheek. It was dry. And yet he could feel the
+sting of the cold spray, and the taste of salt on his lips. He rose,
+and dressed himself. He had made the barber come early because he had
+written, the day before, to my grandfather, to say that he was going,
+that afternoon, to Combray, having learned that Mme. de Cambremer--Mlle.
+Legrandin that had been--was spending a few days there. The association
+in his memory of her young and charming face with a place in the country
+which he had not visited for so long, offered him a combined attraction
+which had made him decide at last to leave Paris for a while. As the
+different changes and chances that bring us into the company of certain
+other people in this life do not coincide with the periods in which we
+are in love with those people, but, overlapping them, may occur before
+love has begun, and may be repeated after love is ended, the earliest
+appearances, in our life, of a creature who is destined to afford us
+pleasure later on, assume retrospectively in our eyes a certain value as
+an indication, a warning, a presage. It was in this fashion that Swann
+had often carried back his mind to the image of Odette, encountered in
+the theatre, on that first evening when he had no thought of ever
+seeing her again--and that he now recalled the party at Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte's, at which he had introduced General de Froberville to
+Mme. de Cambremer. So manifold are our interests in life that it is
+not uncommon that, on a single occasion, the foundations of a happiness
+which does not yet exist are laid down simultaneously with aggravations
+of a grief from which we are still suffering. And, no doubt, that might
+have occurred to Swann elsewhere than at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's. Who,
+indeed, can say whether, in the event of his having gone, that evening,
+somewhere else, other happinesses, other griefs would not have come to
+him, which, later, would have appeared to have been inevitable? But what
+did seem to him to have been inevitable was what had indeed taken place,
+and he was not far short of seeing something providential in the fact
+that he had at last decided to go to Mme. de Saint-Euverte's that
+evening, because his mind, anxious to admire the richness of invention
+that life shews, and incapable of facing a difficult problem for any
+length of time, such as to discover what, actually, had been most to be
+wished for, came to the conclusion that the sufferings through which he
+had passed that evening, and the pleasures, at that time unsuspected,
+which were already being brought to birth,--the exact balance between
+which was too difficult to establish--were linked by a sort of
+concatenation of necessity.
+
+But while, an hour after his awakening, he was giving instructions
+to the barber, so that his stiffly brushed hair should not become
+disarranged on the journey, he thought once again of his dream; he
+saw once again, as he had felt them close beside him, Odette's pallid
+complexion, her too thin cheeks, her drawn features, her tired eyes, all
+the things which--in the course of those successive bursts of affection
+which had made of his enduring love for Odette a long oblivion of the
+first impression that he had formed of her--he had ceased to observe
+after the first few days of their intimacy, days to which, doubtless,
+while he slept, his memory had returned to seek the exact sensation of
+those things. And with that old, intermittent fatuity, which reappeared
+in him now that he was no longer unhappy, and lowered, at the same time,
+the average level of his morality, he cried out in his heart: "To think
+that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that
+the greatest love that I have ever known has been for a woman who did
+not please me, who was not in my style!"
+
+
+
+
+PLACE-NAMES: THE NAME
+
+
+Among the rooms which used most commonly to take shape in my mind during
+my long nights of sleeplessness, there was none that differed more
+utterly from the rooms at Combray, thickly powdered with the motes of an
+atmosphere granular, pollenous, edible and instinct with piety, than
+my room in the Grand Hôtel de la Plage, at Balbec, the walls of which,
+washed with ripolin, contained, like the polished sides of a basin in
+which the water glows with a blue, lurking fire, a finer air, pure,
+azure-tinted, saline. The Bavarian upholsterer who had been entrusted
+with the furnishing of this hotel had varied his scheme of decoration
+in different rooms, and in that which I found myself occupying had set
+against the walls, on three sides of it, a series of low book-cases
+with glass fronts, in which, according to where they stood, by a law
+of nature which he had, perhaps, forgotten to take into account, was
+reflected this or that section of the ever-changing view of the sea, so
+that the walls were lined with a frieze of seascapes, interrupted only
+by the polished mahogany of the actual shelves. And so effective was
+this that the whole room had the appearance of one of those model
+bedrooms which you see nowadays in Housing Exhibitions, decorated with
+works of art which are calculated by their designer to refresh the eyes
+of whoever may ultimately have to sleep in the rooms, the subjects being
+kept in some degree of harmony with the locality and surroundings of the
+houses for which the rooms are planned.
+
+And yet nothing could have differed more utterly, either, from the real
+Balbec than that other Balbec of which I had often dreamed, on stormy
+days, when the wind was so strong that Françoise, as she took me to
+the Champs-Elysées, would warn me not to walk too near the side of the
+street, or I might have my head knocked off by a falling slate, and
+would recount to me, with many lamentations, the terrible disasters and
+shipwrecks that were reported in the newspaper. I longed for nothing
+more than to behold a storm at sea, less as a mighty spectacle than as
+a momentary revelation of the true life of nature; or rather there
+were for me no mighty spectacles save those which I knew to be
+not artificially composed for my entertainment, but necessary and
+unalterable,--the beauty of landscapes or of great works of art. I was
+not curious, I did not thirst to know anything save what I believed
+to be more genuine than myself, what had for me the supreme merit of
+shewing me a fragment of the mind of a great genius, or of the force
+or the grace of nature as she appeared when left entirely to herself,
+without human interference. Just as the lovely sound of her voice,
+reproduced, all by itself, upon the phonograph, could never console a
+man for the loss of his mother, so a mechanical imitation of a storm
+would have left me as cold as did the illuminated fountains at the
+Exhibition. I required also, if the storm was to be absolutely genuine,
+that the shore from which I watched it should be a natural shore, not an
+embankment recently constructed by a municipality. Besides, nature, by
+all the feelings that she aroused in me, seemed to me the most opposite
+thing in the world to the mechanical inventions of mankind. The less she
+bore their imprint, the more room she offered for the expansion of my
+heart. And, as it happened, I had preserved the name of Balbec, which
+Legrandin had cited to us, as that of a sea-side place in the very midst
+of "that funereal coast, famed for the number of its wrecks, swathed,
+for six months in the year, in a shroud of fog and flying foam from the
+waves.
+
+"You feel, there, below your feet still," he had told me, "far more even
+than at Finistère (and even though hotels are now being superimposed
+upon it, without power, however, to modify that oldest bone in the
+earth's skeleton) you feel there that you are actually at the land's
+end of France, of Europe, of the Old World. And it is the ultimate
+encampment of the fishermen, precisely like the fishermen who have
+lived since the world's beginning, facing the everlasting kingdom of
+the sea-fogs and shadows of the night." One day when, at Combray, I had
+spoken of this coast, this Balbec, before M. Swann, hoping to learn from
+him whether it was the best point to select for seeing the most violent
+storms, he had replied: "I should think I did know Balbec! The church
+at Balbec, built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and still
+half romanesque, is perhaps the most curious example to be found of our
+Norman gothic, and so exceptional that one is tempted to describe it
+as Persian in its inspiration." And that region, which, until then, had
+seemed to me to be nothing else than a part of immemorial nature, that
+had remained contemporaneous with the great phenomena of geology--and as
+remote from human history as the Ocean itself, or the Great Bear, with
+its wild race of fishermen for whom, no more than for their whales,
+had there been any Middle Ages--it had been a great joy to me to see
+it suddenly take its place in the order of the centuries, with a stored
+consciousness of the romanesque epoch, and to know that the gothic
+trefoil had come to diversify those wild rocks also, at the appointed
+hour, like those frail but hardy plants which, in the Polar regions,
+when the spring returns, scatter their stars about the eternal snows.
+And if gothic art brought to those places and people a classification
+which, otherwise, they lacked, they too conferred one upon it in return.
+I tried to form a picture in my mind of how those fishermen had lived,
+the timid and unsuspected essay towards social intercourse which they
+had attempted there, clustered upon a promontory of the shores of Hell,
+at the foot of the cliffs of death; and gothic art seemed to me a more
+living thing now that, detaching it from the towns in which, until then,
+I had always imagined it, I could see how, in a particular instance,
+upon a reef of savage rocks, it had taken root and grown until it
+flowered in a tapering spire. I was taken to see reproductions of the
+most famous of the statues at Balbec,--shaggy, blunt-faced Apostles,
+the Virgin from the porch,--and I could scarcely breathe for joy at the
+thought that I might myself, one day, see them take a solid form against
+their eternal background of salt fog. Thereafter, on dear, tempestuous
+February nights, the wind--breathing into my heart, which it shook no
+less violently than the chimney of my bedroom, the project of a visit to
+Balbec--blended in me the desire for gothic architecture with that for a
+storm upon the sea.
+
+I should have liked to take, the very next day, the good, the generous
+train at one twenty-two, of which never without a palpitating heart
+could I read, in the railway company's bills or in advertisements of
+circular tours, the hour of departure: it seemed to me to cut, at
+a precise point in every afternoon, a most fascinating groove, a
+mysterious mark, from which the diverted hours still led one on, of
+course, towards evening, towards to-morrow morning, but to an evening
+and morning which one would behold, not in Paris but in one of those
+towns through which the train passed and among which it allowed one
+to choose; for it stopped at Bayeux, at Coutances, at Vitré, at
+Questambert, at Pontorson, at Balbec, at Lannion, at Lamballe, at
+Benodet, at Pont-Aven, at Quimperle, and progressed magnificently
+surcharged with names which it offered me, so that, among them all, I
+did not know which to choose, so impossible was it to sacrifice any.
+But even without waiting for the train next day, I could, by rising and
+dressing myself with all speed, leave Paris that very evening, should
+my parents permit, and arrive at Balbec as dawn spread westward over the
+raging sea, from whose driven foam I would seek shelter in that church
+in the Persian manner. But at the approach of the Easter holidays, when
+my parents had promised to let me spend them, for once, in the North
+of Italy, lo! in place of those dreams of tempests, by which I had been
+entirely possessed, not wishing to see anything but waves dashing in
+from all sides, mounting always higher, upon the wildest of coasts,
+beside churches as rugged and precipitous as cliffs, in whose towers
+the sea-birds would be wailing; suddenly, effacing them, taking away
+all their charm, excluding them because they were its opposite and could
+only have weakened its effect, was substituted in me the converse dream
+of the most variegated of springs, not the spring of Combray, still
+pricking with all the needle-points of the winter's frost, but that
+which already covered with lilies and anemones the meadows of Fiesole,
+and gave Florence a dazzling golden background, like those in Fra
+Angelico's pictures. From that moment, only sunlight, perfumes, colours,
+seemed to me to have any value; for this alternation of images had
+effected a change of front in my desire, and--as abrupt as those that
+occur sometimes in music,--a complete change of tone in my sensibility.
+Thus it came about that a mere atmospheric variation would be sufficient
+to provoke in me that modulation, without there being any need for me to
+await the return of a season. For often we find a day, in one, that has
+strayed from another season, and makes us live in that other, summons at
+once into our presence and makes us long for its peculiar pleasures, and
+interrupts the dreams that we were in process of weaving, by inserting,
+out of its turn, too early or too late, this leaf, torn from another
+chapter, in the interpolated calendar of Happiness. But soon it happened
+that, like those natural phenomena from which our comfort or our health
+can derive but an accidental and all too modest benefit, until the day
+when science takes control of them, and, producing them at will, places
+in our hands the power to order their appearance, withdrawn from
+the tutelage and independent of the consent of chance; similarly the
+production of these dreams of the Atlantic and of Italy ceased to depend
+entirely upon the changes of the seasons and of the weather. I need
+only, to make them reappear, pronounce the names: Balbec, Venice,
+Florence, within whose syllables had gradually accumulated all the
+longing inspired in me by the places for which they stood. Even in
+spring, to come in a book upon the name of Balbec sufficed to awaken
+in me the desire for storms at sea and for the Norman gothic; even on a
+stormy day the name of Florence or of Venice would awaken the desire for
+sunshine, for lilies, for the Palace of the Doges and for Santa Maria
+del Fiore.
+
+But if their names thus permanently absorbed the image that I had formed
+of these towns, it was only by transforming that image, by subordinating
+its reappearance in me to their own special laws; and in consequence of
+this they made it more beautiful, but at the same time more different
+from anything that the towns of Normandy or Tuscany could in reality be,
+and, by increasing the arbitrary delights of my imagination, aggravated
+the disenchantment that was in store for me when I set out upon my
+travels. They magnified the idea that I formed of certain points on the
+earth's surface, making them more special, and in consequence more
+real. I did not then represent to myself towns, landscapes, historic
+buildings, as pictures more or less attractive, cut out here and there
+of a substance that was common to them all, but looked on each of them
+as on an unknown thing, different from all the rest, a thing for which
+my soul was athirst, by the knowledge of which it would benefit. How
+much more individual still was the character that they assumed from
+being designated by names, names that were only for themselves, proper
+names such as people have. Words present to us little pictures of
+things, lucid and normal, like the pictures that are hung on the walls
+of schoolrooms to give children an illustration of what is meant by
+a carpenter's bench, a bird, an ant-hill; things chosen as typical of
+everything else of the same sort. But names present to us--of persons
+and of towns which they accustom us to regard as individual, as unique,
+like persons--a confused picture, which draws from the names, from
+the brightness or darkness of their sound, the colour in which it is
+uniformly painted, like one of those posters, entirely blue or entirely
+red, in which, on account of the limitations imposed by the process used
+in their reproduction, or by a whim on the designer's part, are blue or
+red not only the sky and the sea, but the ships and the church and the
+people in the streets. The name of Parma, one of the towns that I most
+longed to visit, after reading the _Chartreuse_, seeming to me compact
+and glossy, violet-tinted, soft, if anyone were to speak of such or
+such a house in Parma, in which I should be lodged, he would give me the
+pleasure of thinking that I was to inhabit a dwelling that was compact
+and glossy, violet-tinted, soft, and that bore no relation to the houses
+in any other town in Italy, since I could imagine it only by the aid
+of that heavy syllable of the name of Parma, in which no breath of air
+stirred, and of all that I had made it assume of Stendhalian sweetness
+and the reflected hue of violets. And when I thought of Florence, it was
+of a town miraculously embalmed, and flower-like, since it was called
+the City of the Lilies, and its Cathedral, Our Lady of the Flower. As
+for Balbec, it was one of those names in which, as on an old piece of
+Norman pottery that still keeps the colour of the earth from which
+it was fashioned, one sees depicted still the representation of some
+long-abolished custom, of some feudal right, of the former condition of
+some place, of an obsolete way of pronouncing the language, which had
+shaped and wedded its incongruous syllables and which I never doubted
+that I should find spoken there at once, even by the inn-keeper who
+would pour me out coffee and milk on my arrival, taking me down to watch
+the turbulent sea, unchained, before the church; to whom I lent the
+aspect, disputatious, solemn and mediaeval, of some character in one of
+the old romances.
+
+Had my health definitely improved, had my parents allowed me, if not
+actually to go down to stay at Balbec, at least to take, just once, so
+as to become acquainted with the architecture and landscapes of Normandy
+or of Brittany, that one twenty-two train into which I had so often
+clambered in imagination, I should have preferred to stop, and to alight
+from it, at the most beautiful of its towns; but in vain might I
+compare and contrast them; how was one to choose, any more than between
+individual people, who are not interchangeable, between Bayeux, so lofty
+in its noble coronet of rusty lace, whose highest point caught the light
+of the old gold of its second syllable; Vitré, whose acute accent barred
+its ancient glass with wooden lozenges; gentle Lamballe, whose whiteness
+ranged from egg-shell yellow to a pearly grey; Coutances, a Norman
+Cathedral, which its final consonants, rich and yellowing, crowned with
+a tower of butter; Lannion with the rumble and buzz, in the silence of
+its village street, of the fly on the wheel of the coach; Questambert,
+Pontorson, ridiculously silly and simple, white feathers and yellow
+beaks strewn along the road to those well-watered and poetic spots;
+Benodet, a name scarcely moored that seemed to be striving to draw the
+river down into the tangle of its seaweeds; Pont-Aven, the snowy, rosy
+flight of the wing of a lightly poised coif, tremulously reflected in
+the greenish waters of a canal; Quimperlé, more firmly attached, this,
+and since the Middle Ages, among the rivulets with which it babbled,
+threading their pearls upon a grey background, like the pattern made,
+through the cobwebs upon a window, by rays of sunlight changed into
+blunt points of tarnished silver?
+
+These images were false for another reason also; namely, that they
+were necessarily much simplified; doubtless the object to which my
+imagination aspired, which my senses took in but incompletely and
+without any immediate pleasure, I had committed to the safe custody
+of names; doubtless because I had accumulated there a store of dreams,
+those names now magnetised my desires; but names themselves are not very
+comprehensive; the most that I could do was to include in each of them
+two or three of the principal curiosities of the town, which would
+lie there side by side, without interval or partition; in the name of
+Balbec, as in the magnifying glasses set in those penholders which
+one buys at sea-side places, I could distinguish waves surging round
+a church built in the Persian manner. Perhaps, indeed, the enforced
+simplicity of these images was one of the reasons for the hold that they
+had over me. When my father had decided, one year, that we should go
+for the Easter holidays to Florence and Venice, not finding room
+to introduce into the name of Florence the elements that ordinarily
+constitute a town, I was obliged to let a supernatural city emerge from
+the impregnation by certain vernal scenes of what I supposed to be,
+in its essentials, the genius of Giotto. All the more--and because one
+cannot make a name extend much further in time than in space--like some
+of Giotto's paintings themselves which shew us at two separate moments
+the same person engaged in different actions, here lying on his bed,
+there just about to mount his horse, the name of Florence was divided
+into two compartments. In one, beneath an architectural dais, I gazed
+upon a fresco over which was partly drawn a curtain of morning sunlight,
+dusty, aslant, and gradually spreading; in the other (for, since
+I thought of names not as an inaccessible ideal but as a real and
+enveloping substance into which I was about to plunge, the life not yet
+lived, the life intact and pure which I enclosed in them, gave to the
+most material pleasures, to the simplest scenes, the same attraction
+that they have in the works of the Primitives), I moved swiftly--so as
+to arrive, as soon as might be, at the table that was spread for me,
+with fruit and a flask of Chianti--across a Ponte Vecchio heaped with
+jonquils, narcissi and anemones. That (for all that I was still in
+Paris) was what I saw, and not what was actually round about me. Even
+from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries for
+which we long occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our
+true life than the country in which we may happen to be. Doubtless, if,
+at that time, I had paid more attention to what was in my mind when I
+pronounced the words "going to Florence, to Parma, to Pisa, to Venice,"
+I should have realised that what I saw was in no sense a town, but
+something as different from anything that I knew, something as delicious
+as might be for a human race whose whole existence had passed in a
+series of late winter afternoons, that inconceivable marvel, a morning
+in spring. These images, unreal, fixed, always alike, filling all my
+nights and days, differentiated this period in my life from those which
+had gone before it (and might easily have been confused with it by
+an observer who saw things only from without, that is to say, who saw
+nothing), as in an opera a fresh melody introduces a novel atmosphere
+which one could never have suspected if one had done no more than
+read the libretto, still less if one had remained outside the theatre,
+counting only the minutes as they passed. And besides, even from the
+point of view of mere quantity, in our life the days are not all equal.
+To reach the end of a day, natures that are slightly nervous, as
+mine was, make use, like motor-cars, of different 'speeds.' There are
+mountainous, uncomfortable days, up which one takes an infinite time to
+pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can go at full tilt,
+singing as one goes. During this month--in which I went laboriously
+over, as over a tune, though never to my satisfaction, these visions of
+Florence, Venice, Pisa, from which the desire that they excited in me
+drew and kept something as profoundly personal as if it had been
+love, love for another person--I never ceased to believe that they
+corresponded to a reality independent of myself, and they made me
+conscious of as glorious a hope as could have been cherished by a
+Christian in the primitive age of faith, on the eve of his entry into
+Paradise. Moreover, without my paying any heed to the contradiction that
+there was in my wishing to look at and to touch with my organs of sense
+what had been elaborated by the spell of my dreams and not perceived by
+my senses at all--though all the more tempting to them, in consequence,
+more different from anything that they knew--it was that which recalled
+to me the reality of these visions, which inflamed my desire all the
+more by seeming to hint a promise that my desire should be satisfied.
+And for all that the motive force of my exaltation was a longing for
+aesthetic enjoyments, the guide-books ministered even more to it than
+books on aesthetics, and, more again than the guide-books, the railway
+time-tables. What moved me was the thought that this Florence which I
+could see, so near and yet inaccessible, in my imagination, if the tract
+which separated it from me, in myself, was not one that I might cross,
+could yet be reached by a circuit, by a digression, were I to take
+the plain, terrestrial path. When I repeated to myself, giving thus a
+special value to what I was going to see, that Venice was the "School of
+Giorgione, the home of Titian, the most complete museum of the domestic
+architecture of the Middle Ages," I felt happy indeed. As I was even
+more when, on one of my walks, as I stepped out briskly on account
+of the weather, which, after several days of a precocious spring, had
+relapsed into winter (like the weather that we had invariably found
+awaiting us at Combray, in Holy Week),--seeing upon the boulevards that
+the chestnut-trees, though plunged in a glacial atmosphere that soaked
+through them like a stream of water, were none the less beginning,
+punctual guests, arrayed already for the party, and admitting no
+discouragement, to shape and chisel and curve in its frozen lumps the
+irrepressible verdure whose steady growth the abortive power of the
+cold might hinder but could not succeed in restraining--I reflected that
+already the Ponte Vecchio was heaped high with an abundance of hyacinths
+and anemones, and that the spring sunshine was already tinging the waves
+of the Grand Canal with so dusky an azure, with emeralds so splendid
+that when they washed and were broken against the foot of one of
+Titian's paintings they could vie with it in the richness of their
+colouring. I could no longer contain my joy when my father, in the
+intervals of tapping the barometer and complaining of the cold, began
+to look out which were the best trains, and when I understood that by
+making one's way, after luncheon, into the coal-grimed laboratory, the
+wizard's cell that undertook to contrive a complete transmutation of its
+surroundings, one could awaken, next morning, in the city of marble
+and gold, in which "the building of the wall was of jasper and the
+foundation of the wall an emerald." So that it and the City of the
+Lilies were not just artificial scenes which I could set up at my
+pleasure in front of my imagination, but did actually exist at a certain
+distance from Paris which must inevitably be traversed if I wished to
+see them, at their appointed place on the earth's surface, and at no
+other; in a word they were entirely real. They became even more real
+to me when my father, by saying: "Well, you can stay in Venice from the
+20th to the 29th, and reach Florence on Easter morning," made them both
+emerge, no longer only from the abstraction of Space, but from that
+imaginary Time in which we place not one, merely, but several of
+our travels at once, which do not greatly tax us since they are but
+possibilities,--that Time which reconstructs itself so effectively that
+one can spend it again in one town after one has already spent it in
+another--and consecrated to them some of those actual, calendar days
+which are certificates of the genuineness of what one does on them, for
+those unique days are consumed by being used, they do not return, one
+cannot live them again here when one has lived them elsewhere; I felt
+that it was towards the week that would begin with the Monday on which
+the laundress was to bring back the white waistcoat that I had stained
+with ink, that they were hastening to busy themselves with the duty
+of emerging from that ideal Time in which they did not, as yet, exist,
+those two Queen Cities of which I was soon to be able, by the most
+absorbing kind of geometry, to inscribe the domes and towers on a
+page of my own life. But I was still on the way, only, to the supreme
+pinnacle of happiness; I reached it finally (for not until then did the
+revelation burst upon me that on the clattering streets, reddened by the
+light reflected from Giorgione's frescoes, it was not, as I had, despite
+so many promptings, continued to imagine, the men "majestic and terrible
+as the sea, bearing armour that gleamed with bronze beneath the folds
+of their blood-red cloaks," who would be walking in Venice next week, on
+the Easter vigil; but that I myself might be the minute personage whom,
+in an enlarged photograph of St. Mark's that had been lent to me, the
+operator had portrayed, in a bowler hat, in front of the portico), when
+I heard my father say: "It must be pretty cold, still, on the Grand
+Canal; whatever you do, don't forget to pack your winter greatcoat and
+your thick suit." At these words I was raised to a sort of ecstasy;
+a thing that I had until then deemed impossible, I felt myself to be
+penetrating indeed between those "rocks of amethyst, like a reef in the
+Indian Ocean"; by a supreme muscular effort, a long way in excess of my
+real strength, stripping myself, as of a shell that served no purpose,
+of the air in my own room which surrounded me, I replaced it by an equal
+quantity of Venetian air, that marine atmosphere, indescribable and
+peculiar as the atmosphere of the dreams which my imagination had
+secreted in the name of Venice; I could feel at work within me a
+miraculous disincarnation; it was at once accompanied by that vague
+desire to vomit which one feels when one has a very sore throat; and
+they had to put me to bed with a fever so persistent that the doctor
+not only assured my parents that a visit, that spring, to Florence and
+Venice was absolutely out of the question, but warned them that, even
+when I should have completely recovered, I must, for at least a year,
+give up all idea of travelling, and be kept from anything that was
+liable to excite me.
+
+And, alas, he forbade also, most categorically, my being allowed to go
+to the theatre, to hear Berma; the sublime artist, whose genius Bergotte
+had proclaimed, might, by introducing me to something else that was,
+perhaps, as important and as beautiful, have consoled me for not having
+been to Florence and Venice, for not going to Balbec. My parents had
+to be content with sending me, every day, to the Champs-Elysées, in
+the custody of a person who would see that I did not tire myself; this
+person was none other than Françoise, who had entered our service
+after the death of my aunt Léonie. Going to the Champs-Elysées I found
+unendurable. If only Bergotte had described the place in one of his
+books, I should, no doubt, have longed to see and to know it, like so
+many things else of which a simulacrum had first found its way into
+my imagination. That kept things warm, made them live, gave them
+personality, and I sought then to find their counterpart in reality,
+but in this public garden there was nothing that attached itself to my
+dreams.
+
+* * *
+
+One day, as I was weary of our usual place, beside the wooden horses,
+Françoise had taken me for an excursion--across the frontier guarded at
+regular intervals by the little bastions of the barley-sugar women--into
+those neighbouring but foreign regions, where the faces of the
+passers-by were strange, where the goat-carriage went past; then she had
+gone away to lay down her things on a chair that stood with its back to
+a shrubbery of laurels; while I waited for her I was pacing the broad
+lawn, of meagre close-cropped grass already faded by the sun, dominated,
+at its far end, by a statue rising from a fountain, in front of which a
+little girl with reddish hair was playing with a shuttlecock; when, from
+the path, another little girl, who was putting on her cloak and covering
+up her battledore, called out sharply: "Good-bye, Gilberte, I'm going
+home now; don't forget, we're coming to you this evening, after dinner."
+The name Gilberte passed close by me, evoking all the more forcibly her
+whom it labelled in that it did not merely refer to her, as one speaks
+of a man in his absence, but was directly addressed to her; it passed
+thus close by me, in action, so to speak, with a force that
+increased with the curve of its trajectory and as it drew near to
+its target;--carrying in its wake, I could feel, the knowledge, the
+impression of her to whom it was addressed that belonged not to me but
+to the friend who called to her, everything that, while she uttered the
+words, she more or less vividly reviewed, possessed in her memory, of
+their daily intimacy, of the visits that they paid to each other, of
+that unknown existence which was all the more inaccessible, all the more
+painful to me from being, conversely, so familiar, so tractable to this
+happy girl who let her message brush past me without my being able to
+penetrate its surface, who flung it on the air with a light-hearted cry:
+letting float in the atmosphere the delicious attar which that message
+had distilled, by touching them with precision, from certain invisible
+points in Mlle. Swann's life, from the evening to come, as it would be,
+after dinner, at her home,--forming, on its celestial passage through
+the midst of the children and their nursemaids, a little cloud,
+exquisitely coloured, like the cloud that, curling over one of Poussin's
+gardens, reflects minutely, like a cloud in the opera, teeming with
+chariots and horses, some apparition of the life of the gods; casting,
+finally, on that ragged grass, at the spot on which she stood (at once a
+scrap of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the fair player,
+who continued to beat up and catch her shuttlecock until a governess,
+with a blue feather in her hat, had called her away) a marvellous little
+band of light, of the colour of heliotrope, spread over the lawn like a
+carpet on which I could not tire of treading to and fro with lingering
+feet, nostalgic and profane, while Françoise shouted: "Come on, button
+up your coat, look, and let's get away!" and I remarked for the first
+time how common her speech was, and that she had, alas, no blue feather
+in her hat.
+
+Only, would _she_ come again to the Champs-Elysées? Next day she was
+not there; but I saw her on the following days; I spent all my time
+revolving round the spot where she was at play with her friends, to such
+effect that once, when, they found, they were not enough to make up a
+prisoner's base, she sent one of them to ask me if I cared to complete
+their side, and from that day I played with her whenever she came.
+But this did not happen every day; there were days when she had
+been prevented from coming by her lessons, by her catechism, by a
+luncheon-party, by the whole of that life, separated from my own, which
+twice only, condensed into the name of Gilberte, I had felt pass so
+painfully close to me, in the hawthorn lane near Combray and on the
+grass of the Champs-Elysées. On such days she would have told us
+beforehand that we should not see her; if it were because of her
+lessons, she would say: "It is too tiresome, I sha'n't be able to come
+to-morrow; you will all be enjoying yourselves here without me," with an
+air of regret which to some extent consoled me; if, on the other hand,
+she had been invited to a party, and I, not knowing this, asked her
+whether she was coming to play with us, she would reply: "Indeed I hope
+not! Indeed I hope Mamma will let me go to my friend's." But on these
+days I did at least know that I should not see her, whereas on others,
+without any warning, her mother would take her for a drive, or some such
+thing, and next day she would say: "Oh, yes! I went out with Mamma,"
+as though it had been the most natural thing in the world, and not the
+greatest possible misfortune for some one else. There were also the days
+of bad weather on which her governess, afraid, on her own account, of
+the rain, would not bring Gilberte to the Champs-Elysées.
+
+And so, if the heavens were doubtful, from early morning I would not
+cease to interrogate them, observing all the omens. If I saw the lady
+opposite, just inside her window, putting on her hat, I would say to
+myself: "That lady is going out; it must, therefore, be weather in which
+one can go out. Why should not Gilberte do the same as that lady?" But
+the day grew dark. My mother said that it might clear again, that one
+burst of sunshine would be enough, but that more probably it would rain;
+and if it rained, of what use would it be to go to the Champs-Elysées?
+And so, from breakfast-time, my anxious eyes never left the uncertain,
+clouded sky. It remained dark. Outside the window, the balcony was grey.
+Suddenly, on its sullen stone, I did not indeed see a less negative
+colour, but I felt as it were an effort towards a less negative colour,
+the pulsation of a hesitating ray that struggled to discharge its light.
+A moment later the balcony was as pale and luminous as a standing water
+at dawn, and a thousand shadows from the iron-work of its balustrade had
+come to rest on it. A breath of wind dispersed them; the stone grew
+dark again, but, like tamed creatures, they returned; they began,
+imperceptibly, to grow lighter, and by one of those continuous
+crescendos, such as, in music, at the end of an overture, carry a single
+note to the extreme fortissimo, making it pass rapidly through all the
+intermediate stages, I saw it attain to that fixed, unalterable gold of
+fine days, on which the sharply cut shadows of the wrought iron of the
+balustrade were outlined in black like a capricious vegetation, with a
+fineness in the delineation of their smallest details which seemed to
+indicate a deliberate application, an artist's satisfaction, and with so
+much relief, so velvety a bloom in the restfulness of their sombre
+and happy mass that in truth those large and leafy shadows which lay
+reflected on that lake of sunshine seemed aware that they were pledges
+of happiness and peace of mind.
+
+Brief, fading ivy, climbing, fugitive flora, the most colourless, the
+most depressing, to many minds, of all that creep on walls or decorate
+windows; to me the dearest of them all, from the day when it appeared
+upon our balcony, like the very shadow of the presence of Gilberte,
+who was perhaps already in the Champs-Elysées, and as soon as I arrived
+there would greet me with: "Let's begin at once. You are on my side."
+Frail, swept away by a breath, but at the same time in harmony, not with
+the season, with the hour; a promise of that immediate pleasure which
+the day will deny or fulfil, and thereby of the one paramount immediate
+pleasure, the pleasure of loving and of being loved; more soft,
+more warm upon the stone than even moss is; alive, a ray of sunshine
+sufficing for its birth, and for the birth of joy, even in the heart of
+winter.
+
+And on those days when all other vegetation had disappeared, when the
+fine jerkins of green leather which covered the trunks of the old trees
+were hidden beneath the snow; after the snow had ceased to fall, but
+when the sky was still too much overcast for me to hope that Gilberte
+would venture out, then suddenly--inspiring my mother to say: "Look,
+it's quite fine now; I think you might perhaps try going to the
+Champs-Elysées after all."--on the mantle of snow that swathed the
+balcony, the sun had appeared and was stitching seams of gold, with
+embroidered patches of dark shadow. That day we found no one there, or
+else a solitary girl, on the point of departure, who assured me that
+Gilberte was not coming. The chairs, deserted by the imposing but
+uninspiring company of governesses, stood empty. Only, near the grass,
+was sitting a lady of uncertain age who came in all weathers, dressed
+always in an identical style, splendid and sombre, to make whose
+acquaintance I would have, at that period, sacrificed, had it lain in my
+power, all the greatest opportunities in my life to come. For Gilberte
+went up every day to speak to her; she used to ask Gilberte for news of
+her "dearest mother" and it struck me that, if I had known her, I should
+have been for Gilberte some one wholly different, some one who knew
+people in her parents' world. While her grandchildren played together at
+a little distance, she would sit and read the Débats, which she called
+"My old _Débats_!" as, with an aristocratic familiarity, she would say,
+speaking of the police-sergeant or the woman who let the chairs, "My
+old friend the police-sergeant," or "The chair-keeper and I, who are old
+friends."
+
+Françoise found it too cold to stand about, so we walked to the Pont
+de la Concorde to see the Seine frozen over, on to which everyone, even
+children, walked fearlessly, as though upon an enormous whale, stranded,
+defenceless, and about to be cut up. We returned to the Champs-Elysées;
+I was growing sick with misery between the motionless wooden horses and
+the white lawn, caught in a net of black paths from which the snow had
+been cleared, while the statue that surmounted it held in its hand a
+long pendent icicle which seemed to explain its gesture. The old lady
+herself, having folded up her _Débats_, asked a passing nursemaid
+the time, thanking her with "How very good of you!" then begged the
+road-sweeper to tell her grandchildren to come, as she felt cold, adding
+"A thousand thanks. I am sorry to give you so much trouble!" Suddenly
+the sky was rent in two: between the punch-and-judy and the horses,
+against the opening horizon, I had just seen, like a miraculous sign,
+Mademoiselle's blue feather. And now Gilberte was running at full speed
+towards me, sparkling and rosy beneath a cap trimmed with fur, enlivened
+by the cold, by being late, by her anxiety for a game; shortly before
+she reached me, she slipped on a piece of ice and, either to regain her
+balance, or because it appeared to her graceful, or else pretending
+that she was on skates, it was with outstretched arms that she smilingly
+advanced, as though to embrace me. "Bravo! bravo! that's splendid;
+'topping,' I should say, like you--'sporting,' I suppose I ought to say,
+only I'm a hundred-and-one, a woman of the old school," exclaimed the
+lady, uttering, on behalf of the voiceless Champs-Elysées, their thanks
+to Gilberte for having come, without letting herself be frightened
+away by the weather. "You are like me, faithful at all costs to our old
+Champs-Elysées; we are two brave souls! You wouldn't believe me, I dare
+say, if I told you that I love them, even like this. This snow (I know,
+you'll laugh at me), it makes me think of ermine!" And the old lady
+began to laugh herself.
+
+The first of these days--to which the snow, a symbol of the powers that
+were able to deprive me of the sight of Gilberte, imparted the sadness
+of a day of separation, almost the aspect of a day of departure, because
+it changed the outward form and almost forbade the use of the customary
+scene of our only encounters, now altered, covered, as it were, in
+dust-sheets--that day, none the less, marked a stage in the progress of
+my love, for it was, in a sense, the first sorrow that she was to share
+with me. There were only our two selves of our little company, and to
+be thus alone with her was not merely like a beginning of intimacy, but
+also on her part--as though she had come there solely to please me, and
+in such weather--it seemed to me as touching as if, on one of those days
+on which she had been invited to a party, she had given it up in order
+to come to me in the Champs-Elysées; I acquired more confidence in the
+vitality, in the future of a friendship which could remain so much alive
+amid the torpor, the solitude, the decay of our surroundings; and while
+she dropped pellets of snow down my neck, I smiled lovingly at what
+seemed to me at once a predilection that she shewed for me in thus
+tolerating me as her travelling companion in this new, this wintry land,
+and a sort of loyalty to me which she preserved through evil times.
+Presently, one after another, like shyly hopping sparrows, her friends
+arrived, black against the snow. We got ready to play and, since this
+day which had begun so sadly was destined to end in joy, as I went up,
+before the game started, to the friend with the sharp voice whom I had
+heard, that first day, calling Gilberte by name, she said to me: "No,
+no, I'm sure you'd much rather be in Gilberte's camp; besides, look,
+she's signalling to you." She was in fact summoning me to cross the
+snowy lawn to her camp, to 'take the field,' which the sun, by casting
+over it a rosy gleam, the metallic lustre of old and worn brocades, had
+turned into a Field of the Cloth of Gold.
+
+This day, which I had begun with so many misgivings, was, as it
+happened, one of the few on which I was not unduly wretched.
+
+For, although I no longer thought, now, of anything save not to let a
+single day pass without seeing Gilberte (so much so that once, when my
+grandmother had not come home by dinner-time, I could not resist the
+instinctive reflection that, if she had been run over in the street
+and killed, I should not for some time be allowed to play in the
+Champs-Elysées; when one is in love one has no love left for anyone),
+yet those moments which I spent in her company, for which I had waited
+with so much impatience all night and morning, for which I had quivered
+with excitement, to which I would have sacrificed everything else in the
+world, were by no means happy moments; well did I know it, for they
+were the only moments in my life on which I concentrated a scrupulous,
+undistracted attention, and yet I could not discover in them one atom
+of pleasure. All the time that I was away from Gilberte, I wanted to see
+her, because, having incessantly sought to form a mental picture of her,
+I was unable, in the end, to do so, and did not know exactly to what my
+love corresponded. Besides, she had never yet told me that she loved me.
+Far from it, she had often boasted that she knew other little boys whom
+she preferred to myself, that I was a good companion, with whom she was
+always willing to play, although I was too absent-minded, not attentive
+enough to the game. Moreover, she had often shewn signs of apparent
+coldness towards me, which might have shaken my faith that I was for her
+a creature different from the rest, had that faith been founded upon a
+love that Gilberte had felt for me, and not, as was the case, upon
+the love that I felt for her, which strengthened its resistance to the
+assaults of doubt by making it depend entirely upon the manner in which
+I was obliged, by an internal compulsion, to think of Gilberte. But my
+feelings with regard to her I had never yet ventured to express to her
+in words. Of course, on every page of my exercise-books, I wrote out,
+in endless repetition, her name and address, but at the sight of those
+vague lines which I might trace, without her having to think, on that
+account, of me, I felt discouraged, because they spoke to me, not of
+Gilberte, who would never so much as see them, but of my own desire,
+which they seemed to shew me in its true colours, as something purely
+personal, unreal, tedious and ineffective. The most important thing
+was that we should see each other, Gilberte and I, and should have an
+opportunity of making a mutual confession of our love which, until then,
+would not officially (so to speak) have begun. Doubtless the various
+reasons which made me so impatient to see her would have appeared less
+urgent to a grown man. As life goes on, we acquire such adroitness in
+the culture of our pleasures, that we content ourselves with that which
+we derive from thinking of a woman, as I was thinking of Gilberte,
+without troubling ourselves to ascertain whether the image corresponds
+to the reality,--and with the pleasure of loving her, without needing to
+be sure, also, that she loves us; or again that we renounce the pleasure
+of confessing our passion for her, so as to preserve and enhance the
+passion that she has for us, like those Japanese gardeners who, to
+obtain one perfect blossom, will sacrifice the rest. But at the period
+when I was in love with Gilberte, I still believed that Love did really
+exist, apart from ourselves; that, allowing us, at the most, to surmount
+the obstacles in our way, it offered us its blessings in an order in
+which we were not free to make the least alteration; it seemed to me
+that if I had, on my own initiative, substituted for the sweetness of
+a confession a pretence of indifference, I should not only have been
+depriving myself of one of the joys of which I had most often dreamed,
+I should have been fabricating, of my own free will, a love that was
+artificial and without value, that bore no relation to the truth, whose
+mysterious and foreordained ways I should thus have been declining to
+follow.
+
+But when I arrived at the Champs-Elysées,--and, as at first sight
+it appeared, was in a position to confront my love, so as to make it
+undergo the necessary modifications, with its living and independent
+cause--as soon as I was in the presence of that Gilberte Swann on the
+sight of whom I had counted to revive the images that my tired memory
+had lost and could not find again, of that Gilberte Swann with whom I
+had been playing the day before, and whom I had just been prompted to
+greet, and then to recognise, by a blind instinct like that which, when
+we are walking, sets one foot before the other, without giving us time
+to think what we are doing, then at once it became as though she and the
+little girl who had inspired my dreams had been two different people.
+If, for instance, I had retained in my memory overnight two fiery eyes
+above plump and rosy cheeks, Gilberte's face would now offer me (and
+with emphasis) something that I distinctly had not remembered, a
+certain sharpening and prolongation of the nose which, instantaneously
+associating itself with certain others of her features, assumed the
+importance of those characteristics which, in natural history, are used
+to define a species, and transformed her into a little girl of the kind
+that have sharpened profiles. While I was making myself ready to take
+advantage of this long expected moment, and to surrender myself to the
+impression of Gilberte which I had prepared beforehand but could no
+longer find in my head, to an extent which would enable me, during the
+long hours which I must spend alone, to be certain that it was indeed
+herself whom I had in mind, that it was indeed my love for her that I
+was gradually making grow, as a book grows when one is writing it, she
+threw me a ball; and, like the idealist philosopher whose body takes
+account of the external world in the reality of which his intellect
+declines to believe, the same self which had made me salute her before I
+had identified her now urged me to catch the ball that she tossed to me
+(as though she had been a companion, with whom I had come to play, and
+not a sister-soul with whom my soul had come to be united), made me,
+out of politeness, until the time came when she had to I go, address
+a thousand polite and trivial remarks to her, and so prevented me both
+from keeping a silence in which I might at last have laid my hand upon
+the indispensable, escaped idea, and from uttering the words which might
+have made that definite progress in the course of our love on which I
+was always obliged to count only for the following afternoon. There was,
+however, an occasional development. One day, we had gone with Gilberte
+to the stall of our own special vendor, who was always particularly
+nice to us, since it was to her that M. Swann used to send for his
+gingerbread, of which, for reasons of health (he suffered from a racial
+eczema, and from the constipation of the prophets), he consumed a great
+quantity,--Gilberte pointed out to me with a laugh two little boys who
+were like the little artist and the little naturalist in the children's
+storybooks. For one of them would not have a red stick of rock because
+he preferred the purple, while the other, with tears in his eyes,
+refused a plum which his nurse was buying for him, because, as he
+finally explained in passionate tones: "I want the other plum; it's got
+a worm in it!" I purchased two ha'penny marbles. With admiring eyes I
+saw, luminous and imprisoned in a bowl by themselves, the agate marbles
+which seemed precious to me because they were as fair and smiling as
+little girls, and because they cost five-pence each. Gilberte, who was
+given a great deal more pocket money than I ever had, asked me which I
+thought the prettiest. They were as transparent, as liquid-seeming as
+life itself. I would not have had her sacrifice a single one of them.
+I should have liked her to be able to buy them, to liberate them all.
+Still, I pointed out one that had the same colour as her eyes. Gilberte
+took it, turned it about until it shone with a ray of gold, fondled it,
+paid its ransom, but at once handed me her captive, saying: "Take it; it
+is for you, I give it to you, keep it to remind yourself of me."
+
+Another time, being still obsessed by the desire to hear Berma in
+classic drama, I had asked her whether she had not a copy of a pamphlet
+in which Bergotte spoke of Racine, and which was now out of print. She
+had told me to let her know the exact title of it, and that evening
+I had sent her a little telegram, writing on its envelope the name,
+Gilberte Swann, which I had so often traced in my exercise-books. Next
+day she brought me in a parcel tied with pink bows and sealed with white
+wax, the pamphlet, a copy of which she had managed to find. "You see, it
+is what you asked me for," she said, taking from her muff the telegram
+that I had sent her. But in the address on the pneumatic message--which,
+only yesterday, was nothing, was merely a 'little blue' that I had
+written, and, after a messenger had delivered it to Gilberte's porter
+and a servant had taken it to her in her room, had become a thing
+without value or distinction, one of the 'little blues' that she had
+received in the course of the day--I had difficulty in recognising
+the futile, straggling lines of my own handwriting beneath the circles
+stamped on it at the post-office, the inscriptions added in pencil by
+a postman, signs of effectual realisation, seals of the external world,
+violet bands symbolical of life itself, which for the first time came to
+espouse, to maintain, to raise, to rejoice my dream.
+
+And there was another day on which she said to me: "You know, you may
+call me 'Gilberte'; in any case, I'm going to call you by your first
+name. It's too silly not to." Yet she continued for a while to address
+me by the more formal '_vous_,' and, when I drew her attention to this,
+smiled, and composing, constructing a phrase like those that are put
+into the grammar-books of foreign languages with no other object than to
+teach us to make use of a new word, ended it with my Christian name. And
+when I recalled, later, what I had felt at the time, I could distinguish
+the impression of having been held, for a moment, in her mouth, myself,
+naked, without, any longer, any of the social qualifications which
+belonged equally to her other companions and, when she used my surname,
+to my parents, accessories of which her lips--by the effort that she
+made, a little after her father's manner, to articulate the words to
+which she wished to give a special value--had the air of stripping, of
+divesting me, as one peels the skin from a fruit of which one is going
+to put only the pulp into one's mouth, while her glance, adapting itself
+to the same new degree of intimacy as her speech, fell on me also more
+directly, not without testifying to the consciousness, the pleasure,
+even the gratitude that it felt, accompanying itself with a smile.
+
+But at that actual moment, I was not able to appreciate the worth of
+these new pleasures. They were given, not by the little girl whom I
+loved, to me who loved her, but by the other, her with whom I used to
+play, to my other self, who possessed neither the memory of the true
+Gilberte, nor the fixed heart which alone could have known the value
+of a happiness for which it alone had longed. Even after I had returned
+home I did not taste them, since, every day, the necessity which made
+me hope that on the morrow I should arrive at the clear, calm, happy
+contemplation of Gilberte, that she would at last confess her love
+for me, explaining to me the reasons by which she had been obliged,
+hitherto, to conceal it, that same necessity forced me to regard the
+past as of no account, to look ahead of me only, to consider the little
+advantages that she had given me not in themselves and as if they were
+self-sufficient, but like fresh rungs of the ladder on which I might
+set my feet, which were going to allow me to advance a step further and
+finally to attain the happiness which I had not yet encountered.
+
+If, at times, she shewed me these marks of her affection, she troubled
+me also by seeming not to be pleased to see me, and this happened often
+on the very days on which I had most counted for the realisation of my
+hopes. I was sure that Gilberte was coming to the Champs-Elysées, and
+I felt an elation which seemed merely the anticipation of a great
+happiness when--going into the drawing-room in the morning to kiss
+Mamma, who was already dressed to go out, the coils of her black hair
+elaborately built up, and her beautiful hands, plump and white, fragrant
+still with soap--I had been apprised, by seeing a column of dust
+standing by itself in the air above the piano, and by hearing a
+barrel-organ playing, beneath the window, _En revenant de la revue_,
+that the winter had received, until nightfall, an unexpected, radiant
+visit from a day of spring. While we sat at luncheon, by opening her
+window, the lady opposite had sent packing, in the twinkling of an eye,
+from beside my chair--to sweep in a single stride over the whole width
+of our dining-room--a sunbeam which had lain down there for its midday
+rest and returned to continue it there a moment later. At school, during
+the one o'clock lesson, the sun made me sick with impatience and boredom
+as it let fall a golden stream that crept to the edge of my desk, like
+an invitation to the feast at which I could not myself arrive before
+three o'clock, until the moment when Françoise came to fetch me at the
+school-gate, and we made our way towards the Champs-Elysées through
+streets decorated with sunlight, dense with people, over which the
+balconies, detached by the sun and made vaporous, seemed to float in
+front of the houses like clouds of gold. Alas! in the Champs-Elysées
+I found no Gilberte; she had not yet arrived. Motionless, on the lawn
+nurtured by the invisible sun which, here and there, kindled to a flame
+the point of a blade of grass, while the pigeons that had alighted upon
+it had the appearance of ancient sculptures which the gardener's pick
+had heaved to the surface of a hallowed soil, I stood with my eyes fixed
+on the horizon, expecting at every moment to see appear the form of
+Gilberte following that of her governess, behind the statue that
+seemed to be holding out the child, which it had in its arms, and which
+glistened in the stream of light, to receive benediction from the
+sun. The old lady who read the Débats was sitting on her chair, in her
+invariable place, and had just accosted a park-keeper, with a friendly
+wave of her hands towards him as she exclaimed "What a lovely day!" And
+when the chair-woman came up to collect her penny, with an infinity of
+smirks and affectations she folded the ticket away inside her glove,
+as though it had been a posy of flowers, for which she had sought, in
+gratitude to the donor, the most becoming place upon her person. When
+she had found it, she performed a circular movement with her neck,
+straightened her boa, and fastened upon the collector, as she shewed
+her the end of yellow paper that stuck out over her bare wrist, the
+bewitching smile with which a woman says to a young man, pointing to her
+bosom: "You see, I'm wearing your roses!"
+
+I dragged Françoise, on the way towards Gilberte, as far as the Arc
+de Triomphe; we did not meet her, and I was returning towards the lawn
+convinced, now, that she was not coming, when, in front of the wooden
+horses, the little girl with the sharp voice flung herself upon me:
+"Quick, quick, Gilberte's been here a quarter of an hour. She's just
+going. We've been waiting for you, to make up a prisoner's base."
+
+While I had been going up the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, Gilberte had
+arrived by the Rue Boissy-d'Anglas, Mademoiselle having taken advantage
+of the fine weather to go on some errand of her own; and M. Swann was
+coming to fetch his daughter. And so it was my fault; I ought not to
+have strayed from the lawn; for one never knew for certain from what
+direction Gilberte would appear, whether she would be early or late, and
+this perpetual tension succeeded in making more impressive not only the
+Champs-Elysées in their entirety, and the whole span of the afternoon,
+like a vast expanse of space and time, on every point and at every
+moment of which it was possible that the form of Gilberte might appear,
+but also that form itself, since behind its appearance I felt that there
+lay concealed the reason for which it had shot its arrow into my heart
+at four o'clock instead of at half-past two; crowned with a smart hat,
+for paying calls, instead of the plain cap, for games; in front of the
+Ambassadeurs and not between the two puppet-shows; I divined one of
+those occupations in which I might not follow Gilberte, occupations
+that forced her to go out or to stay at home, I was in contact with the
+mystery of her unknown life. It was this mystery, too, which troubled
+me when, running at the sharp-voiced girl's bidding, so as to begin our
+game without more delay, I saw Gilberte, so quick and informal with
+us, make a ceremonious bow to the old lady with the _Débats_ (who
+acknowledged it with "What a lovely sun! You'd think there was a fire
+burning.") speaking to her with a shy smile, with an air of constraint
+which called to my mind the other little girl that Gilberte must be when
+at home with her parents, or with friends of her parents, paying
+visits, in all the rest, that escaped me, of her existence. But of that
+existence no one gave me so strong an impression as did M. Swann, who
+came a little later to fetch his daughter. That was because he and Mme.
+Swann--inasmuch as their daughter lived with them, as her lessons,
+her games, her friendships depended upon them--contained for me, like
+Gilberte, perhaps even more than Gilberte, as befitted subjects that had
+an all-powerful control over her in whom it must have had its source, an
+undefined, an inaccessible quality of melancholy charm. Everything that
+concerned them was on my part the object of so constant a preoccupation
+that the days on which, as on this day, M. Swann (whom I had seen so
+often, long ago, without his having aroused my curiosity, when he
+was still on good terms with my parents) came for Gilberte to the
+Champs-Elysées, once the pulsations to which my heart had been excited
+by the appearance of his grey hat and hooded cape had subsided, the
+sight of him still impressed me as might that of an historic personage,
+upon whom one had just been studying a series of books, and the smallest
+details of whose life one learned with enthusiasm. His relations with
+the Comte de Paris, which, when I heard them discussed at Combray,
+seemed to me unimportant, became now in my eyes something marvellous,
+as if no one else had ever known the House of Orleans; they set him
+in vivid detachment against the vulgar background of pedestrians
+of different classes, who encumbered that particular path in the
+Champs-Elysées, in the midst of whom I admired his condescending to
+figure without claiming any special deference, which as it happened none
+of them dreamed of paying him, so profound was the incognito in which he
+was wrapped.
+
+He responded politely to the salutations of Gilberte's companions, even
+to mine, for all that he was no longer on good terms with my family,
+but without appearing to know who I was. (This reminded me that he had
+constantly seen me in the country; a memory which I had retained, but
+kept out of sight, because, since I had seen Gilberte again, Swann had
+become to me pre-eminently her father, and no longer the Combray Swann;
+as the ideas which, nowadays, I made his name connote were different
+from the ideas in the system of which it was formerly comprised, which
+I utilised not at all now when I had occasion to think of him, he had
+become a new, another person; still I attached him by an artificial
+thread, secondary and transversal, to our former guest; and as nothing
+had any longer any value for me save in the extent to which my love
+might profit by it, it was with a spasm of shame and of regret at not
+being able to erase them from my memory that I recaptured the years in
+which, in the eyes of this same Swann who was at this moment before me
+in the Champs-Elysées, and to whom, fortunately, Gilberte had perhaps
+not mentioned my name, I had so often, in the evenings, made myself
+ridiculous by sending to ask Mamma to come upstairs to my room to say
+good-night to me, while she was drinking coffee with him and my father
+and my grandparents at the table in the garden.) He told Gilberte that
+she might play one game; he could wait for a quarter of an hour; and,
+sitting down, just like anyone else, on an iron chair, paid for his
+ticket with that hand which Philippe VII had so often held in his own,
+while we began our game upon the lawn, scattering the pigeons, whose
+beautiful, iridescent bodies (shaped like hearts and, surely, the lilacs
+of the feathered kingdom) took refuge as in so many sanctuaries, one on
+the great basin of stone, on which its beak, as it disappeared below the
+rim, conferred the part, assigned the purpose of offering to the bird in
+abundance the fruit or grain at which it appeared to be pecking, another
+on the head of the statue, which it seemed to crown with one of those
+enamelled objects whose polychrome varies in certain classical works
+the monotony of the stone, and with an attribute which, when the goddess
+bears it, entitles her to a particular epithet and makes of her, as a
+different Christian name makes of a mortal, a fresh divinity.
+
+On one of these sunny days which had not realised my hopes, I had not
+the courage to conceal my disappointment from Gilberte.
+
+"I had ever so many things to ask you," I said to her; "I thought that
+to-day was going to mean so much in our friendship. And no sooner have
+you come than you go away! Try to come early to-morrow, so that I can
+talk to you."
+
+Her face lighted up and she jumped for joy as she answered: "Tomorrow,
+you may make up your mind, my dear friend, I sha'n't come!
+
+"First of all I've a big luncheon-party; then in the afternoon I
+am going to a friend's house to see King Theodosius arrive from her
+windows; won't that be splendid?--and then, next day, I'm going to
+_Michel Strogoff_, and after that it will soon be Christmas, and the New
+Year holidays! Perhaps they'll take me south, to the Riviera; won't that
+be nice? Though I should miss the Christmas-tree here; anyhow, if I do
+stay in Paris, I sha'n't be coming here, because I shall be out paying
+calls with Mamma. Good-bye--there's Papa calling me."
+
+I returned home with Françoise through streets that were still gay with
+sunshine, as on the evening of a holiday when the merriment is over. I
+could scarcely drag my legs along.
+
+"I'm not surprised;" said Françoise, "it's not the right weather for the
+time of year; it's much too warm. Oh dear, oh dear, to think of all
+the poor sick people there must be everywhere; you would think that up
+there, too, everything's got out of order."
+
+I repeated to myself, stifling my sobs, the words in which Gilberte had
+given utterance to her joy at the prospect of not coming back, for a
+long time, to the Champs-Elysées. But already the charm with which, by
+the mere act of thinking, my mind was filled as soon as it thought of
+her, the privileged position, unique even if it were painful, in which
+I was inevitably placed in relation to Gilberte by the contraction of a
+scar in my mind, had begun to add to that very mark of her indifference
+something romantic, and in the midst of my tears my lips would shape
+themselves in a smile which was indeed the timid outline of a kiss. And
+when the time came for the postman I said to myself, that evening as on
+every other: "I am going to have a letter from Gilberte, she is going to
+tell me, at last, that she has never ceased to love me, and to explain
+to me the mysterious reason by which she has been forced to conceal her
+love from me until now, to put on the appearance of being able to be
+happy without seeing me; the reason for which she has assumed the form
+of the other Gilberte, who is simply a companion."
+
+Every evening I would beguile myself into imagining this letter,
+believing that I was actually reading it, reciting each of its sentences
+in turn. Suddenly I would stop, in alarm. I had realised that, if I was
+to receive a letter from Gilberte, it could not, in any case, be this
+letter, since it was I myself who had just composed it. And from that
+moment I would strive to keep my thoughts clear of the words which I
+should have liked her to write to me, from fear lest, by first selecting
+them myself, I should be excluding just those identical words,--the
+dearest, the most desired--from the field of possible events. Even if,
+by an almost impossible coincidence, it had been precisely the letter
+of my invention that Gilberte had addressed to me of her own accord,
+recognising my own work in it I should not have had the impression that
+I was receiving something that had not originated in myself, something
+real, something new, a happiness external to my mind, independent of my
+will, a gift indeed from love.
+
+While I waited I read over again a page which, although it had not been
+written to me by Gilberte, came to me, none the less, from her, that
+page by Bergotte upon the beauty of the old myths from which Racine
+drew his inspiration, which (with the agate marble) I always kept within
+reach. I was touched by my friend's kindness in having procured the book
+for me; and as everyone is obliged to find some reason for his passion,
+so much so that he is glad to find in the creature whom he loves
+qualities which (he has learned by reading or in conversation) are
+worthy to excite a man's love, that he assimilates them by imitation
+and makes out of them fresh reasons for his love, even although these
+qualities be diametrically opposed to those for which his love would
+have sought, so long as it was spontaneous--as Swann, before my day, had
+sought to establish the aesthetic basis of Odette's beauty--I, who had
+at first loved Gilberte, in Combray days, on account of all the unknown
+element in her life into which I would fain have plunged headlong, have
+undergone reincarnation, discarding my own separate existence as a thing
+that no longer mattered, I thought now, as of an inestimable advantage,
+that of this, my own, my too familiar, my contemptible existence
+Gilberte might one day become the humble servant, the kindly, the
+comforting collaborator, who in the evenings, helping me in my work,
+would collate for me the texts of rare pamphlets. As for Bergotte, that
+infinitely wise, almost divine old man, because of whom I had first,
+before I had even seen her, loved Gilberte, now it was for Gilberte's
+sake, chiefly, that I loved him. With as much pleasure as the pages that
+he had written about Racine, I studied the wrapper, folded under great
+seals of white wax and tied with billows of pink ribbon, in which she
+had brought those pages to me. I kissed the agate marble, which was
+the better part of my love's heart, the part that was not frivolous but
+faithful, and, for all that it was adorned with the mysterious charm of
+Gilberte's life, dwelt close beside me, inhabited my chamber, shared my
+bed. But the beauty of that stone, and the beauty also of those pages
+of Bergotte which I was glad to associate with the idea of my love for
+Gilberte, as if, in the moments when my love seemed no longer to have
+any existence, they gave it a kind of consistency, were, I perceived,
+anterior to that love, which they in no way resembled; their elements
+had been determined by the writer's talent, or by geological laws,
+before ever Gilberte had known me, nothing in book or stone would have
+been different if Gilberte had not loved me, and there was nothing,
+consequently, that authorised me to read in them a message of happiness.
+And while my love, incessantly waiting for the morrow to bring a
+confession of Gilberte's love for me, destroyed, unravelled every
+evening, the ill-done work of the day, in some shadowed part of my being
+was an unknown weaver who would not leave where they lay the severed
+threads, but collected and rearranged them, without any thought of
+pleasing me, or of toiling for my advantage, in the different order
+which she gave to all her handiwork. Without any special interest in my
+love, not beginning by deciding that I was loved, she placed, side by
+side, those of Gilberte's actions that had seemed to me inexplicable and
+her faults which I had excused. Then, one with another, they took on
+a meaning. It seemed to tell me, this new arrangement, that when I saw
+Gilberte, instead of coming to me in the Champs-Elysées, going to a
+party, or on errands with her governess, when I saw her prepared for
+an absence that would extend over the New Year holidays, I was wrong in
+thinking, in saying: "It is because she is frivolous," or "easily lead."
+For she would have ceased to be either if she had loved me, and if she
+had been forced to obey it would have been with the same despair in
+her heart that I felt on the days when I did not see her. It shewed me
+further, this new arrangement, that I ought, after all, to know what
+it was to love, since I loved Gilberte; it drew my attention to the
+constant anxiety that I had to 'shew off' before her, by reason of which
+I tried to persuade my mother to get for Françoise a waterproof coat and
+a hat with a blue feather, or, better still, to stop sending with me to
+the Champs-Elysées an attendant with whom I blushed to be seen (to all
+of which my mother replied that I was not fair to Françoise, that
+she was an excellent woman and devoted to us all) and also that sole,
+exclusive need to see Gilberte, the result of which was that, months in
+advance, I could think of nothing but how to find out at what date she
+would be leaving Paris and where she was going, feeling that the most
+attractive country in the world would be but a place of exile if she
+were not to be there, and asking only to be allowed to stay for ever
+in Paris, so long as I might see her in the Champs-Elysées; and it had
+little difficulty in making me see that neither my anxiety nor my
+need could be justified by anything in Gilberte's conduct. She, on the
+contrary, was genuinely fond of her governess, without troubling herself
+over what I might choose to think about it. It seemed quite natural to
+her not to come to the Champs-Elysées if she had to go shopping with
+Mademoiselle, delightful if she had to go out somewhere with her mother.
+And even supposing that she would ever have allowed me to spend my
+holidays in the same place as herself, when it came to choosing
+that place she considered her parents' wishes, a thousand different
+amusements of which she had been told, and not at all that it should be
+the place to which my family were proposing to send me. When she assured
+me (as sometimes happened) that she liked me less than some other of
+her friends, less than she had liked me the day before, because by my
+clumsiness I had made her side lose a game, I would beg her pardon, I
+would beg her to tell me what I must do in order that she should begin
+again to like me as much as, or more than the rest; I hoped to hear her
+say that that was already my position; I besought her; as though she had
+been able to modify her affection for me as she or I chose, to give me
+pleasure, merely by the words that she would utter, as my good or bad
+conduct should deserve. Was I, then, not yet aware that what I felt,
+myself, for her, depended neither upon her actions nor upon my desires?
+
+It shewed me finally, the new arrangement planned by my unseen weaver,
+that, if we find ourselves hoping that the actions of a person who has
+hitherto caused us anxiety may prove not to have been sincere, they shed
+in their wake a light which our hopes are powerless to extinguish, a
+light to which, rather than to our hopes, we must put the question, what
+will be that person's actions on the morrow.
+
+These new counsels, my love listened and heard them; they persuaded it
+that the morrow would not be different from all the days that had gone
+before; that Gilberte's feeling for me, too long established now to
+be capable of alteration, was indifference; that in my friendship with
+Gilberte, it was I alone who loved. "That is true," my love responded,
+"there is nothing more to be made of that friendship. It will not alter
+now." And so the very next day (unless I were to wait for a public
+holiday, if there was one approaching, some anniversary, the New Year,
+perhaps, one of those days which are not like other days, on which time
+starts afresh, casting aside the heritage of the past, declining its
+legacy of sorrows) I would appeal to Gilberte to terminate our old and
+to join me in laying the foundations of a new friendship.
+
+* * *
+
+I had always, within reach, a plan of Paris, which, because I could see
+drawn on it the street in which M. and Mme. Swann lived, seemed to me to
+contain a secret treasure. And to please myself, as well as by a sort
+of chivalrous loyalty, in any connection or with no relevance at all, I
+would repeat the name of that street until my father, not being, like
+my mother and grandmother, in the secret of my love, would ask: "But
+why are you always talking about that street? There's nothing wonderful
+about it. It is an admirable street to live in because it's only a few
+minutes' walk from the Bois, but there are a dozen other streets just
+the same."
+
+I made every effort to introduce the name of Swann into my conversation
+with my parents; in my own mind, of course, I never ceased to murmur it;
+but I needed also to hear its exquisite sound, and to make myself
+play that chord, the voiceless rendering of which did not suffice
+me. Moreover, that name of Swann, with which I had for so long been
+familiar, was to me now (as happens at times to people suffering from
+aphasia, in the case of the most ordinary words) the name of something
+new. It was for ever present in my mind, which could not, however, grow
+accustomed to it. I analysed it, I spelt it; its orthography came to me
+as a surprise. And with its familiarity it had simultaneously lost its
+innocence. The pleasure that I derived from the sound of it I felt to
+be so guilty, that it seemed to me as though the others must read my
+thoughts, and would change the conversation if I endeavoured to guide it
+in that direction. I fell back upon subjects which still brought me into
+touch with Gilberte, I eternally repeated the same words, and it was no
+use my knowing that they were but words--words uttered in her absence,
+which she could not hear, words without virtue in themselves, repeating
+what were, indeed, facts, but powerless to modify them--for still
+it seemed to me that by dint of handling, of stirring in this way
+everything that had reference to Gilberte, I might perhaps make emerge
+from it something that would bring me happiness. I told my parents again
+that Gilberte was very fond of her governess, as if the statement, when
+repeated for the hundredth time, would at last have the effect of making
+Gilberte suddenly burst into the room, come to live with us for ever.
+I had already sung the praises of the old lady who read the _Débats_
+(I had hinted to my parents that she must at least be an Ambassador's
+widow, if not actually a Highness) and I continued to descant on her
+beauty, her splendour, her nobility, until the day on which I mentioned
+that, by what I had heard Gilberte call her, she appeared to be a Mme.
+Blatin.
+
+"Oh, now I know whom you mean," cried my mother, while I felt myself
+grow red all over with shame. "On guard! on guard!--as your grandfather
+says. And so it's she that you think so wonderful? Why, she's perfectly
+horrible, and always has been. She's the widow of a bailiff. You can't
+remember, when you were little, all the trouble I used to have to avoid
+her at your gymnastic lessons, where she was always trying to get hold
+of me--I didn't know the woman, of course--to tell me that you were
+'much too nice-looking for a boy.' She has always had an insane desire
+to get to know people, and she must be quite insane, as I have always
+thought, if she really does know Mme. Swann. For even if she does come
+of very common people, I have never heard anything said against her
+character. But she must always be forcing herself upon strangers. She
+is, really, a horrible woman, frightfully vulgar, and besides, she is
+always creating awkward situations."
+
+As for Swann, in my attempts to resemble him, I spent the whole time,
+when I was at table, in drawing my finger along my nose and in rubbing
+my eyes. My father would exclaim: "The child's a perfect idiot, he's
+becoming quite impossible." More than all else I should have liked to
+be as bald as Swann. He appeared to me to be a creature so extraordinary
+that I found it impossible to believe that people whom I knew and often
+saw knew him also, and that in the course of the day anyone might run
+against him. And once my mother, while she was telling us, as she did
+every evening at dinner, where she had been and what she had done that
+afternoon, merely by the words: "By the way, guess whom I saw at the
+Trois Quartiers--at the umbrella counter--Swann!" caused to burst open
+in the midst of her narrative (an arid desert to me) a mystic blossom.
+What a melancholy satisfaction to learn that, that very afternoon,
+threading through the crowd his supernatural form, Swann had gone to
+buy an umbrella. Among the events of the day, great and small, but
+all equally unimportant, that one alone aroused in me those peculiar
+vibrations by which my love for Gilberte was invariably stirred. My
+father complained that I took no interest in anything, because I did not
+listen while he was speaking of the political developments that might
+follow the visit of King Theodosius, at that moment in France as
+the nation's guest and (it was hinted) ally. And yet how intensely
+interested I was to know whether Swann had been wearing his hooded cape!
+
+"Did you speak to him?" I asked.
+
+"Why, of course I did," answered my mother, who always seemed afraid
+lest, were she to admit that we were not on the warmest of terms with
+Swann, people would seek to reconcile us more than she cared for, in
+view of the existence of Mme. Swann, whom she did not wish to know. "It
+was he who came up and spoke to me. I hadn't seen him."
+
+"Then you haven't quarrelled?"
+
+"Quarrelled? What on earth made you think that we had quarrelled?"
+she briskly parried, as though I had cast doubt on the fiction of her
+friendly relations with Swann, and was planning an attempt to 'bring
+them together.'
+
+"He might be cross with you for never asking him here."
+
+"One isn't obliged to ask everyone to one's house, you know; has he ever
+asked me to his? I don't know his wife."
+
+"But he used often to come, at Combray."
+
+"I should think he did! He used to come at Combray, and now, in Paris,
+he has something better to do, and so have I. But I can promise you, we
+didn't look in the least like people who had quarrelled. We were kept
+waiting there for some time, while they brought him his parcel. He
+asked after you; he told me you had been playing with his daughter--"
+my mother went on, amazing me with the portentous revelation of my own
+existence in Swann's mind; far more than that, of my existence in so
+complete, so material a form that when I stood before him, trembling
+with love, in the Champs-Elysées, he had known my name, and who my
+mother was, and had been able to blend with my quality as his daughter's
+playmate certain facts with regard to my grandparents and their
+connections, the place in which we lived, certain details of our past
+life, all of which I myself perhaps did not know. But my mother did not
+seem to have noticed anything particularly attractive in that counter at
+the Trois Quartiers where she had represented to Swann, at the moment
+in which he caught sight of her, a definite person with whom he had
+sufficient memories in common to impel him to come up to her and to
+speak.
+
+Nor did either she or my father seem to find any occasion now to mention
+Swann's family, the grandparents of Gilberte, nor to use the title of
+stockbroker, topics as which nothing else gave me so keen a pleasure.
+My imagination had isolated and consecrated in the social Paris a
+certain family, just as it had set apart in the structural Paris a
+certain house, on whose porch it had fashioned sculptures and made its
+windows precious. But these ornaments I alone had eyes to see. Just as
+my father and mother looked upon the house in which Swann lived as one
+that closely resembled the other houses built at the same period in the
+neighbourhood of the Bois, so Swann's family seemed to them to be in the
+same category as many other families of stockbrokers. Their judgment was
+more or less favourable according to the extent to which the family in
+question shared in merits that were common to the rest of the universe,
+and there was about it nothing that they could call unique. What, on the
+other hand, they did appreciate in the Swanns they found in equal, if
+not in greater measure elsewhere. And so, after admitting that the house
+was in a good position, they would go on to speak of some other house
+that was in a better, but had nothing to do with Gilberte, or of
+financiers on a larger scale than her grandfather had been; and if they
+had appeared, for a moment, to be of my opinion, that was a mistake
+which was very soon corrected. For in order to distinguish in all
+Gilberte's surroundings an indefinable quality analogous, in the scale
+of emotions, to what in the scale of colours is called infra-red, a
+supplementary sense of perception was required, with which love, for the
+time being, had endowed me; and this my parents lacked.
+
+On the days when Gilberte had warned me that she would not be coming to
+the Champs-Elysées, I would try to arrange my walks so that I should
+be brought into some kind of contact with her. Sometimes I would lead
+Françoise on a pilgrimage to the house in which the Swanns lived, making
+her repeat to me unendingly all that she had learned from the governess
+with regard to Mme. Swann. "It seems, she puts great faith in medals.
+She would never think of starting on a journey if she had heard an
+owl hoot, or the death-watch in the wall, or if she had seen a cat
+at midnight, or if the furniture had creaked. Oh yes! she's a most
+religious lady, she is!" I was so madly in love with Gilberte that if,
+on our way, I caught sight of their old butler taking the dog out, my
+emotion would bring me to a standstill, I would fasten on his white
+whiskers eyes that melted with passion. And Françoise would rouse me
+with: "What's wrong with you now, child?" and we would continue on our
+way until we reached their gate, where a porter, different from every
+other porter in the world, and saturated, even to the braid on his
+livery, with the same melancholy charm that I had felt to be latent in
+the name of Gilberte, looked at me as though he knew that I was one
+of those whose natural unworthiness would for ever prevent them from
+penetrating into the mysteries of the life inside, which it was his duty
+to guard, and over which the ground-floor windows appeared conscious of
+being protectingly closed, with far less resemblance, between the nobly
+sweeping arches of their muslin curtains, to any other windows in the
+world than to Gilberte's glancing eyes. On other days we would go along
+the boulevards, and I would post myself at the corner of the Rue Duphot;
+I had heard that Swann was often to be seen passing there, on his way
+to the dentist's; and my imagination so far differentiated Gilberte's
+father from the rest of humanity, his presence in the midst of a crowd
+of real people introduced among them so miraculous an element, that even
+before we reached the Madeleine I would be trembling with emotion at
+the thought that I was approaching a street from which that supernatural
+apparition might at any moment burst upon me unawares.
+
+But most often of all, on days when I was not to see Gilberte, as I
+had heard that Mme. Swann walked almost every day along the Allée des
+Acacias, round the big lake, and in the Allée de la Reine Marguerite, I
+would guide Françoise in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne. It was
+to me like one of those zoological gardens in which one sees assembled
+together a variety of flora, and contrasted effects in landscape; where
+from a hill one passes to a grotto, a meadow, rocks, a stream, a trench,
+another hill, a marsh, but knows that they are there only to enable
+the hippopotamus, zebra, crocodile, rabbit, bear and heron to disport
+themselves in a natural or a picturesque setting; this, the Bois,
+equally complex, uniting a multitude of little worlds, distinct and
+separate--placing a stage set with red trees, American oaks, like an
+experimental forest in Virginia, next to a fir-wood by the edge of the
+lake, or to a forest grove from which would suddenly emerge, in her
+lissom covering of furs, with the large, appealing eyes of a dumb
+animal, a hastening walker--was the Garden of Woman; and like the
+myrtle-alley in the Aeneid, planted for their delight with trees of one
+kind only, the Allée des Acacias was thronged by the famous Beauties
+of the day. As, from a long way off, the sight of the jutting crag from
+which it dives into the pool thrills with joy the children who know
+that they are going to behold the seal, long before I reached the
+acacia-alley, their fragrance, scattered abroad, would make me feel that
+I was approaching the incomparable presence of a vegetable personality,
+strong and tender; then, as I drew near, the sight of their topmost
+branches, their lightly tossing foliage, in its easy grace, its
+coquettish outline, its delicate fabric, over which hundreds of flowers
+were laid, like winged and throbbing colonies of precious insects; and
+finally their name itself, feminine, indolent and seductive, made my
+heart beat, but with a social longing, like those waltzes which remind
+us only of the names of the fair dancers, called aloud as they entered
+the ball-room. I had been told that I should see in the alley certain
+women of fashion, who, in spite of their not all having husbands, were
+constantly mentioned in conjunction with Mme. Swann, but most often by
+their professional names;--their new names, when they had any, being
+but a sort of incognito, a veil which those who would speak of them were
+careful to draw aside, so as to make themselves understood. Thinking
+that Beauty--in the order of feminine elegance--was governed by occult
+laws into the knowledge of which they had been initiated, and that they
+had the power to realise it, I accepted before seeing them, like the
+truth of a coming revelation, the appearance of their clothes, of their
+carriages and horses, of a thousand details among which I placed my
+faith as in an inner soul which gave the cohesion of a work of art to
+that ephemeral and changing pageant. But it was Mme. Swann whom I wished
+to see, and I waited for her to go past, as deeply moved as though
+she were Gilberte, whose parents, saturated, like everything in her
+environment, with her own special charm, excited in me as keen a passion
+as she did herself, indeed a still more painful disturbance (since their
+point of contact with her was that intimate, that internal part of
+her life which was hidden from me), and furthermore, for I very soon
+learned, as we shall see in due course, that they did not like my
+playing with her, that feeling of veneration which we always have for
+those who hold, and exercise without restraint, the power to do us an
+injury.
+
+I assigned the first place, in the order of aesthetic merit and of
+social grandeur, to simplicity, when I saw Mme. Swann on foot, in a
+'polonaise' of plain cloth, a little toque on her head trimmed with a
+pheasant's wing, a bunch of violets in her bosom, hastening along the
+Allée des Acacias as if it had been merely the shortest way back to her
+own house, and acknowledging with a rapid glance the courtesy of the
+gentlemen in carriages, who, recognising her figure at a distance, were
+raising their hats to her and saying to one another that there was never
+anyone so well turned out as she. But instead of simplicity it was to
+ostentation that I must assign the first place if, after I had compelled
+Françoise, who could hold out no longer, and complained that her legs
+were 'giving' beneath her, to stroll up and down with me for another
+hour, I saw at length, emerging from the Porte Dauphine, figuring for
+me a royal dignity, the passage of a sovereign, an impression such as
+no real Queen has ever since been able to give me, because my notion of
+their power has been less vague, and more founded upon experience--borne
+along by the flight of a pair of fiery horses, slender and shapely as
+one sees them in the drawings of Constantin Guys, carrying on its box an
+enormous coachman, furred like a cossack, and by his side a diminutive
+groom, like Toby, "the late Beaudenord's tiger," I saw--or rather I
+felt its outlines engraved upon my heart by a clean and killing stab--a
+matchless victoria, built rather high, and hinting, through the extreme
+modernity of its appointments, at the forms of an earlier day, deep down
+in which lay negligently back Mme. Swann, her hair, now quite pale with
+one grey lock, girt with a narrow band of flowers, usually violets, from
+which floated down long veils, a lilac parasol in her hand, on her lips
+an ambiguous smile in which I read only the benign condescension
+of Majesty, though it was pre-eminently the enticing smile of the
+courtesan, which she graciously bestowed upon the men who bowed to her.
+That smile was, in reality, saying to one: "Oh yes, I do remember, quite
+well; it was wonderful!" to another: "How I should have loved to! We
+were unfortunate!", to a third: "Yes, if you like! I must just keep in
+the line for a minute, then as soon as I can I will break away." When
+strangers passed she still allowed to linger about her lips a lazy
+smile, as though she expected or remembered some friend, which made them
+say: "What a lovely woman!". 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 a viper, that you can't keep quiet for a
+moment. But do you suppose that I care what you say?" Coquelin passed,
+talking, in a group of listening friends, and with a sweeping wave of
+his hand bade a theatrical good day to the people in the carriages. But
+I thought only of Mme. Swann, and pretended to have not yet seen her,
+for I knew that, when she reached the pigeon-shooting ground, she would
+tell her coachman to 'break away' and to stop the carriage, so that she
+might come back on foot. And on days when I felt that I had the courage
+to pass close by her I would drag Françoise off in that direction; until
+the moment came when I saw Mme. Swann, letting trail behind her the long
+train of her lilac skirt, dressed, as the populace imagine queens to be
+dressed, in rich attire such as no other woman might wear, lowering
+her eyes now and then to study the handle of her parasol, paying scant
+attention to the passers-by, as though the important thing for her, her
+one object in being there, was to take exercise, without thinking that
+she was seen, and that every head was turned towards her. Sometimes,
+however, when she had looked back to call her dog to her, she would
+cast, almost imperceptibly, a sweeping glance round about.
+
+Those even who did not know her were warned by something exceptional,
+something beyond the normal in her--or perhaps by a telepathic
+suggestion such as would move an ignorant audience to a frenzy of
+applause when Berma was 'sublime'--that she must be some one well-known.
+They would ask one another, "Who is she?", or sometimes would
+interrogate a passing stranger, or would make a mental note of how she
+was dressed so as to fix her identity, later, in the mind of a friend
+better informed than themselves, who would at once enlighten them.
+Another pair, half-stopping in their walk, would exchange:
+
+"You know who that is? Mme. Swann! That conveys nothing to you? Odette
+de Crécy, then?"
+
+"Odette de Crécy! Why, I thought as much. Those great, sad eyes... But I
+say, you know, she can't be as young as she was once, eh? I remember, I
+had her on the day that MacMahon went."
+
+"I shouldn't remind her of it, if I were you. She is now Mme. Swann, the
+wife of a gentleman in the Jockey Club, a friend of the Prince of Wales.
+Apart from that, though, she is wonderful still."
+
+"Oh, but you ought to have known her then; Gad, she was lovely!
+She lived in a very odd little house with a lot of Chinese stuff.
+I remember, we were bothered all the time by the newsboys, shouting
+outside; in the end she made me get up and go."
+
+Without listening to these memories, I could feel all about her the
+indistinct murmur of fame. My heart leaped with impatience when I
+thought that a few seconds must still elapse before all these people,
+among whom I was dismayed not to find a certain mulatto banker who (or
+so I felt) had a contempt for me, were to see the unknown youth, to
+whom they had not, so far, been paying the slightest attention, salute
+(without knowing her, it was true, but I thought that I had sufficient
+authority since my parents knew her husband and I was her daughter's
+playmate) this woman whose reputation for beauty, for misconduct, and
+for elegance was universal. But I was now close to Mme. Swann; I pulled
+off my hat 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, like 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 a
+theatre, of her daily walks abroad.
+
+On certain days when I had missed her in the Allée des Acacias I would
+be so fortunate as to meet her in the Allée de la Reine Marguerite,
+where women went who wished to be alone, or to appear to be wishing to
+be alone; she would not be alone for long, being soon overtaken by some
+man or other, often in a grey 'tile' hat, whom I did not know, and
+who would talk to her for some time, while their two carriages crawled
+behind.
+
+* * *
+
+That sense of the complexity of the Bois de Boulogne which made it an
+artificial place and, in the zoological or mythological sense of the
+word, a Garden, I captured again, this year, as I crossed it on my way
+to Trianon, on one of those mornings, early in November, when in Paris,
+if we stay indoors, being so near and yet prevented from witnessing the
+transformation scene of autumn, which is drawing so rapidly to a close
+without our assistance, we feel a regret for the fallen leaves that
+becomes a fever, and may even keep us awake at night. Into my closed
+room they had been drifting already for a month, summoned there by
+my desire to see them, slipping between my thoughts and the object,
+whatever it might be, upon which I was trying to concentrate them,
+whirling in front of me like those brown spots that sometimes, whatever
+we may be looking at, will seem to be dancing or swimming before our
+eyes. And on that morning, not hearing the splash of the rain as on the
+previous days, seeing the smile of fine weather at the corners of my
+drawn curtains, as from the corners of closed lips may escape the secret
+of their happiness, I had felt that I could actually see those yellow
+leaves, with the light shining through them, in their supreme beauty;
+and being no more able to restrain myself from going to look at the
+trees than, in my childhood's days, when the wind howled in the chimney,
+I had been able to resist the longing to visit the sea, I had risen and
+left the house to go to Trianon, passing through the Bois de Boulogne.
+It was the hour and the season in which the Bois seems, perhaps, most
+multiform, not only because it is then most divided, but because it
+is divided in a different way. Even in the unwooded parts, where the
+horizon is large, here and there against the background of a dark
+and distant mass of trees, now leafless or still keeping their summer
+foliage unchanged, a double row of orange-red chestnuts seemed, as in a
+picture just begun, to be the only thing painted, so far, by an artist
+who had not yet laid any colour on the rest, and to be offering their
+cloister, in full daylight, for the casual exercise of the human figures
+that would be added to the picture later on.
+
+Farther off, at a place where the trees were still all green, one alone,
+small, stunted, lopped, but stubborn in its resistance, was tossing
+in the breeze an ugly mane of red. Elsewhere, again, might be seen
+the first awakening of this Maytime of the leaves, and those of an
+ampelopsis, a smiling miracle, like a red hawthorn flowering in winter,
+had that very morning all 'come out,' so to speak, in blossom. And the
+Bois had the temporary, unfinished, artificial look of a nursery garden
+or a park in which, either for some botanic purpose or in preparation
+for a festival, there have been embedded among the trees of commoner
+growth, which have not yet been uprooted and transplanted elsewhere, a
+few rare specimens, with fantastic foliage, which seem to be clearing
+all round themselves an empty space, making room, giving air, diffusing
+light. Thus it was the time of year at which the Bois de Boulogne
+displays more separate characteristics, assembles more distinct elements
+in a composite whole than at any other. It was also the time of day.
+In places where the trees still kept their leaves, they seemed to have
+undergone an alteration of their substance from the point at which they
+were touched by the sun's light, still, at this hour in the morning,
+almost horizontal, as it would be again, a few hours later, at the
+moment when, just as dusk began, it would flame up like a lamp, project
+afar over the leaves a warm and artificial glow, and set ablaze the few
+topmost boughs of a tree that would itself remain unchanged, a sombre
+incombustible candelabrum beneath its flaming crest. At one spot the
+light grew solid as a brick wall, and like a piece of yellow Persian
+masonry, patterned in blue, daubed coarsely upon the sky the leaves of
+the chestnuts; at another, it cut them off from the sky towards which
+they stretched out their curling, golden fingers. Half-way up the trunk
+of a tree draped with wild vine, the light had grafted and brought to
+blossom, too dazzling to be clearly distinguished, an enormous posy,
+of red flowers apparently, perhaps of a new variety of carnation. The
+different parts of the Bois, so easily confounded in summer in the
+density and monotony of their universal green, were now clearly divided.
+A patch of brightness indicated the approach to almost every one of
+them, or else a splendid mass of foliage stood out before it like an
+oriflamme. I could make out, as on a coloured map, Armenonville, the
+Pré Catalan, Madrid, the Race Course and the shore of the lake. Here and
+there would appear some meaningless erection, a sham grotto, a mill, for
+which the trees made room by drawing away from it, or which was borne
+upon the soft green platform of a grassy lawn. I could feel that the
+Bois was not really a wood, that it existed for a purpose alien to the
+life of its trees; my sense of exaltation was due not only to admiration
+of the autumn tints but to a bodily desire. Ample source of a joy which
+the heart feels at first without being conscious of its cause, without
+understanding that it results from no external impulse! Thus I gazed
+at the trees with an unsatisfied longing which went beyond them and,
+without my knowledge, directed itself towards that masterpiece of
+beautiful strolling women which the trees enframed for a few hours every
+day. I walked towards the Allée des Acacias. I passed through forest
+groves in which the morning light, breaking them into new sections,
+lopped and trimmed the trees, united different trunks in marriage, made
+nosegays of their branches. It would skilfully draw towards it a pair of
+trees; making deft use of the sharp chisel of light and shade, it would
+cut away from each of them half of its trunk and branches, and, weaving
+together the two halves that remained, would make of them either a
+single pillar of shade, defined by the surrounding light, or a single
+luminous phantom whose artificial, quivering contour was encompassed
+in a network of inky shadows. When a ray of sunshine gilded the highest
+branches, they seemed, soaked and still dripping with a sparkling
+moisture, to have emerged alone from the liquid, emerald-green
+atmosphere in which the whole grove was plunged as though beneath the
+sea. For the trees continued to live by their own vitality, and when
+they had no longer any leaves, that vitality gleamed more brightly still
+from the nap of green velvet that carpeted their trunks, or in the white
+enamel of the globes of mistletoe that were scattered all the way up to
+the topmost branches of the poplars, rounded as are the sun and moon in
+Michelangelo's 'Creation.' But, forced for so many years now, by a sort
+of grafting process, to share the life of feminine humanity, they called
+to my mind the figure of the dryad, the fair worldling, swiftly walking,
+brightly coloured, whom they sheltered with their branches as she
+passed beneath them, and obliged to acknowledge, as they themselves
+acknowledged, the power of the season; they recalled to me the happy
+days when I was young and had faith, when I would hasten eagerly to the
+spots where masterpieces of female elegance would be incarnate for a few
+moments beneath the unconscious, accommodating boughs. But the beauty
+for which the firs and acacias of the Bois de Boulogne made me long,
+more disquieting in that respect than the chestnuts and lilacs of
+Trianon which I was going to see, was not fixed somewhere outside myself
+in the relics of an historical period, in works of art, in a little
+temple of love at whose door was piled an oblation of autumn leaves
+ribbed with gold. I reached the shore of the lake; I walked on as far as
+the pigeon-shooting ground. The idea of perfection which I had within me
+I had bestowed, in that other time, upon the height of a victoria, upon
+the raking thinness of those horses, frenzied and light as wasps upon
+the wing, with bloodshot eyes like the cruel steeds of Diomed, which
+now, smitten by a desire to see again what I had once loved, as ardent
+as the desire that had driven me, many years before, along the same
+paths, I wished to see renewed before my eyes at the moment when Mme.
+Swann's enormous coachman, supervised by a groom no bigger than his
+fist, and as infantile as Saint George in the picture, endeavoured to
+curb the ardour of the flying, steel-tipped pinions with which they
+thundered along the ground. Alas! there was nothing now but motor-cars
+driven each by a moustached mechanic, with a tall footman towering by
+his side. I wished to hold before my bodily eyes, that I might know
+whether they were indeed as charming as they appeared to the eyes of
+memory, little hats, so low-crowned as to seem no more than garlands
+about the brows of women. All the hats now were immense; covered with
+fruits and flowers and all manner of birds. In place of the lovely gowns
+in which Mme. Swann walked like a Queen, appeared Greco-Saxon tunics,
+with Tanagra folds, or sometimes, in the Directoire style, 'Liberty
+chiffons' sprinkled with flowers like sheets of wallpaper. On the heads
+of the gentlemen who might have been eligible to stroll with Mme. Swann
+in the Allée de la Reine Marguerite, I found not the grey 'tile' hats
+of old, nor any other kind. They walked the Bois bare-headed. And seeing
+all these new elements of the spectacle, I had no longer the faith
+which, applied to them, would have given them consistency, unity,
+life; they passed in a scattered sequence before me, at random, without
+reality, containing in themselves no beauty that my eyes might have
+endeavoured as in the old days, to extract from them and to compose in
+a picture. They were just women, in whose elegance I had no belief,
+and whose clothes seemed to me unimportant. But when a belief vanishes,
+there survives it--more and more ardently, so as to cloak the absence
+of the power, now lost to us, of imparting reality to new phenomena--an
+idolatrous attachment to the old things which our belief in them did
+once animate, as if it was in that belief and not in ourselves that the
+divine spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent
+cause--the death of the gods.
+
+"Oh, horrible!" I exclaimed to myself: "Does anyone really imagine that
+these motor-cars are as smart as the old carriage-and-pair? I dare say.
+I am too old now--but I was not intended for a world in which women
+shackle themselves in garments that are not even made of cloth. To what
+purpose shall I walk among these trees if there is nothing left now of
+the assembly that used to meet beneath the delicate tracery of reddening
+leaves, if vulgarity and fatuity have supplanted the exquisite thing
+that once their branches framed? Oh, horrible! My consolation is to
+think of the women whom I have known, in the past, now that there is
+no standard left of elegance. But how can the people who watch these
+dreadful creatures hobble by, beneath hats on which have been heaped
+the spoils of aviary or garden-bed,--how can they imagine the charm that
+there was in the sight of Mme. Swann, crowned with a close-fitting lilac
+bonnet, or with a tiny hat from which rose stiffly above her head a
+single iris?" Could I ever have made them understand the emotion that
+I used to feel on winter mornings, when I met Mme. Swann on foot, in an
+otter-skin coat, with a woollen cap from which stuck out two blade-like
+partridge-feathers, but enveloped also in the deliberate, artificial
+warmth of her own house, which was suggested by nothing more than the
+bunch of violets crushed into her bosom, whose flowering, vivid and blue
+against the grey sky, the freezing air, the naked boughs, had the same
+charming effect of using the season and the weather merely as a setting,
+and of living actually in a human atmosphere, in the atmosphere of this
+woman, as had in the vases and beaupots of her drawing-room, beside the
+blazing fire, in front of the silk-covered sofa, the flowers that looked
+out through closed windows at the falling snow? But it would not have
+sufficed me that the costumes alone should still have been the same as
+in those distant years. Because of the solidarity that binds together
+the different parts of a general impression, parts that our memory keeps
+in a balanced whole, of which we are not permitted to subtract or to
+decline any fraction, I should have liked to be able to pass the rest
+of the day with one of those women, over a cup of tea, in a little house
+with dark-painted walls (as Mme. Swann's were still in the year after
+that in which the first part of this story ends) against which would
+glow the orange flame, the red combustion, the pink and white flickering
+of her chrysanthemums in the twilight of a November evening, in moments
+similar to those in which (as we shall see) I had not managed to
+discover the pleasures for which I longed. But now, albeit they had led
+to nothing, those moments struck me as having been charming enough in
+themselves. I sought to find them again as I remembered them. Alas!
+there was nothing now but flats decorated in the Louis XVI style, all
+white paint, with hortensias in blue enamel. Moreover, people did not
+return to Paris, now, until much later. Mme. Swann would have written to
+me, from a country house, that she would not be in town before February,
+had I asked her to reconstruct for me the elements of that memory which
+I felt to belong to a distant era, to a date in time towards which it
+was forbidden me to ascend again the fatal slope, the elements of that
+longing which had become, itself, as inaccessible as the pleasure that
+it had once vainly pursued. And I should have required also that they
+be the same women, those whose costume interested me because, at a time
+when I still had faith, my imagination had individualised them and had
+provided each of them with a legend. Alas! in the acacia-avenue--the
+myrtle-alley--I did see some of them again, grown old, no more now
+than grim spectres of what once they had been, wandering to and fro, in
+desperate search of heaven knew what, through the Virgilian groves. They
+had long fled, and still I stood vainly questioning the deserted paths.
+The sun's face was hidden. Nature began again to reign over the Bois,
+from which had vanished all trace of the idea that it was the Elysian
+Garden of Woman; above the gimcrack windmill the real sky was grey; the
+wind wrinkled the surface of the Grand Lac in little wavelets, like
+a real lake; large birds passed swiftly over the Bois, as over a real
+wood, and with shrill cries perched, one after another, on the great
+oaks which, beneath their Druidical crown, and with Dodonaic majesty,
+seemed to proclaim the unpeopled vacancy of this estranged forest, and
+helped me to understand how paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the
+pictures that are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose
+the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not
+being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer
+existed. It sufficed that Mme. Swann did not appear, in the same attire
+and at the same moment, for the whole avenue to be altered. The places
+that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which
+we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a
+thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our
+life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a
+particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as
+the years.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWANN’S WAY ***
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
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+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Swann’s Way<br />
+  Remembrance of Things Past, Volume One</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Marcel Proust</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 22, 2003 [eBook #7178]<br />
+[Most recently updated: May 1, 2023]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Eric Eldred and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWANN’S WAY ***</div>
+
+    <h1>
+      SWANN'S WAY
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      Remembrance Of Things Past, Volume One
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Marcel Proust
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated From The French By C. K. Scott Moncrieff
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      NEW YORK<br /> HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY<br /> 1922
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> OVERTURE </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> COMBRAY </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> SWANN IN LOVE </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> PLACE-NAMES: THE NAME </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      OVERTURE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out
+      my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say
+      "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time
+      to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I
+      imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been
+      thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been
+      reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I
+      myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a
+      quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression
+      would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my
+      mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from
+      registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would
+      begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must
+      be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself
+      from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no;
+      and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to
+      find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the
+      eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared
+      incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling of
+      trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance
+      like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted
+      countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the
+      nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his
+      memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing
+      unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged
+      beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence
+      of the night; and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would lay my cheeks gently against the comfortable cheeks of my pillow,
+      as plump and blooming as the cheeks of babyhood. Or I would strike a match
+      to look at my watch. Nearly midnight. The hour when an invalid, who has
+      been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a strange hotel,
+      awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief a streak of
+      daylight shewing under his bedroom door. Oh, joy of joys! it is morning.
+      The servants will be about in a minute: he can ring, and some one will
+      come to look after him. The thought of being made comfortable gives him
+      strength to endure his pain. He is certain he heard footsteps: they come
+      nearer, and then die away. The ray of light beneath his door is
+      extinguished. It is midnight; some one has turned out the gas; the last
+      servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night in agony with no one to
+      bring him any help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would fall asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches
+      only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or to
+      open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness, to
+      savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay heavy
+      upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I formed but
+      an insignificant part and whose unconsciousness I should very soon return
+      to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned without the least
+      effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever outgrown; and had come
+      under the thrall of one of my childish terrors, such as that old terror of
+      my great-uncle's pulling my curls, which was effectually dispelled on the
+      day—the dawn of a new era to me—on which they were finally
+      cropped from my head. I had forgotten that event during my sleep; I
+      remembered it again immediately I had succeeded in making myself wake up
+      to escape my great-uncle's fingers; still, as a measure of precaution, I
+      would bury the whole of my head in the pillow before returning to the
+      world of dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, too, just as Eve was created from a rib of Adam, so a woman
+      would come into existence while I was sleeping, conceived from some strain
+      in the position of my limbs. Formed by the appetite that I was on the
+      point of gratifying, she it was, I imagined, who offered me that
+      gratification. My body, conscious that its own warmth was permeating hers,
+      would strive to become one with her, and I would awake. The rest of
+      humanity seemed very remote in comparison with this woman whose company I
+      had left but a moment ago: my cheek was still warm with her kiss, my body
+      bent beneath the weight of hers. If, as would sometimes happen, she had
+      the appearance of some woman whom I had known in waking hours, I would
+      abandon myself altogether to the sole quest of her, like people who set
+      out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city that they have
+      always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste in reality what
+      has charmed their fancy. And then, gradually, the memory of her would
+      dissolve and vanish, until I had forgotten the maiden of my dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours,
+      the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively,
+      when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own
+      position on the earth's surface and the amount of time that has elapsed
+      during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused,
+      and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning, after a night of
+      insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading, in quite a
+      different position from that in which he normally goes to sleep, he has
+      only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back in its course,
+      and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, but will
+      conclude that he has just gone to bed. Or suppose that he gets drowsy in
+      some even more abnormal position; sitting in an armchair, say, after
+      dinner: then the world will fall topsy-turvy from its orbit, the magic
+      chair will carry him at full speed through time and space, and when he
+      opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to sleep months earlier
+      and in some far distant country. But for me it was enough if, in my own
+      bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for
+      then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when
+      I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first
+      who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may
+      lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal's consciousness; I was more
+      destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory,
+      not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I
+      had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down
+      from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I
+      could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and
+      surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised
+      succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars,
+      would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them
+      by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by
+      the immobility of our conceptions of them. For it always happened that
+      when I awoke like this, and my mind struggled in an unsuccessful attempt
+      to discover where I was, everything would be moving round me through the
+      darkness: things, places, years. My body, still too heavy with sleep to
+      move, would make an effort to construe the form which its tiredness took
+      as an orientation of its various members, so as to induce from that where
+      the wall lay and the furniture stood, to piece together and to give a name
+      to the house in which it must be living. Its memory, the composite memory
+      of its ribs, knees, and shoulder-blades offered it a whole series of rooms
+      in which it had at one time or another slept; while the unseen walls kept
+      changing, adapting themselves to the shape of each successive room that it
+      remembered, whirling madly through the darkness. And even before my brain,
+      lingering in consideration of when things had happened and of what they
+      had looked like, had collected sufficient impressions to enable it to
+      identify the room, it, my body, would recall from each room in succession
+      what the bed was like, where the doors were, how daylight came in at the
+      windows, whether there was a passage outside, what I had had in my mind
+      when I went to sleep, and had found there when I awoke. The stiffened side
+      underneath my body would, for instance, in trying to fix its position,
+      imagine itself to be lying, face to the wall, in a big bed with a canopy;
+      and at once I would say to myself, "Why, I must have gone to sleep after
+      all, and Mamma never came to say good night!" for I was in the country
+      with my grandfather, who died years ago; and my body, the side upon which
+      I was lying, loyally preserving from the past an impression which my mind
+      should never have forgotten, brought back before my eyes the glimmering
+      flame of the night-light in its bowl of Bohemian glass, shaped like an urn
+      and hung by chains from the ceiling, and the chimney-piece of Siena marble
+      in my bedroom at Combray, in my great-aunt's house, in those far distant
+      days which, at the moment of waking, seemed present without being clearly
+      penned, but would become plainer in a little while when I was properly
+      awake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then would come up the memory of a fresh position; the wall slid away in
+      another direction; I was in my room in Mme. de Saint-Loup's house in the
+      country; good heavens, it must be ten o'clock, they will have finished
+      dinner! I must have overslept myself, in the little nap which I always
+      take when I come in from my walk with Mme. de Saint-Loup, before dressing
+      for the evening. For many years have now elapsed since the Combray days,
+      when, coming in from the longest and latest walks, I would still be in
+      time to see the reflection of the sunset glowing in the panes of my
+      bedroom window. It is a very different kind of existence at Tansonville
+      now with Mme. de Saint-Loup, and a different kind of pleasure that I now
+      derive from taking walks only in the evenings, from visiting by moonlight
+      the roads on which I used to play, as a child, in the sunshine; while the
+      bedroom, in which I shall presently fall asleep instead of dressing for
+      dinner, from afar off I can see it, as we return from our walk, with its
+      lamp shining through the window, a solitary beacon in the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These shifting and confused gusts of memory never lasted for more than a
+      few seconds; it often happened that, in my spell of uncertainty as to
+      where I was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of which that
+      uncertainty was composed any more than, when we watch a horse running, we
+      isolate the successive positions of its body as they appear upon a
+      bioscope. But I had seen first one and then another of the rooms in which
+      I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them all in the
+      long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on going to bed I
+      would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the most diverse
+      materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets, a piece of a
+      shawl, the edge of my bed, and a copy of an evening paper, all of which
+      things I would contrive, with the infinite patience of birds building
+      their nests, to cement into one whole; rooms where, in a keen frost, I
+      would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world (like
+      the sea-swallow which builds at the end of a dark tunnel and is kept warm
+      by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire keeping in all night, I
+      would sleep wrapped up, as it were, in a great cloak of snug and savoury
+      air, shot with the glow of the logs which would break out again in flame:
+      in a sort of alcove without walls, a cave of warmth dug out of the heart
+      of the room itself, a zone of heat whose boundaries were constantly
+      shifting and altering in temperature as gusts of air ran across them to
+      strike freshly upon my face, from the corners of the room, or from parts
+      near the window or far from the fireplace which had therefore remained
+      cold—or rooms in summer, where I would delight to feel myself a part
+      of the warm evening, where the moonlight striking upon the half-opened
+      shutters would throw down to the foot of my bed its enchanted ladder;
+      where I would fall asleep, as it might be in the open air, like a titmouse
+      which the breeze keeps poised in the focus of a sunbeam—or sometimes
+      the Louis XVI room, so cheerful that I could never feel really unhappy,
+      even on my first night in it: that room where the slender columns which
+      lightly supported its ceiling would part, ever so gracefully, to indicate
+      where the bed was and to keep it separate; sometimes again that little
+      room with the high ceiling, hollowed in the form of a pyramid out of two
+      separate storeys, and partly walled with mahogany, in which from the first
+      moment my mind was drugged by the unfamiliar scent of flowering grasses,
+      convinced of the hostility of the violet curtains and of the insolent
+      indifference of a clock that chattered on at the top of its voice as
+      though I were not there; while a strange and pitiless mirror with square
+      feet, which stood across one corner of the room, cleared for itself a site
+      I had not looked to find tenanted in the quiet surroundings of my normal
+      field of vision: that room in which my mind, forcing itself for hours on
+      end to leave its moorings, to elongate itself upwards so as to take on the
+      exact shape of the room, and to reach to the summit of that monstrous
+      funnel, had passed so many anxious nights while my body lay stretched out
+      in bed, my eyes staring upwards, my ears straining, my nostrils sniffing
+      uneasily, and my heart beating; until custom had changed the colour of the
+      curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought an expression of pity to the
+      cruel, slanting face of the glass, disguised or even completely dispelled
+      the scent of flowering grasses, and distinctly reduced the apparent
+      loftiness of the ceiling. Custom! that skilful but unhurrying manager who
+      begins by torturing the mind for weeks on end with her provisional
+      arrangements; whom the mind, for all that, is fortunate in discovering,
+      for without the help of custom it would never contrive, by its own
+      efforts, to make any room seem habitable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly I was now well awake; my body had turned about for the last time
+      and the good angel of certainty had made all the surrounding objects stand
+      still, had set me down under my bedclothes, in my bedroom, and had fixed,
+      approximately in their right places in the uncertain light, my chest of
+      drawers, my writing-table, my fireplace, the window overlooking the
+      street, and both the doors. But it was no good my knowing that I was not
+      in any of those houses of which, in the stupid moment of waking, if I had
+      not caught sight exactly, I could still believe in their possible
+      presence; for memory was now set in motion; as a rule I did not attempt to
+      go to sleep again at once, but used to spend the greater part of the night
+      recalling our life in the old days at Combray with my great-aunt, at
+      Balbec, Paris, Doncières, Venice, and the rest; remembering again all the
+      places and people that I had known, what I had actually seen of them, and
+      what others had told me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Combray, as every afternoon ended, long before the time when I should
+      have to go up to bed, and to lie there, unsleeping, far from my mother and
+      grandmother, my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and
+      anxious thoughts were centred. Some one had had the happy idea of giving
+      me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally wretched, a magic
+      lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while we waited for
+      dinner-time to come: in the manner of the master-builders and
+      glass-painters of gothic days it substituted for the opaqueness of my
+      walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many colours,
+      in which legends were depicted, as on a shifting and transitory window.
+      But my sorrows were only increased, because this change of lighting
+      destroyed, as nothing else could have done, the customary impression I had
+      formed of my room, thanks to which the room itself, but for the torture of
+      having to go to bed in it, had become quite endurable. For now I no longer
+      recognised it, and I became uneasy, as though I were in a room in some
+      hotel or furnished lodging, in a place where I had just arrived, by train,
+      for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Riding at a jerky trot, Golo, his mind filled with an infamous design,
+      issued from the little three-cornered forest which dyed dark-green the
+      slope of a convenient hill, and advanced by leaps and bounds towards the
+      castle of poor Geneviève de Brabant. This castle was cut off short by a
+      curved line which was in fact the circumference of one of the transparent
+      ovals in the slides which were pushed into position through a slot in the
+      lantern. It was only the wing of a castle, and in front of it stretched a
+      moor on which Geneviève stood, lost in contemplation, wearing a blue
+      girdle. The castle and the moor were yellow, but I could tell their colour
+      without waiting to see them, for before the slides made their appearance
+      the old-gold sonorous name of Brabant had given me an unmistakable clue.
+      Golo stopped for a moment and listened sadly to the little speech read
+      aloud by my great-aunt, which he seemed perfectly to understand, for he
+      modified his attitude with a docility not devoid of a degree of majesty,
+      so as to conform to the indications given in the text; then he rode away
+      at the same jerky trot. And nothing could arrest his slow progress. If the
+      lantern were moved I could still distinguish Golo's horse advancing across
+      the window-curtains, swelling out with their curves and diving into their
+      folds. The body of Golo himself, being of the same supernatural substance
+      as his steed's, overcame all material obstacles—everything that
+      seemed to bar his way—by taking each as it might be a skeleton and
+      embodying it in himself: the door-handle, for instance, over which,
+      adapting itself at once, would float invincibly his red cloak or his pale
+      face, never losing its nobility or its melancholy, never shewing any sign
+      of trouble at such a transubstantiation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, indeed, I found plenty of charm in these bright projections, which
+      seemed to have come straight out of a Merovingian past, and to shed around
+      me the reflections of such ancient history. But I cannot express the
+      discomfort I felt at such an intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room
+      which I had succeeded in filling with my own personality until I thought
+      no more of the room than of myself. The anaesthetic effect of custom being
+      destroyed, I would begin to think and to feel very melancholy things. The
+      door-handle of my room, which was different to me from all the other
+      doorhandles in the world, inasmuch as it seemed to open of its own accord
+      and without my having to turn it, so unconscious had its manipulation
+      become; lo and behold, it was now an astral body for Golo. And as soon as
+      the dinner-bell rang I would run down to the dining-room, where the big
+      hanging lamp, ignorant of Golo and Bluebeard but well acquainted with my
+      family and the dish of stewed beef, shed the same light as on every other
+      evening; and I would fall into the arms of my mother, whom the misfortunes
+      of Geneviève de Brabant had made all the dearer to me, just as the crimes
+      of Golo had driven me to a more than ordinarily scrupulous examination of
+      my own conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after dinner, alas, I was soon obliged to leave Mamma, who stayed
+      talking with the others, in the garden if it was fine, or in the little
+      parlour where everyone took shelter when it was wet. Everyone except my
+      grandmother, who held that "It is a pity to shut oneself indoors in the
+      country," and used to carry on endless discussions with my father on the
+      very wettest days, because he would send me up to my room with a book
+      instead of letting me stay out of doors. "That is not the way to make him
+      strong and active," she would say sadly, "especially this little man, who
+      needs all the strength and character that he can get." My father would
+      shrug his shoulders and study the barometer, for he took an interest in
+      meteorology, while my mother, keeping very quiet so as not to disturb him,
+      looked at him with tender respect, but not too hard, not wishing to
+      penetrate the mysteries of his superior mind. But my grandmother, in all
+      weathers, even when the rain was coming down in torrents and Françoise had
+      rushed indoors with the precious wicker armchairs, so that they should not
+      get soaked—you would see my grandmother pacing the deserted garden,
+      lashed by the storm, pushing back her grey hair in disorder so that her
+      brows might be more free to imbibe the life-giving draughts of wind and
+      rain. She would say, "At last one can breathe!" and would run up and down
+      the soaking paths—too straight and symmetrical for her liking, owing
+      to the want of any feeling for nature in the new gardener, whom my father
+      had been asking all morning if the weather were going to improve—with
+      her keen, jerky little step regulated by the various effects wrought upon
+      her soul by the intoxication of the storm, the force of hygiene, the
+      stupidity of my education and of symmetry in gardens, rather than by any
+      anxiety (for that was quite unknown to her) to save her plum-coloured
+      skirt from the spots of mud under which it would gradually disappear to a
+      depth which always provided her maid with a fresh problem and filled her
+      with fresh despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When these walks of my grandmother's took place after dinner there was one
+      thing which never failed to bring her back to the house: that was if (at
+      one of those points when the revolutions of her course brought her,
+      moth-like, in sight of the lamp in the little parlour where the liqueurs
+      were set out on the card-table) my great-aunt called out to her:
+      "Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!" For,
+      simply to tease her (she had brought so foreign a type of mind into my
+      father's family that everyone made a joke of it), my great-aunt used to
+      make my grandfather, who was forbidden liqueurs, take just a few drops. My
+      poor grandmother would come in and beg and implore her husband not to
+      taste the brandy; and he would become annoyed and swallow his few drops
+      all the same, and she would go out again sad and discouraged, but still
+      smiling, for she was so humble and so sweet that her gentleness towards
+      others, and her continual subordination of herself and of her own
+      troubles, appeared on her face blended in a smile which, unlike those seen
+      on the majority of human faces, had no trace in it of irony, save for
+      herself, while for all of us kisses seemed to spring from her eyes, which
+      could not look upon those she loved without yearning to bestow upon them
+      passionate caresses. The torments inflicted on her by my great-aunt, the
+      sight of my grandmother's vain entreaties, of her in her weakness
+      conquered before she began, but still making the futile endeavour to wean
+      my grandfather from his liqueur-glass—all these were things of the
+      sort to which, in later years, one can grow so well accustomed as to smile
+      at them, to take the tormentor's side with a happy determination which
+      deludes one into the belief that it is not, really, tormenting; but in
+      those days they filled me with such horror that I longed to strike my
+      great-aunt. And yet, as soon as I heard her "Bathilde! Come in and stop
+      your husband from drinking brandy!" in my cowardice I became at once a
+      man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and
+      injustice; I preferred not to see them; I ran up to the top of the house
+      to cry by myself in a little room beside the schoolroom and beneath the
+      roof, which smelt of orris-root, and was scented also by a wild
+      currant-bush which had climbed up between the stones of the outer wall and
+      thrust a flowering branch in through the half-opened window. Intended for
+      a more special and a baser use, this room, from which, in the daytime, I
+      could see as far as the keep of Roussainville-le-Pin, was for a long time
+      my place of refuge, doubtless because it was the only room whose door I
+      was allowed to lock, whenever my occupation was such as required an
+      inviolable solitude; reading or dreaming, secret tears or paroxysms of
+      desire. Alas! I little knew that my own lack of will-power, my delicate
+      health, and the consequent uncertainty as to my future weighed far more
+      heavily on my grandmother's mind than any little breach of the rules by
+      her husband, during those endless perambulations, afternoon and evening,
+      in which we used to see passing up and down, obliquely raised towards the
+      heavens, her handsome face with its brown and wrinkled cheeks, which with
+      age had acquired almost the purple hue of tilled fields in autumn,
+      covered, if she were walking abroad, by a half-lifted veil, while upon
+      them either the cold or some sad reflection invariably left the drying
+      traces of an involuntary tear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma
+      would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted
+      for so short a time: she went down again so soon that the moment in which
+      I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her garden
+      dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited straw,
+      rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment of the
+      keenest sorrow. So much did I love that good night that I reached the
+      stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as to prolong
+      the time of respite during which Mamma would not yet have appeared.
+      Sometimes when, after kissing me, she opened the door to go, I longed to
+      call her back, to say to her "Kiss me just once again," but I knew that
+      then she would at once look displeased, for the concession which she made
+      to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to me with this kiss of
+      peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies absurd, and
+      she would have liked to try to induce me to outgrow the need, the custom
+      of having her there at all, which was a very different thing from letting
+      the custom grow up of my asking her for an additional kiss when she was
+      already crossing the threshold. And to see her look displeased destroyed
+      all the sense of tranquillity she had brought me a moment before, when she
+      bent her loving face down over my bed, and held it out to me like a Host,
+      for an act of Communion in which my lips might drink deeply the sense of
+      her real presence, and with it the power to sleep. But those evenings on
+      which Mamma stayed so short a time in my room were sweet indeed compared
+      to those on which we had guests to dinner, and therefore she did not come
+      at all. Our 'guests' were practically limited to M. Swann, who, apart from
+      a few passing strangers, was almost the only person who ever came to the
+      house at Combray, sometimes to a neighbourly dinner (but less frequently
+      since his unfortunate marriage, as my family did not care to receive his
+      wife) and sometimes after dinner, uninvited. On those evenings when, as we
+      sat in front of the house beneath the big chestnut-tree and round the iron
+      table, we heard, from the far end of the garden, not the large and noisy
+      rattle which heralded and deafened as he approached with its ferruginous,
+      interminable, frozen sound any member of the household who had put it out
+      of action by coming in 'without ringing,' but the double peal—timid,
+      oval, gilded—of the visitors' bell, everyone would at once exclaim
+      "A visitor! Who in the world can it be?" but they knew quite well that it
+      could only be M. Swann. My great-aunt, speaking in a loud voice, to set an
+      example, in a tone which she endeavoured to make sound natural, would tell
+      the others not to whisper so; that nothing could be more unpleasant for a
+      stranger coming in, who would be led to think that people were saying
+      things about him which he was not meant to hear; and then my grandmother
+      would be sent out as a scout, always happy to find an excuse for an
+      additional turn in the garden, which she would utilise to remove
+      surreptitiously, as she passed, the stakes of a rose-tree or two, so as to
+      make the roses look a little more natural, as a mother might run her hand
+      through her boy's hair, after the barber had smoothed it down, to make it
+      stick out properly round his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there we would all stay, hanging on the words which would fall from my
+      grandmother's lips when she brought us back her report of the enemy, as
+      though there had been some uncertainty among a vast number of possible
+      invaders, and then, soon after, my grandfather would say: "I can hear
+      Swann's voice." And, indeed, one could tell him only by his voice, for it
+      was difficult to make out his face with its arched nose and green eyes,
+      under a high forehead fringed with fair, almost red hair, dressed in the
+      Bressant style, because in the garden we used as little light as possible,
+      so as not to attract mosquitoes: and I would slip away as though not going
+      for anything in particular, to tell them to bring out the syrups; for my
+      grandmother made a great point, thinking it 'nicer' of their not being
+      allowed to seem anything out of the ordinary, which we kept for visitors
+      only. Although a far younger man, M. Swann was very much attached to my
+      grandfather, who had been an intimate friend, in his time, of Swann's
+      father, an excellent but an eccentric man in whom the least little thing
+      would, it seemed, often check the flow of his spirits and divert the
+      current of his thoughts. Several times in the course of a year I would
+      hear my grandfather tell at table the story, which never varied, of the
+      behaviour of M. Swann the elder upon the death of his wife, by whose
+      bedside he had watched day and night. My grandfather, who had not seen him
+      for a long time, hastened to join him at the Swanns' family property on
+      the outskirts of Combray, and managed to entice him for a moment, weeping
+      profusely, out of the death-chamber, so that he should not be present when
+      the body was laid in its coffin. They took a turn or two in the park,
+      where there was a little sunshine. Suddenly M. Swann seized my grandfather
+      by the arm and cried, "Oh, my dear old friend, how fortunate we are to be
+      walking here together on such a charming day! Don't you see how pretty
+      they are, all these trees—my hawthorns, and my new pond, on which
+      you have never congratulated me? You look as glum as a night-cap. Don't
+      you feel this little breeze? Ah! whatever you may say, it's good to be
+      alive all the same, my dear Amédée!" And then, abruptly, the memory of his
+      dead wife returned to him, and probably thinking it too complicated to
+      inquire into how, at such a time, he could have allowed himself to be
+      carried away by an impulse of happiness, he confined himself to a gesture
+      which he habitually employed whenever any perplexing question came into
+      his mind: that is, he passed his hand across his forehead, dried his eyes,
+      and wiped his glasses. And he could never be consoled for the loss of his
+      wife, but used to say to my grandfather, during the two years for which he
+      survived her, "It's a funny thing, now; I very often think of my poor
+      wife, but I cannot think of her very much at any one time." "Often, but a
+      little at a time, like poor old Swann," became one of my grandfather's
+      favourite phrases, which he would apply to all kinds of things. And I
+      should have assumed that this father of Swann's had been a monster if my
+      grandfather, whom I regarded as a better judge than myself, and whose word
+      was my law and often led me in the long run to pardon offences which I
+      should have been inclined to condemn, had not gone on to exclaim, "But,
+      after all, he had a heart of gold."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For many years, albeit—and especially before his marriage—M.
+      Swann the younger came often to see them at Combray, my great-aunt and
+      grandparents never suspected that he had entirely ceased to live in the
+      kind of society which his family had frequented, or that, under the sort
+      of incognito which the name of Swann gave him among us, they were
+      harbouring—with the complete innocence of a family of honest
+      innkeepers who have in their midst some distinguished highwayman and never
+      know it—one of the smartest members of the Jockey Club, a particular
+      friend of the Comte de Paris and of the Prince of Wales, and one of the
+      men most sought after in the aristocratic world of the Faubourg
+      Saint-Germain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our utter ignorance of the brilliant part which Swann was playing in the
+      world of fashion was, of course, due in part to his own reserve and
+      discretion, but also to the fact that middle-class people in those days
+      took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist
+      of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself
+      called to that station in life which his parents already occupied, and
+      nothing, except the chance of a brilliant career or of a 'good' marriage,
+      could extract you from that station or admit you to a superior caste. M.
+      Swann, the father, had been a stockbroker; and so 'young Swann' found
+      himself immured for life in a caste where one's fortune, as in a list of
+      taxpayers, varied between such and such limits of income. We knew the
+      people with whom his father had associated, and so we knew his own
+      associates, the people with whom he was 'in a position to mix.' If he knew
+      other people besides, those were youthful acquaintances on whom the old
+      friends of the family, like my relatives, shut their eyes all the more
+      good-naturedly that Swann himself, after he was left an orphan, still came
+      most faithfully to see us; but we would have been ready to wager that the
+      people outside our acquaintance whom Swann knew were of the sort to whom
+      he would not have dared to raise his hat, had he met them while he was
+      walking with ourselves. Had there been such a thing as a determination to
+      apply to Swann a social coefficient peculiar to himself, as distinct from
+      all the other sons of other stockbrokers in his father's position, his
+      coefficient would have been rather lower than theirs, because, leading a
+      very simple life, and having always had a craze for 'antiques' and
+      pictures, he now lived and piled up his collections in an old house which
+      my grandmother longed to visit, but which stood on the Quai d'Orléans, a
+      neighbourhood in which my great-aunt thought it most degrading to be
+      quartered. "Are you really a connoisseur, now?" she would say to him; "I
+      ask for your own sake, as you are likely to have 'fakes' palmed off on you
+      by the dealers," for she did not, in fact, endow him with any critical
+      faculty, and had no great opinion of the intelligence of a man who, in
+      conversation, would avoid serious topics and shewed a very dull
+      preciseness, not only when he gave us kitchen recipes, going into the most
+      minute details, but even when my grandmother's sisters were talking to him
+      about art. When challenged by them to give an opinion, or to express his
+      admiration for some picture, he would remain almost impolitely silent, and
+      would then make amends by furnishing (if he could) some fact or other
+      about the gallery in which the picture was hung, or the date at which it
+      had been painted. But as a rule he would content himself with trying to
+      amuse us by telling us the story of his latest adventure—and he
+      would have a fresh story for us on every occasion—with some one whom
+      we ourselves knew, such as the Combray chemist, or our cook, or our
+      coachman. These stories certainly used to make my great-aunt laugh, but
+      she could never tell whether that was on account of the absurd parts which
+      Swann invariably made himself play in the adventures, or of the wit that
+      he shewed in telling us of them. "It is easy to see that you are a regular
+      'character,' M. Swann!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she was the only member of our family who could be described as a
+      trifle 'common,' she would always take care to remark to strangers, when
+      Swann was mentioned, that he could easily, if he had wished to, have lived
+      in the Boulevard Haussmann or the Avenue de l'Opéra, and that he was the
+      son of old M. Swann who must have left four or five million francs, but
+      that it was a fad of his. A fad which, moreover, she thought was bound to
+      amuse other people so much that in Paris, when M. Swann called on New
+      Year's Day bringing her a little packet of <i>marrons glacés</i>, she
+      never failed, if there were strangers in the room, to say to him: "Well,
+      M. Swann, and do you still live next door to the Bonded Vaults, so as to
+      be sure of not missing your train when you go to Lyons?" and she would
+      peep out of the corner of her eye, over her glasses, at the other
+      visitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if anyone had suggested to my aunt that this Swann, who, in his
+      capacity as the son of old M. Swann, was 'fully qualified' to be received
+      by any of the 'upper middle class,' the most respected barristers and
+      solicitors of Paris (though he was perhaps a trifle inclined to let this
+      hereditary privilege go into abeyance), had another almost secret
+      existence of a wholly different kind: that when he left our house in
+      Paris, saying that he must go home to bed, he would no sooner have turned
+      the corner than he would stop, retrace his steps, and be off to some
+      drawing-room on whose like no stockbroker or associate of stockbrokers had
+      ever set eyes—that would have seemed to my aunt as extraordinary as,
+      to a woman of wider reading, the thought of being herself on terms of
+      intimacy with Aristaeus, of knowing that he would, when he had finished
+      his conversation with her, plunge deep into the realms of Thetis, into an
+      empire veiled from mortal eyes, in which Virgil depicts him as being
+      received with open arms; or—to be content with an image more likely
+      to have occurred to her, for she had seen it painted on the plates we used
+      for biscuits at Combray—as the thought of having had to dinner Ali
+      Baba, who, as soon as he found himself alone and unobserved, would make
+      his way into the cave, resplendent with its unsuspected treasures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day when he had come to see us after dinner in Paris, and had begged
+      pardon for being in evening clothes, Françoise, when he had gone, told us
+      that she had got it from his coachman that he had been dining "with a
+      princess." "A pretty sort of princess," drawled my aunt; "I know them,"
+      and she shrugged her shoulders without raising her eyes from her knitting,
+      serenely ironical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Altogether, my aunt used to treat him with scant ceremony. Since she was
+      of the opinion that he ought to feel flattered by our invitations, she
+      thought it only right and proper that he should never come to see us in
+      summer without a basket of peaches or raspberries from his garden, and
+      that from each of his visits to Italy he should bring back some
+      photographs of old masters for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed quite natural, therefore, to send to him whenever we wanted a
+      recipe for some special sauce or for a pineapple salad for one of our big
+      dinner-parties, to which he himself would not be invited, not seeming of
+      sufficient importance to be served up to new friends who might be in our
+      house for the first time. If the conversation turned upon the Princes of
+      the House of France, "Gentlemen, you and I will never know, will we, and
+      don't want to, do we?" my great-aunt would say tartly to Swann, who had,
+      perhaps, a letter from Twickenham in his pocket; she would make him play
+      accompaniments and turn over music on evenings when my grandmother's
+      sister sang; manipulating this creature, so rare and refined at other
+      times and in other places, with the rough simplicity of a child who will
+      play with some curio from the cabinet no more carefully than if it were a
+      penny toy. Certainly the Swann who was a familiar figure in all the clubs
+      of those days differed hugely from, the Swann created in my great-aunt's
+      mind when, of an evening, in our little garden at Combray, after the two
+      shy peals had sounded from the gate, she would vitalise, by injecting into
+      it everything she had ever heard about the Swann family, the vague and
+      unrecognisable shape which began to appear, with my grandmother in its
+      wake, against a background of shadows, and could at last be identified by
+      the sound of its voice. But then, even in the most insignificant details
+      of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole,
+      which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in
+      an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created
+      by the thoughts of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as
+      "seeing some one we know" is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We
+      pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we
+      have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we
+      compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In
+      the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to
+      follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the
+      sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent
+      envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our
+      own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen. And so, no
+      doubt, from the Swann they had built up for their own purposes my family
+      had left out, in their ignorance, a whole crowd of the details of his
+      daily life in the world of fashion, details by means of which other
+      people, when they met him, saw all the Graces enthroned in his face and
+      stopping at the line of his arched nose as at a natural frontier; but they
+      contrived also to put into a face from which its distinction had been
+      evicted, a face vacant and roomy as an untenanted house, to plant in the
+      depths of its unvalued eyes a lingering sense, uncertain but not
+      unpleasing, half-memory and half-oblivion, of idle hours spent together
+      after our weekly dinners, round the card-table or in the garden, during
+      our companionable country life. Our friend's bodily frame had been so well
+      lined with this sense, and with various earlier memories of his family,
+      that their own special Swann had become to my people a complete and living
+      creature; so that even now I have the feeling of leaving some one I know
+      for another quite different person when, going back in memory, I pass from
+      the Swann whom I knew later and more intimately to this early Swann—this
+      early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my
+      childhood, and who, incidentally, is less like his successor than he is
+      like the other people I knew at that time, as though one's life were a
+      series of galleries in which all the portraits of any one period had a
+      marked family likeness, the same (so to speak) tonality—this early
+      Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent of the great
+      chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and of a sprig of tarragon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet one day, when my grandmother had gone to ask some favour of a lady
+      whom she had known at the Sacré Coeur (and with whom, because of our caste
+      theory, she had not cared to keep up any degree of intimacy in spite of
+      several common interests), the Marquise de Villeparisis, of the famous
+      house of Bouillon, this lady had said to her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think you know M. Swann very well; he is a great friend of my nephews,
+      the des Laumes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My grandmother had returned from the call full of praise for the house,
+      which overlooked some gardens, and in which Mme. de Villeparisis had
+      advised her to rent a flat; and also for a repairing tailor and his
+      daughter, who kept a little shop in the courtyard, into which she had gone
+      to ask them to put a stitch in her skirt, which she had torn on the
+      staircase. My grandmother had found these people perfectly charming: the
+      girl, she said, was a jewel, and the tailor a most distinguished man, the
+      finest she had ever seen. For in her eyes distinction was a thing wholly
+      independent of social position. She was in ecstasies over some answer the
+      tailor had made, saying to Mamma:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sévigné would not have said it better!" and, by way of contrast, of a
+      nephew of Mme. de Villeparisis whom she had met at the house:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear, he is so common!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, the effect of that remark about Swann had been, not to raise him in
+      my great-aunt's estimation, but to lower Mme. de Villeparisis. It appeared
+      that the deference which, on my grandmother's authority, we owed to Mme.
+      de Villeparisis imposed on her the reciprocal obligation to do nothing
+      that would render her less worthy of our regard, and that she had failed
+      in her duty in becoming aware of Swann's existence and in allowing members
+      of her family to associate with him. "How should she know Swann? A lady
+      who, you always made out, was related to Marshal MacMahon!" This view of
+      Swann's social atmosphere which prevailed in my family seemed to be
+      confirmed later on by his marriage with a woman of the worst class, you
+      might almost say a 'fast' woman, whom, to do him justice, he never
+      attempted to introduce to us, for he continued to come to us alone, though
+      he came more and more seldom; but from whom they thought they could
+      establish, on the assumption that he had found her there, the circle,
+      unknown to them, in which he ordinarily moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on one occasion my grandfather read in a newspaper that M. Swann was
+      one of the most faithful attendants at the Sunday luncheons given by the
+      Duc de X——, whose father and uncle had been among our most
+      prominent statesmen in the reign of Louis Philippe. Now my grandfather was
+      curious to learn all the little details which might help him to take a
+      mental share in the private lives of men like Mole, the Duc Pasquier, or
+      the Duc de Broglie. He was delighted to find that Swann associated with
+      people who had known them. My great-aunt, however, interpreted this piece
+      of news in a sense discreditable to Swann; for anyone who chose his
+      associates outside the caste in which he had been born and bred, outside
+      his 'proper station,' was condemned to utter degradation in her eyes. It
+      seemed to her that such a one abdicated all claim to enjoy the fruits of
+      those friendly relations with people of good position which prudent
+      parents cultivate and store up for their children's benefit, for my
+      great-aunt had actually ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer we had known
+      because he had married a 'Highness' and had thereby stepped down—in
+      her eyes—from the respectable position of a lawyer's son to that of
+      those adventurers, upstart footmen or stable-boys mostly, to whom we read
+      that queens have sometimes shewn their favours. She objected, therefore,
+      to my grandfather's plan of questioning Swann, when next he came to dine
+      with us, about these people whose friendship with him we had discovered.
+      On the other hand, my grandmother's two sisters, elderly spinsters who
+      shared her nobility of character but lacked her intelligence, declared
+      that they could not conceive what pleasure their brother-in-law could find
+      in talking about such trifles. They were ladies of lofty ambition, who for
+      that reason were incapable of taking the least interest in what might be
+      called the 'pinchbeck' things of life, even when they had an historic
+      value, or, generally speaking, in anything that was not directly
+      associated with some object aesthetically precious. So complete was their
+      negation of interest in anything which seemed directly or indirectly a
+      part of our everyday life that their sense of hearing—which had
+      gradually come to understand its own futility when the tone of the
+      conversation, at the dinner-table, became frivolous or merely mundane,
+      without the two old ladies' being able to guide it back to the topic dear
+      to themselves—would leave its receptive channels unemployed, so
+      effectively that they were actually becoming atrophied. So that if my
+      grandfather wished to attract the attention of the two sisters, he would
+      have to make use of some such alarm signals as mad-doctors adopt in
+      dealing with their distracted patients; as by beating several times on a
+      glass with the blade of a knife, fixing them at the same time with a sharp
+      word and a compelling glance, violent methods which the said doctors are
+      apt to bring with them into their everyday life among the sane, either
+      from force of professional habit or because they think the whole world a
+      trifle mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their interest grew, however, when, the day before Swann was to dine with
+      us, and when he had made them a special present of a case of Asti, my
+      great-aunt, who had in her hand a copy of the <i>Figaro</i> in which to
+      the name of a picture then on view in a Corot exhibition were added the
+      words, "from the collection of M. Charles Swann," asked: "Did you see that
+      Swann is 'mentioned' in the <i>Figaro</i>?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I have always told you," said my grandmother, "that he had plenty of
+      taste."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You would, of course," retorted my great-aunt, "say anything just to seem
+      different from <i>us</i>." For, knowing that my grandmother never agreed
+      with her, and not being quite confident that it was her own opinion which
+      the rest of us invariably endorsed, she wished to extort from us a
+      wholesale condemnation of my grandmother's views, against which she hoped
+      to force us into solidarity with her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we sat silent. My grandmother's sisters having expressed a desire to
+      mention to Swann this reference to him in the <i>Figaro</i>, my great-aunt
+      dissuaded them. Whenever she saw in others an advantage, however trivial,
+      which she herself lacked, she would persuade herself that it was no
+      advantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to have to envy
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think that would please him at all; I know very well, I should
+      hate to see my name printed like that, as large as life, in the paper, and
+      I shouldn't feel at all flattered if anyone spoke to me about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not, however, put any very great pressure upon my grandmother's
+      sisters, for they, in their horror of vulgarity, had brought to such a
+      fine art the concealment of a personal allusion in a wealth of ingenious
+      circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person to
+      whom it was addressed. As for my mother, her only thought was of managing
+      to induce my father to consent to speak to Swann, not of his wife, but of
+      his daughter, whom he worshipped, and for whose sake it was understood
+      that he had ultimately made his unfortunate marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You need only say a word; just ask him how she is. It must be so very
+      hard for him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My father, however, was annoyed: "No, no; you have the most absurd ideas.
+      It would be utterly ridiculous."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the only one of us in whom the prospect of Swann's arrival gave rise
+      to an unhappy foreboding was myself. And that was because on the evenings
+      when there were visitors, or just M. Swann in the house, Mamma did not
+      come up to my room. I did not, at that time, have dinner with the family:
+      I came out to the garden after dinner, and at nine I said good night and
+      went to bed. But on these evenings I used to dine earlier than the others,
+      and to come in afterwards and sit at table until eight o'clock, when it
+      was understood that I must go upstairs; that frail and precious kiss which
+      Mamma used always to leave upon my lips when I was in bed and just going
+      to sleep I had to take with me from the dining-room to my own, and to keep
+      inviolate all the time that it took me to undress, without letting its
+      sweet charm be broken, without letting its volatile essence diffuse itself
+      and evaporate; and just on those very evenings when I must needs take most
+      pains to receive it with due formality, I had to snatch it, to seize it
+      instantly and in public, without even having the time or being properly
+      free to apply to what I was doing the punctiliousness which madmen use who
+      compel themselves to exclude all other thoughts from their minds while
+      they are shutting a door, so that when the sickness of uncertainty sweeps
+      over them again they can triumphantly face and overcome it with the
+      recollection of the precise moment in which the door was shut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were all in the garden when the double peal of the gate-bell sounded
+      shyly. Everyone knew that it must be Swann, and yet they looked at one
+      another inquiringly and sent my grandmother scouting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "See that you thank him intelligibly for the wine," my grandfather warned
+      his two sisters-in-law; "you know how good it is, and it is a huge case."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, don't start whispering!" said my great-aunt. "How would you like to
+      come into a house and find everyone muttering to themselves?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! There's M. Swann," cried my father. "Let's ask him if he thinks it
+      will be fine to-morrow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother fancied that a word from her would wipe out all the
+      unpleasantness which my family had contrived to make Swann feel since his
+      marriage. She found an opportunity to draw him aside for a moment. But I
+      followed her: I could not bring myself to let her go out of reach of me
+      while I felt that in a few minutes I should have to leave her in the
+      dining-room and go up to my bed without the consoling thought, as on
+      ordinary evenings, that she would come up, later, to kiss me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, M. Swann," she said, "do tell me about your daughter; I am sure she
+      shews a taste already for nice things, like her papa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come along and sit down here with us all on the verandah," said my
+      grandfather, coming up to him. My mother had to abandon the quest, but
+      managed to extract from the restriction itself a further refinement of
+      thought, as great poets do when the tyranny of rhyme forces them into the
+      discovery of their finest lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We can talk about her again when we are by ourselves," she said, or
+      rather whispered to Swann. "It is only a mother who can understand. I am
+      sure that hers would agree with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so we all sat down round the iron table. I should have liked not to
+      think of the hours of anguish which I should have to spend, that evening,
+      alone in my room, without the possibility of going to sleep: I tried to
+      convince myself that they were of no importance, really, since I should
+      have forgotten them next morning, and to fix my mind on thoughts of the
+      future which would carry me, as on a bridge, across the terrifying abyss
+      that yawned at my feet. But my mind, strained by this foreboding,
+      distended like the look which I shot at my mother, would not allow any
+      other impression to enter. Thoughts did, indeed, enter it, but only on the
+      condition that they left behind them every element of beauty, or even of
+      quaintness, by which I might have been distracted or beguiled. As a
+      surgical patient, by means of a local anaesthetic, can look on with a
+      clear consciousness while an operation is being performed upon him and yet
+      feel nothing, I could repeat to myself some favourite lines, or watch my
+      grandfather attempting to talk to Swann about the Duc
+      d'Audriffet-Pasquier, without being able to kindle any emotion from one or
+      amusement from the other. Hardly had my grandfather begun to question
+      Swann about that orator when one of my grandmother's sisters, in whose
+      ears the question echoed like a solemn but untimely silence which her
+      natural politeness bade her interrupt, addressed the other with:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just fancy, Flora, I met a young Swedish governess to-day who told me
+      some most interesting things about the co-operative movement in
+      Scandinavia. We really must have her to dine here one evening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To be sure!" said her sister Flora, "but I haven't wasted my time either.
+      I met such a clever old gentleman at M. Vinteuil's who knows Maubant quite
+      well, and Maubant has told him every little thing about how he gets up his
+      parts. It is the most interesting thing I ever heard. He is a neighbour of
+      M. Vinteuil's, and I never knew; and he is so nice besides."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "M. Vinteuil is not the only one who has nice neighbours," cried my aunt
+      Céline in a voice which seemed loud because she was so timid, and seemed
+      forced because she had been planning the little speech for so long;
+      darting, as she spoke, what she called a 'significant glance' at Swann.
+      And my aunt Flora, who realised that this veiled utterance was Céline's
+      way of thanking Swann intelligibly for the Asti, looked at him with a
+      blend of congratulation and irony, either just, because she wished to
+      underline her sister's little epigram, or because she envied Swann his
+      having inspired it, or merely because she imagined that he was
+      embarrassed, and could not help having a little fun at his expense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think it would be worth while," Flora went on, "to have this old
+      gentleman to dinner. When you get him upon Maubant or Mme. Materna he will
+      talk for hours on end."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That must be delightful," sighed my grandfather, in whose mind nature had
+      unfortunately forgotten to include any capacity whatsoever for becoming
+      passionately interested in the co-operative movement among the ladies of
+      Sweden or in the methods employed by Maubant to get up his parts, just as
+      it had forgotten to endow my grandmother's two sisters with a grain of
+      that precious salt which one has oneself to 'add to taste' in order to
+      extract any savour from a narrative of the private life of Mole or of the
+      Comte de Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I say!" exclaimed Swann to my grandfather, "what I was going to tell you
+      has more to do than you might think with what you were asking me just now,
+      for in some respects there has been very little change. I came across a
+      passage in Saint-Simon this morning which would have amused you. It is in
+      the volume which covers his mission to Spain; not one of the best, little
+      more in fact than a journal, but at least it is a journal wonderfully well
+      written, which fairly distinguishes it from the devastating journalism
+      that we feel bound to read in these days, morning, noon and night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not agree with you: there are some days when I find reading the
+      papers very pleasant indeed!" my aunt Flora broke in, to show Swann that
+      she had read the note about his Corot in the <i>Figaro</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," aunt Céline went one better. "When they write about things or
+      people in whom we are interested."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't deny it," answered Swann in some bewilderment. "The fault I find
+      with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh
+      triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a
+      lifetime give us anything that is of real importance. Suppose that, every
+      morning, when we tore the wrapper off our paper with fevered hands, a
+      transmutation were to take place, and we were to find inside it—oh!
+      I don't know; shall we say Pascal's <i>Pensées</i>?" He articulated the
+      title with an ironic emphasis so as not to appear pedantic. "And then, in
+      the gilt and tooled volumes which we open once in ten years," he went on,
+      shewing that contempt for the things of this world which some men of the
+      world like to affect, "we should read that the Queen of the Hellenes had
+      arrived at Cannes, or that the Princesse de Léon had given a fancy dress
+      ball. In that way we should arrive at the right proportion between
+      'information' and 'publicity.'" But at once regretting that he had allowed
+      himself to speak, even in jest, of serious matters, he added ironically:
+      "We are having a most entertaining conversation; I cannot think why we
+      climb to these lofty summits," and then, turning to my grandfather: "Well,
+      Saint-Simon tells how Maulevrier had had the audacity to offer his hand to
+      his sons. You remember how he says of Maulevrier, 'Never did I find in
+      that coarse bottle anything but ill-humour, boorishness, and folly.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Coarse or not, I know bottles in which there is something very
+      different!" said Flora briskly, feeling bound to thank Swann as well as
+      her sister, since the present of Asti had been addressed to them both.
+      Céline began to laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann was puzzled, but went on: "'I cannot say whether it was his
+      ignorance or a trap,' writes Saint-Simon; 'he wished to give his hand to
+      my children. I noticed it in time to prevent him.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My grandfather was already in ecstasies over "ignorance or a trap," but
+      Miss Céline—the name of Saint-Simon, a 'man of letters,' having
+      arrested the complete paralysis of her sense of hearing—had grown
+      angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! You admire that, do you? Well, it is clever enough! But what is the
+      point of it? Does he mean that one man isn't as good as another? What
+      difference can it make whether he is a duke or a groom so long as he is
+      intelligent and good? He had a fine way of bringing up his children, your
+      Saint-Simon, if he didn't teach them to shake hands with all honest men.
+      Really and truly, it's abominable. And you dare to quote it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And my grandfather, utterly depressed, realising how futile it would be
+      for him, against this opposition, to attempt to get Swann to tell him the
+      stories which would have amused him, murmured to my mother: "Just tell me
+      again that line of yours which always comforts me so much on these
+      occasions. Oh, yes:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  What virtues, Lord, Thou makest us abhor!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Good, that is, very good."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I never took my eyes off my mother. I knew that when they were at table I
+      should not be permitted to stay there for the whole of dinner-time, and
+      that Mamma, for fear of annoying my father, would not allow me to give her
+      in public the series of kisses that she would have had in my room. And so
+      I promised myself that in the dining-room, as they began to eat and drink
+      and as I felt the hour approach, I would put beforehand into this kiss,
+      which was bound to be so brief and stealthy in execution, everything that
+      my own efforts could put into it: would look out very carefully first the
+      exact spot on her cheek where I would imprint it, and would so prepare my
+      thoughts that I might be able, thanks to these mental preliminaries, to
+      consecrate the whole of the minute Mamma would allow me to the sensation
+      of her cheek against my lips, as a painter who can have his subject for
+      short sittings only prepares his palette, and from what he remembers and
+      from rough notes does in advance everything which he possibly can do in
+      the sitter's absence. But to-night, before the dinner-bell had sounded, my
+      grandfather said with unconscious cruelty: "The little man looks tired;
+      he'd better go up to bed. Besides, we are dining late to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And my father, who was less scrupulous than my grandmother or mother in
+      observing the letter of a treaty, went on: "Yes, run along; to bed with
+      you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would have kissed Mamma then and there, but at that moment the
+      dinner-bell rang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no, leave your mother alone. You've said good night quite enough.
+      These exhibitions are absurd. Go on upstairs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so I must set forth without viaticum; must climb each step of the
+      staircase 'against my heart,' as the saying is, climbing in opposition to
+      my heart's desire, which was to return to my mother, since she had not, by
+      her kiss, given my heart leave to accompany me forth. That hateful
+      staircase, up which I always passed with such dismay, gave out a smell of
+      varnish which had to some extent absorbed, made definite and fixed the
+      special quality of sorrow that I felt each evening, and made it perhaps
+      even more cruel to my sensibility because, when it assumed this olfactory
+      guise, my intellect was powerless to resist it. When we have gone to sleep
+      with a maddening toothache and are conscious of it only as a little girl
+      whom we attempt, time after time, to pull out of the water, or as a line
+      of Molière which we repeat incessantly to ourselves, it is a great relief
+      to wake up, so that our intelligence can disentangle the idea of toothache
+      from any artificial semblance of heroism or rhythmic cadence. It was the
+      precise converse of this relief which I felt when my anguish at having to
+      go up to my room invaded my consciousness in a manner infinitely more
+      rapid, instantaneous almost, a manner at once insidious and brutal as I
+      breathed in—a far more poisonous thing than any moral penetration—the
+      peculiar smell of the varnish upon that staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once in my room I had to stop every loophole, to close the shutters, to
+      dig my own grave as I turned down the bed-clothes, to wrap myself in the
+      shroud of my nightshirt. But before burying myself in the iron bed which
+      had been placed there because, on summer nights, I was too hot among the
+      red curtains of the four-poster, I was stirred to revolt, and attempted
+      the desperate stratagem of a condemned prisoner. I wrote to my mother
+      begging her to come upstairs for an important reason which I could not put
+      in writing. My fear was that Françoise, my aunt's cook who used to be put
+      in charge of me when I was at Combray, might refuse to take my note. I had
+      a suspicion that, in her eyes, to carry a message to my mother when there
+      was a stranger in the room would appear flatly inconceivable, just as it
+      would be for the door-keeper of a theatre to hand a letter to an actor
+      upon the stage. For things which might or might not be done she possessed
+      a code at once imperious, abundant, subtle, and uncompromising on points
+      themselves imperceptible or irrelevant, which gave it a resemblance to
+      those ancient laws which combine such cruel ordinances as the massacre of
+      infants at the breast with prohibitions, of exaggerated refinement,
+      against "seething the kid in his mother's milk," or "eating of the sinew
+      which is upon the hollow of the thigh." This code, if one could judge it
+      by the sudden obstinacy which she would put into her refusal to carry out
+      certain of our instructions, seemed to have foreseen such social
+      complications and refinements of fashion as nothing in Françoise's
+      surroundings or in her career as a servant in a village household could
+      have put into her head; and we were obliged to assume that there was
+      latent in her some past existence in the ancient history of France, noble
+      and little understood, just as there is in those manufacturing towns where
+      old mansions still testify to their former courtly days, and chemical
+      workers toil among delicately sculptured scenes of the Miracle of
+      Theophilus or the Quatre Fils Aymon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this particular instance, the article of her code which made it highly
+      improbable that—barring an outbreak of fire—Françoise would go
+      down and disturb Mamma when M. Swann was there for so unimportant a person
+      as myself was one embodying the respect she shewed not only for the family
+      (as for the dead, for the clergy, or for royalty), but also for the
+      stranger within our gates; a respect which I should perhaps have found
+      touching in a book, but which never failed to irritate me on her lips,
+      because of the solemn and gentle tones in which she would utter it, and
+      which irritated me more than usual this evening when the sacred character
+      in which she invested the dinner-party might have the effect of making her
+      decline to disturb its ceremonial. But to give myself one chance of
+      success I lied without hesitation, telling her that it was not in the
+      least myself who had wanted to write to Mamma, but Mamma who, on saying
+      good night to me, had begged me not to forget to send her an answer about
+      something she had asked me to find, and that she would certainly be very
+      angry if this note were not taken to her. I think that Françoise
+      disbelieved me, for, like those primitive men whose senses were so much
+      keener than our own, she could immediately detect, by signs imperceptible
+      by the rest of us, the truth or falsehood of anything that we might wish
+      to conceal from her. She studied the envelope for five minutes as though
+      an examination of the paper itself and the look of my handwriting could
+      enlighten her as to the nature of the contents, or tell her to which
+      article of her code she ought to refer the matter. Then she went out with
+      an air of resignation which seemed to imply: "What a dreadful thing for
+      parents to have a child like this!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later she returned to say that they were still at the ice stage
+      and that it was impossible for the butler to deliver the note at once, in
+      front of everybody; but that when the finger-bowls were put round he would
+      find a way of slipping it into Mamma's hand. At once my anxiety subsided;
+      it was now no longer (as it had been a moment ago) until to-morrow that I
+      had lost my mother, for my little line was going—to annoy her, no
+      doubt, and doubly so because this contrivance would make me ridiculous in
+      Swann's eyes—but was going all the same to admit me, invisibly and
+      by stealth, into the same room as herself, was going to whisper from me
+      into her ear; for that forbidden and unfriendly dining-room, where but a
+      moment ago the ice itself—with burned nuts in it—and the
+      finger-bowls seemed to me to be concealing pleasures that were mischievous
+      and of a mortal sadness because Mamma was tasting of them and I was far
+      away, had opened its doors to me and, like a ripe fruit which bursts
+      through its skin, was going to pour out into my intoxicated heart the
+      gushing sweetness of Mamma's attention while she was reading what I had
+      written. Now I was no longer separated from her; the barriers were down;
+      an exquisite thread was binding us. Besides, that was not all, for surely
+      Mamma would come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the agony through which I had just passed, I imagined that Swann
+      would have laughed heartily at it if he had read my letter and had guessed
+      its purpose; whereas, on the contrary, as I was to learn in due course, a
+      similar anguish had been the bane of his life for many years, and no one
+      perhaps could have understood my feelings at that moment so well as
+      himself; to him, that anguish which lies in knowing that the creature one
+      adores is in some place of enjoyment where oneself is not and cannot
+      follow—to him that anguish came through Love, to which it is in a
+      sense predestined, by which it must be equipped and adapted; but when, as
+      had befallen me, such an anguish possesses one's soul before Love has yet
+      entered into one's life, then it must drift, awaiting Love's coming, vague
+      and free, without precise attachment, at the disposal of one sentiment
+      to-day, of another to-morrow, of filial piety or affection for a comrade.
+      And the joy with which I first bound myself apprentice, when Françoise
+      returned to tell me that my letter would be delivered; Swann, too, had
+      known well that false joy which a friend can give us, or some relative of
+      the woman we love, when on his arrival at the house or theatre where she
+      is to be found, for some ball or party or 'first-night' at which he is to
+      meet her, he sees us wandering outside, desperately awaiting some
+      opportunity of communicating with her. He recognises us, greets us
+      familiarly, and asks what we are doing there. And when we invent a story
+      of having some urgent message to give to his relative or friend, he
+      assures us that nothing could be more simple, takes us in at the door, and
+      promises to send her down to us in five minutes. How much we love him—as
+      at that moment I loved Françoise—the good-natured intermediary who
+      by a single word has made supportable, human, almost propitious the
+      inconceivable, infernal scene of gaiety in the thick of which we had been
+      imagining swarms of enemies, perverse and seductive, beguiling away from
+      us, even making laugh at us, the woman whom we love. If we are to judge of
+      them by him, this relative who has accosted us and who is himself an
+      initiate in those cruel mysteries, then the other guests cannot be so very
+      demoniacal. Those inaccessible and torturing hours into which she had gone
+      to taste of unknown pleasures—behold, a breach in the wall, and we
+      are through it. Behold, one of the moments whose series will go to make up
+      their sum, a moment as genuine as the rest, if not actually more important
+      to ourself because our mistress is more intensely a part of it; we picture
+      it to ourselves, we possess it, we intervene upon it, almost we have
+      created it: namely, the moment in which he goes to tell her that we are
+      waiting there below. And very probably the other moments of the party will
+      not be essentially different, will contain nothing else so exquisite or so
+      well able to make us suffer, since this kind friend has assured us that
+      "Of course, she will be delighted to come down! It will be far more
+      amusing for her to talk to you than to be bored up there." Alas! Swann had
+      learned by experience that the good intentions of a third party are
+      powerless to control a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even
+      into a ball-room by a man whom she does not love. Too often, the kind
+      friend comes down again alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother did not appear, but with no attempt to safeguard my self-respect
+      (which depended upon her keeping up the fiction that she had asked me to
+      let her know the result of my search for something or other) made
+      Françoise tell me, in so many words "There is no answer"—words I
+      have so often, since then, heard the hall-porters in 'mansions' and the
+      flunkeys in gambling-clubs and the like, repeat to some poor girl, who
+      replies in bewilderment: "What! he's said nothing? It's not possible. You
+      did give him my letter, didn't you? Very well, I shall wait a little
+      longer." And just as she invariably protests that she does not need the
+      extra gas which the porter offers to light for her, and sits on there,
+      hearing nothing further, except an occasional remark on the weather which
+      the porter exchanges with a messenger whom he will send off suddenly, when
+      he notices the time, to put some customer's wine on the ice; so, having
+      declined Françoise's offer to make me some tea or to stay beside me, I let
+      her go off again to the servants' hall, and lay down and shut my eyes, and
+      tried not to hear the voices of my family who were drinking their coffee
+      in the garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after a few seconds I realised that, by writing that line to Mamma, by
+      approaching—at the risk of making her angry—so near to her
+      that I felt I could reach out and grasp the moment in which I should see
+      her again, I had cut myself off from the possibility of going to sleep
+      until I actually had seen her, and my heart began to beat more and more
+      painfully as I increased my agitation by ordering myself to keep calm and
+      to acquiesce in my ill-fortune. Then, suddenly, my anxiety subsided, a
+      feeling of intense happiness coursed through me, as when a strong medicine
+      begins to take effect and one's pain vanishes: I had formed a resolution
+      to abandon all attempts to go to sleep without seeing Mamma, and had
+      decided to kiss her at all costs, even with the certainty of being in
+      disgrace with her for long afterwards, when she herself came up to bed.
+      The tranquillity which followed my anguish made me extremely alert, no
+      less than my sense of expectation, my thirst for and my fear of danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noiselessly I opened the window and sat down on the foot of my bed; hardly
+      daring to move in case they should hear me from below. Things outside
+      seemed also fixed in mute expectation, so as not to disturb the moonlight
+      which, duplicating each of them and throwing it back by the extension,
+      forwards, of a shadow denser and more concrete than its substance, had
+      made the whole landscape seem at once thinner and longer, like a map
+      which, after being folded up, is spread out upon the ground. What had to
+      move—a leaf of the chestnut-tree, for instance—moved. But its
+      minute shuddering, complete, finished to the least detail and with utmost
+      delicacy of gesture, made no discord with the rest of the scene, and yet
+      was not merged in it, remaining clearly outlined. Exposed upon this
+      surface of silence, which absorbed nothing from them, the most distant
+      sounds, those which must have come from gardens at the far end of the
+      town, could be distinguished with such exact 'finish' that the impression
+      they gave of coming from a distance seemed due only to their 'pianissimo'
+      execution, like those movements on muted strings so well performed by the
+      orchestra of the Conservatoire that, although one does not lose a single
+      note, one thinks all the same that they are being played somewhere
+      outside, a long way from the concert hall, so that all the old
+      subscribers, and my grandmother's sisters too, when Swann had given them
+      his seats, used to strain their ears as if they had caught the distant
+      approach of an army on the march, which had not yet rounded the corner of
+      the Rue de Trévise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was well aware that I had placed myself in a position than which none
+      could be counted upon to involve me in graver consequences at my parents'
+      hands; consequences far graver, indeed, than a stranger would have
+      imagined, and such as (he would have thought) could follow only some
+      really shameful fault. But in the system of education which they had given
+      me faults were not classified in the same order as in that of other
+      children, and I had been taught to place at the head of the list
+      (doubtless because there was no other class of faults from which I needed
+      to be more carefully protected) those in which I can now distinguish the
+      common feature that one succumbs to them by yielding to a nervous impulse.
+      But such words as these last had never been uttered in my hearing; no one
+      had yet accounted for my temptations in a way which might have led me to
+      believe that there was some excuse for my giving in to them, or that I was
+      actually incapable of holding out against them. Yet I could easily
+      recognise this class of transgressions by the anguish of mind which
+      preceded, as well as by the rigour of the punishment which followed them;
+      and I knew that what I had just done was in the same category as certain
+      other sins for which I had been severely chastised, though infinitely more
+      serious than they. When I went out to meet my mother as she herself came
+      up to bed, and when she saw that I had remained up so as to say good night
+      to her again in the passage, I should not be allowed to stay in the house
+      a day longer, I should be packed off to school next morning; so much was
+      certain. Very good: had I been obliged, the next moment, to hurl myself
+      out of the window, I should still have preferred such a fate. For what I
+      wanted now was Mamma, and to say good night to her. I had gone too far
+      along the road which led to the realisation of this desire to be able to
+      retrace my steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could hear my parents' footsteps as they went with Swann; and, when the
+      rattle of the gate assured me that he had really gone, I crept to the
+      window. Mamma was asking my father if he had thought the lobster good, and
+      whether M. Swann had had some of the coffee-and-pistachio ice. "I thought
+      it rather so-so," she was saying; "next time we shall have to try another
+      flavour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't tell you," said my great-aunt, "what a change I find in Swann. He
+      is quite antiquated!" She had grown so accustomed to seeing Swann always
+      in the same stage of adolescence that it was a shock to her to find him
+      suddenly less young than the age she still attributed to him. And the
+      others too were beginning to remark in Swann that abnormal, excessive,
+      scandalous senescence, meet only in a celibate, in one of that class for
+      whom it seems that the great day which knows no morrow must be longer than
+      for other men, since for such a one it is void of promise, and from its
+      dawn the moments steadily accumulate without any subsequent partition
+      among his offspring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I fancy he has a lot of trouble with that wretched wife of his, who
+      'lives' with a certain Monsieur de Charlus, as all Combray knows. It's the
+      talk of the town."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother observed that, in spite of this, he had looked much less unhappy
+      of late. "And he doesn't nearly so often do that trick of his, so like his
+      father, of wiping his eyes and passing his hand across his forehead. I
+      think myself that in his heart of hearts he doesn't love his wife any
+      more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, of course he doesn't," answered my grandfather. "He wrote me a
+      letter about it, ages ago, to which I took care to pay no attention, but
+      it left no doubt as to his feelings, let alone his love for his wife.
+      Hullo! you two; you never thanked him for the Asti!" he went on, turning
+      to his sisters-in-law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! we never thanked him? I think, between you and me, that I put it to
+      him quite neatly," replied my aunt Flora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, you managed it very well; I admired you for it," said my aunt
+      Céline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you did it very prettily, too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; I liked my expression about 'nice neighbours.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! Do you call that thanking him?" shouted my grandfather. "I heard
+      that all right, but devil take me if I guessed it was meant for Swann. You
+      may be quite sure he never noticed it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, come; Swann is not a fool. I am positive he appreciated the
+      compliment. You didn't expect me to tell him the number of bottles, or to
+      guess what he paid for them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My father and mother were left alone and sat down for a moment; then my
+      father said: "Well, shall we go up to bed?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As you wish, dear, though I don't feel in the least like sleeping. I
+      don't know why; it can't be the coffee-ice—it wasn't strong enough
+      to keep me awake like this. But I see a light in the servants' hall: poor
+      Françoise has been sitting up for me, so I will get her to unhook me while
+      you go and undress."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother opened the latticed door which led from the hall to the
+      staircase. Presently I heard her coming upstairs to close her window. I
+      went quietly into the passage; my heart was beating so violently that I
+      could hardly move, but at least it was throbbing no longer with anxiety,
+      but with terror and with joy. I saw in the well of the stair a light
+      coming upwards, from Mamma's candle. Then I saw Mamma herself: I threw
+      myself upon her. For an instant she looked at me in astonishment, not
+      realising what could have happened. Then her face assumed an expression of
+      anger. She said not a single word to me; and, for that matter, I used to
+      go for days on end without being spoken to, for far less offences than
+      this. A single word from Mamma would have been an admission that further
+      intercourse with me was within the bounds of possibility, and that might
+      perhaps have appeared to me more terrible still, as indicating that, with
+      such a punishment as was in store for me, mere silence, and even anger,
+      were relatively puerile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A word from her then would have implied the false calm in which one
+      converses with a servant to whom one has just decided to give notice; the
+      kiss one bestows on a son who is being packed off to enlist, which would
+      have been denied him if it had merely been a matter of being angry with
+      him for a few days. But she heard my father coming from the dressing-room,
+      where he had gone to take off his clothes, and, to avoid the 'scene' which
+      he would make if he saw me, she said, in a voice half-stifled by her
+      anger: "Run away at once. Don't let your father see you standing there
+      like a crazy jane!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I begged her again to "Come and say good night to me!" terrified as I
+      saw the light from my father's candle already creeping up the wall, but
+      also making use of his approach as a means of blackmail, in the hope that
+      my mother, not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must if she
+      continued to hold out, would give in to me, and say: "Go back to your
+      room. I will come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Too late: my father was upon us. Instinctively I murmured, though no one
+      heard me, "I am done for!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was not, however. My father used constantly to refuse to let me do
+      things which were quite clearly allowed by the more liberal charters
+      granted me by my mother and grandmother, because he paid no heed to
+      'Principles,' and because in his sight there were no such things as
+      'Rights of Man.' For some quite irrelevant reason, or for no reason at
+      all, he would at the last moment prevent me from taking some particular
+      walk, one so regular and so consecrated to my use that to deprive me of it
+      was a clear breach of faith; or again, as he had done this evening, long
+      before the appointed hour he would snap out: "Run along up to bed now; no
+      excuses!" But then again, simply because he was devoid of principles (in
+      my grandmother's sense), so he could not, properly speaking, be called
+      inexorable. He looked at me for a moment with an air of annoyance and
+      surprise, and then when Mamma had told him, not without some
+      embarrassment, what had happened, said to her: "Go along with him, then;
+      you said just now that you didn't feel like sleep, so stay in his room for
+      a little. I don't need anything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But dear," my mother answered timidly, "whether or not I feel like sleep
+      is not the point; we must not make the child accustomed..."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's no question of making him accustomed," said my father, with a
+      shrug of the shoulders; "you can see quite well that the child is unhappy.
+      After all, we aren't gaolers. You'll end by making him ill, and a lot of
+      good that will do. There are two beds in his room; tell Françoise to make
+      up the big one for you, and stay beside him for the rest of the night. I'm
+      off to bed, anyhow; I'm not nervous like you. Good night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was impossible for me to thank my father; what he called my
+      sentimentality would have exasperated him. I stood there, not daring to
+      move; he was still confronting us, an immense figure in his white
+      nightshirt, crowned with the pink and violet scarf of Indian cashmere in
+      which, since he had begun to suffer from neuralgia, he used to tie up his
+      head, standing like Abraham in the engraving after Benozzo Gozzoli which
+      M. Swann had given me, telling Sarah that she must tear herself away from
+      Isaac. Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase,
+      up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb, was long
+      ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which, I
+      imagined, would last for ever, and new structures have arisen, giving
+      birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have
+      foreseen, just as now the old are difficult of comprehension. It is a long
+      time, too, since my father has been able to tell Mamma to "Go with the
+      child." Never again will such hours be possible for me. But of late I have
+      been increasingly able to catch, if I listen attentively, the sound of the
+      sobs which I had the strength to control in my father's presence, and
+      which broke out only when I found myself alone with Mamma. Actually, their
+      echo has never ceased: it is only because life is now growing more and
+      more quiet round about me that I hear them afresh, like those convent
+      bells which are so effectively drowned during the day by the noises of the
+      streets that one would suppose them to have been stopped for ever, until
+      they sound out again through the silent evening air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mamma spent that night in my room: when I had just committed a sin so
+      deadly that I was waiting to be banished from the household, my parents
+      gave me a far greater concession than I should ever have won as the reward
+      of a good action. Even at the moment when it manifested itself in this
+      crowning mercy, my father's conduct towards me was still somewhat
+      arbitrary, and regardless of my deserts, as was characteristic of him and
+      due to the fact that his actions were generally dictated by chance
+      expediencies rather than based on any formal plan. And perhaps even what I
+      called his strictness, when he sent me off to bed, deserved that title
+      less, really, than my mother's or grandmother's attitude, for his nature,
+      which in some respects differed more than theirs from my own, had probably
+      prevented him from guessing, until then, how wretched I was every evening,
+      a thing which my mother and grandmother knew well; but they loved me
+      enough to be unwilling to spare me that suffering, which they hoped to
+      teach me to overcome, so as to reduce my nervous sensibility and to
+      strengthen my will. As for my father, whose affection for me was of
+      another kind, I doubt if he would have shewn so much courage, for as soon
+      as he had grasped the fact that I was unhappy he had said to my mother:
+      "Go and comfort him." Mamma stayed all night in my room, and it seemed
+      that she did not wish to mar by recrimination those hours, so different
+      from anything that I had had a right to expect; for when Françoise (who
+      guessed that something extraordinary must have happened when she saw Mamma
+      sitting by my side, holding my hand and letting me cry unchecked) said to
+      her: "But, Madame, what is little Master crying for?" she replied: "Why,
+      Françoise, he doesn't know himself: it is his nerves. Make up the big bed
+      for me quickly and then go off to your own." And thus for the first time
+      my unhappiness was regarded no longer as a fault for which I must be
+      punished, but as an involuntary evil which had been officially recognised
+      a nervous condition for which I was in no way responsible: I had the
+      consolation that I need no longer mingle apprehensive scruples with the
+      bitterness of my tears; I could weep henceforward without sin. I felt no
+      small degree of pride, either, in Françoise's presence at this return to
+      humane conditions which, not an hour after Mamma had refused to come up to
+      my room and had sent the snubbing message that I was to go to sleep,
+      raised me to the dignity of a grown-up person, brought me of a sudden to a
+      sort of puberty of sorrow, to emancipation from tears. I ought then to
+      have been happy; I was not. It struck me that my mother had just made a
+      first concession which must have been painful to her, that it was a first
+      step down from the ideal she had formed for me, and that for the first
+      time she, with all her courage, had to confess herself beaten. It struck
+      me that if I had just scored a victory it was over her; that I had
+      succeeded, as sickness or sorrow or age might have succeeded, in relaxing
+      her will, in altering her judgment; that this evening opened a new era,
+      must remain a black date in the calendar. And if I had dared now, I should
+      have said to Mamma: "No, I don't want you; you mustn't sleep here." But I
+      was conscious of the practical wisdom, of what would be called nowadays
+      the realism with which she tempered the ardent idealism of my
+      grandmother's nature, and I knew that now the mischief was done she would
+      prefer to let me enjoy the soothing pleasure of her company, and not to
+      disturb my father again. Certainly my mother's beautiful features seemed
+      to shine again with youth that evening, as she sat gently holding my hands
+      and trying to check my tears; but, just for that reason, it seemed to me
+      that this should not have happened; her anger would have been less
+      difficult to endure than this new kindness which my childhood had not
+      known; I felt that I had with an impious and secret finger traced a first
+      wrinkle upon her soul and made the first white hair shew upon her head.
+      This thought redoubled my sobs, and then I saw that Mamma, who had never
+      allowed herself to go to any length of tenderness with me, was suddenly
+      overcome by my tears and had to struggle to keep back her own. Then, as
+      she saw that I had noticed this, she said to me, with a smile: "Why, my
+      little buttercup, my little canary-boy, he's going to make Mamma as silly
+      as himself if this goes on. Look, since you can't sleep, and Mamma can't
+      either, we mustn't go on in this stupid way; we must do something; I'll
+      get one of your books." But I had none there. "Would you like me to get
+      out the books now that your grandmother is going to give you for your
+      birthday? Just think it over first, and don't be disappointed if there is
+      nothing new for you then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was only too delighted, and Mamma went to find a parcel of books in
+      which I could not distinguish, through the paper in which it was wrapped,
+      any more than its squareness and size, but which, even at this first
+      glimpse, brief and obscure as it was, bade fair to eclipse already the
+      paint-box of last New Year's Day and the silkworms of the year before. It
+      contained <i>La Mare au Diable</i>, <i>François le Champi</i>, <i>La
+      Petite Fadette</i>, and <i>Les Maîtres Sonneurs</i>. My grandmother, as I
+      learned afterwards, had at first chosen Mussel's poems, a volume of
+      Rousseau, and <i>Indiana</i>; for while she considered light reading as
+      unwholesome as sweets and cakes, she did not reflect that the strong
+      breath of genius must have upon the very soul of a child an influence at
+      once more dangerous and less quickening than those of fresh air and
+      country breezes upon his body. But when my father had seemed almost to
+      regard her as insane on learning the names of the books she proposed to
+      give me, she had journeyed back by herself to Jouy-le-Vicomte to the
+      bookseller's, so that there should be no fear of my not having my present
+      in time (it was a burning hot day, and she had come home so unwell that
+      the doctor had warned my mother not to allow her again to tire herself in
+      that way), and had there fallen back upon the four pastoral novels of
+      George Sand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear," she had said to Mamma, "I could not allow myself to give the
+      child anything that was not well written."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth was that she could never make up her mind to purchase anything
+      from which no intellectual profit was to be derived, and, above all, that
+      profit which good things bestowed on us by teaching us to seek our
+      pleasures elsewhere than in the barren satisfaction of worldly wealth.
+      Even when she had to make some one a present of the kind called 'useful,'
+      when she had to give an armchair or some table-silver or a walking-stick,
+      she would choose 'antiques,' as though their long desuetude had effaced
+      from them any semblance of utility and fitted them rather to instruct us
+      in the lives of the men of other days than to serve the common
+      requirements of our own. She would have liked me to have in my room
+      photographs of ancient buildings or of beautiful places. But at the moment
+      of buying them, and for all that the subject of the picture had an
+      aesthetic value of its own, she would find that vulgarity and utility had
+      too prominent a part in them, through the mechanical nature of their
+      reproduction by photography. She attempted by a subterfuge, if not to
+      eliminate altogether their commercial banality, at least to minimise it,
+      to substitute for the bulk of it what was art still, to introduce, as it
+      might be, several 'thicknesses' of art; instead of photographs of Chartres
+      Cathedral, of the Fountains of Saint-Cloud, or of Vesuvius she would
+      inquire of Swann whether some great painter had not made pictures of them,
+      and preferred to give me photographs of 'Chartres Cathedral' after Corot,
+      of the 'Fountains of Saint-Cloud' after Hubert Robert, and of 'Vesuvius'
+      after Turner, which were a stage higher in the scale of art. But although
+      the photographer had been prevented from reproducing directly the
+      masterpieces or the beauties of nature, and had there been replaced by a
+      great artist, he resumed his odious position when it came to reproducing
+      the artist's interpretation. Accordingly, having to reckon again with
+      vulgarity, my grandmother would endeavour to postpone the moment of
+      contact still further. She would ask Swann if the picture had not been
+      engraved, preferring, when possible, old engravings with some interest of
+      association apart from themselves, such, for example, as shew us a
+      masterpiece in a state in which we can no longer see it to-day, as
+      Morghen's print of the 'Cenacolo' of Leonardo before it was spoiled by
+      restoration. It must be admitted that the results of this method of
+      interpreting the art of making presents were not always happy. The idea
+      which I formed of Venice, from a drawing by Titian which is supposed to
+      have the lagoon in the background, was certainly far less accurate than
+      what I have since derived from ordinary photographs. We could no longer
+      keep count in the family (when my great-aunt tried to frame an indictment
+      of my grandmother) of all the armchairs she had presented to married
+      couples, young and old, which on a first attempt to sit down upon them had
+      at once collapsed beneath the weight of their recipient. But my
+      grandmother would have thought it sordid to concern herself too closely
+      with the solidity of any piece of furniture in which could still be
+      discerned a flourish, a smile, a brave conceit of the past. And even what
+      in such pieces supplied a material need, since it did so in a manner to
+      which we are no longer accustomed, was as charming to her as one of those
+      old forms of speech in which we can still see traces of a metaphor whose
+      fine point has been worn away by the rough usage of our modern tongue. In
+      precisely the same way the pastoral novels of George Sand, which she was
+      giving me for my birthday, were regular lumber-rooms of antique furniture,
+      full of expressions that have fallen out of use and returned as imagery,
+      such as one finds now only in country dialects. And my grandmother had
+      bought them in preference to other books, just as she would have preferred
+      to take a house that had a gothic dovecot, or some other such piece of
+      antiquity as would have a pleasant effect on the mind, filling it with a
+      nostalgic longing for impossible journeys through the realms of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mamma sat down by my bed; she had chosen <i>François le Champi</i>, whose
+      reddish cover and incomprehensible title gave it a distinct personality in
+      my eyes and a mysterious attraction. I had not then read any real novels.
+      I had heard it said that George Sand was a typical novelist. That prepared
+      me in advance to imagine that <i>François le Champi</i> contained
+      something inexpressibly delicious. The course of the narrative, where it
+      tended to arouse curiosity or melt to pity, certain modes of expression
+      which disturb or sadden the reader, and which, with a little experience,
+      he may recognise as 'common form' in novels, seemed to me then distinctive—for
+      to me a new book was not one of a number of similar objects, but was like
+      an individual man, unmatched, and with no cause of existence beyond
+      himself—an intoxicating whiff of the peculiar essence of <i>François
+      le Champi</i>. Beneath the everyday incidents, the commonplace thoughts
+      and hackneyed words, I could hear, or overhear, an intonation, a rhythmic
+      utterance fine and strange. The 'action' began: to me it seemed all the
+      more obscure because in those days, when I read to myself, I used often,
+      while I turned the pages, to dream of something quite different. And to
+      the gaps which this habit made in my knowledge of the story more were
+      added by the fact that when it was Mamma who was reading to me aloud she
+      left all the love-scenes out. And so all the odd changes which take place
+      in the relations between the miller's wife and the boy, changes which only
+      the birth and growth of love can explain, seemed to me plunged and steeped
+      in a mystery, the key to which (as I could readily believe) lay in that
+      strange and pleasant-sounding name of <i>Champi</i>, which draped the boy
+      who bore it, I knew not why, in its own bright colour, purpurate and
+      charming. If my mother was not a faithful reader, she was, none the less,
+      admirable when reading a work in which she found the note of true feeling
+      by the respectful simplicity of her interpretation and by the sound of her
+      sweet and gentle voice. It was the same in her daily life, when it was not
+      works of art but men and women whom she was moved to pity or admire: it
+      was touching to observe with what deference she would banish from her
+      voice, her gestures, from her whole conversation, now the note of joy
+      which might have distressed some mother who had long ago lost a child, now
+      the recollection of an event or anniversary which might have reminded some
+      old gentleman of the burden of his years, now the household topic which
+      might have bored some young man of letters. And so, when she read aloud
+      the prose of George Sand, prose which is everywhere redolent of that
+      generosity and moral distinction which Mamma had learned from my
+      grandmother to place above all other qualities in life, and which I was
+      not to teach her until much later to refrain from placing, in the same
+      way, above all other qualities in literature; taking pains to banish from
+      her voice any weakness or affectation which might have blocked its channel
+      for that powerful stream of language, she supplied all the natural
+      tenderness, all the lavish sweetness which they demanded to phrases which
+      seemed to have been composed for her voice, and which were all, so to
+      speak, within her compass. She came to them with the tone that they
+      required, with the cordial accent which existed before they were, which
+      dictated them, but which is not to be found in the words themselves, and
+      by these means she smoothed away, as she read on, any harshness there
+      might be or discordance in the tenses of verbs, endowing the imperfect and
+      the preterite with all the sweetness which there is in generosity, all the
+      melancholy which there is in love; guided the sentence that was drawing to
+      an end towards that which was waiting to begin, now hastening, now
+      slackening the pace of the syllables so as to bring them, despite their
+      difference of quantity, into a uniform rhythm, and breathed into this
+      quite ordinary prose a kind of life, continuous and full of feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My agony was soothed; I let myself be borne upon the current of this
+      gentle night on which I had my mother by my side. I knew that such a night
+      could not be repeated; that the strongest desire I had in the world,
+      namely, to keep my mother in my room through the sad hours of darkness,
+      ran too much counter to general requirements and to the wishes of others
+      for such a concession as had been granted me this evening to be anything
+      but a rare and casual exception. To-morrow night I should again be the
+      victim of anguish and Mamma would not stay by my side. But when these
+      storms of anguish grew calm I could no longer realise their existence;
+      besides, tomorrow evening was still a long way off; I reminded myself that
+      I should still have time to think about things, albeit that remission of
+      time could bring me no access of power, albeit the coming event was in no
+      way dependent upon the exercise of my will, and seemed not quite
+      inevitable only because it was still separated from me by this short
+      interval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was that, for a long time afterwards, when I lay awake at night
+      and revived old memories of Combray, I saw no more of it than this sort of
+      luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy background,
+      like the panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign will illuminate
+      and dissect from the front of a building the other parts of which remain
+      plunged in darkness: broad enough at its base, the little parlour, the
+      dining-room, the alluring shadows of the path along which would come M.
+      Swann, the unconscious author of my sufferings, the hall through which I
+      would journey to the first step of that staircase, so hard to climb, which
+      constituted, all by itself, the tapering 'elevation' of an irregular
+      pyramid; and, at the summit, my bedroom, with the little passage through
+      whose glazed door Mamma would enter; in a word, seen always at the same
+      evening hour, isolated from all its possible surroundings, detached and
+      solitary against its shadowy background, the bare minimum of scenery
+      necessary (like the setting one sees printed at the head of an old play,
+      for its performance in the provinces) to the drama of my undressing, as
+      though all Combray had consisted of but two floors joined by a slender
+      staircase, and as though there had been no time there but seven o'clock at
+      night. I must own that I could have assured any questioner that Combray
+      did include other scenes and did exist at other hours than these. But
+      since the facts which I should then have recalled would have been prompted
+      only by an exercise of the will, by my intellectual memory, and since the
+      pictures which that kind of memory shews us of the past preserve nothing
+      of the past itself, I should never have had any wish to ponder over this
+      residue of Combray. To me it was in reality all dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Permanently dead? Very possibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a large element of hazard in these matters, and a second hazard,
+      that of our own death, often prevents us from awaiting for any length of
+      time the favours of the first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls
+      of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an
+      animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to
+      us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the
+      tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then
+      they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have
+      recognised their voice the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they
+      have overcome death and return to share our life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to
+      recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past
+      is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in
+      some material object (in the sensation which that material object will
+      give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on
+      chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was
+      comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any
+      existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother,
+      seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily
+      take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my
+      mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called
+      'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been moulded in the
+      fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a
+      dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a
+      spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner
+      had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a
+      shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the
+      extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had
+      invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its
+      origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me,
+      its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation
+      having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious
+      essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased
+      now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me,
+      this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the
+      taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours,
+      could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come?
+      What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first,
+      a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop;
+      the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest,
+      the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has called up in me,
+      but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely with a
+      gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which I, too, cannot
+      interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon the tea for it
+      again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my
+      final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for
+      it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever
+      the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders;
+      when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go
+      seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than
+      that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far
+      exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone
+      can bring into the light of day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered
+      state which brought with it no logical proof of its existence, but only
+      the sense that it was a happy, that it was a real state in whose presence
+      other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to
+      make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the
+      first spoonful of tea. I find again the same state, illumined by no fresh
+      light. I compel my mind to make one further effort, to follow and
+      recapture once again the fleeting sensation. And that nothing may
+      interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous
+      idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the sounds which come
+      from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued
+      without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy
+      that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to
+      rest and refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And then for the
+      second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position
+      before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I
+      feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place
+      and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a
+      great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting
+      slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces
+      traversed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the
+      image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to
+      follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too
+      much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless reflection in which
+      are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot
+      distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter,
+      to translate to me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable
+      paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea; cannot ask it to inform me what
+      special circumstance is in question, of what period in my past life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this
+      memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment
+      has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very
+      depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has
+      stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can
+      say whether it will ever rise? Ten times over I must essay the task, must
+      lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters
+      us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me
+      to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the
+      worries of to-day and of my hopes for to-morrow, which let themselves be
+      pondered over without effort or distress of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of
+      madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I
+      did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in
+      her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own
+      cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had
+      recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so
+      often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays
+      in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from
+      those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps
+      because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing
+      now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including
+      that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its
+      severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long
+      dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed
+      them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a
+      long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the
+      things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more
+      vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell
+      and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind
+      us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest;
+      and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their
+      essence, the vast structure of recollection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in
+      her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I
+      did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory
+      made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where
+      her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to
+      the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out
+      behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had
+      been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to
+      night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon,
+      the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took
+      when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a
+      porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which
+      until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet,
+      stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become
+      flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment
+      all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies
+      on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings
+      and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings,
+      taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and
+      gardens alike, from my cup of tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      COMBRAY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Combray at a distance, from a twenty-mile radius, as we used to see it
+      from the railway when we arrived there every year in Holy Week, was no
+      more than a church epitomising the town, representing it, speaking of it
+      and for it to the horizon, and as one drew near, gathering close about its
+      long, dark cloak, sheltering from the wind, on the open plain, as a
+      shepherd gathers his sheep, the woolly grey backs of its flocking houses,
+      which a fragment of its mediaeval ramparts enclosed, here and there, in an
+      outline as scrupulously circular as that of a little town in a primitive
+      painting. To live in, Combray was a trifle depressing, like its streets,
+      whose houses, built of the blackened stone of the country, fronted with
+      outside steps, capped with gables which projected long shadows downwards,
+      were so dark that one had, as soon as the sun began to go down, to draw
+      back the curtains in the sitting-room windows; streets with the solemn
+      names of Saints, not a few of whom figured in the history of the early
+      lords of Combray, such as the Rue Saint-Hilaire, the Rue Saint-Jacques, in
+      which my aunt's house stood, the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde, which ran past her
+      railings, and the Rue du Saint-Esprit, on to which the little garden gate
+      opened; and these Combray streets exist in so remote a quarter of my
+      memory, painted in colours so different from those in which the world is
+      decked for me to-day, that in fact one and all of them, and the church
+      which towered above them in the Square, seem to me now more unsubstantial
+      than the projections of my magic-lantern; while at times I feel that to be
+      able to cross the Rue Saint-Hilaire again, to engage a room in the Rue de
+      l'Oiseau, in the old hostelry of the Oiseau Flesché, from whose windows in
+      the pavement used to rise a smell of cooking which rises still in my mind,
+      now and then, in the same warm gusts of comfort, would be to secure a
+      contact with the unseen world more marvellously supernatural than it would
+      be to make Golo's acquaintance and to chat with Geneviève de Brabant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My grandfather's cousin—by courtesy my great-aunt—with whom we
+      used to stay, was the mother of that aunt Léonie who, since her husband's
+      (my uncle Octave's) death, had gradually declined to leave, first Combray,
+      then her house in Combray, then her bedroom, and finally her bed; and who
+      now never 'came down,' but lay perpetually in an indefinite condition of
+      grief, physical exhaustion, illness, obsessions, and religious
+      observances. Her own room looked out over the Rue Saint-Jacques, which ran
+      a long way further to end in the Grand-Pré (as distinct from the
+      Petit-Pré, a green space in the centre of the town where three streets
+      met) and which, monotonous and grey, with the three high steps of stone
+      before almost every one of its doors, seemed like a deep furrow cut by
+      some sculptor of gothic images in the very block of stone out of which he
+      had fashioned a Calvary or a Crib. My aunt's life was now practically
+      confined to two adjoining rooms, in one of which she would rest in the
+      afternoon while they aired the other. They were rooms of that country
+      order which (just as in certain climes whole tracts of air or ocean are
+      illuminated or scented by myriads of protozoa which we cannot see)
+      fascinate our sense of smell with the countless odours springing from
+      their own special virtues, wisdom, habits, a whole secret system of life,
+      invisible, superabundant and profoundly moral, which their atmosphere
+      holds in solution; smells natural enough indeed, and coloured by
+      circumstances as are those of the neighbouring countryside, but already
+      humanised, domesticated, confined, an exquisite, skilful, limpid jelly,
+      blending all the fruits of the season which have left the orchard for the
+      store-room, smells changing with the year, but plenishing, domestic
+      smells, which compensate for the sharpness of hoar frost with the sweet
+      savour of warm bread, smells lazy and punctual as a village clock, roving
+      smells, pious smells; rejoicing in a peace which brings only an increase
+      of anxiety, and in a prosiness which serves as a deep source of poetry to
+      the stranger who passes through their midst without having lived amongst
+      them. The air of those rooms was saturated with the fine bouquet of a
+      silence so nourishing, so succulent that I could not enter them without a
+      sort of greedy enjoyment, particularly on those first mornings, chilly
+      still, of the Easter holidays, when I could taste it more fully, because I
+      had just arrived then at Combray: before I went in to wish my aunt good
+      day I would be kept waiting a little time in the outer room, where the
+      sun, a wintry sun still, had crept in to warm itself before the fire,
+      lighted already between its two brick sides and plastering all the room
+      and everything in it with a smell of soot, making the room like one of
+      those great open hearths which one finds in the country, or one of the
+      canopied mantelpieces in old castles under which one sits hoping that in
+      the world outside it is raining or snowing, hoping almost for a
+      catastrophic deluge to add the romance of shelter and security to the
+      comfort of a snug retreat; I would turn to and fro between the prayer-desk
+      and the stamped velvet armchairs, each one always draped in its crocheted
+      antimacassar, while the fire, baking like a pie the appetising smells with
+      which the air of the room was thickly clotted, which the dewy and sunny
+      freshness of the morning had already 'raised' and started to 'set,' puffed
+      them and glazed them and fluted them and swelled them into an invisible
+      though not impalpable country cake, an immense puff-pastry, in which,
+      barely waiting to savour the crustier, more delicate, more respectable,
+      but also drier smells of the cupboard, the chest-of-drawers, and the
+      patterned wall-paper I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to
+      bury myself in the nondescript, resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity
+      smell of the flowered quilt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the next room I could hear my aunt talking quietly to herself. She
+      never spoke save in low tones, because she believed that there was
+      something broken in her head and floating loose there, which she might
+      displace by talking too loud; but she never remained for long, even when
+      alone, without saying something, because she believed that it was good for
+      her throat, and that by keeping the blood there in circulation it would
+      make less frequent the chokings and other pains to which she was liable;
+      besides, in the life of complete inertia which she led she attached to the
+      least of her sensations an extraordinary importance, endowed them with a
+      Protean ubiquity which made it difficult for her to keep them secret, and,
+      failing a confidant to whom she might communicate them, she used to
+      promulgate them to herself in an unceasing monologue which was her sole
+      form of activity. Unfortunately, having formed the habit of thinking
+      aloud, she did not always take care to see that there was no one in the
+      adjoining room, and I would often hear her saying to herself: "I must not
+      forget that I never slept a wink"—for "never sleeping a wink" was
+      her great claim to distinction, and one admitted and respected in our
+      household vocabulary; in the morning Françoise would not 'call' her, but
+      would simply 'come to' her; during the day, when my aunt wished to take a
+      nap, we used to say just that she wished to 'be quiet' or to 'rest'; and
+      when in conversation she so far forgot herself as to say "what made me
+      wake up," or "I dreamed that," she would flush and at once correct
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After waiting a minute, I would go in and kiss her; Françoise would be
+      making her tea; or, if my aunt were feeling 'upset,' she would ask instead
+      for her 'tisane,' and it would be my duty to shake out of the chemist's
+      little package on to a plate the amount of lime-blossom required for
+      infusion in boiling water. The drying of the stems had twisted them into a
+      fantastic trellis, in whose intervals the pale flowers opened, as though a
+      painter had arranged them there, grouping them in the most decorative
+      poses. The leaves, which had lost or altered their own appearance, assumed
+      those instead of the most incongruous things imaginable, as though the
+      transparent wings of flies or the blank sides of labels or the petals of
+      roses had been collected and pounded, or interwoven as birds weave the
+      material for their nests. A thousand trifling little details—the
+      charming prodigality of the chemist—details which would have been
+      eliminated from an artificial preparation, gave me, like a book in which
+      one is astonished to read the name of a person whom one knows, the
+      pleasure of finding that these were indeed real lime-blossoms, like those
+      I had seen, when coming from the train, in the Avenue de la Gare, altered,
+      but only because they were not imitations but the very same blossoms,
+      which had grown old. And as each new character is merely a metamorphosis
+      from something older, in these little grey balls I recognised green buds
+      plucked before their time; but beyond all else the rosy, moony, tender
+      glow which lit up the blossoms among the frail forest of stems from which
+      they hung like little golden roses—marking, as the radiance upon an
+      old wall still marks the place of a vanished fresco, the difference
+      between those parts of the tree which had and those which had not been 'in
+      bloom'—shewed me that these were petals which, before their
+      flowering-time, the chemist's package had embalmed on warm evenings of
+      spring. That rosy candlelight was still their colour, but
+      half-extinguished and deadened in the diminished life which was now
+      theirs, and which may be called the twilight of a flower. Presently my
+      aunt was able to dip in the boiling infusion, in which she would relish
+      the savour of dead or faded blossom, a little madeleine, of which she
+      would hold out a piece to me when it was sufficiently soft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At one side of her bed stood a big yellow chest-of-drawers of lemon-wood,
+      and a table which served at once as pharmacy and as high altar, on which,
+      beneath a statue of Our Lady and a bottle of Vichy-Célestins, might be
+      found her service-books and her medical prescriptions, everything that she
+      needed for the performance, in bed, of her duties to soul and body, to
+      keep the proper times for pepsin and for vespers. On the other side her
+      bed was bounded by the window: she had the street beneath her eyes, and
+      would read in it from morning to night to divert the tedium of her life,
+      like a Persian prince, the daily but immemorial chronicles of Combray,
+      which she would discuss in detail afterwards with Françoise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would not have been five minutes with my aunt before she would send me
+      away in case I made her tired. She would hold out for me to kiss her sad
+      brow, pale and lifeless, on which at this early hour she would not yet
+      have arranged the false hair and through which the bones shone like the
+      points of a crown of thorns—or the beads of a rosary, and she would
+      say to me: "Now, my poor child, you must go away; go and get ready for
+      mass; and if you see Françoise downstairs, tell her not to stay too long
+      amusing herself with you; she must come up soon to see if I want
+      anything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Françoise, who had been for many years in my aunt's service and did not at
+      that time suspect that she would one day be transferred entirely to ours,
+      was a little inclined to desert my aunt during the months which we spent
+      in her house. There had been in my infancy, before we first went to
+      Combray, and when my aunt Léonie used still to spend the winter in Paris
+      with her mother, a time when I knew Françoise so little that on New Year's
+      Day, before going into my great-aunt's house, my mother put a five-franc
+      piece in my hand and said: "Now, be careful. Don't make any mistake. Wait
+      until you hear me say 'Good morning, Françoise,' and I touch your arm
+      before you give it to her." No sooner had we arrived in my aunt's dark
+      hall than we saw in the gloom, beneath the frills of a snowy cap as stiff
+      and fragile as if it had been made of spun sugar, the concentric waves of
+      a smile of anticipatory gratitude. It was Françoise, motionless and erect,
+      framed in the small doorway of the corridor like the statue of a saint in
+      its niche. When we had grown more accustomed to this religious darkness we
+      could discern in her features a disinterested love of all humanity,
+      blended with a tender respect for the 'upper classes' which raised to the
+      most honourable quarter of her heart the hope of receiving her due reward.
+      Mamma pinched my arm sharply and said in a loud voice: "Good morning,
+      Françoise." At this signal my fingers parted and I let fall the coin,
+      which found a receptacle in a confused but outstretched hand. But since we
+      had begun to go to Combray there was no one I knew better than Françoise.
+      We were her favourites, and in the first years at least, while she shewed
+      the same consideration for us as for my aunt, she enjoyed us with a keener
+      relish, because we had, in addition to our dignity as part of 'the family'
+      (for she had for those invisible bonds by which community of blood unites
+      the members of a family as much respect as any Greek tragedian), the fresh
+      charm of not being her customary employers. And so with what joy would she
+      welcome us, with what sorrow complain that the weather was still so bad
+      for us, on the day of our arrival, just before Easter, when there was
+      often an icy wind; while Mamma inquired after her daughter and her
+      nephews, and if her grandson was good-looking, and what they were going to
+      make of him, and whether he took after his granny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later, when no one else was in the room, Mamma, who knew that Françoise
+      was still mourning for her parents, who had been dead for years, would
+      speak of them kindly, asking her endless little questions about them and
+      their lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had guessed that Françoise was not over-fond of her son-in-law, and
+      that he spoiled the pleasure she found in visiting her daughter, as the
+      two could not talk so freely when he was there. And so one day, when
+      Françoise was going to their house, some miles from Combray, Mamma said to
+      her, with a smile: "Tell me, Françoise, if Julien has had to go away, and
+      you have Marguerite to yourself all day, you will be very sorry, but will
+      make the best of it, won't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Françoise answered, laughing: "Madame knows everything; Madame is
+      worse than the X-rays" (she pronounced 'x' with an affectation of
+      difficulty and with a smile in deprecation of her, an unlettered woman's,
+      daring to employ a scientific term) "they brought here for Mme. Octave,
+      which see what is in your heart"—and she went off, disturbed that
+      anyone should be caring about her, perhaps anxious that we should not see
+      her in tears: Mamma was the first person who had given her the pleasure of
+      feeling that her peasant existence, with its simple joys and sorrows,
+      might offer some interest, might be a source of grief or pleasure to some
+      one other than herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My aunt resigned herself to doing without Françoise to some extent during
+      our visits, knowing how much my mother appreciated the services of so
+      active and intelligent a maid, one who looked as smart at five o'clock in
+      the morning in her kitchen, under a cap whose stiff and dazzling frills
+      seemed to be made of porcelain, as when dressed for churchgoing; who did
+      everything in the right way, who toiled like a horse, whether she was well
+      or ill, but without noise, without the appearance of doing anything; the
+      only one of my aunt's maids who when Mamma asked for hot water or black
+      coffee would bring them actually boiling; she was one of those servants
+      who in a household seem least satisfactory, at first, to a stranger,
+      doubtless because they take no pains to make a conquest of him and shew
+      him no special attention, knowing very well that they have no real need of
+      him, that he will cease to be invited to the house sooner than they will
+      be dismissed from it; who, on the other hand, cling with most fidelity to
+      those masters and mistresses who have tested and proved their real
+      capacity, and do not look for that superficial responsiveness, that
+      slavish affability, which may impress a stranger favourably, but often
+      conceals an utter barrenness of spirit in which no amount of training can
+      produce the least trace of individuality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Françoise, having seen that my parents had everything they required,
+      first went upstairs again to give my aunt her pepsin and to find out from
+      her what she would take for luncheon, very few mornings pased but she was
+      called upon to give an opinion, or to furnish an explanation, in regard to
+      some important event.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just fancy, Françoise, Mme. Goupil went by more than a quarter of an hour
+      late to fetch her sister: if she loses any more time on the way I should
+      not be at all surprised if she got in after the Elevation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, there'd be nothing wonderful in that," would be the answer. Or:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Françoise, if you had come in five minutes ago, you would have seen Mme.
+      Imbert go past with some asparagus twice the size of what mother Callot
+      has: do try to find out from her cook where she got them. You know you've
+      been putting asparagus in all your sauces this spring; you might be able
+      to get some like these for our visitors."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't be surprised if they came from the Curé's," Françoise would
+      say, and:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm sure you wouldn't, my poor Françoise," my aunt would reply, raising
+      her shoulders. "From the Curé's, indeed! You know quite well that he can
+      never grow anything but wretched little twigs of asparagus, not asparagus
+      at all. I tell you these ones were as thick as my arm. Not your arm, of
+      course, but my poor arm, which has grown so much thinner again this year."
+      Or:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Françoise, didn't you hear that bell just now! It split my head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Mme. Octave."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, poor girl, your skull must be very thick; you may thank God for that.
+      It was Maguelone come to fetch Dr. Piperaud. He came out with her at once
+      and they went off along the Rue de l'Oiseau. There must be some child
+      ill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh dear, dear; the poor little creature!" would come with a sigh from
+      Françoise, who could not hear of any calamity befalling a person unknown
+      to her, even in some distant part of the world, without beginning to
+      lament. Or:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Françoise, for whom did they toll the passing-bell just now? Oh dear, of
+      course, it would be for Mme. Rousseau. And to think that I had forgotten
+      that she passed away the other night. Indeed, it is time the Lord called
+      me home too; I don't know what has become of my head since I lost my poor
+      Octave. But I am wasting your time, my good girl."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed no, Mme. Octave, my time is not so precious; whoever made our time
+      didn't sell it to us. I am just going to see that my fire hasn't gone
+      out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this way Françoise and my aunt made a critical valuation between them,
+      in the course of these morning sessions, of the earliest happenings of the
+      day. But sometimes these happenings assumed so mysterious or so alarming
+      an air that my aunt felt she could not wait until it was time for
+      Françoise to come upstairs, and then a formidable and quadruple peal would
+      resound through the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, Mme. Octave, it is not time for your pepsin," Françoise would begin.
+      "Are you feeling faint?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, thank you, Françoise," my aunt would reply, "that is to say, yes; for
+      you know well that there is very seldom a time when I don't feel faint;
+      one day I shall pass away like Mme. Rousseau, before I know where I am;
+      but that is not why I rang. Would you believe that I have just seen, as
+      plainly as I see you, Mme. Goupil with a little girl I didn't know at all.
+      Run and get a pennyworth of salt from Camus. It's not often that Théodore
+      can't tell you who a person is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But that must be M. Pupin's daughter," Françoise would say, preferring to
+      stick to an immediate explanation, since she had been perhaps twice
+      already into Camus's shop that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "M. Pupin's daughter! Oh, that's a likely story, my poor Françoise. Do you
+      think I should not have recognised M. Pupin's daughter!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I don't mean the big one, Mme. Octave; I mean the little girl, he one
+      who goes to school at Jouy. I seem to have seen her once already this
+      morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, if that's what it is!" my aunt would say, "she must have come over
+      for the holidays. Yes, that is it. No need to ask, she will have come over
+      for the holidays. But then we shall soon see Mme. Sazerat come along and
+      ring her sister's door-bell, for her luncheon. That will be it! I saw the
+      boy from Galopin's go by with a tart. You will see that the tart was for
+      Mme. Goupil."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Once Mme. Goupil has anyone in the house, Mme. Octave, you won't be long
+      in seeing all her folk going in to their luncheon there, for it's not so
+      early as it was," would be the answer, for Françoise, who was anxious to
+      retire downstairs to look after our own meal, was not sorry to leave my
+      aunt with the prospect of such a distraction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! not before midday!" my aunt would reply in a tone of resignation,
+      darting an uneasy glance at the clock, but stealthily, so as not to let it
+      be seen that she, who had renounced all earthly joys, yet found a keen
+      satisfaction in learning that Mme. Goupil was expecting company to
+      luncheon, though, alas, she must wait a little more than an hour still
+      before enjoying the spectacle. "And it will come in the middle of my
+      luncheon!" she would murmur to herself. Her luncheon was such a
+      distraction in itself that she did not like any other to come at the same
+      time. "At least, you will not forget to give me my creamed eggs on one of
+      the flat plates?" These were the only plates which had pictures on them
+      and my aunt used to amuse herself at every meal by reading the description
+      on whichever might have been sent up to her. She would put on her
+      spectacles and spell out: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," "Aladdin, or
+      the Wonderful Lamp," and smile, and say "Very good indeed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I may as well go across to Camus..." Françoise would hazard, seeing that
+      my aunt had no longer any intention of sending her there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no; it's not worth while now; it's certain to be the Pupin girl. My
+      poor Françoise, I am sorry to have made you come upstairs for nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not for nothing, as my aunt well knew, that she had rung for
+      Françoise, since at Combray a person whom one 'didn't know at all' was as
+      incredible a being as any mythological deity, and it was apt to be
+      forgotten that after each occasion on which there had appeared in the Rue
+      du Saint-Esprit or in the Square one of these bewildering phenomena,
+      careful and exhaustive researches had invariably reduced the fabulous
+      monster to the proportions of a person whom one 'did know,' either
+      personally or in the abstract, in his or her civil status as being more or
+      less closely related to some family in Combray. It would turn out to be
+      Mme. Sauton's son discharged from the army, or the Abbé Perdreau's niece
+      come home from her convent, or the Curé's brother, a tax-collector at
+      Châteaudun, who had just retired on a pension or had come over to Combray
+      for the holidays. On first noticing them you have been impressed by the
+      thought that there might be in Combray people whom you 'didn't know at
+      all,' simply because you had failed to recognise or identify them at
+      once. And yet long beforehand Mme. Sauton and the Curé had given warning
+      that they expected their 'strangers.' In the evening, when I came in and
+      went upstairs to tell my aunt the incidents of our walk, if I was rash
+      enough to say to her that we had passed, near the Pont-Vieux, a man whom
+      my grandfather didn't know:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A man grandfather didn't know at all!" she would exclaim. "That's a
+      likely story." None the less, she would be a little disturbed by the news,
+      she would wish to have the details correctly, and so my grandfather would
+      be summoned. "Who can it have been that you passed near the Pont-Vieux,
+      uncle? A man you didn't know at all?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, of course I did," my grandfather would answer; "it was Prosper, Mme.
+      Bouilleboeuf's gardener's brother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, well!" my aunt would say, calm again but slightly flushed still; "and
+      the boy told me that you had passed a man you didn't know at all!" After
+      which I would be warned to be more careful of what I said, and not to
+      upset my aunt so by thoughtless remarks. Everyone was so well known in
+      Combray, animals as well as people, that if my aunt had happened to see a
+      dog go by which she 'didn't know at all' she would think about it
+      incessantly, devoting to the solution of the incomprehensible problem all
+      her inductive talent and her leisure hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That will be Mme. Sazerat's dog," Françoise would suggest, without any
+      real conviction, but in the hope of peace, and so that my aunt should not
+      'split her head.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As if I didn't know Mme. Sazerat's dog!"—for my aunt's critical
+      mind would not so easily admit any fresh fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, but that will be the new dog M. Galopin has brought her from
+      Lisieux."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, if that's what it is!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It seems, it's a most engaging animal," Françoise would go on, having got
+      the story from Théodore, "as clever as a Christian, always in a good
+      temper, always friendly, always everything that's nice. It's not often you
+      see an animal so well-behaved at that age. Mme. Octave, it's high time I
+      left you; I can't afford to stay here amusing myself; look, it's nearly
+      ten o'clock and my fire not lighted yet, and I've still to dress the
+      asparagus."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, Françoise, more asparagus! It's a regular disease of asparagus you
+      have got this year: you will make our Parisians sick of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no, Madame Octave, they like it well enough. They'll be coming back
+      from church soon as hungry as hunters, and they won't eat it out of the
+      back of their spoons, you'll see."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Church! why, they must be there now; you'd better not lose any time. Go
+      and look after your luncheon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While my aunt gossiped on in this way with Françoise I would have
+      accompanied my parents to mass. How I loved it: how clearly I can see it
+      still, our church at Combray! The old porch by which we went in, black,
+      and full of holes as a cullender, was worn out of shape and deeply
+      furrowed at the sides (as also was the holy water stoup to which it led
+      us) just as if the gentle grazing touch of the cloaks of peasant-women
+      going into the church, and of their fingers dipping into the water, had
+      managed by agelong repetition to acquire a destructive force, to impress
+      itself on the stone, to carve ruts in it like those made by cart-wheels
+      upon stone gate-posts against which they are driven every day. Its
+      memorial stones, beneath which the noble dust of the Abbots of Combray,
+      who were buried there, furnished the choir with a sort of spiritual
+      pavement, were themselves no longer hard and lifeless matter, for time had
+      softened and sweetened them, and had made them melt like honey and flow
+      beyond their proper margins, either surging out in a milky, frothing wave,
+      washing from its place a florid gothic capital, drowning the white violets
+      of the marble floor; or else reabsorbed into their limits, contracting
+      still further a crabbed Latin inscription, bringing a fresh touch of
+      fantasy into the arrangement of its curtailed characters, closing together
+      two letters of some word of which the rest were disproportionately
+      scattered. Its windows were never so brilliant as on days when the sun
+      scarcely shone, so that if it was dull outside you might be certain of
+      fine weather in church. One of them was filled from top to bottom by a
+      solitary figure, like the king on a playing-card, who lived up there
+      beneath his canopy of stone, between earth and heaven; and in the blue
+      light of its slanting shadow, on weekdays sometimes, at noon, when there
+      was no service (at one of those rare moments when the airy, empty church,
+      more human somehow and more luxurious with the sun shewing off all its
+      rich furnishings, seemed to have almost a habitable air, like the hall—all
+      sculptured stone and painted glass—of some mediaeval mansion), you
+      might see Mme. Sazerat kneel for an instant, laying down on the chair
+      beside her own a neatly corded parcel of little cakes which she had just
+      bought at the baker's and was taking home for her luncheon. In another, a
+      mountain of rosy snow, at whose foot a battle was being fought, seemed to
+      have frozen the window also, which it swelled and distorted with its
+      cloudy sleet, like a pane to which snowflakes have drifted and clung, but
+      flakes illumined by a sunrise—the same, doubtless, which purpled the
+      reredos of the altar with tints so fresh that they seemed rather to be
+      thrown on it for a moment by a light shining from outside and shortly to
+      be extinguished than painted and permanently fastened on the stone. And
+      all of them were so old that you could see, here and there, their silvery
+      antiquity sparkling with the dust of centuries and shewing in its
+      threadbare brilliance the very cords of their lovely tapestry of glass.
+      There was one among them which was a tall panel composed of a hundred
+      little rectangular windows, of blue principally, like a great game of
+      patience of the kind planned to beguile King Charles VI; but, either
+      because a ray of sunlight had gleamed through it or because my own
+      shifting vision had drawn across the window, whose colours died away and
+      were rekindled by turns, a rare and transient fire—the next instant
+      it had taken on all the iridescence of a peacock's tail, then shook and
+      wavered in a flaming and fantastic shower, distilled and dropping from the
+      groin of the dark and rocky vault down the moist walls, as though it were
+      along the bed of some rainbow grotto of sinuous stalactites that I was
+      following my parents, who marched before me, their prayer-books clasped in
+      their hands; a moment later the little lozenge windows had put on the deep
+      transparence, the unbreakable hardness of sapphires clustered on some
+      enormous breastplate; but beyond which could be distinguished, dearer than
+      all such treasures, a fleeting smile from the sun, which could be seen and
+      felt as well here, in the blue and gentle flood in which it washed the
+      masonry, as on the pavement of the Square or the straw of the
+      market-place; and even on our first Sundays, when we came down before
+      Easter, it would console me for the blackness and bareness of the earth
+      outside by making burst into blossom, as in some springtime in old history
+      among the heirs of Saint Louis, this dazzling and gilded carpet of
+      forget-me-nots in glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two tapestries of high warp represented the coronation of Esther (in which
+      tradition would have it that the weaver had given to Ahasuerus the
+      features of one of the kings of France and to Esther those of a lady of
+      Guermantes whose lover he had been); their colours had melted into one
+      another, so as to add expression, relief, light to the pictures. A touch
+      of red over the lips of Esther had strayed beyond their outline; the
+      yellow on her dress was spread with such unctuous plumpness as to have
+      acquired a kind of solidity, and stood boldly out from the receding
+      atmosphere; while the green of the trees, which was still bright in silk
+      and wool among the lower parts of the panel, but had quite 'gone' at the
+      top, separated in a paler scheme, above the dark trunks, the yellowing
+      upper branches, tanned and half-obliterated by the sharp though sidelong
+      rays of an invisible sun. All these things and, still more than these, the
+      treasures which had come to the church from personages who to me were
+      almost legendary figures (such as the golden cross wrought, it was said,
+      by Saint Eloi and presented by Dagobert, and the tomb of the sons of Louis
+      the Germanic in porphyry and enamelled copper), because of which I used to
+      go forward into the church when we were making our way to our chairs as
+      into a fairy-haunted valley, where the rustic sees with amazement on a
+      rock, a tree, a marsh, the tangible proofs of the little people's
+      supernatural passage—all these things made of the church for me
+      something entirely different from the rest of the town; a building which
+      occupied, so to speak, four dimensions of space—the name of the
+      fourth being Time—which had sailed the centuries with that old nave,
+      where bay after bay, chapel after chapel, seemed to stretch across and
+      hold down and conquer not merely a few yards of soil, but each successive
+      epoch from which the whole building had emerged triumphant, hiding the
+      rugged barbarities of the eleventh century in the thickness of its walls,
+      through which nothing could be seen of the heavy arches, long stopped and
+      blinded with coarse blocks of ashlar, except where, near the porch, a deep
+      groove was furrowed into one wall by the tower-stair; and even there the
+      barbarity was veiled by the graceful gothic arcade which pressed
+      coquettishly upon it, like a row of grown-up sisters who, to hide him from
+      the eyes of strangers, arrange themselves smilingly in front of a
+      countrified, unmannerly and ill-dressed younger brother; rearing into the
+      sky above the Square a tower which had looked down upon Saint Louis, and
+      seemed to behold him still; and thrusting down with its crypt into the
+      blackness of a Merovingian night, through which, guiding us with groping
+      finger-tips beneath the shadowy vault, ribbed strongly as an immense bat's
+      wing of stone, Théodore or his sister would light up for us with a candle
+      the tomb of Sigebert's little daughter, in which a deep hole, like the bed
+      of a fossil, had been bored, or so it was said, "by a crystal lamp which,
+      on the night when the Frankish princess was murdered, had left, of its own
+      accord, the golden chains by which it was suspended where the apse is
+      to-day and with neither the crystal broken nor the light extinguished had
+      buried itself in the stone, through which it had gently forced its way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the apse of Combray: what am I to say of that? It was so coarse,
+      so devoid of artistic beauty, even of the religious spirit. From outside,
+      since the street crossing which it commanded was on a lower level, its
+      great wall was thrust upwards from a basement of unfaced ashlar, jagged
+      with flints, in all of which there was nothing particularly
+      ecclesiastical; the windows seemed to have been pierced at an abnormal
+      height, and its whole appearance was that of a prison wall rather than of
+      a church. And certainly in later years, were I to recall all the glorious
+      apses that I had seen, it would never enter my mind to compare with any
+      one of them the apse of Combray. Only, one day, turning out of a little
+      street in some country town, I came upon three alley-ways that converged,
+      and facing them an old wall, rubbed, worn, crumbling, and unusually high;
+      with windows pierced in it far overhead and the same asymmetrical
+      appearance as the apse of Combray. And at that moment I did not say to
+      myself, as at Chartres I might have done or at Rheims, with what strength
+      the religious feeling had been expressed in its construction, but
+      instinctively I exclaimed "The Church!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The church! A dear, familiar friend; close pressed in the Rue
+      Saint-Hilaire, upon which its north door opened, by its two neighbours,
+      Mme. Loiseau's house and the pharmacy of M. Rapin, against which its walls
+      rested without interspace; a simple citizen of Combray, who might have had
+      her number in the street had the streets of Combray borne numbers, and at
+      whose door one felt that the postman ought to stop on his morning rounds,
+      before going into Mme. Loiseau's and after leaving M. Rapin's, there
+      existed, for all that, between the church and everything in Combray that
+      was not the church a clear line of demarcation which I have never
+      succeeded in eliminating from my mind. In vain might Mme. Loiseau deck her
+      window-sills with fuchsias, which developed the bad habit of letting their
+      branches trail at all times and in all directions, head downwards, and
+      whose flowers had no more important business, when they were big enough to
+      taste the joys of life, than to go and cool their purple, congested cheeks
+      against the dark front of the church; to me such conduct sanctified the
+      fuchsias not at all; between the flowers and the blackened stones towards
+      which they leaned, if my eyes could discern no interval, my mind preserved
+      the impression of an abyss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a long way off one could distinguish and identify the steeple of
+      Saint-Hilaire inscribing its unforgettable form upon a horizon beneath
+      which Combray had not yet appeared; when from the train which brought us
+      down from Paris at Easter-time my father caught sight of it, as it slipped
+      into every fold of the sky in turn, its little iron cock veering
+      continually in all directions, he would say: "Come, get your wraps
+      together, we are there." And on one of the longest walks we ever took from
+      Combray there was a spot where the narrow road emerged suddenly on to an
+      immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose
+      and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple, but so
+      sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched on the
+      sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a landscape,
+      to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this single
+      indication of human existence. As one drew near it and could make out the
+      remains of the square tower, half in ruins, which still stood by its side,
+      though without rivalling it in height, one was struck, first of all, by
+      the tone, reddish and sombre, of its stones; and on a misty morning in
+      autumn one would have called it, to see it rising above the violet
+      thunder-cloud of the vineyards, a ruin of purple, almost the colour of the
+      wild vine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often in the Square, as we came home, my grandmother would make me stop to
+      look up at it. From the tower windows, placed two and two, one pair above
+      another, with that right and original proportion in their spacing to which
+      not only human faces owe their beauty and dignity, it released, it let
+      fall at regular intervals flights of jackdaws which for a little while
+      would wheel and caw, as though the ancient stones which allowed them to
+      sport thus and never seemed to see them, becoming of a sudden
+      uninhabitable and discharging some infinitely disturbing element, had
+      struck them and driven them forth. Then after patterning everywhere the
+      violet velvet of the evening air, abruptly soothed, they would return and
+      be absorbed in the tower, deadly no longer but benignant, some perching
+      here and there (not seeming to move, but snapping, perhaps, and swallowing
+      some passing insect) on the points of turrets, as a seagull perches, with
+      an angler's immobility, on the crest of a wave. Without quite knowing why,
+      my grandmother found in the steeple of Saint-Hilaire that absence of
+      vulgarity, pretension, and meanness which made her love—and deem
+      rich in beneficent influences—nature itself, when the hand of man
+      had not, as did my great-aunt's gardener, trimmed it, and the works of
+      genius. And certainly every part one saw of the church served to
+      distinguish the whole from any other building by a kind of general feeling
+      which pervaded it, but it was in the steeple that the church seemed to
+      display a consciousness of itself, to affirm its individual and
+      responsible existence. It was the steeple which spoke for the church. I
+      think, too, that in a confused way my grandmother found in the steeple of
+      Combray what she prized above anything else in the world, namely, a
+      natural air and an air of distinction. Ignorant of architecture, she would
+      say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dears, laugh at me if you like; it is not conventionally beautiful,
+      but there is something in its quaint old face which pleases me. If it
+      could play the piano, I am sure it would really <i>play</i>." And when she
+      gazed on it, when her eyes followed the gentle tension, the fervent
+      inclination of its stony slopes which drew together as they rose, like
+      hands joined in prayer, she would absorb herself so utterly in the
+      outpouring of the spire that her gaze seemed to leap upwards with it; her
+      lips at the same time curving in a friendly smile for the worn old stones
+      of which the setting sun now illumined no more than the topmost pinnacles,
+      which, at the point where they entered that zone of sunlight and were
+      softened and sweetened by it, seemed to have mounted suddenly far higher,
+      to have become truly remote, like a song whose singer breaks into
+      falsetto, an octave above the accompanying air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which shaped and crowned and
+      consecrated every occupation, every hour of the day, every point of view
+      in the town. From my bedroom window I could discern no more than its base,
+      which had been freshly covered with slates; but when on Sundays I saw
+      these, in the hot light of a summer morning, blaze like a black sun I
+      would say to myself: "Good heavens! nine o'clock! I must get ready for
+      mass at once if I am to have time to go in and kiss aunt Léonie first,"
+      and I would know exactly what was the colour of the sunlight upon the
+      Square, I could feel the heat and dust of the market, the shade behind the
+      blinds of the shop into which Mamma would perhaps go on her way to mass,
+      penetrating its odour of unbleached calico, to purchase a handkerchief or
+      something, of which the draper himself would let her see what he had,
+      bowing from the waist: who, having made everything ready for shutting up,
+      had just gone into the back shop to put on his Sunday coat and to wash his
+      hands, which it was his habit, every few minutes and even on the saddest
+      occasions, to rub one against the other with an air of enterprise,
+      cunning, and success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And again, after mass, when we looked in to tell Théodore to bring a
+      larger loaf than usual because our cousins had taken advantage of the fine
+      weather to come over from Thiberzy for luncheon, we had in front of us the
+      steeple, which, baked and brown itself like a larger loaf still of 'holy
+      bread,' with flakes and sticky drops on it of sunlight, pricked its sharp
+      point into the blue sky. And in the evening, as I came in from my walk and
+      thought of the approaching moment when I must say good night to my mother
+      and see her no more, the steeple was by contrast so kindly, there at the
+      close of day, that I would imagine it as being laid, like a brown velvet
+      cushion, against—as being thrust into the pallid sky which had
+      yielded beneath its pressure, had sunk slightly so as to make room for it,
+      and had correspondingly risen on either side; while the cries of the birds
+      wheeling to and fro about it seemed to intensify its silence, to elongate
+      its spire still further, and to invest it with some quality beyond the
+      power of words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even when our errands lay in places behind the church, from which it could
+      not be seen, the view seemed always to have been composed with reference
+      to the steeple, which would stand up, now here, now there, among the
+      houses, and was perhaps even more affecting when it appeared thus without
+      the church. And, indeed, there are many others which look best when seen
+      in this way, and I can call to mind vignettes of housetops with
+      surmounting steeples in quite another category of art than those formed by
+      the dreary streets of Combray. I shall never forget, in a quaint Norman
+      town not far from Balbec, two charming eighteenth-century houses, dear to
+      me and venerable for many reasons, between which, when one looks up at
+      them from a fine garden which descends in terraces to the river, the
+      gothic spire of a church (itself hidden by the houses) soars into the sky
+      with the effect of crowning and completing their fronts, but in a material
+      so different, so precious, so beringed, so rosy, so polished, that it is
+      at once seen to be no more a part of them than would be a part of two
+      pretty pebbles lying side by side, between which it had been washed on the
+      beach, the purple, crinkled spire of some sea-shell spun out into a turret
+      and gay with glossy colour. Even in Paris, in one of the ugliest parts of
+      the town, I know a window from which one can see across a first, a second,
+      and even a third layer of jumbled roofs, street beyond street, a violet
+      bell, sometimes ruddy, sometimes too, in the finest 'prints' which the
+      atmosphere makes of it, of an ashy solution of black; which is, in fact,
+      nothing else than the dome of Saint-Augustin, and which imparts to this
+      view of Paris the character of some of the Piranesi views of Rome. But
+      since into none of these little etchings, whatever the taste my memory may
+      have been able to bring to their execution, was it able to contribute an
+      element I have long lost, the feeling which makes us not merely regard a
+      thing as a spectacle, but believe in it as in a creature without parallel,
+      so none of them keeps in dependence on it a whole section of my inmost
+      life as does the memory of those aspects of the steeple of Combray from
+      the streets behind the church. Whether one saw it at five o'clock when
+      going to call for letters at the post-office, some doors away from one, on
+      the left, raising abruptly with its isolated peak the ridge of housetops;
+      or again, when one had to go in and ask for news of Mme. Sazerat, one's
+      eyes followed the line where it ran low again beyond the farther,
+      descending slope, and one knew that it would be the second turning after
+      the steeple; or yet again, if pressing further afield one went to the
+      station, one saw it obliquely, shewing in profile fresh angles and
+      surfaces, like a solid body surprised at some unknown point in its
+      revolution; or, from the banks of the Vivonne, the apse, drawn muscularly
+      together and heightened in perspective, seemed to spring upwards with the
+      effort which the steeple made to hurl its spire-point into the heart of
+      heaven: it was always to the steeple that one must return, always it which
+      dominated everything else, summing up the houses with an unexpected
+      pinnacle, raised before me like the Finger of God, Whose Body might have
+      been concealed below among the crowd of human bodies without fear of my
+      confounding It, for that reason, with them. And so even to-day in any
+      large provincial town, or in a quarter of Paris which I do not know well,
+      if a passer-by who is 'putting me on the right road' shews me from afar,
+      as a point to aim at, some belfry of a hospital, or a convent steeple
+      lifting the peak of its ecclesiastical cap at the corner of the street
+      which I am to take, my memory need only find in it some dim resemblance to
+      that dear and vanished outline, and the passer-by, should he turn round to
+      make sure that I have not gone astray, would see me, to his astonishment,
+      oblivious of the walk that I had planned to take or the place where I was
+      obliged to call, standing still on the spot, before that steeple, for
+      hours on end, motionless, trying to remember, feeling deep within myself a
+      tract of soil reclaimed from the waters of Lethe slowly drying until the
+      buildings rise on it again; and then no doubt, and then more uneasily than
+      when, just now, I asked him for a direction, I will seek my way again, I
+      will turn a corner... but... the goal is in my heart...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On our way home from mass we would often meet M. Legrandin, who, detained
+      in Paris by his professional duties as an engineer, could only (except in
+      the regular holiday seasons) visit his home at Combray between Saturday
+      evenings and Monday mornings. He was one of that class of men who, apart
+      from a scientific career in which they may well have proved brilliantly
+      successful, have acquired an entirely different kind of culture, literary
+      or artistic, of which they make no use in the specialised work of their
+      profession, but by which their conversation profits. More 'literary' than
+      many 'men of letters' (we were not aware at this period that M. Legrandin
+      had a distinct reputation as a writer, and so were greatly astonished to
+      find that a well-known composer had set some verses of his to music),
+      endowed with a greater ease in execution than many painters, they imagine
+      that the life they are obliged to lead is not that for which they are
+      really fitted, and they bring to their regular occupations either a
+      fantastic indifference or a sustained and lofty application, scornful,
+      bitter, and conscientious. Tall, with a good figure, a fine, thoughtful
+      face, drooping fair moustaches, a look of disillusionment in his blue
+      eyes, an almost exaggerated refinement of courtesy; a talker such as we
+      had never heard; he was in the sight of my family, who never ceased to
+      quote him as an example, the very pattern of a gentleman, who took life in
+      the noblest and most delicate manner. My grandmother alone found fault
+      with him for speaking a little too well, a little too much like a book,
+      for not using a vocabulary as natural as his loosely knotted Lavallière
+      neckties, his short, straight, almost schoolboyish coat. She was
+      astonished, too, at the furious invective which he was always launching at
+      the aristocracy, at fashionable life, and 'snobbishness'—"undoubtedly,"
+      he would say, "the sin of which Saint Paul is thinking when he speaks of
+      the sin for which there is no forgiveness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Worldly ambition was a thing which my grandmother was so little capable of
+      feeling, or indeed of understanding, that it seemed to her futile to apply
+      so much heat to its condemnation. Besides, she thought it in not very good
+      taste that M. Legrandin, whose sister was married to a country gentleman
+      of Lower Normandy near Balbec, should deliver himself of such violent
+      attacks upon the nobles, going so far as to blame the Revolution for not
+      having guillotined them all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well met, my friends!" he would say as he came towards us. "You are lucky
+      to spend so much time here; to-morrow I have to go back to Paris, to
+      squeeze back into my niche.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, I admit," he went on, with his own peculiar smile, gently ironical,
+      disillusioned and vague, "I have every useless thing in the world in my
+      house there. The only thing wanting is the necessary thing, a great patch
+      of open sky like this. Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life,
+      little boy," he added, turning to me. "You have a soul in you of rare
+      quality, an artist's nature; never let it starve for lack of what it
+      needs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, on our reaching the house, my aunt would send to ask us whether Mme.
+      Goupil had indeed arrived late for mass, not one of us could inform her.
+      Instead, we increased her anxiety by telling her that there was a painter
+      at work in the church copying the window of Gilbert the Bad. Françoise was
+      at once dispatched to the grocer's, but returned empty-handed owing to the
+      absence of Théodore, whose dual profession of choirman, with a part in the
+      maintenance of the fabric, and of grocer's assistant gave him not only
+      relations with all sections of society, but an encyclopaedic knowledge of
+      their affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah!" my aunt would sigh, "I wish it were time for Eulalie to come. She is
+      really the only person who will be able to tell me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eulalie was a limping, energetic, deaf spinster who had 'retired' after
+      the death of Mme. de la Bretonnerie, with whom she had been in service
+      from her childhood, and had then taken a room beside the church, from
+      which she would incessantly emerge, either to attend some service, or,
+      when there was no service, to say a prayer by herself or to give Théodore
+      a hand; the rest of her time she spent in visiting sick persons like my
+      aunt Léonie, to whom she would relate everything that had occurred at mass
+      or vespers. She was not above adding occasional pocket-money to the little
+      income which was found for her by the family of her old employers by going
+      from time to time to look after the Curé's linen, or that of some other
+      person of note in the clerical world of Combray. Above a mantle of black
+      cloth she wore a little white coif that seemed almost to attach her to
+      some Order, and an infirmity of the skin had stained part of her cheeks
+      and her crooked nose the bright red colour of balsam. Her visits were the
+      one great distraction in the life of my aunt Léonie, who now saw hardly
+      anyone else, except the reverend Curé. My aunt had by degrees erased every
+      other visitor's name from her list, because they all committed the fatal
+      error, in her eyes, of falling into one or other of the two categories of
+      people she most detested. One group, the worse of the two, and the one of
+      which she rid herself first, consisted of those who advised her not to
+      take so much care of herself, and preached (even if only negatively and
+      with no outward signs beyond an occasional disapproving silence or
+      doubting smile) the subversive doctrine that a sharp walk in the sun and a
+      good red beefsteak would do her more good (her, who had had two dreadful
+      sips of Vichy water on her stomach for fourteen hours!) than all her
+      medicine bottles and her bed. The other category was composed of people
+      who appeared to believe that she was more seriously ill than she thought,
+      in fact that she was as seriously ill as she said. And so none of those
+      whom she had allowed upstairs to her room, after considerable hesitation
+      and at Françoise's urgent request, and who in the course of their visit
+      had shewn how unworthy they were of the honour which had been done them by
+      venturing a timid: "Don't you think that if you were just to stir out a
+      little on really fine days...?" or who, on the other hand, when she said
+      to them: "I am very low, very low; nearing the end, dear friends!" had
+      replied: "Ah, yes, when one has no strength left! Still, you may last a
+      while yet"; each party alike might be certain that her doors would never
+      open to them again. And if Françoise was amused by the look of
+      consternation on my aunt's face whenever she saw, from her bed, any of
+      these people in the Rue du Saint-Esprit, who looked as if they were coming
+      to see her, or heard her own door-bell ring, she would laugh far more
+      heartily, as at a clever trick, at my aunt's devices (which never failed)
+      for having them sent away, and at their look of discomfiture when they had
+      to turn back without having seen her; and would be filled with secret
+      admiration for her mistress, whom she felt to be superior to all these
+      other people, inasmuch as she could and did contrive not to see them. In
+      short, my aunt stipulated, at one and the same time, that whoever came to
+      see her must approve of her way of life, commiserate with her in her
+      sufferings, and assure her of an ultimate recovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all this Eulalie excelled. My aunt might say to her twenty times in a
+      minute: "The end is come at last, my poor Eulalie!", twenty times Eulalie
+      would retort with: "Knowing your illness as you do, Mme. Octave, you will
+      live to be a hundred, as Mme. Sazerin said to me only yesterday." For one
+      of Eulalie's most rooted beliefs, and one that the formidable list of
+      corrections which her experience must have compiled was powerless to
+      eradicate, was that Mme. Sazerat's name was really Mme. Sazerin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not ask to live to a hundred," my aunt would say, for she preferred
+      to have no definite limit fixed to the number of her days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And since, besides this, Eulalie knew, as no one else knew, how to
+      distract my aunt without tiring her, her visits, which took place
+      regularly every Sunday, unless something unforeseen occurred to prevent
+      them, were for my aunt a pleasure the prospect of which kept her on those
+      days in a state of expectation, appetising enough to begin with, but at
+      once changing to the agony of a hunger too long unsatisfied if Eulalie
+      were a minute late in coming. For, if unduly prolonged, the rapture of
+      waiting for Eulalie became a torture, and my aunt would never cease from
+      looking at the time, and yawning, and complaining of each of her symptoms
+      in turn. Eulalie's ring, if it sounded from the front door at the very end
+      of the day, when she was no longer expecting it, would almost make her
+      ill. For the fact was that on Sundays she thought of nothing else than
+      this visit, and the moment that our luncheon was ended Françoise would
+      become impatient for us to leave the dining-room so that she might go
+      upstairs to 'occupy' my aunt. But—and this more than ever from the
+      day on which fine weather definitely set in at Combray—the proud
+      hour of noon, descending from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which it
+      blazoned for a moment with the twelve points of its sonorous crown, would
+      long have echoed about our table, beside the 'holy bread,' which too had
+      come in, after church, in its familiar way; and we would still be found
+      seated in front of our Arabian Nights plates, weighed down by the heat of
+      the day, and even more by our heavy meal. For upon the permanent
+      foundation of eggs, cutlets, potatoes, preserves, and biscuits, whose
+      appearance on the table she no longer announced to us, Françoise would add—as
+      the labour of fields and orchards, the harvest of the tides, the luck of
+      the markets, the kindness of neighbours, and her own genius might provide;
+      and so effectively that our bill of fare, like the quatrefoils that were
+      carved on the porches of cathedrals in the thirteenth century, reflected
+      to some extent the march of the seasons and the incidents of human life—a
+      brill, because the fish-woman had guaranteed its freshness; a turkey,
+      because she had seen a beauty in the market at Roussainville-le-Pin;
+      cardoons with marrow, because she had never done them for us in that way
+      before; a roast leg of mutton, because the fresh air made one hungry and
+      there would be plenty of time for it to 'settle down' in the seven hours
+      before dinner; spinach, by way of a change; apricots, because they were
+      still hard to get; gooseberries, because in another fortnight there would
+      be none left; raspberries, which M. Swann had brought specially; cherries,
+      the first to come from the cherry-tree, which had yielded none for the
+      last two years; a cream cheese, of which in those days I was extremely
+      fond; an almond cake, because she had ordered one the evening before; a
+      fancy loaf, because it was our turn to 'offer' the holy bread. And when
+      all these had been eaten, a work composed expressly for ourselves, but
+      dedicated more particularly to my father, who had a fondness for such
+      things, a cream of chocolate, inspired in the mind, created by the hand of
+      Françoise, would be laid before us, light and fleeting as an 'occasional
+      piece' of music, into which she had poured the whole of her talent. Anyone
+      who refused to partake of it, saying: "No, thank you, I have finished; I
+      am not hungry," would at once have been lowered to the level of the
+      Philistines who, when an artist makes them a present of one of his works,
+      examine its weight and material, whereas what is of value is the creator's
+      intention and his signature. To have left even the tiniest morsel in the
+      dish would have shewn as much discourtesy as to rise and leave a concert
+      hall while the 'piece' was still being played, and under the
+      composer's very eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length my mother would say to me: "Now, don't stay here all day; you
+      can go up to your room if you are too hot outside, but get a little fresh
+      air first; don't start reading immediately after your food."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I would go and sit down beside the pump and its trough, ornamented
+      here and there, like a gothic font, with a salamander, which modelled upon
+      a background of crumbling stone the quick relief of its slender,
+      allegorical body; on the bench without a back, in the shade of a
+      lilac-tree, in that little corner of the garden which communicated, by a
+      service door, with the Rue du Saint-Esprit, and from whose neglected soil
+      rose, in two stages, an outcrop from the house itself and apparently a
+      separate building, my aunt's back-kitchen. One could see its red-tiled
+      floor gleaming like porphyry. It seemed not so much the cave of Françoise
+      as a little temple of Venus. It would be overflowing with the offerings of
+      the milkman, the fruiterer, the greengrocer, come sometimes from distant
+      villages to dedicate here the first-fruits of their fields. And its roof
+      was always surmounted by the cooing of a dove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In earlier days I would not have lingered in the sacred grove which
+      surrounded this temple, for, before going upstairs to read, I would steal
+      into the little sitting-room which my uncle Adolphe, a brother of my
+      grandfather and an old soldier who had retired from the service as a
+      major, used to occupy on the ground floor, a room which, even when its
+      opened windows let in the heat, if not actually the rays of the sun which
+      seldom penetrated so far, would never fail to emit that vague and yet
+      fresh odour, suggesting at once an open-air and an old-fashioned kind of
+      existence, which sets and keeps the nostrils dreaming when one goes into a
+      disused gun-room. But for some years now I had not gone into my uncle
+      Adolphe's room, since he no longer came to Combray on account of a quarrel
+      which had arisen between him and my family, by my fault, and in the
+      following circumstances: Once or twice every month, in Paris, I used to be
+      sent to pay him a visit, as he was finishing his luncheon, wearing a
+      plain alpaca coat, and waited upon by his servant in a working-jacket of
+      striped linen, purple and white. He would complain that I had not been to
+      see him for a long time; that he was being neglected; he would offer me a
+      marchpane or a tangerine, and we would cross a room in which no one ever
+      sat, whose fire was never lighted, whose walls were picked out with gilded
+      mouldings, its ceiling painted blue in imitation of the sky, and its
+      furniture upholstered in satin, as at my grandparents', only yellow; then
+      we would enter what he called his 'study,' a room whose walls were hung
+      with prints which shewed, against a dark background, a plump and rosy
+      goddess driving a car, or standing upon a globe, or wearing a star on her
+      brow; pictures which were popular under the Second Empire because there
+      was thought to be something about them that suggested Pompeii, which were
+      then generally despised, and which now people are beginning to collect
+      again for one single and consistent reason (despite any others which they
+      may advance), namely, that they suggest the Second Empire. And there I
+      would stay with my uncle until his man came, with a message from the
+      coachman, to ask him at what time he would like the carriage. My uncle
+      would then be lost in meditation, while his astonished servant stood
+      there, not daring to disturb him by the least movement, wondering and
+      waiting for his answer, which never varied. For in the end, after a
+      supreme crisis of hesitation, my uncle would utter, infallibly, the words:
+      "A quarter past two," which the servant would echo with amazement, but
+      without disputing them: "A quarter past two! Very good, sir... I will go
+      and tell him...."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this date I was a lover of the theatre: a Platonic lover, of necessity,
+      since my parents had not yet allowed me to enter one, and so incorrect was
+      the picture I drew for myself of the pleasures to be enjoyed there that I
+      almost believed that each of the spectators looked, as into a stereoscope,
+      upon a stage and scenery which existed for himself alone, though closely
+      resembling the thousand other spectacles presented to the rest of the
+      audience individually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every morning I would hasten to the Moriss column to see what new plays it
+      announced. Nothing could be more disinterested or happier than the dreams
+      with which these announcements filled my mind, dreams which took their
+      form from the inevitable associations of the words forming the title of
+      the play, and also from the colour of the bills, still damp and wrinkled
+      with paste, on which those words stood out. Nothing, unless it were such
+      strange titles as the <i>Testament de César Girodot, or Oedipe-Roi</i>,
+      inscribed not on the green bills of the Opéra-Comique, but on the
+      wine-coloured bills of the Comédie-Française, nothing seemed to me to
+      differ more profoundly from the sparkling white plume of the <i>Diamants
+      de la Couronne</i> than the sleek, mysterious satin of the <i>Domino Noir</i>;
+      and since my parents had told me that, for my first visit to the theatre,
+      I should have to choose between these two pieces, I would study
+      exhaustively and in turn the title of one and the title of the other (for
+      those were all that I knew of either), attempting to snatch from each a
+      foretaste of the pleasure which it offered me, and to compare this
+      pleasure with that latent in the other title, until in the end I had shewn
+      myself such vivid, such compelling pictures of, on the one hand, a play of
+      dazzling arrogance, and on the other a gentle, velvety play, that I was as
+      little capable of deciding which play I should prefer to see as if, at the
+      dinner-table, they had obliged me to choose between <i>rice à
+      l'Impératrice</i> and the famous cream of chocolate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All my conversations with my playfellows bore upon actors, whose art,
+      although as yet I had no experience of it, was the first of all its
+      numberless forms in which Art itself allowed me to anticipate its
+      enjoyment. Between one actor's tricks of intonation and inflection and
+      another's, the most trifling differences would strike me as being of an
+      incalculable importance. And from what I had been told of them I would
+      arrange them in the order of their talent in lists which I used to murmur
+      to myself all day long: lists which in the end became petrified in my
+      brain and were a source of annoyance to it, being irremovable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And later, in my schooldays, whenever I ventured in class, when the
+      master's head was turned, to communicate with some new friend, I would
+      always begin by asking him whether he had begun yet to go to theatres, and
+      if he agreed that our greatest actor was undoubtedly Got, our second
+      Delaunay, and so on. And if, in his judgment, Febvre came below Thiron, or
+      Delaunay below Coquelin, the sudden volatility which the name of Coquelin,
+      forsaking its stony rigidity, would engender in my mind, in which it moved
+      upwards to the second place, the rich vitality with which the name of
+      Delaunay would suddenly be furnished, to enable it to slip down to fourth,
+      would stimulate and fertilise my brain with a sense of budding and
+      blossoming life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if the thought of actors weighed so upon me, if the sight of Maubant,
+      coming out one afternoon from the Théâtre-Français, had plunged me in the
+      throes and sufferings of hopeless love, how much more did the name of a
+      'star,' blazing outside the doors of a theatre, how much more, seen
+      through the window of a brougham which passed me in the street, the hair
+      over her forehead abloom with roses, did the face of a woman who, I would
+      think, was perhaps an actress, leave with me a lasting disturbance, a
+      futile and painful effort to form a picture of her private life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I classified, in order of talent, the most distinguished: Sarah Bernhardt,
+      Berma, Bartet, Madeleine Brohan, Jeanne Samary; but I was interested in
+      them all. Now my uncle knew many of them personally, and also ladies of
+      another class, not clearly distinguished from actresses in my mind. He
+      used to entertain them at his house. And if we went to see him on certain
+      days only, that was because on the other days ladies might come whom his
+      family could not very well have met. So we at least thought; as for my
+      uncle, his fatal readiness to pay pretty widows (who had perhaps never
+      been married) and countesses (whose high-sounding titles were probably no
+      more than <i>noms de guerre</i>) the compliment of presenting them to my
+      grandmother or even of presenting to them some of our family jewels, had
+      already embroiled him more than once with my grandfather. Often, if the
+      name of some actress were mentioned in conversation, I would hear my
+      father say, with a smile, to my mother: "One of your uncle's friends," and
+      I would think of the weary novitiate through which, perhaps for years on
+      end, a grown man, even a man of real importance, might have to pass,
+      waiting on the doorstep of some such lady, while she refused to answer his
+      letters and made her hall-porter drive him away; and imagine that my uncle
+      was able to dispense a little jackanapes like myself from all these
+      sufferings by introducing me in his own home to the actress,
+      unapproachable by all the world, but for him an intimate friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so—on the pretext that some lesson, the hour of which had been
+      altered, now came at such an awkward time that it had already more than
+      once prevented me, and would continue to prevent me, from seeing my uncle—one
+      day, not one of the days which he set apart for our visits, I took
+      advantage of the fact that my parents had had luncheon earlier than usual;
+      I slipped out and, instead of going to read the playbills on their column,
+      for which purpose I was allowed to go out unaccompanied, I ran all the way
+      to his house. I noticed before his door a carriage and pair, with red
+      carnations on the horses' blinkers and in the coachman's buttonhole. As I
+      climbed the staircase I could hear laughter and a woman's voice, and, as
+      soon as I had rung, silence and the sound of shutting doors. The
+      man-servant who let me in appeared embarrassed, and said that my uncle was
+      extremely busy and probably could not see me; he went in, however, to
+      announce my arrival, and the same voice I had heard before said: "Oh, yes!
+      Do let him come in; just for a moment; it will be so amusing. Is that his
+      photograph there, on your desk? And his mother (your niece, isn't she?)
+      beside it? The image of her, isn't he? I should so like to see the little
+      chap, just for a second."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could hear my uncle grumbling and growing angry; finally the manservant
+      told me to come in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the table was the same plate of marchpanes that was always there; my
+      uncle wore the same alpaca coat as on other days; but opposite to him, in
+      a pink silk dress with a great necklace of pearls about her throat, sat a
+      young woman who was just finishing a tangerine. My uncertainty whether I
+      ought to address her as Madame or Mademoiselle made me blush, and not
+      daring to look too much in her direction, in case I should be obliged to
+      speak to her, I hurried across to kiss my uncle. She looked at me and
+      smiled; my uncle said "My nephew!" without telling her my name or telling
+      me hers, doubtless because, since his difficulties with my grandfather, he
+      had endeavoured as far as possible to avoid any association of his family
+      with this other class of acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How like his mother he is," said the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you have never seen my niece, except in photographs," my uncle broke
+      in quickly, with a note of anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg your pardon, dear friend, I passed her on the staircase last year
+      when you were so ill. It is true I only saw her for a moment, and your
+      staircase is rather dark; but I saw well enough to see how lovely she was.
+      This young gentleman has her beautiful eyes, and also this," she went on,
+      tracing a line with one finger across the lower part of her forehead.
+      "Tell me," she asked my uncle, "is your niece Mme.——; is her
+      name the same as yours?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He takes most after his father," muttered my uncle, who was no more
+      anxious to effect an introduction by proxy, in repeating Mamma's name
+      aloud, than to bring the two together in the flesh. "He's his father all
+      over, and also like my poor mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not met his father, dear," said the lady in pink, bowing her head
+      slightly, "and I never saw your poor mother. You will remember it was just
+      after your great sorrow that we got to know one another."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt somewhat disillusioned, for this young lady was in no way different
+      from other pretty women whom I had seen from time to time at home,
+      especially the daughter of one of our cousins, to whose house I went every
+      New Year's Day. Only better dressed; otherwise my uncle's friend had the
+      same quick and kindly glance, the same frank and friendly manner. I could
+      find no trace in her of the theatrical appearance which I admired in
+      photographs of actresses, nothing of the diabolical expression which would
+      have been in keeping with the life she must lead. I had difficulty in
+      believing that this was one of 'those women,' and certainly I should never
+      have believed her one of the 'smart ones' had I not seen the carriage and
+      pair, the pink dress, the pearly necklace, had I not been aware, too, that
+      my uncle knew only the very best of them. But I asked myself how the
+      millionaire who gave her her carriage and her flat and her jewels could
+      find any pleasure in flinging his money away upon a woman who had so
+      simple and respectable an appearance. And yet, when I thought of what her
+      life must be like, its immorality disturbed me more, perhaps, than if it
+      had stood before me in some concrete and recognisable form, by its secrecy
+      and invisibility, like the plot of a novel, the hidden truth of a scandal
+      which had driven out of the home of her middle-class parents and dedicated
+      to the service of all mankind which had brought to the flowering-point of
+      her beauty, had raised to fame or notoriety this woman, the play of whose
+      features, the intonations of whose voice, like so many others I already
+      knew, made me regard her, in spite of myself, as a young lady of good
+      family, her who was no longer of a family at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had gone by this time into the 'study,' and my uncle, who seemed a
+      trifle embarrassed by my presence, offered her a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, thank you, dear friend," she said. "You know I only smoke the ones
+      the Grand Duke sends me. I tell him that they make you jealous." And she
+      drew from a case cigarettes covered with inscriptions in gold, in a
+      foreign language. "Why, yes," she began again suddenly. "Of course I have
+      met this young man's father with you. Isn't he your nephew? How on earth
+      could I have forgotten? He was so nice, so charming to me," she went on,
+      modestly and with feeling. But when I thought to myself what must actually
+      have been the rude greeting (which, she made out, had been so charming),
+      I, who knew my father's coldness and reserve, was shocked, as though at
+      some indelicacy on his part, at the contrast between the excessive
+      recognition bestowed on it and his never adequate geniality. It has since
+      struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life
+      by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity,
+      all their talent, their transferable dreams of sentimental beauty (for,
+      like all artists, they never seek to realise the value of those dreams, or
+      to enclose them in the four-square frame of everyday life), and their
+      gold, which counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious
+      setting for the rubbed and scratched and ill-polished lives of men. And
+      just as this one filled the smoking-room, where my uncle was entertaining
+      her in his alpaca coat, with her charming person, her dress of pink silk,
+      her pearls, and the refinement suggested by intimacy with a Grand Duke,
+      so, in the same way, she had taken some casual remark by my father, had
+      worked it up delicately, given it a 'turn,' a precious title, set in it
+      the gem of a glance from her own eyes, a gem of the first water, blended
+      of humility and gratitude; and so had given it back transformed into a
+      jewel, a work of art, into something altogether charming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, my boy, it is time you went away," said my uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose; I could scarcely resist a desire to kiss the hand of the lady in
+      pink, but I felt that to do so would require as much audacity as a
+      forcible abduction of her. My heart beat loud while I counted out to
+      myself "Shall I do it, shall I not?" and then I ceased to ask myself what
+      I ought to do so as at least to do something. Blindly, hotly, madly,
+      flinging aside all the reasons I had just found to support such action, I
+      seized and raised to my lips the hand she held out to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Isn't he delicious! Quite a ladies' man already; he takes after his
+      uncle. He'll be a perfect 'gentleman,'" she went on, setting her teeth so
+      as to give the word a kind of English accentuation. "Couldn't he come to
+      me some day for 'a cup of tea,' as our friends across the channel say; he
+      need only send me a 'blue' in the morning?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had not the least idea of what a 'blue' might be. I did not understand
+      half the words which the lady used, but my fear lest there should be
+      concealed in them some question which it would be impolite in me not to
+      answer kept me from withdrawing my close attention from them, and I was
+      beginning to feel extremely tired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no; it is impossible," said my uncle, shrugging his shoulders. "He is
+      kept busy at home all day; he has plenty of work to do. He brings back all
+      the prizes from his school," he added in a lower tone, so that I should
+      not hear this falsehood and interrupt with a contradiction. "You can't
+      tell; he may turn out a little Victor Hugo, a kind of Vaulabelle, don't
+      you know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, I love artistic people," replied the lady in pink; "there is no one
+      like them for understanding women. Them, and really nice men like
+      yourself. But please forgive my ignorance. Who, what is Vaulabelle? Is it
+      those gilt books in the little glass case in your drawing-room? You know
+      you promised to lend them to me; I will take great care of them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My uncle, who hated lending people books, said nothing, and ushered me out
+      into the hall. Madly in love with the lady in pink, I covered my old
+      uncle's tobacco-stained cheeks with passionate kisses, and while he,
+      awkwardly enough, gave me to understand (without actually saying) that he
+      would rather I did not tell my parents about this visit, I assured him,
+      with tears in my eyes, that his kindness had made so strong an impression
+      upon me that some day I would most certainly find a way of expressing my
+      gratitude. So strong an impression had it made upon me that two hours
+      later, after a string of mysterious utterances which did not strike me as
+      giving my parents a sufficiently clear idea of the new importance with
+      which I had been invested, I found it simpler to let them have a full
+      account, omitting no detail, of the visit I had paid that afternoon. In
+      doing this I had no thought of causing my uncle any unpleasantness. How
+      could I have thought such a thing, since I did not wish it? And I could
+      not suppose that my parents would see any harm in a visit in which I
+      myself saw none. Every day of our lives does not some friend or other ask
+      us to make his apologies, without fail, to some woman to whom he has been
+      prevented from writing; and do not we forget to do so, feeling that this
+      woman cannot attach much importance to a silence which has none for
+      ourselves? I imagined, like everyone else, that the brains of other people
+      were lifeless and submissive receptacles with no power of specific
+      reaction to any stimulus which might be applied to them; and I had not the
+      least doubt that when I deposited in the minds of my parents the news of
+      the acquaintance I had made at my uncle's I should at the same time
+      transmit to them the kindly judgment I myself had based on the
+      introduction. Unfortunately my parents had recourse to principles entirely
+      different from those which I suggested they should adopt when they came to
+      form their estimate of my uncle's conduct. My father and grandfather had
+      'words' with him of a violent order; as I learned indirectly. A few days
+      later, passing my uncle in the street as he drove by in an open carriage,
+      Î felt at once all the grief, the gratitude, the remorse which I should
+      have liked to convey to him. Beside the immensity of these emotions I
+      considered that merely to raise my hat to him would be incongruous and
+      petty, and might make him think that I regarded myself as bound to shew
+      him no more than the commonest form of courtesy. I decided to abstain from
+      so inadequate a gesture, and turned my head away. My uncle thought that,
+      in doing so I was obeying my parents' orders; he never forgave them; and
+      though he did not die until many years later, not one of us ever set eyes
+      on him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so I no longer used to go into the little sitting-room (now kept shut)
+      of my uncle Adolphe; instead, after hanging about on the outskirts of the
+      back-kitchen until Françoise appeared on its threshold and announced: "I
+      am going to let the kitchen-maid serve the coffee and take up the hot
+      water; it is time I went off to Mme. Octave," I would then decide to go
+      indoors, and would go straight upstairs to my room to read. The
+      kitchen-maid was an abstract personality, a permanent institution to which
+      an invariable set of attributes assured a sort of fixity and continuity
+      and identity throughout the long series of transitory human shapes in
+      which that personality was incarnate; for we never found the same girl
+      there two years running. In the year in which we ate such quantities of
+      asparagus, the kitchen-maid whose duty it was to dress them was a poor
+      sickly creature, some way 'gone' in pregnancy when we arrived at Combray
+      for Easter, and it was indeed surprising that Françoise allowed her to run
+      so many errands in the town and to do so much work in the house, for she
+      was beginning to find a difficulty in bearing before her the mysterious
+      casket, fuller and larger every day, whose splendid outline could be
+      detected through the folds of her ample smocks. These last recalled the
+      cloaks in which Giotto shrouds some of the allegorical figures in his
+      paintings, of which M. Swann had given me photographs. He it was who
+      pointed out the resemblance, and when he inquired after the kitchen-maid
+      he would say: "Well, how goes it with Giotto's Charity?" And indeed the
+      poor girl, whose pregnancy had swelled and stoutened every part of her,
+      even to her face, and the vertical, squared outlines of her cheeks, did
+      distinctly suggest those virgins, so strong and mannish as to seem matrons
+      rather, in whom the Virtues are personified in the Arena Chapel. And I can
+      see now that those Virtues and Vices of Padua resembled her in another
+      respect as well. For just as the figure of this girl had been enlarged by
+      the additional symbol which she carried in her body, without appearing to
+      understand what it meant, without any rendering in her facial expression
+      of all its beauty and spiritual significance, but carried as if it were an
+      ordinary and rather heavy burden, so it is without any apparent suspicion
+      of what she is about that the powerfully built housewife who is portrayed
+      in the Arena beneath the label 'Caritas,' and a reproduction of whose
+      portrait hung upon the wall of my schoolroom at Combray, incarnates that
+      virtue, for it seems impossible that any thought of charity can ever have
+      found expression in her vulgar and energetic face. By a fine stroke of the
+      painter's invention she is tumbling all the treasures of the earth at her
+      feet, but exactly as if she were treading grapes in a wine-press to
+      extract their juice, or, still more, as if she had climbed on a heap of
+      sacks to raise herself higher; and she is holding out her flaming heart to
+      God, or shall we say 'handing' it to Him, exactly as a cook might hand up
+      a corkscrew through the skylight of her underground kitchen to some one
+      who had called down to ask her for it from the ground-level above. The
+      'Invidia,' again, should have had some look on her face of envy. But in
+      this fresco, too, the symbol occupies so large a place and is represented
+      with such realism; the serpent hissing between the lips of Envy is so
+      huge, and so completely fills her wide-opened mouth that the muscles of
+      her face are strained and contorted, like a child's who is filling a
+      balloon with his breath, and that Envy, and we ourselves for that matter,
+      when we look at her, since all her attention and ours are concentrated on
+      the action of her lips, have no time, almost, to spare for envious
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Despite all the admiration that M. Swann might profess for these figures
+      of Giotto, it was a long time before I could find any pleasure in seeing
+      in our schoolroom (where the copies he had brought me were hung) that
+      Charity devoid of charity, that Envy who looked like nothing so much as a
+      plate in some medical book, illustrating the compression of the glottis or
+      uvula by a tumour in the tongue, or by the introduction of the operator's
+      instrument, a Justice whose greyish and meanly regular features were the
+      very same as those which adorned the faces of certain good and pious and
+      slightly withered ladies of Combray whom I used to see at mass, many of
+      whom had long been enrolled in the reserve forces of Injustice. But in
+      later years I understood that the arresting strangeness, the special
+      beauty of these frescoes lay in the great part played in each of them by
+      its symbols, while the fact that these were depicted, not as symbols (for
+      the thought symbolised was nowhere expressed), but as real things,
+      actually felt or materially handled, added something more precise and more
+      literal to their meaning, something more concrete and more striking to the
+      lesson they imparted. And even in the case of the poor kitchen-maid, was
+      not our attention incessantly drawn to her belly by the load which filled
+      it; and in the same way, again, are not the thoughts of men and women in
+      the agony of death often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure,
+      internal, intestinal aspect, towards that 'seamy side' of death which is,
+      as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces
+      them to feel, a side which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a
+      difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to
+      which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There must have been a strong element of reality in those Virtues and
+      Vices of Padua, since they appeared to me to be as much alive as the
+      pregnant servant-girl, while she herself appeared scarcely less
+      allegorical than they. And, quite possibly, this lack (or seeming lack) of
+      participation by a person's soul in the significant marks of its own
+      special virtue has, apart from its aesthetic meaning, a reality which, if
+      not strictly psychological, may at least be called physiognomical. Later
+      on, when, in the course of my life, I have had occasion to meet with, in
+      convents for instance, literally saintly examples of practical charity,
+      they have generally had the brisk, decided, undisturbed, and slightly
+      brutal air of a busy surgeon, the face in which one can discern no
+      commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suffering humanity, and no
+      fear of hurting it, the face devoid of gentleness or sympathy, the sublime
+      face of true goodness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then while the kitchen-maid—who, all unawares, made the superior
+      qualities of Françoise shine with added lustre, just as Error, by force of
+      contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth—took in coffee which
+      (according to Mamma) was nothing more than hot water, and then carried up
+      to our rooms hot water which was barely tepid, I would be lying stretched
+      out on my bed, a book in my hand, in my room which trembled with the
+      effort to defend its frail, transparent coolness against the afternoon
+      sun, behind its almost closed shutters through which, however, a
+      reflection of the sunlight had contrived to slip in on its golden wings,
+      remaining motionless, between glass and woodwork, in a corner, like a
+      butterfly poised upon a flower. It was hardly light enough for me to read,
+      and my feeling of the day's brightness and splendour was derived solely
+      from the blows struck down below, in the Rue de la Cure, by Camus (whom
+      Françoise had assured that my aunt was not 'resting' and that he might
+      therefore make a noise), upon some old packing-cases from which nothing
+      would really be sent flying but the dust, though the din of them, in the
+      resonant atmosphere that accompanies hot weather, seemed to scatter
+      broadcast a rain of blood-red stars; and from the flies who performed for
+      my benefit, in their small concert, as it might be the chamber music of
+      summer; evoking heat and light quite differently from an air of human
+      music which, if you happen to have heard it during a fine summer, will
+      always bring that summer back to your mind, the flies' music is bound to
+      the season by a closer, a more vital tie—born of sunny days, and not
+      to be reborn but with them, containing something of their essential
+      nature, it not merely calls up their image in our memory, but gives us a
+      guarantee that they do really exist, that they are close around us,
+      immediately accessible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This dim freshness of my room was to the broad daylight of the street what
+      the shadow is to the sunbeam, that is to say, equally luminous, and
+      presented to my imagination the entire panorama of summer, which my
+      senses, if I had been out walking, could have tasted and enjoyed in
+      fragments only; and so was quite in harmony with my state of repose, which
+      (thanks to the adventures related in my books, which had just excited it)
+      bore, like a hand reposing motionless in a stream of running water, the
+      shock and animation of a torrent of activity and life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But my grandmother, even if the weather, after growing too hot, had
+      broken, and a storm, or just a shower, had burst over us, would come up
+      and beg me to go outside. And as I did not wish to leave off my book, I
+      would go on with it in the garden, under the chestnut-tree, in a little
+      sentry-box of canvas and matting, in the farthest recesses of which I used
+      to sit and feel that I was hidden from the eyes of anyone who might be
+      coming to call upon the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then my thoughts, did not they form a similar sort of hiding-hole, in
+      the depths of which I felt that I could bury myself and remain invisible
+      even when I was looking at what went on outside? When I saw any external
+      object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and
+      it, enclosing it in a slender, incorporeal outline which prevented me from
+      ever coming directly in contact with the material form; for it would
+      volatilise itself in some way before I could touch it, just as an
+      incandescent body which is moved towards something wet never actually
+      touches moisture, since it is always preceded, itself, by a zone of
+      evaporation. Upon the sort of screen, patterned with different states and
+      impressions, which my consciousness would quietly unfold while I was
+      reading, and which ranged from the most deeply hidden aspirations of my
+      heart to the wholly external view of the horizon spread out before my eyes
+      at the foot of the garden, what was from the first the most permanent and
+      the most intimate part of me, the lever whose incessant movements
+      controlled all the rest, was my belief in the philosophic richness and
+      beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire to appropriate these to
+      myself, whatever the book might be. For even if I had purchased it at
+      Combray, having seen it outside Borange's, whose grocery lay too far from
+      our house for Françoise to be able to deal there, as she did with Camus,
+      but who enjoyed better custom as a stationer and bookseller; even if I had
+      seen it, tied with string to keep it in its place in the mosaic of monthly
+      parts and pamphlets which adorned either side of his doorway, a doorway
+      more mysterious, more teeming with suggestion than that of a cathedral, I
+      should have noticed and bought it there simply because I had recognised it
+      as a book which had been well spoken of, in my hearing, by the
+      school-master or the school-friend who, at that particular time, seemed to
+      me to be entrusted with the secret of Truth and Beauty, things half-felt
+      by me, half-incomprehensible, the full understanding of which was the
+      vague but permanent object of my thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next to this central belief, which, while I was reading, would be
+      constantly a motion from my inner self to the outer world, towards the
+      discovery of Truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which
+      I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more
+      dramatic and sensational events than occur, often, in a whole lifetime.
+      These were the events which took place in the book I was reading. It is
+      true that the people concerned in them were not what Françoise would have
+      called 'real people.' But none of the feelings which the joys or
+      misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be awakened except through
+      a mental picture of those joys or misfortunes; and the ingenuity of the
+      first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the picture was the one
+      essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that
+      simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple,
+      of 'real' people would be a decided improvement. A 'real' person,
+      profoundly as we may sympathise with him, is in a great measure
+      perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, he remains opaque,
+      offers a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to
+      lift. If some misfortune comes to him, it is only in one small section of
+      the complete idea we have of him that we are capable of feeling any
+      emotion; indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he
+      has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either. The
+      novelist's happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque
+      sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial
+      sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself.
+      After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings of this new
+      order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made
+      them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening, that they
+      are holding in thrall, while we turn over, feverishly, the pages of the
+      book, our quickened breath and staring eyes. And once the novelist has
+      brought us to that state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every
+      emotion is multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes to disturb us as
+      might a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression
+      than those which come to us in sleep; why, then, for the space of an hour
+      he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of
+      which, only, we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting
+      to know, and the keenest, the most intense of which would never have been
+      revealed to us because the slow course of their development stops our
+      perception of them. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is
+      our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by
+      imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural
+      phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish,
+      successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual
+      sensation of change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next to, but distinctly less intimate a part of myself than this human
+      element, would come the view, more or less projected before my eyes, of
+      the country in which the action of the story was taking place, which made
+      a far stronger impression on my mind than the other, the actual landscape
+      which would meet my eyes when I raised them from my book. In this way, for
+      two consecutive summers I used to sit in the heat of our Combray garden,
+      sick with a longing inspired by the book I was then reading for a land of
+      mountains and rivers, where I could see an endless vista of sawmills,
+      where beneath the limpid currents fragments of wood lay mouldering in beds
+      of watercress; and nearby, rambling and clustering along low walls, purple
+      flowers and red. And since there was always lurking in my mind the dream
+      of a woman who would enrich me with her love, that dream in those two
+      summers used to be quickened with the freshness and coolness of running
+      water; and whoever she might be, the woman whose image I called to mind,
+      purple flowers and red would at once spring up on either side of her like
+      complementary colours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not only because an image of which we dream remains for ever
+      distinguished, is adorned and enriched by the association of colours not
+      its own which may happen to surround it in our mental picture; for the
+      scenes in the books I read were to me not merely scenery more vividly
+      portrayed by my imagination than any which Combray could spread before my
+      eyes but otherwise of the same kind. Because of the selection that the
+      author had made of them, because of the spirit of faith in which my mind
+      would exceed and anticipate his printed word, as it might be interpreting
+      a revelation, these scenes used to give me the impression—one which
+      I hardly ever derived from any place in which I might happen to be, and
+      never from our garden, that undistinguished product of the strictly
+      conventional fantasy of the gardener whom my grandmother so despised—of
+      their being actually part of Nature herself, and worthy to be studied and
+      explored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had my parents allowed me, when I read a book, to pay a visit to the
+      country it described, I should have felt that I was making an enormous
+      advance towards the ultimate conquest of truth. For even if we have the
+      sensation of being always enveloped in, surrounded by our own soul, still
+      it does not seem a fixed and immovable prison; rather do we seem to be
+      borne away with it, and perpetually struggling to pass beyond it, to break
+      out into the world, with a perpetual discouragement as we hear endlessly,
+      all around us, that unvarying sound which is no echo from without, but the
+      resonance of a vibration from within. We try to discover in things,
+      endeared to us on that account, the spiritual glamour which we ourselves
+      have cast upon them; we are disillusioned, and learn that they are in
+      themselves barren and devoid of the charm which they owed, in our minds,
+      to the association of certain ideas; sometimes we mobilise all our
+      spiritual forces in a glittering array so as to influence and subjugate
+      other human beings who, as we very well know, are situated outside
+      ourselves, where we can never reach them. And so, if I always imagined the
+      woman I loved as in a setting of whatever places I most longed, at the
+      time, to visit; if in my secret longings it was she who attracted me to
+      them, who opened to me the gate of an unknown world, that was not by the
+      mere hazard of a simple association of thoughts; no, it was because my
+      dreams of travel and of love were only moments—which I isolate
+      artificially to-day as though I were cutting sections, at different
+      heights, in a jet of water, rainbow-flashing but seemingly without flow or
+      motion—were only drops in a single, undeviating, irresistible
+      outrush of all the forces of my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as I continue to trace the outward course of these impressions
+      from their close-packed intimate source in my consciousness, and before I
+      come to the horizon of reality which envelops them, I discover pleasures
+      of another kind, those of being comfortably seated, of tasting the good
+      scent on the air, of not being disturbed by any visitor; and, when an hour
+      chimed from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire, of watching what was already
+      spent of the afternoon fall drop by drop until I heard the last stroke
+      which enabled me to add up the total sum, after which the silence that
+      followed seemed to herald the beginning, in the blue sky above me, of that
+      long part of the day still allowed me for reading, until the good dinner
+      which Françoise was even now preparing should come to strengthen and
+      refresh me after the strenuous pursuit of its hero through the pages of my
+      book. And, as each hour struck, it would seem to me that a few seconds
+      only had passed since the hour before; the latest would inscribe itself,
+      close to its predecessor, on the sky's surface, and I would be unable to
+      believe that sixty minutes could be squeezed into the tiny arc of blue
+      which was comprised between their two golden figures. Sometimes it would
+      even happen that this precocious hour would sound two strokes more than
+      the last; there must then have been an hour which I had not heard strike;
+      something which had taken place had not taken place for me; the
+      fascination of my book, a magic as potent as the deepest slumber, had
+      stopped my enchanted ears and had obliterated the sound of that golden
+      bell from the azure surface of the enveloping silence. Sweet Sunday
+      afternoons beneath the chestnut-tree in our Combray garden, from which I
+      was careful to eliminate every commonplace incident of my actual life,
+      replacing them by a career of strange adventures and ambitions in a land
+      watered by living streams, you still recall those adventures and ambitions
+      to my mind when I think of you, and you embody and preserve them by virtue
+      of having little by little drawn round and enclosed them (while I went on
+      with my book and the heat of the day declined) in the gradual
+      crystallisation, slowly altering in form and dappled with a pattern of
+      chestnut-leaves, of your silent, sonorous, fragrant, limpid hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes I would be torn from my book, in the middle of the afternoon, by
+      the gardener's daughter, who came running like a mad thing, overturning an
+      orange-tree in its tub, cutting a finger, breaking a tooth, and screaming
+      out "They're coming, they're coming!" so that Françoise and I should run
+      too and not miss anything of the show. That was on days when the cavalry
+      stationed in Combray went out for some military exercise, going as a rule
+      by the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde. While our servants, sitting in a row on
+      their chairs outside the garden railings, stared at the people of Combray
+      taking their Sunday walks and were stared at in return, the gardener's
+      daughter, through the gap which there was between two houses far away in
+      the Avenue de la Gare, would have spied the glitter of helmets. The
+      servants then hurried in with their chairs, for when the troopers filed
+      through the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde they filled it from side to side, and
+      their jostling horses scraped against the walls of the houses, covering
+      and drowning the pavements like banks which present too narrow a channel
+      to a river in flood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor children," Françoise would exclaim, in tears almost before she had
+      reached the railings; "poor boys, to be mown down like grass in a meadow.
+      It's just shocking to think of," she would go on, laying a hand over her
+      heart, where presumably she had felt the shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A fine sight, isn't it, Mme. Françoise, all these young fellows not
+      caring two straws for their lives?" the gardener would ask, just to 'draw'
+      her. And he would not have spoken in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not caring for their lives, is it? Why, what in the world is there that
+      we should care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never
+      offers us a second time? Oh dear, oh dear; you're right all the same; it's
+      quite true, they don't care! I can remember them in '70; in those wretched
+      wars they've no fear of death left in them; they're nothing more nor less
+      than madmen; and then they aren't worth the price of a rope to hang them
+      with; they're not men any more, they're lions." For by her way of
+      thinking, to compare a man with a lion, which she used to pronounce
+      'lie-on,' was not at all complimentary to the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rue Sainte-Hildegarde turned too sharply for us to be able to see
+      people approaching at any distance, and it was only through the gap
+      between those two houses in the Avenue de la Gare that we could still make
+      out fresh helmets racing along towards us, and flashing in the sunlight.
+      The gardener wanted to know whether there were still many to come, and he
+      was thirsty besides, with the sun beating down upon his head. So then,
+      suddenly, his daughter would leap out, as though from a beleaguered city,
+      would make a sortie, turn the street corner, and, having risked her life a
+      hundred times over, reappear and bring us, with a jug of liquorice-water,
+      the news that there were still at least a thousand of them, pouring along
+      without a break from the direction of Thiberzy and Méséglise. Françoise
+      and the gardener, having 'made up' their difference, would discuss the
+      line to be followed in case of war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you see, Françoise," he would say. "Revolution would be better,
+      because then no one would need to join in unless he liked."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, yes, I can see that, certainly; it's more straightforward."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gardener believed that, as soon as war was declared, they would stop
+      all the railways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, to be sure; so that we sha'n't get away," said Françoise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the gardener would assent, with "Ay, they're the cunning ones," for he
+      would not allow that war was anything but a kind of trick which the state
+      attempted to play on the people, or that there was a man in the world who
+      would not run away from it if he had the chance to do so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Françoise would hasten back to my aunt, and I would return to my book,
+      and the servants would take their places again outside the gate to watch
+      the dust settle on the pavement, and the excitement caused by the passage
+      of the soldiers subside. Long after order had been restored, an abnormal
+      tide of humanity would continue to darken the streets of Combray. And in
+      front of every house, even of those where it was not, as a rule, 'done,'
+      the servants, and sometimes even the masters would sit and stare,
+      festooning their doorsteps with a dark, irregular fringe, like the border
+      of shells and sea-weed which a stronger tide than usual leaves on the
+      beach, as though trimming it with embroidered crape, when the sea itself
+      has retreated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Except on such days as these, however, I would as a rule be left to read
+      in peace. But the interruption which a visit from Swann once made, and the
+      commentary which he then supplied to the course of my reading, which had
+      brought me to the work of an author quite new to me, called Bergotte, had
+      this definite result that for a long time afterwards it was not against a
+      wall gay with spikes of purple blossom, but on a wholly different
+      background, the porch of a gothic cathedral, that I would see outlined the
+      figure of one of the women of whom I dreamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had heard Bergotte spoken of, for the first time, by a friend older than
+      myself, for whom I had a strong admiration, a precious youth of the name
+      of Bloch. Hearing me confess my love of the <i>Nuit d'Octobre</i>, he had
+      burst out in a bray of laughter, like a bugle-call, and told me, by way of
+      warning: "You must conquer your vile taste for A. de Musset, Esquire. He
+      is a bad egg, one of the very worst, a pretty detestable specimen. I am
+      bound to admit, natheless," he added graciously, "that he, and even the
+      man Racine, did, each of them, once in his life, compose a line which is
+      not only fairly rhythmical, but has also what is in my eyes the supreme
+      merit of meaning absolutely nothing. One is
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  <i>La blanche Oloossone et la blanche Camire</i>,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      and the other
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  <i>La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë</i>."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      They were submitted to my judgment, as evidence for the defence of the two
+      runagates, in an article by my very dear master Father Lecomte, who is
+      found pleasing in the sight of the immortal gods. By which token, here is
+      a book which I have not the time, just now, to read, a book recommended,
+      it would seem, by that colossal fellow. He regards, or so they tell me,
+      its author, one Bergotte, Esquire, as a subtle scribe, more subtle,
+      indeed, than any beast of the field; and, albeit he exhibits on occasion a
+      critical pacifism, a tenderness in suffering fools, for which it is
+      impossible to account, and hard to make allowance, still his word has
+      weight with me as it were the Delphic Oracle. Read you then this lyrical
+      prose, and, if the Titanic master-builder of rhythm who composed <i>Bhagavat</i>
+      and the <i>Lévrier de Magnus</i> speaks not falsely, then, by Apollo, you
+      may taste, even you, my master, the ambrosial joys of Olympus." It was in
+      an ostensible vein of sarcasm that he had asked me to call him, and that
+      he himself called me, "my master." But, as a matter of fact, we each
+      derived a certain amount of satisfaction from the mannerism, being still
+      at the age in which one believes that one gives a thing real existence by
+      giving it a name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately I was not able to set at rest, by further talks with Bloch,
+      in which I might have insisted upon an explanation, the doubts he had
+      engendered in me when he told me that fine lines of poetry (from which I,
+      if you please, expected nothing less than the revelation of truth itself)
+      were all the finer if they meant absolutely nothing. For, as it happened,
+      Bloch was not invited to the house again. At first, he had been well
+      received there. It is true that my grandfather made out that, whenever I
+      formed a strong attachment to any one of my friends and brought him home
+      with me, that friend was invariably a Jew; to which he would not have
+      objected on principle—indeed his own friend Swann was of Jewish
+      extraction—had he not found that the Jews whom I chose as friends
+      were not usually of the best type. And so I was hardly ever able to bring
+      a new friend home without my grandfather's humming the "O, God of our
+      fathers" from <i>La Juive</i>, or else "Israel, break thy chain," singing
+      the tune alone, of course, to an "um-ti-tum-ti-tum, tra-la"; but I used to
+      be afraid of my friend's recognising the sound, and so being able to
+      reconstruct the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before seeing them, merely on hearing their names, about which, as often
+      as not, there was nothing particularly Hebraic, he would divine not only
+      the Jewish origin of such of my friends as might indeed be of the chosen
+      people, but even some dark secret which was hidden in their family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what do they call your friend who is coming this evening?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dumont, grandpapa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dumont! Oh, I'm frightened of Dumont."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he would sing:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Archers, be on your guard!
+  Watch without rest, without sound,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      and then, after a few adroit questions on points of detail, he would call
+      out "On guard! on guard," or, if it were the victim himself who had
+      already arrived, and had been obliged, unconsciously, by my grandfather's
+      subtle examination, to admit his origin, then my grandfather, to shew us
+      that he had no longer any doubts, would merely look at us, humming almost
+      inaudibly the air of
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  What! do you hither guide the feet
+  Of this timid Israelite?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      or of
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Sweet vale of Hebron, dear paternal fields,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      or, perhaps, of
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Yes, I am of the chosen race.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      These little eccentricities on my grandfather's part implied no ill-will
+      whatsoever towards my friends. But Bloch had displeased my family for
+      other reasons. He had begun by annoying my father, who, seeing him come in
+      with wet clothes, had asked him with keen interest:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, M. Bloch, is there a change in the weather; has it been raining? I
+      can't understand it; the barometer has been 'set fair.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which drew from Bloch nothing more instructive than "Sir, I am absolutely
+      incapable of telling you whether it has rained. I live so resolutely apart
+      from physical contingencies that my senses no longer trouble to inform me
+      of them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My poor boy," said my father after Bloch had gone, "your friend is out of
+      his mind. Why, he couldn't even tell me what the weather was like. As if
+      there could be anything more interesting! He is an imbecile."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next, Bloch had displeased my grandmother because, after luncheon, when
+      she complained of not feeling very well, he had stifled a sob and wiped
+      the tears from his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You cannot imagine that he is sincere," she observed to me. "Why he
+      doesn't know me. Unless he's mad, of course."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And finally he had upset the whole household when he arrived an hour and a
+      half late for luncheon and covered with mud from head to foot, and made
+      not the least apology, saying merely: "I never allow myself to be
+      influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or by
+      the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time. I would willingly
+      reintroduce to society the opium pipe of China or the Malayan kriss, but I
+      am wholly and entirely without instruction in those infinitely more
+      pernicious (besides being quite bleakly bourgeois) implements, the
+      umbrella and the watch."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of all this he would still have been received at Combray. He was,
+      of course, hardly the friend my parents would have chosen for me; they
+      had, in the end, decided that the tears which he had shed on hearing of my
+      grandmother's illness were genuine enough; but they knew, either
+      instinctively or from their own experience, that our early impulsive
+      emotions have but little influence over our later actions and the conduct
+      of our lives; and that regard for moral obligations, loyalty to our
+      friends, patience in finishing our work, obedience to a rule of life, have
+      a surer foundation in habits solidly formed and blindly followed than in
+      these momentary transports, ardent but sterile. They would have preferred
+      to Bloch, as companions for myself, boys who would have given me no more
+      than it is proper, by all the laws of middle-class morality, for boys to
+      give one another, who would not unexpectedly send me a basket of fruit
+      because they happened, that morning, to have thought of me with affection,
+      but who, since they were incapable of inclining in my favour, by any
+      single impulse of their imagination and emotions, the exact balance of the
+      duties and claims of friendship, were as incapable of loading the scales
+      to my prejudice. Even the injuries we do them will not easily divert from
+      the path of their duty towards us those conventional natures of which my
+      great-aunt furnished a type: who, after quarrelling for years with a
+      niece, to whom she never spoke again, yet made no change in the will in
+      which she had left that niece the whole of her fortune, because she was
+      her next-of-kin, and it was the 'proper thing' to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was fond of Bloch; my parents wished me to be happy; and the
+      insoluble problems which I set myself on such texts as the 'absolutely
+      meaningless' beauty of <i>La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë</i> tired me
+      more and made me more unwell than I should have been after further talks
+      with him, unwholesome as those talks might seem to my mother's mind. And
+      he would still have been received at Combray but for one thing. That same
+      night, after dinner, having informed me (a piece of news which had a great
+      influence on my later life, making it happier at one time and then more
+      unhappy) that no woman ever thought of anything but love, and that there
+      was not one of them whose resistance a man could not overcome, he had gone
+      on to assure me that he had heard it said on unimpeachable authority that
+      my great-aunt herself had led a 'gay' life in her younger days, and had
+      been notoriously 'kept.' I could not refrain from passing on so important
+      a piece of information to my parents; the next time Bloch called he was
+      not admitted, and afterwards, when I met him in the street, he greeted me
+      with extreme coldness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the matter of Bergotte he had spoken truly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first few days, like a tune which will be running in one's head
+      and maddening one soon enough, but of which one has not for the moment
+      'got hold,' the things I was to love so passionately in Bergotte's style
+      had not yet caught my eye. I could not, it is true, lay down the novel of
+      his which I was reading, but I fancied that I was interested in the story
+      alone, as in the first dawn of love, when we go every day to meet a woman
+      at some party or entertainment by the charm of which we imagine it is that
+      we are attracted. Then I observed the rare, almost archaic phrases which
+      he liked to employ at certain points, where a hidden flow of harmony, a
+      prelude contained and concealed in the work itself would animate and
+      elevate his style; and it was at such points as these, too, that he would
+      begin to speak of the "vain dream of life," of the "inexhaustible torrent
+      of fair forms," of the "sterile, splendid torture of understanding and
+      loving," of the "moving effigies which ennoble for all time the charming
+      and venerable fronts of our cathedrals"; that he would express a whole
+      system of philosophy, new to me, by the use of marvellous imagery, to the
+      inspiration of which I would naturally have ascribed that sound of harping
+      which began to chime and echo in my ears, an accompaniment to which that
+      imagery added something ethereal and sublime. One of these passages of
+      Bergotte, the third or fourth which I had detached from the rest, filled
+      me with a joy to which the meagre joy I had tasted in the first passage
+      bore no comparison, a joy which I felt myself to have experienced in some
+      innermost chamber of my soul, deep, undivided, vast, from which all
+      obstructions and partitions seemed to have been swept away. For what had
+      happened was that, while I recognised in this passage the same taste for
+      uncommon phrases, the same bursts of music, the same idealist philosophy
+      which had been present in the earlier passages without my having taken
+      them into account as the source of my pleasure, I now no longer had the
+      impression of being confronted by a particular passage in one of
+      Bergotte's works, which traced a purely bi-dimensional figure in outline
+      upon the surface of my mind, but rather of the 'ideal passage' of
+      Bergotte, common to every one of his books, and to which all the earlier,
+      similar passages, now becoming merged in it, had added a kind of density
+      and volume, by which my own understanding seemed to be enlarged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was by no means Bergotte's sole admirer; he was the favourite writer
+      also of a friend of my mother's, a highly literary lady; while Dr. du
+      Boulbon had kept all his patients waiting until he finished Bergotte's
+      latest volume; and it was from his consulting room, and from a house in a
+      park near Combray that some of the first seeds were scattered of that
+      taste for Bergotte, a rare-growth in those days, but now so universally
+      acclimatised that one finds it flowering everywhere throughout Europe and
+      America, and even in the tiniest villages, rare still in its refinement,
+      but in that alone. What my mother's friend, and, it would seem, what Dr.
+      du Boulbon liked above all in the writings of Bergotte was just what I
+      liked, the same flow of melody, the same old-fashioned phrases, and
+      certain others, quite simple and familiar, but so placed by him, in such
+      prominence, as to hint at a particular quality of taste on his part; and
+      also, in the sad parts of his books, a sort of roughness, a tone that was
+      almost harsh. And he himself, no doubt, realised that these were his
+      principal attractions. For in his later books, if he had hit upon some
+      great truth, or upon the name of an historic cathedral, he would break off
+      his narrative, and in an invocation, an apostrophe, a lengthy prayer,
+      would give a free outlet to that effluence which, in the earlier volumes,
+      remained buried beneath the form of his prose, discernible only in a
+      rippling of its surface, and perhaps even more delightful, more harmonious
+      when it was thus veiled from the eye, when the reader could give no
+      precise indication of where the murmur of the current began, or of where
+      it died away. These passages in which he delighted were our favourites
+      also. For my own part I knew all of them by heart. I felt even
+      disappointed when he resumed the thread of his narrative. Whenever he
+      spoke of something whose beauty had until then remained hidden from me, of
+      pine-forests or of hailstorms, of <i>Notre-Dame de Paris</i>, of <i>Athalie</i>,
+      or of <i>Phèdre</i>, by some piece of imagery he would make their beauty
+      explode and drench me with its essence. And so, dimly realising that the
+      universe contained innumerable elements which my feeble senses would be
+      powerless to discern, did he not bring them within my reach, I wished that
+      I might have his opinion, some metaphor of his, upon everything in the
+      world, and especially upon such things as I might have an opportunity,
+      some day, of seeing for myself; and among such things, more particularly
+      still upon some of the historic buildings of France, upon certain views of
+      the sea, because the emphasis with which, in his books, he referred to
+      these shewed that he regarded them as rich in significance and beauty.
+      But, alas, upon almost everything in the world his opinion was unknown to
+      me. I had no doubt that it would differ entirely from my own, since his
+      came down from an unknown sphere towards which I was striving to raise
+      myself; convinced that my thoughts would have seemed pure foolishness to
+      that perfected spirit, I had so completely obliterated them all that, if I
+      happened to find in one of his books something which had already occurred
+      to my own mind, my heart would swell with gratitude and pride as though
+      some deity had, in his infinite bounty, restored it to me, had pronounced
+      it to be beautiful and right. It happened now and then that a page of
+      Bergotte would express precisely those ideas which I used often at night,
+      when I was unable to sleep, to write to my grandmother and mother, and so
+      concisely and well that his page had the appearance of a collection of
+      mottoes for me to set at the head of my letters. And so too, in later
+      years, when I began to compose a book of my own, and the quality of some
+      of my sentences seemed so inadequate that I could not make up my mind to
+      go on with the undertaking, I would find the equivalent of my sentences in
+      Bergotte's. But it was only then, when I read them in his pages, that I
+      could enjoy them; when it was I myself who composed them, in my anxiety
+      that they should exactly reproduce what I seemed to have detected in my
+      mind, and in my fear of their not turning out 'true to life,' I had no
+      time to ask myself whether what I was writing would be pleasant to read!
+      But indeed there was no kind of language, no kind of ideas which I really
+      liked, except these. My feverish and unsatisfactory attempts were
+      themselves a token of my love, a love which brought me no pleasure, but
+      was, for all that, intense and deep. And so, when I came suddenly upon
+      similar phrases in the writings of another, that is to say stripped of
+      their familiar accompaniment of scruples and repressions and
+      self-tormentings, I was free to indulge to the full my own appetite for
+      such things, just as a cook who, once in a while, has no dinner to prepare
+      for other people, can then find time to gormandise himself. And so, when I
+      had found, one day, in a book by Bergotte, some joke about an old family
+      servant, to which his solemn and magnificent style added a great deal of
+      irony, but which was in principle what I had often said to my grandmother
+      about Françoise, and when, another time, I had discovered that he thought
+      not unworthy of reflection in one of those mirrors of absolute Truth which
+      were his writings, a remark similar to one which I had had occasion to
+      make on our friend M. Legrandin (and, moreover, my remarks on Françoise
+      and M. Legrandin were among those which I would most resolutely have
+      sacrificed for Bergotte's sake, in the belief that he would find them
+      quite without interest); then it was suddenly revealed to me that my own
+      humble existence and the Realms of Truth were less widely separated than I
+      had supposed, that at certain points they were actually in contact; and in
+      my new-found confidence and joy I wept upon his printed page, as in the
+      arms of a long-lost father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From his books I had formed an impression of Bergotte as a frail and
+      disappointed old man, who had lost his children, and had never found any
+      consolation. And so I would read, or rather sing his sentences in my
+      brain, with rather more <i>dolce</i>, rather more <i>lento</i> than he
+      himself had, perhaps, intended, and his simplest phrase would strike my
+      ears with something peculiarly gentle and loving in its intonation. More
+      than anything else in the world I cherished his philosophy, and had
+      pledged myself to it in lifelong devotion. It made me impatient to reach
+      the age when I should be eligible to attend the class at school called
+      'Philosophy.' I did not wish to learn or do anything else there, but
+      simply to exist and be guided entirely by the mind of Bergotte, and, if I
+      had been told then that the metaphysicians whom I was actually to follow
+      there resembled him in nothing, I should have been struck down by the
+      despair a young lover feels who has sworn lifelong fidelity, when a friend
+      speaks to him of the other mistresses he will have in time to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One Sunday, while I was reading in the garden, I was interrupted by Swann,
+      who had come to call upon my parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you reading? May I look? Why, it's Bergotte! Who has been
+      telling you about him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I replied that Bloch was responsible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, yes, that boy I saw here once, who looks so like the Bellini portrait
+      of Mahomet II. It's an astonishing likeness; he has the same arched
+      eyebrows and hooked nose and prominent cheekbones. When his beard comes
+      he'll be Mahomet himself. Anyhow he has good taste, for Bergotte is a
+      charming creature." And seeing how much I seemed to admire Bergotte,
+      Swann, who never spoke at all about the people he knew, made an exception
+      in my favour and said: "I know him well; if you would like him to write a
+      few words on the title-page of your book I could ask him for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I dared not accept such an offer, but bombarded Swann with questions about
+      his friend. "Can you tell me, please, who is his favourite actor?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Actor? No, I can't say. But I do know this: there's not a man on the
+      stage whom he thinks equal to Berma; he puts her above everyone. Have you
+      seen her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir, my parents do not allow me to go to the theatre."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is a pity. You should insist. Berma in <i>Phèdre</i>, in the <i>Cid</i>;
+      well, she's only an actress, if you like, but you know that I don't
+      believe very much in the 'hierarchy' of the arts." As he spoke I noticed,
+      what had often struck me before in his conversations with my grandmother's
+      sisters, that whenever he spoke of serious matters, whenever he used an
+      expression which seemed to imply a definite opinion upon some important
+      subject, he would take care to isolate, to sterilise it by using a special
+      intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he had put the phrase or word
+      between inverted commas, and was anxious to disclaim any personal
+      responsibility for it; as who should say "the 'hierarchy,' don't you know,
+      as silly people call it." But then, if it was so absurd, why did he say
+      the 'hierarchy'? A moment later he went on: "Her acting will give you as
+      noble an inspiration as any masterpiece of art in the world, as—oh,
+      I don't know—" and he began to laugh, "shall we say the Queens of
+      Chartres?" Until then I had supposed that his horror of having to give a
+      serious opinion was something Parisian and refined, in contrast to the
+      provincial dogmatism of my grandmother's sisters; and I had imagined also
+      that it was characteristic of the mental attitude towards life of the
+      circle in which Swann moved, where, by a natural reaction from the
+      'lyrical' enthusiasms of earlier generations, an excessive importance was
+      given to small and precise facts, formerly regarded as vulgar, and
+      anything in the nature of 'phrase-making' was banned. But now I found
+      myself slightly shocked by this attitude which Swann invariably adopted
+      when face to face with generalities. He appeared unwilling to risk even
+      having an opinion, and to be at his ease only when he could furnish, with
+      meticulous accuracy, some precise but unimportant detail. But in so doing
+      he did not take into account that even here he was giving an opinion,
+      holding a brief (as they say) for something, that the accuracy of his
+      details had an importance of its own. I thought again of the dinner that
+      night, when I had been so unhappy because Mamma would not be coming up to
+      my room, and when he had dismissed the balls given by the Princesse de
+      Léon as being of no importance. And yet it was to just that sort of
+      amusement that he was devoting his life. For what other kind of existence
+      did he reserve the duties of saying in all seriousness what he thought
+      about things, of formulating judgments which he would not put between
+      inverted commas; and when would he cease to give himself up to occupations
+      of which at the same time he made out that they were absurd? I noticed,
+      too, in the manner in which Swann spoke to me of Bergotte, something
+      which, to do him justice, was not peculiar to himself, but was shared by
+      all that writer's admirers at that time, at least by my mother's friend
+      and by Dr. du Boulbon. Like Swann, they would say of Bergotte: "He has a
+      charming mind, so individual, he has a way of his own of saying things,
+      which is a little far-fetched, but so pleasant. You never need to look for
+      his name on the title-page, you can tell his work at once." But none of
+      them had yet gone so far as to say "He is a great writer, he has great
+      talent." They did not even credit him with talent at all. They did not
+      speak, because they were not aware of it. We are very slow in recognising
+      in the peculiar physiognomy of a new writer the type which is labelled
+      'great talent' in our museum of general ideas. Simply because that
+      physiognomy is new and strange, we can find in it no resemblance to what
+      we are accustomed to call talent. We say rather originality, charm,
+      delicacy, strength; and then one day we add up the sum of these, and find
+      that it amounts simply to talent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are there any books in which Bergotte has written about Berma?" I asked
+      M. Swann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think he has, in that little essay on Racine, but it must be out of
+      print. Still, there has perhaps been a second impression. I will find out.
+      Anyhow, I can ask Bergotte himself all that you want to know next time he
+      comes to dine with us. He never misses a week, from one year's end to
+      another. He is my daughter's greatest friend. They go about together, and
+      look at old towns and cathedrals and castles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I was still completely ignorant of the different grades in the social
+      hierarchy, the fact that my father found it impossible for us to see
+      anything of Swann's wife and daughter had, for a long time, had the
+      contrary effect of making me imagine them as separated from us by an
+      enormous gulf, which greatly enhanced their dignity and importance in my
+      eyes. I was sorry that my mother did not dye her hair and redden her lips,
+      as I had heard our neighbour, Mme. Sazerat, say that Mme. Swann did, to
+      gratify not her husband but M. de Charlus; and I felt that, to her, we
+      must be an object of scorn, which distressed me particularly on account of
+      the daughter, such a pretty little girl, as I had heard, and one of whom I
+      used often to dream, always imagining her with the same features and
+      appearance, which I bestowed upon her quite arbitrarily, but with a
+      charming effect. But from this afternoon, when I had learned that Mlle.
+      Swann was a creature living in such rare and fortunate circumstances,
+      bathed, as in her natural element, in such a sea of privilege that, if she
+      should ask her parents whether anyone were coming to dinner, she would be
+      answered in those two syllables, radiant with celestial light, would hear
+      the name of that golden guest who was to her no more than an old friend of
+      her family, Bergotte; that for her the intimate conversation at table,
+      corresponding to what my great-aunt's conversation was for me, would be
+      the words of Bergotte upon all those subjects which he had not been able
+      to take up in his writings, and on which I would fain have heard him utter
+      oracles; and that, above all, when she went to visit other towns, he would
+      be walking by her side, unrecognised and glorious, like the gods who came
+      down, of old, from heaven to dwell among mortal men: then I realised both
+      the rare worth of a creature such as Mlle. Swann, and, at the same time,
+      how coarse and ignorant I should appear to her; and I felt so keenly how
+      pleasant and yet how impossible it would be for me to become her friend
+      that I was filled at once with longing and with despair. And usually, from
+      this time forth, when I thought of her, I would see her standing before
+      the porch of a cathedral, explaining to me what each of the statues meant,
+      and, with a smile which was my highest commendation, presenting me, as her
+      friend, to Bergotte. And invariably the charm of all the fancies which the
+      thought of cathedrals used to inspire in me, the charm of the hills and
+      valleys of the Ile-de-France and of the plains of Normandy, would radiate
+      brightness and beauty over the picture I had formed in my mind of Mlle.
+      Swann; nothing more remained but to know and to love her. Once we believe
+      that a fellow-creature has a share in some unknown existence to which that
+      creature's love for ourselves can win us admission, that is, of all the
+      preliminary conditions which Love exacts, the one to which he attaches
+      most importance, the one which makes him generous or indifferent as to the
+      rest. Even those women who pretend that they judge a man by his exterior
+      only, see in that exterior an emanation from some special way of life. And
+      that is why they fall in love with a soldier or a fireman, whose uniform
+      makes them less particular about his face; they kiss and believe that
+      beneath the crushing breastplate there beats a heart different from the
+      rest, more gallant, more adventurous, more tender; and so it is that a
+      young king or a crown prince may travel in foreign countries and make the
+      most gratifying conquests, and yet lack entirely that regular and classic
+      profile which would be indispensable, I dare say, in an outside-broker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I was reading in the garden, a thing my great-aunt would never have
+      understood my doing save on a Sunday, that being the day on which it was
+      unlawful to indulge in any serious occupation, and on which she herself
+      would lay aside her sewing (on a week-day she would have said, "How you
+      can go on amusing yourself with a book; it isn't Sunday, you know!"
+      putting into the word 'amusing' an implication of childishness and waste
+      of time), my aunt Léonie would be gossiping with Françoise until it was
+      time for Eulalie to arrive. She would tell her that she had just seen Mme.
+      Goupil go by "without an umbrella, in the silk dress she had made for her
+      the other day at Châteaudun. If she has far to go before vespers, she may
+      get it properly soaked."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very likely" (which meant also "very likely not") was the answer, for
+      Françoise did not wish definitely to exclude the possibility of a happier
+      alternative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There, now," went on my aunt, beating her brow, "that reminds me that I
+      never heard if she got to church this morning before the Elevation. I must
+      remember to ask Eulalie... Françoise, just look at that black cloud behind
+      the steeple, and how poor the light is on the slates, you may be certain
+      it will rain before the day is out. It couldn't possibly keep on like
+      this, it's been too hot. And the sooner the better, for until the storm
+      breaks my Vichy water won't 'go down,'" she concluded, since, in her mind,
+      the desire to accelerate the digestion of her Vichy water was of
+      infinitely greater importance than her fear of seeing Mme. Goupil's new
+      dress ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very likely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you know that when it rains in the Square there's none too much
+      shelter." Suddenly my aunt turned pale. "What, three o'clock!" she
+      exclaimed. "But vespers will have begun already, and I've forgotten my
+      pepsin! Now I know why that Vichy water has been lying on my stomach." And
+      falling precipitately upon a prayer-book bound in purple velvet, with gilt
+      clasps, out of which in her haste she let fall a shower of the little
+      pictures, each in a lace fringe of yellowish paper, which she used to mark
+      the places of the greater feasts of the church, my aunt, while she
+      swallowed her drops, began at full speed to mutter the words of the sacred
+      text, its meaning being slightly clouded in her brain by the uncertainty
+      whether the pepsin, when taken so long after the Vichy, would still be
+      able to overtake it and to 'send it down.' "Three o'clock! It's
+      unbelievable how time flies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed
+      by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand
+      were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on
+      an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming, musical, innumerable,
+      universal. It was the rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There, Françoise, what did I tell you? How it's coming down! But I think
+      I heard the bell at the garden gate: go along and see who can be outside
+      in this weather."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Françoise went and returned. "It's Mme. Amédée" (my grandmother). "She
+      said she was going for a walk. It's raining hard, all the same."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm not at all surprised," said my aunt, looking up towards the sky.
+      "I've always said that she was not in the least like other people. Well,
+      I'm glad it's she and not myself who's outside in all this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mme. Amédée is always the exact opposite of the rest," said Françoise,
+      not unkindly, refraining until she should be alone with the other servants
+      from stating her belief that my grandmother was 'a bit off her head.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's Benediction over! Eulalie will never come now," sighed my aunt.
+      "It will be the weather that's frightened her away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it's not five o'clock yet, Mme. Octave, it's only half-past four."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only half-past four! And here am I, obliged to draw back the small
+      curtains, just to get a tiny streak of daylight. At half-past four! Only a
+      week before the Rogation-days. Ah, my poor Françoise, the dear Lord must
+      be sorely vexed with us. The world is going too far in these days. As my
+      poor Octave used to say, we have forgotten God too often, and He is taking
+      vengeance upon us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A bright flush animated my aunt's cheeks; it was Eulalie. As ill luck
+      would have it, scarcely had she been admitted to the presence when
+      Françoise reappeared and, with a smile which was meant to indicate her
+      full participation in the pleasure which, she had no doubt, her tidings
+      would give my aunt, articulating each syllable so as to shew that, in
+      spite of her having to translate them into indirect speech, she was
+      repeating, as a good servant should, the very words which the new visitor
+      had condescended to use, said: "His reverence the Curé would be delighted,
+      enchanted, if Mme. Octave is not resting just now, and could see him. His
+      reverence does not wish to disturb Mme. Octave. His reverence is
+      downstairs; I told him to go into the parlour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the truth been known, the Curé's visits gave my aunt no such ecstatic
+      pleasure as Françoise supposed, and the air of jubilation with which she
+      felt bound to illuminate her face whenever she had to announce his
+      arrival, did not altogether correspond to what was felt by her invalid.
+      The Curé (an excellent man, with whom I am sorry now that I did not
+      converse more often, for, even if he cared nothing for the arts, he knew a
+      great many etymologies), being in the habit of shewing distinguished
+      visitors over his church (he had even planned to compile a history of the
+      Parish of Combray), used to weary her with his endless explanations,
+      which, incidentally, never varied in the least degree. But when his visit
+      synchronized exactly with Eulalie's it became frankly distasteful to my
+      aunt. She would have preferred to make the most of Eulalie, and not to
+      have had the whole of her circle about her at one time. But she dared not
+      send the Curé away, and had to content herself with making a sign to
+      Eulalie not to leave when he did, so that she might have her to herself
+      for a little after he had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is this I have been hearing, Father, that a painter has set up his
+      easel in your church, and is copying one of the windows? Old as I am, I
+      can safely say that I have never even heard of such a thing in all my
+      life! What is the world coming to next, I wonder! And the ugliest thing in
+      the whole church, too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will not go so far as to say that it is quite the ugliest, for,
+      although there are certain things in Saint-Hilaire which are well worth a
+      visit, there are others that are very old now, in my poor basilica, the
+      only one in all the diocese that has never even been restored. The Lord
+      knows, our porch is dirty and out of date; still, it is of a majestic
+      character; take, for instance, the Esther tapestries, though personally I
+      would not give a brass farthing for the pair of them, but experts put them
+      next after the ones at Sens. I can quite see, too, that apart from certain
+      details which are—well, a trifle realistic, they shew features which
+      testify to a genuine power of observation. But don't talk to me about the
+      windows. Is it common sense, I ask you, to leave up windows which shut out
+      all the daylight, and even confuse the eyes by throwing patches of colour,
+      to which I should be hard put to it to give a name, on a floor in which
+      there are not two slabs on the same level? And yet they refuse to renew
+      the floor for me because, if you please, those are the tombstones of the
+      Abbots of Combray and the Lords of Guermantes, the old Counts, you know,
+      of Brabant, direct ancestors of the present Duc de Guermantes, and of his
+      Duchesse also, since she was a lady of the Guermantes family, and married
+      her cousin." (My grandmother, whose steady refusal to take any interest in
+      'persons' had ended in her confusing all their names and titles, whenever
+      anyone mentioned the Duchesse de Guermantes used to make out that she must
+      be related to Mme. de Villeparisis. The whole family would then burst out
+      laughing; and she would attempt to justify herself by harking back to some
+      invitation to a christening or funeral: "I feel sure that there was a
+      Guermantes in it somewhere." And for once I would side with the others,
+      and against her, refusing to admit that there could be any connection
+      between her school-friend and the descendant of Geneviève de Brabant.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look at Roussainville," the Curé went on. "It is nothing more nowadays
+      than a parish of farmers, though in olden times the place must have had a
+      considerable importance from its trade in felt hats and clocks. (I am not
+      certain, by the way, of the etymology of Roussainville. I should dearly
+      like to think that the name was originally Rouville, from <i>Radulfi villa</i>,
+      analogous, don't you see, to Châteauroux, <i>Castrum Radulfi</i>, but we
+      will talk about that some other time.) Very well; the church there has
+      superb windows, almost all quite modern, including that most imposing
+      'Entry of Louis-Philippe into Combray' which would be more in keeping,
+      surely, at Combray itself, and which is every bit as good, I understand,
+      as the famous windows at Chartres. Only yesterday I met Dr. Percepied's
+      brother, who goes in for these things, and he told me that he looked upon
+      it as a most beautiful piece of work. But, as I said to this artist, who,
+      by the way, seems to be a most civil fellow, and is a regular virtuoso, it
+      appears, with his brush; what on earth, I said to him, do you find so
+      extraordinary in this window, which is, if anything, a little dingier than
+      the rest?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure that if you were to ask his Lordship," said my aunt in a
+      resigned tone, for she had begun to feel that she was going to be 'tired,'
+      "he would never refuse you a new window."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may depend upon it, Mme. Octave," replied the Curé. "Why, it was just
+      his Lordship himself who started the outcry about the window, by proving
+      that it represented Gilbert the Bad, a Lord of Guermantes and a direct
+      descendant of Geneviève de Brabant, who was a daughter of the House of
+      Guermantes, receiving absolution from Saint Hilaire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I don't see where Saint Hilaire comes in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why yes, have you never noticed, in the corner of the window, a lady in a
+      yellow robe? Very well, that is Saint Hilaire, who is also known, you will
+      remember, in certain parts of the country as Saint Illiers, Saint Hèlier,
+      and even, in the Jura, Saint Ylie. But these various corruptions of <i>Sanctus
+      Hilarius</i> are by no means the most curious that have occurred in the
+      names of the blessed Saints. Take, for example, my good Eulalie, the case
+      of your own patron, <i>Sancta Eulalia</i>; do you know what she has become
+      in Burgundy? Saint Eloi, nothing more nor less! The lady has become a
+      gentleman. Do you hear that, Eulalie, after you are dead they will make a
+      man of you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Father will always have his joke."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gilbert's brother, Charles the Stammerer, was a pious prince, but, having
+      early in life lost his father, Pepin the Mad, who died as a result of his
+      mental infirmity, he wielded the supreme power with all the arrogance of a
+      man who has not been subjected to discipline in his youth, so much so
+      that, whenever he saw a man in a town whose face he did not remember, he
+      would massacre the whole place, to the last inhabitant. Gilbert, wishing
+      to be avenged on Charles, caused the church at Combray to be burned down,
+      the original church, that was, which Théodebert, when he and his court
+      left the country residence he had near here, at Thiberzy (which is, of
+      course, <i>Theodeberiacus</i>), to go out and fight the Burgundians, had
+      promised to build over the tomb of Saint Hilaire if the Saint brought him
+      victory. Nothing remains of it now but the crypt, into which Théodore has
+      probably taken you, for Gilbert burned all the rest. Finally, he defeated
+      the unlucky Charles with the aid of William" which the Curé pronounced
+      "Will'am" "the Conqueror, which is why so many English still come to visit
+      the place. But he does not appear to have managed to win the affection of
+      the people of Combray, for they fell upon him as he was coming out from
+      mass, and cut off his head. Théodore has a little book, that he lends
+      people, which tells you the whole story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what is unquestionably the most remarkable thing about our church is
+      the view from the belfry, which is full of grandeur. Certainly in your
+      case, since you are not very strong, I should never recommend you to
+      climb our seven and ninety steps, just half the number they have in the
+      famous cathedral at Milan. It is quite tiring enough for the most active
+      person, especially as you have to go on your hands and knees, if you don't
+      wish to crack your skull, and you collect all the cobwebs off the
+      staircase upon your clothes. In any case you should be well wrapped up,"
+      he went on, without noticing my aunt's fury at the mere suggestion that
+      she could ever, possibly, be capable of climbing into his belfry, "for
+      there's a strong breeze there, once you get to the top. Some people even
+      assure me that they have felt the chill of death up there. No matter, on
+      Sundays there are always clubs and societies, who come, some of them, long
+      distances to admire our beautiful panorama, and they always go home
+      charmed. Wait now, next Sunday, if the weather holds, you will be sure to
+      find a lot of people there, for Rogation-tide. You must admit, certainly,
+      that the view from up there is like a fairy-tale, with what you might call
+      vistas along the plain, which have quite a special charm of their own. On
+      a clear day you can see as far as Verneuil. And then another thing; you
+      can see at the same time places which you are in the habit of seeing one
+      without the other, as, for instance, the course of the Vivonne and the
+      ditches at Saint-Assise-lès-Combray, which are separated, really, by a
+      screen of tall trees; or, to take another example, there are all the
+      canals at Jouy-le-Vicomte, which is <i>Gaudiacus vicecomitis</i>, as of
+      course you know. Each time that I have been to Jouy I have seen a bit of a
+      canal in one place, and then I have turned a corner and seen another, but
+      when I saw the second I could no longer see the first. I tried in vain to
+      imagine how they lay by one another; it was no good. But, from the top of
+      Saint-Hilaire, it's quite another matter; the whole countryside is spread
+      out before you like a map. Only, you cannot make out the water; you would
+      say that there were great rifts in the town, slicing it up so neatly that
+      it looks like a loaf of bread which still holds together after it has been
+      cut up. To get it all quite perfect you would have to be in both places at
+      once; up here on the top of Saint-Hilaire and down there at
+      Jouy-le-Vicomte."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Curé had so much exhausted my aunt that no sooner had he gone than she
+      was obliged to send away Eulalie also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here, my poor Eulalie," she said in a feeble voice, drawing a coin from a
+      small purse which lay ready to her hand. "This is just something so that
+      you shall not forget me in your prayers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, but, Mme. Octave, I don't think I ought to; you know very well that I
+      don't come here for that!" So Eulalie would answer, with the same
+      hesitation and the same embarrassment, every Sunday, as though each
+      temptation were the first, and with a look of displeasure which enlivened
+      my aunt and never offended her, for if it so happened that Eulalie, when
+      she took the money, looked a little less sulky than usual, my aunt would
+      remark afterwards, "I cannot think what has come over Eulalie; I gave her
+      just the trifle I always give, and she did not look at all pleased."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think she has very much to complain of, all the same," Françoise
+      would sigh grimly, for she had a tendency to regard as petty cash all that
+      my aunt might give her for herself or her children, and as treasure
+      riotously squandered on a pampered and ungrateful darling the little coins
+      slipped, Sunday by Sunday, into Eulalie's hand, but so discreetly passed
+      that Françoise never managed to see them. It was not that she wanted to
+      have for herself the money my aunt bestowed on Eulalie. She already
+      enjoyed a sufficiency of all that my aunt possessed, in the knowledge that
+      the wealth of the mistress automatically ennobled and glorified the maid
+      in the eyes of the world; and that she herself was conspicuous and worthy
+      to be praised throughout Combray, Jouy-le-Vicomte, and other cities of
+      men, on account of my aunt's many farms, her frequent and prolonged visits
+      from the Curé, and the astonishing number of bottles of Vichy water which
+      she consumed. Françoise was avaricious only for my aunt; had she had
+      control over my aunt's fortune (which would have more than satisfied her
+      highest ambition) she would have guarded it from the assaults of strangers
+      with a maternal ferocity. She would, however, have seen no great harm in
+      what my aunt, whom she knew to be incurably generous, allowed herself to
+      give away, had she given only to those who were already rich. Perhaps she
+      felt that such persons, not being actually in need of my aunt's presents,
+      could not be suspected of simulating affection for her on that account.
+      Besides, presents offered to persons of great wealth and position, such as
+      Mme. Sazerat, M. Swann, M. Legrandin and Mme. Goupil, to persons of the
+      'same class' as my aunt, and who would naturally 'mix with her,' seemed to
+      Françoise to be included among the ornamental customs of that strange and
+      brilliant life led by rich people, who hunted and shot, gave balls and
+      paid visits, a life which she would contemplate with an admiring smile.
+      But it was by no means the same thing if, for this princely exchange of
+      courtesies, my aunt substituted mere charity, if her beneficiaries were of
+      the class which Françoise would label "people like myself," or "people no
+      better than myself," people whom she despised even more if they did not
+      address her always as "Mme. Françoise," just to shew that they considered
+      themselves to be 'not as good.' And when she saw that, despite all her
+      warnings, my aunt continued to do exactly as she pleased, and to fling
+      money away with both hands (or so, at least, Françoise believed) on
+      undeserving objects, she began to find that the presents she herself
+      received from my aunt were very tiny compared to the imaginary riches
+      squandered upon Eulalie, There was not, in the neighbourhood of Combray, a
+      farm of such prosperity and importance that Françoise doubted Eulalie's
+      ability to buy it, without thinking twice, out of the capital which her
+      visits to my aunt had 'brought in.' It must be added that Eulalie had
+      formed an exactly similar estimate of the vast and secret hoards of
+      Françoise. So, every Sunday, after Eulalie had gone, Françoise would
+      mercilessly prophesy her coming downfall. She hated Eulalie, but was at
+      the same time afraid of her, and so felt bound, when Eulalie was there, to
+      'look pleasant.' But she would make up for that after the other's
+      departure; never, it is true, alluding to her by name, but hinting at her
+      in Sibylline oracles, or in utterances of a comprehensive character, like
+      those of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher, but so worded that their special
+      application could not escape my aunt. After peering out at the side of the
+      curtain to see whether Eulalie had shut the front-door behind her;
+      "Flatterers know how to make themselves welcome, and to gather up the
+      crumbs; but have patience, have patience; our God is a jealous God, and
+      one fine day He will be avenged upon them!" she would declaim, with the
+      sidelong, insinuating glance of Joash, thinking of Athaliah alone when he
+      says that the
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+            ....prosperity
+  Of wicked men runs like a torrent past,
+  And soon is spent.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But on this memorable afternoon, when the Curé had come as well, and by
+      his interminable visit had drained my aunt's strength, Françoise followed
+      Eulalie from the room, saying: "Mme. Octave, I will leave you to rest; you
+      look utterly tired out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And my aunt answered her not a word, breathing a sigh so faint that it
+      seemed it must prove her last, and lying there with closed eyes, as though
+      already dead. But hardly had Françoise arrived downstairs, when four peals
+      of a bell, pulled with the utmost violence, reverberated through the
+      house, and my aunt, sitting erect upon her bed, called out: "Has Eulalie
+      gone yet? Would you believe it; I forgot to ask her whether Mme. Goupil
+      arrived in church before the Elevation. Run after her, quick!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Françoise returned alone, having failed to overtake Eulalie. "It is
+      most provoking," said my aunt, shaking her head. "The one important thing
+      that I had to ask her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this way life went by for my aunt Léonie, always the same, in the
+      gentle uniformity of what she called, with a pretence of deprecation but
+      with a deep tenderness, her 'little jog-trot.' Respected by all and
+      sundry, not merely in her own house, where every one of us, having learned
+      the futility of recommending any healthier mode of life, had become
+      gradually resigned to its observance, but in the village as well, where,
+      three streets away, a tradesman who had to hammer nails into a
+      packing-case would send first to Françoise to make sure that my aunt was
+      not 'resting'—her 'little jog-trot' was, none the less, brutally
+      disturbed on one occasion in this same year. Like a fruit hidden among its
+      leaves, which has grown and ripened unobserved by man, until it falls of
+      its own accord, there came upon us one night the kitchen-maid's
+      confinement. Her pains were unbearable, and, as there was no midwife in
+      Combray, Françoise had to set off before dawn to fetch one from Thiberzy.
+      My aunt was unable to 'rest,' owing to the cries of the girl, and as
+      Françoise, though the distance was nothing, was very late in returning,
+      her services were greatly missed. And so, in the course of the morning, my
+      mother said to me: "Run upstairs, and see if your aunt wants anything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went into the first of her two rooms, and through the open door of the
+      other saw my aunt lying on her side, asleep. I could hear her breathing,
+      in what was almost distinguishable as a snore. I was just going to slip
+      away when something, probably the sound of my entry, interrupted her
+      sleep, and made it 'change speed,' as they say of motorcars nowadays, for
+      the music of her snore broke off for a second and began again on a lower
+      note; then she awoke, and half turned her face, which I could see for the
+      first time; a kind of horror was imprinted on it; plainly she had just
+      escaped from some terrifying dream. She could not see me from where she
+      was lying, and I stood there not knowing whether I ought to go forward or
+      to retire; but all at once she seemed to return to a sense of reality, and
+      to grasp the falsehood of the visions that had terrified her; a smile of
+      joy, a pious act of thanksgiving to God, Who is pleased to grant that life
+      shall be less cruel than our dreams, feebly illumined her face, and, with
+      the habit she had formed of speaking to herself, half-aloud, when she
+      thought herself alone, she murmured: "The Lord be praised! We have nothing
+      to disturb us here but the kitchen-maid's baby. And I've been dreaming
+      that my poor Octave had come back to life, and was trying to make me take
+      a walk every day!" She stretched out a hand towards her rosary, which was
+      lying on the small table, but sleep was once again getting the mastery,
+      and did not leave her the strength to reach it; she fell asleep, calm and
+      contented, and I crept out of the room on tiptoe, without either her or
+      anyone's else ever knowing, from that day to this, what I had seen and
+      heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I say that, apart from such rare happenings as this confinement, my
+      aunt's 'little jog-trot' never underwent any variation, I do not include
+      those variations which, repeated at regular intervals and in identical
+      form, did no more, really, than print a sort of uniform pattern upon the
+      greater uniformity of her life. So, for instance, every Saturday, as
+      Françoise had to go in the afternoon to market at Roussainville-le-Pin,
+      the whole household would have to have luncheon an hour earlier. And my
+      aunt had so thoroughly acquired the habit of this weekly exception to her
+      general habits, that she clung to it as much as to the rest. She was so
+      well 'routined' to it, as Françoise would say, that if, on a Saturday, she
+      had had to wait for her luncheon until the regular hour, it would have
+      'upset' her as much as if she had had, on an ordinary day, to put her
+      luncheon forward to its Saturday time. Incidentally this acceleration of
+      luncheon gave Saturday, for all of us, an individual character, kindly and
+      rather attractive. At the moment when, ordinarily, there was still an hour
+      to be lived through before meal-time sounded, we would all know that in a
+      few seconds we should see the endives make their precocious appearance,
+      followed by the special favour of an omelette, an unmerited steak. The
+      return of this asymmetrical Saturday was one of those petty occurrences,
+      intra-mural, localised, almost civic, which, in uneventful lives and
+      stable orders of society, create a kind of national unity, and become the
+      favourite theme for conversation, for pleasantries, for anecdotes which
+      can be embroidered as the narrator pleases; it would have provided a
+      nucleus, ready-made, for a legendary cycle, if any of us had had the epic
+      mind. At daybreak, before we were dressed, without rhyme or reason, save
+      for the pleasure of proving the strength of our solidarity, we would call
+      to one another good-humoredly, cordially, patriotically, "Hurry up;
+      there's no time to be lost; don't forget, it's Saturday!" while my aunt,
+      gossiping with Françoise, and reflecting that the day would be even longer
+      than usual, would say, "You might cook them a nice bit of veal, seeing
+      that it's Saturday." If, at half-past ten, some one absent-mindedly pulled
+      out a watch and said, "I say, an hour-and-a-half still before luncheon,"
+      everyone else would be in ecstasies over being able to retort at once:
+      "Why, what are you thinking about? Have you for-gotten that it's
+      Saturday?" And a quarter of an hour later we would still be laughing, and
+      reminding ourselves to go up and tell aunt Léonie about this absurd
+      mistake, to amuse her. The very face of the sky appeared to undergo a
+      change. After luncheon the sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would
+      blaze an hour longer in the zenith, and when some one, thinking that we
+      were late in starting for our walk, said, "What, only two o'clock!"
+      feeling the heavy throb go by him of the twin strokes from the steeple of
+      Saint-Hilaire (which as a rule passed no one at that hour upon the
+      highways, deserted for the midday meal or for the nap which follows it, or
+      on the banks of the bright and ever-flowing stream, which even the angler
+      had abandoned, and so slipped unaccompanied into the vacant sky, where
+      only a few loitering clouds remained to greet them) the whole family would
+      respond in chorus: "Why, you're forgetting; we had luncheon an hour
+      earlier; you know very well it's Saturday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The surprise of a 'barbarian' (for so we termed everyone who was not
+      acquainted with Saturday's special customs) who had called at eleven
+      o'clock to speak to my father, and had found us at table, was an event
+      which used to cause Françoise as much merriment as, perhaps, anything that
+      had ever happened in her life. And if she found it amusing that the
+      nonplussed visitor should not have known, beforehand, that we had our
+      luncheon an hour earlier on Saturday, it was still more irresistibly funny
+      that my father himself (fully as she sympathised, from the bottom of her
+      heart, with the rigid chauvinism which prompted him) should never have
+      dreamed that the barbarian could fail to be aware of so simple a matter,
+      and so had replied, with no further enlightenment of the other's surprise
+      at seeing us already in the dining-room: "You see, it's Saturday." On
+      reaching this point in the story, Françoise would pause to wipe the tears
+      of merriment from her eyes, and then, to add to her own enjoyment, would
+      prolong the dialogue, inventing a further reply for the visitor to whom
+      the word 'Saturday' had conveyed nothing. And so far from our objecting to
+      these interpolations, we would feel that the story was not yet long
+      enough, and would rally her with: "Oh, but surely he said something else
+      as well. There was more than that, the first time you told it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My great-aunt herself would lay aside her work, and raise her head and
+      look on at us over her glasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day had yet another characteristic feature, namely, that during May we
+      used to go out on Saturday evenings after dinner to the 'Month of Mary'
+      devotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we were liable, there, to meet M. Vinteuil, who held very strict views
+      on "the deplorable untidiness of young people, which seems to be
+      encouraged in these days," my mother would first see that there was
+      nothing out of order in my appearance, and then we would set out for the
+      church. It was in these 'Month of Mary' services that I can remember
+      having first fallen in love with hawthorn-blossom. The hawthorn was not
+      merely in the church, for there, holy ground as it was, we had all of us a
+      right of entry; but, arranged upon the altar itself, inseparable from the
+      mysteries in whose celebration it was playing a part, it thrust in among
+      the tapers and the sacred vessels its rows of branches, tied to one
+      another horizontally in a stiff, festal scheme of decoration; and they
+      were made more lovely still by the scalloped outline of the dark leaves,
+      over which were scattered in profusion, as over a bridal train, little
+      clusters of buds of a dazzling whiteness. Though I dared not look at them
+      save through my fingers, I could feel that the formal scheme was composed
+      of living things, and that it was Nature herself who, by trimming the
+      shape of the foliage, and by adding the crowning ornament of those snowy
+      buds, had made the decorations worthy of what was at once a public
+      rejoicing and a solemn mystery. Higher up on the altar, a flower had
+      opened here and there with a careless grace, holding so unconcernedly,
+      like a final, almost vaporous bedizening, its bunch of stamens, slender as
+      gossamer, which clouded the flower itself in a white mist, that in
+      following these with my eyes, in trying to imitate, somewhere inside
+      myself, the action of their blossoming, I imagined it as a swift and
+      thoughtless movement of the head with an enticing glance from her
+      contracted pupils, by a young girl in white, careless and alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Vinteuil had come in with his daughter and had sat down beside us. He
+      belonged to a good family, and had once been music-master to my
+      grandmother's sisters; so that when, after losing his wife and inheriting
+      some property, he had retired to the neighbourhood of Combray, we used
+      often to invite him to our house. But with his intense prudishness he had
+      given up coming, so as not to be obliged to meet Swann, who had made what
+      he called "a most unsuitable marriage, as seems to be the fashion in these
+      days." My mother, on hearing that he 'composed,' told him by way of a
+      compliment that, when she came to see him, he must play her something of
+      his own. M. Vinteuil would have liked nothing better, but he carried
+      politeness and consideration for others to so fine a point, always putting
+      himself in their place, that he was afraid of boring them, or of appearing
+      egotistical, if he carried out, or even allowed them to suspect what were
+      his own desires. On the day when my parents had gone to pay him a visit, I
+      had accompanied them, but they had allowed me to remain outside, and as M.
+      Vinteuil's house, Montjouvain, stood on a site actually hollowed out from
+      a steep hill covered with shrubs, among which I took cover, I had found
+      myself on a level with his drawing-room, upstairs, and only a few feet
+      away from its window. When a servant came in to tell him that my parents
+      had arrived, I had seen M. Vinteuil run to the piano and lay out a sheet
+      of music so as to catch the eye. But as soon as they entered the room he
+      had snatched it away and hidden it in a corner. He was afraid, no doubt,
+      of letting them suppose that he was glad to see them only because it gave
+      him a chance of playing them some of his compositions. And every time that
+      my mother, in the course of her visit, had returned to the subject of his
+      playing, he had hurriedly protested: "I cannot think who put that on the
+      piano; it is not the proper place for it at all," and had turned the
+      conversation aside to other topics, simply because those were of less
+      interest to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His one and only passion was for his daughter, and she, with her somewhat
+      boyish appearance, looked so robust that it was hard to restrain a smile
+      when one saw the precautions her father used to take for her health, with
+      spare shawls always in readiness to wrap around her shoulders. My
+      grandmother had drawn our attention to the gentle, delicate, almost timid
+      expression which might often be caught flitting across the face, dusted
+      all over with freckles, of this otherwise stolid child. When she had
+      spoken, she would at once take her own words in the sense in which her
+      audience must have heard them, she would be alarmed at the possibility of
+      a misunderstanding, and one would see, in clear outline, as though in a
+      transparency, beneath the mannish face of the 'good sort' that she was,
+      the finer features of a young woman in tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, before turning to leave the church, I made a genuflection before the
+      altar, I felt suddenly, as I rose again, a bitter-sweet fragrance of
+      almonds steal towards me from the hawthorn-blossom, and I then noticed
+      that on the flowers themselves were little spots of a creamier colour, in
+      which I imagined that this fragrance must lie concealed, as the taste of
+      an almond cake lay in the burned parts, or the sweetness of Mlle.
+      Vinteuil's cheeks beneath their freckles. Despite the heavy, motionless
+      silence of the hawthorns, these gusts of fragrance came to me like the
+      murmuring of an intense vitality, with which the whole altar was quivering
+      like a roadside hedge explored by living antennae, of which I was reminded
+      by seeing some stamens, almost red in colour, which seemed to have kept
+      the springtime virulence, the irritant power of stinging insects now
+      transmuted into flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the church we would stand talking for a moment with M. Vinteuil,
+      in the porch. Boys would be chevying one another in the Square, and he
+      would interfere, taking the side of the little ones and lecturing the big.
+      If his daughter said, in her thick, comfortable voice, how glad she had
+      been to see us, immediately it would seem as though some elder and more
+      sensitive sister, latent in her, had blushed at this thoughtless,
+      schoolboyish utterance, which had, perhaps, made us think that she was
+      angling for an invitation to the house. Her father would then arrange a
+      cloak over her shoulders, they would clamber into a little dog-cart which
+      she herself drove, and home they would both go to Montjouvain. As for
+      ourselves, the next day being Sunday, with no need to be up and stirring
+      before high mass, if it was a moonlight night and warm, then, instead of
+      taking us home at once, my father, in his thirst for personal distinction,
+      would lead us on a long walk round by the Calvary, which my mother's utter
+      incapacity for taking her bearings, or even for knowing which road she
+      might be on, made her regard as a triumph of his strategic genius.
+      Sometimes we would go as far as the viaduct, which began to stride on its
+      long legs of stone at the railway station, and to me typified all the
+      wretchedness of exile beyond the last outposts of civilisation, because
+      every year, as we came down from Paris, we would be warned to take special
+      care, when we got to Combray, not to miss the station, to be ready before
+      the train stopped, since it would start again in two minutes and proceed
+      across the viaduct, out of the lands of Christendom, of which Combray, to
+      me, represented the farthest limit. We would return by the Boulevard de la
+      Gare, which contained the most attractive villas in the town. In each of
+      their gardens the moonlight, copying the art of Hubert Robert, had
+      scattered its broken staircases of white marble, its fountains of water
+      and gates temptingly ajar. Its beams had swept away the telegraph office.
+      All that was left of it was a column, half shattered, but preserving the
+      beauty of a ruin which endures for all time. I would by now be dragging my
+      weary limbs, and ready to drop with sleep; the balmy scent of the
+      lime-trees seemed a consolation which I could obtain only at the price of
+      great suffering and exhaustion, and not worthy of the effort. From gates
+      far apart the watchdogs, awakened by our steps in the silence, would set
+      up an antiphonal barking, as I still hear them bark, at times, in the
+      evenings, and it is in their custody (when the public gardens of Combray
+      were constructed on its site) that the Boulevard de la Gare must have
+      taken refuge, for wherever I may be, as soon as they begin their alternate
+      challenge and acceptance, I can see it again with all its lime-trees, and
+      its pavement glistening beneath the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly my father would bring us to a standstill and ask my mother—"Where
+      are we?" Utterly worn out by the walk but still proud of her husband, she
+      would lovingly confess that she had not the least idea. He would shrug his
+      shoulders and laugh. And then, as though it had slipped, with his
+      latchkey, from his waistcoat pocket, he would point out to us, when it
+      stood before our eyes, the back-gate of our own garden, which had come
+      hand-in-hand with the familiar corner of the Rue du Saint-Esprit, to await
+      us, to greet us at the end of our wanderings over paths unknown. My mother
+      would murmur admiringly "You really are wonderful!" And from that instant
+      I had not to take another step; the ground moved forward under my feet in
+      that garden where, for so long, my actions had ceased to require any
+      control, or even attention, from my will. Custom came to take me in her
+      arms, carried me all the way up to my bed, and laid me down there like a
+      little child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although Saturday, by beginning an hour earlier, and by depriving her of
+      the services of Françoise, passed more slowly than other days for my aunt,
+      yet, the moment it was past, and a new week begun, she would look forward
+      with impatience to its return, as something that embodied all the novelty
+      and distraction which her frail and disordered body was still able to
+      endure. This was not to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for
+      some even greater variation, that she did not pass through those abnormal
+      hours in which one thirsts for something different from what one has, when
+      those people who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to
+      generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or
+      the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news),
+      for some emotion (even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which
+      prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and
+      sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break
+      them; when the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to
+      subdue its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own
+      uncontrolled desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its
+      guiding reins into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be,
+      cruel. Of course, since my aunt's strength, which was completely drained
+      by the slightest exertion, returned but drop by drop into the pool of her
+      repose, the reservoir was very slow in filling, and months would go by
+      before she reached that surplus which other people use up in their daily
+      activities, but which she had no idea—and could never decide how to
+      employ. And I have no doubt that then—just as a desire to have her
+      potatoes served with béchamel sauce, for a change, would be formed,
+      ultimately, from the pleasure she found in the daily reappearance of those
+      mashed potatoes of which she was never 'tired'—she would extract
+      from the accumulation of those monotonous days (on which she so much
+      depended) a keen expectation of some domestic cataclysm, instantaneous in
+      its happening, but violent enough to compel her to put into effect, once
+      for all, one of those changes which she knew would be beneficial to her
+      health, but to which she could never make up her mind without some such
+      stimulus. She was genuinely fond of us; she would have enjoyed the long
+      luxury of weeping for our untimely decease; coming at a moment when she
+      felt 'well' and was not in a perspiration, the news that the house was
+      being destroyed by a fire, in which all the rest of us had already
+      perished, a fire which, in a little while, would not leave one stone
+      standing upon another, but from which she herself would still have plenty
+      of time to escape without undue haste, provided that she rose at once from
+      her bed, must often have haunted her dreams, as a prospect which combined
+      with the two minor advantages of letting her taste the full savour of her
+      affection for us in long years of mourning, and of causing universal
+      stupefaction in the village when she should sally forth to conduct our
+      obsequies, crushed but courageous, moribund but erect, the paramount and
+      priceless boon of forcing her at the right moment, with no time to be
+      lost, no room for weakening hesitations, to go off and spend the summer at
+      her charming farm of Mirougrain, where there was a waterfall. Inasmuch as
+      nothing of this sort had ever occurred, though indeed she must often have
+      pondered the success of such a manoeuvre as she lay alone absorbed in her
+      interminable games of patience (and though it must have plunged her in
+      despair from the first moment of its realisation, from the first of those
+      little unforeseen facts, the first word of calamitous news, whose accents
+      can never afterwards be expunged from the memory, everything that bears
+      upon it the imprint of actual, physical death, so terribly different from
+      the logical abstraction of its possibility) she would fall back from time
+      to time, to add an interest to her life, upon imagining other, minor
+      catastrophes, which she would follow up with passion. She would beguile
+      herself with a sudden suspicion that Françoise had been robbing her, that
+      she had set a trap to make certain, and had caught her betrayer
+      red-handed; and being in the habit, when she made up a game of cards by
+      herself, of playing her own and her adversary's hands at once, she would
+      first stammer out Françoise's awkward apologies, and then reply to them
+      with such a fiery indignation that any of us who happened to intrude upon
+      her at one of these moments would find her bathed in perspiration, her
+      eyes blazing, her false hair pushed awry and exposing the baldness of her
+      brows. Françoise must often, from the next room, have heard these mordant
+      sarcasms levelled at herself, the mere framing of which in words would not
+      have relieved my aunt's feelings sufficiently, had they been allowed to
+      remain in a purely immaterial form, without the degree of substance and
+      reality which she added to them by murmuring them half-aloud. Sometimes,
+      however, even these counterpane dramas would not satisfy my aunt; she must
+      see her work staged. And so, on a Sunday, with all the doors mysteriously
+      closed, she would confide in Eulalie her doubts of Françoise's integrity
+      and her determination to be rid of her, and on another day she would
+      confide in Françoise her suspicions of the disloyalty of Eulalie, to whom
+      the front-door would very soon be closed for good. A few days more, and,
+      disgusted with her latest confidant, she would again be 'as thick as
+      thieves' with the traitor, while, before the next performance, the two
+      would once more have changed their parts. But the suspicions which Eulalie
+      might occasionally breed in her were no more than a fire of straw, which
+      must soon subside for lack of fuel, since Eulalie was not living with her
+      in the house. It was a very different matter when the suspect was
+      Françoise, of whose presence under the same roof as herself my aunt was
+      perpetually conscious, while for fear of catching cold, were she to leave
+      her bed, she would never dare go downstairs to the kitchen to see for
+      herself whether there was, indeed, any foundation for her suspicions. And
+      so on by degrees, until her mind had no other occupation than to attempt,
+      at every hour of the day, to discover what was being done, what was being
+      concealed from her by Françoise. She would detect the most furtive
+      movement of Françoise's features, something contradictory in what she was
+      saying, some desire which she appeared to be screening. And she would shew
+      her that she was unmasked, by, a single word, which made Françoise turn
+      pale, and which my aunt seemed to find a cruel satisfaction in driving
+      into her unhappy servant's heart. And the very next Sunday a disclosure by
+      Eulalie—like one of those discoveries which suddenly open up an
+      unsuspected field for exploration to some new science which has hitherto
+      followed only the beaten paths—proved to my aunt that her own worst
+      suspicions fell a long way short of the appalling truth. "But Françoise
+      ought to know that," said Eulalie, "now that you have given her a
+      carriage."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now that I have given her a carriage!" gasped my aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, but I didn't know; I only thought so; I saw her go by yesterday in
+      her open coach, as proud as Artaban, on her way to Roussainville market. I
+      supposed that it must be Mme. Octave who had given it to her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So on by degrees, until Françoise and my aunt, the quarry and the hunter,
+      could never cease from trying to forestall each other's devices. My mother
+      was afraid lest Françoise should develop a genuine hatred of my aunt, who
+      was doing everything in her power to annoy her. However that might be,
+      Françoise had come, more and more, to pay an infinitely scrupulous
+      attention to my aunt's least word and gesture. When she had to ask her for
+      anything she would hesitate, first, for a long time, making up her mind
+      how best to begin. And when she had uttered her request, she would watch
+      my aunt covertly, trying to guess from the expression on her face what she
+      thought of it, and how she would reply. And in this way—whereas an
+      artist who had been reading memoirs of the seventeenth century, and wished
+      to bring himself nearer to the great Louis, would consider that he was
+      making progress in that direction when he constructed a pedigree that
+      traced his own descent from some historic family, or when he engaged in
+      correspondence with one of the reigning Sovereigns of Europe, and so would
+      shut his eyes to the mistake he was making in seeking to establish a
+      similarity by an exact and therefore lifeless copy of mere outward forms—a
+      middle-aged lady in a small country town, by doing no more than yield
+      whole-hearted obedience to her own irresistible eccentricities, and to a
+      spirit of mischief engendered by the utter idleness of her existence,
+      could see, without ever having given a thought to Louis XIV, the most
+      trivial occupations of her daily life, her morning toilet, her luncheon,
+      her afternoon nap, assume, by virtue of their despotic singularity,
+      something of the interest that was to be found in what Saint-Simon used to
+      call the 'machinery' of life at Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade
+      herself that her silence, a shade of good humour or of arrogance on her
+      features would provide Françoise with matter for a mental commentary as
+      tense with passion and terror, as did the silence, the good humour or the
+      arrogance of the King when a courtier, or even his greatest nobles, had
+      presented a petition to him, at the turning of an avenue, at Versailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One Sunday, when my aunt had received simultaneous visits from the Curé
+      and from Eulalie, and had been left alone, afterwards, to rest, the whole
+      family went upstairs to bid her good night, and Mamma ventured to condole
+      with her on the unlucky coincidence that always brought both visitors to
+      her door at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hear that things went wrong again to-day, Léonie," she said kindly,
+      "you have had all your friends here at once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And my great-aunt interrupted with: "Too many good things..." for, since
+      her daughter's illness, she felt herself in duty bound to revive her as
+      far as possible by always drawing her attention to the brighter side of
+      things. But my father had begun to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should like to take advantage," he said, "of the whole family's being
+      here together, to tell you a story, so as not to have to begin all over
+      again to each of you separately. I am afraid we are in M. Legrandin's bad
+      books; he would hardly say 'How d'ye do' to me this morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not wait to hear the end of my father's story, for I had been with
+      him myself after mass when we had passed M. Legrandin; instead, I went
+      downstairs to the kitchen to ask for the bill of fare for our dinner,
+      which was of fresh interest to me daily, like the news in a paper, and
+      excited me as might the programme of a coming festivity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As M. Legrandin had passed close by us on our way from church, walking by
+      the side of a lady, the owner of a country house in the neighbourhood,
+      whom we knew only by sight, my father had saluted him in a manner at once
+      friendly and reserved, without stopping in his walk; M. Legrandin had
+      barely acknowledged the courtesy, and then with an air of surprise, as
+      though he had not recognised us, and with that distant look characteristic
+      of people who do not wish to be agreeable, and who from the suddenly
+      receding depths of their eyes seem to have caught sight of you at the far
+      end of an interminably straight road, and at so great a distance that they
+      content themselves with directing towards you an almost imperceptible
+      movement of the head, in proportion to your doll-like dimensions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, the lady who was walking with Legrandin was a model of virtue, known
+      and highly respected; there could be no question of his being out for
+      amorous adventure, and annoyed at being detected; and my father asked
+      himself how he could possibly have displeased our friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should be all the more sorry to feel that he was angry with us," he
+      said, "because among all those people in their Sunday clothes there is
+      something about him, with his little cut-away coat and his soft neckties,
+      so little 'dressed-up,' so genuinely simple; an air of innocence, almost,
+      which is really attractive."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the vote of the family council was unanimous, that my father had
+      imagined the whole thing, or that Legrandin, at the moment in question,
+      had been preoccupied in thinking about something else. Anyhow, my father's
+      fears were dissipated no later than the following evening. As we returned
+      from a long walk we saw, near the Pont-Vieux, Legrandin himself, who, on
+      account of the holidays, was spending a few days more in Combray. He came
+      up to us with outstretched hand: "Do you know, master book-lover," he
+      asked me, "this line of Paul Desjardins?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Is not that a fine rendering of a moment like this? Perhaps you have never
+      read Paul Desjardins. Read him, my boy, read him; in these days he is
+      converted, they tell me, into a preaching friar, but he used to have the
+      most charming water-colour touch—
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even
+      when the time comes, which is coming now for me, when the woods are all
+      black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself,
+      as I am doing, by looking up to the sky." He took a cigarette from his
+      pocket and stood for a long time, his eyes fixed on the horizon. "Goodbye,
+      friends!" he suddenly exclaimed, and left us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the hour when I usually went downstairs to find out what there was for
+      dinner, its preparation would already have begun, and Françoise, a colonel
+      with all the forces of nature for her subalterns, as in the fairy-tales
+      where giants hire themselves out as scullions, would be stirring the
+      coals, putting the potatoes to steam, and, at the right moment, finishing
+      over the fire those culinary masterpieces which had been first got ready
+      in some of the great array of vessels, triumphs of the potter's craft,
+      which ranged from tubs and boilers and cauldrons and fish kettles down to
+      jars for game, moulds for pastry, and tiny pannikins for cream, and
+      included an entire collection of pots and pans of every shape and size. I
+      would stop by the table, where the kitchen-maid had shelled them, to
+      inspect the platoons of peas, drawn up in ranks and numbered, like little
+      green marbles, ready for a game; but what fascinated me would be the
+      asparagus, tinged with ultramarine and rosy pink which ran from their
+      heads, finely stippled in mauve and azure, through a series of
+      imperceptible changes to their white feet, still stained a little by the
+      soil of their garden-bed: a rainbow-loveliness that was not of this world.
+      I felt that these celestial hues indicated the presence of exquisite
+      creatures who had been pleased to assume vegetable form, who, through the
+      disguise which covered their firm and edible flesh, allowed me to discern
+      in this radiance of earliest dawn, these hinted rainbows, these blue
+      evening shades, that precious quality which I should recognise again when,
+      all night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played
+      (lyrical and coarse in their jesting as the fairies in Shakespeare's <i>Dream</i>)
+      at transforming my humble chamber into a bower of aromatic perfume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Giotto's Charity, as Swann had named her, charged by Françoise with
+      the task of preparing them for the table, would have them lying beside her
+      in a basket; sitting with a mournful air, as though all the sorrows of the
+      world were heaped upon her; and the light crowns of azure which capped the
+      asparagus shoots above their pink jackets would be finely and separately
+      outlined, star by star, as in Giotto's fresco are the flowers banded about
+      the brows, or patterning the basket of his Virtue at Padua. And,
+      meanwhile, Françoise would be turning on the spit one of those chickens,
+      such as she alone knew how to roast, chickens which had wafted far abroad
+      from Combray the sweet savour of her merits, and which, while she was
+      serving them to us at table, would make the quality of kindness
+      predominate for the moment in my private conception of her character; the
+      aroma of that cooked flesh, which she knew how to make so unctuous and so
+      tender, seeming to me no more than the proper perfume of one of her many
+      virtues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the day on which, while my father took counsel with his family upon
+      our strange meeting with Legrandin, I went down to the kitchen, was one of
+      those days when Giotto's Charity, still very weak and ill after her recent
+      confinement, had been unable to rise from her bed; Françoise, being
+      without assistance, had fallen into arrears. When I went in, I saw her in
+      the back-kitchen which opened on to the courtyard, in process of killing a
+      chicken; by its desperate and quite natural resistance, which Françoise,
+      beside herself with rage as she attempted to slit its throat beneath the
+      ear, accompanied with shrill cries of "Filthy creature! Filthy creature!"
+      it made the saintly kindness and unction of our servant rather less
+      prominent than it would do, next day at dinner, when it made its
+      appearance in a skin gold-embroidered like a chasuble, and its precious
+      juice was poured out drop by drop as from a pyx. When it was dead
+      Françoise mopped up its streaming blood, in which, however, she did not
+      let her rancour drown, for she gave vent to another burst of rage, and,
+      gazing down at the carcass of her enemy, uttered a final "Filthy
+      creature!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I crept out of the kitchen and upstairs, trembling all over; I could have
+      prayed, then, for the instant dismissal of Françoise. But who would have
+      baked me such hot rolls, boiled me such fragrant coffee, and even—roasted
+      me such chickens? And, as it happened, everyone else had already had to
+      make the same cowardly reckoning. For my aunt Léonie knew (though I was
+      still in ignorance of this) that Françoise, who, for her own daughter or
+      for her nephews, would have given her life without a murmur, shewed a
+      singular implacability in her dealings with the rest of the world. In
+      spite of which my aunt still retained her, for, while conscious of her
+      cruelty, she could appreciate her services. I began gradually to realise
+      that Françoise's kindness, her compunction, the sum total of her virtues
+      concealed many of these back-kitchen tragedies, just as history reveals to
+      us that the reigns of the kings and queens who are portrayed as kneeling
+      with clasped hands in the windows of churches, were stained by oppression
+      and bloodshed. I had taken note of the fact that, apart from her own
+      kinsfolk, the sufferings of humanity inspired in her a pity which
+      increased in direct ratio to the distance separating the sufferers from
+      herself. The tears which flowed from her in torrents when she read of the
+      misfortunes of persons unknown to her, in a newspaper, were quickly
+      stemmed once she had been able to form a more accurate mental picture of
+      the victims. One night, shortly after her confinement, the kitchen-maid
+      was seized with the most appalling pains; Mamma heard her groans, and rose
+      and awakened Françoise, who, quite unmoved, declared that all the outcry
+      was mere malingering, that the girl wanted to 'play the mistress' in the
+      house. The doctor, who had been afraid of some such attack, had left a
+      marker in a medical dictionary which we had, at the page on which the
+      symptoms were described, and had told us to turn up this passage, where we
+      would find the measures of 'first aid' to be adopted. My mother sent
+      Françoise to fetch the book, warning her not to let the marker drop out.
+      An hour elapsed, and Françoise had not returned; my mother, supposing that
+      she had gone back to bed, grew vexed, and told me to go myself to the
+      bookcase and fetch the volume. I did so, and there found Françoise who, in
+      her curiosity to know what the marker indicated, had begun to read the
+      clinical account of these after-pains, and was violently sobbing, now that
+      it was a question of a type of illness with which she was not familiar. At
+      each painful symptom mentioned by the writer she would exclaim: "Oh, oh,
+      Holy Virgin, is it possible that God wishes any wretched human creature to
+      suffer so? Oh, the poor girl!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when I had called her, and she had returned to the bedside of Giotto's
+      Charity, her tears at once ceased to flow; she could find no stimulus for
+      that pleasant sensation of tenderness and pity which she very well knew,
+      having been moved to it often enough by the perusal of newspapers; nor any
+      other pleasure of the same kind in her sense of weariness and irritation
+      at being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night for the
+      kitchen-maid; so that at the sight of those very sufferings, the printed
+      account of which had moved her to tears, she had nothing to offer but
+      ill-tempered mutterings, mingled with bitter sarcasm, saying, when she
+      thought that we had gone out of earshot: "Well, she need never have done
+      what she must have done to bring all this about! She found that pleasant
+      enough, I dare say! She had better not put on any airs now. All the same,
+      he must have been a god-forsaken young man to go after <i>that</i>. Dear,
+      dear, it's just as they used to say in my poor mother's country:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Snaps and snails and puppy-dogs' tails,
+    And dirty sluts in plenty,
+  Smell sweeter than roses in young men's noses
+    When the heart is one-and-twenty."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Although, when her grandson had a slight cold in his head, she would set
+      off at night, even if she were ill also, instead of going to bed, to see
+      whether he had everything that he wanted, covering ten miles on foot
+      before daybreak so as to be in time to begin her work, this same love for
+      her own people, and her desire to establish the future greatness of her
+      house on a solid foundation reacted, in her policy with regard to the
+      other servants, in one unvarying maxim, which was never to let any of them
+      set foot in my aunt's room; indeed she shewed a sort of pride in not
+      allowing anyone else to come near my aunt, preferring, when she herself
+      was ill, to get out of bed and to administer the Vichy water in person,
+      rather than to concede to the kitchen-maid the right of entry into her
+      mistress's presence. There is a species of hymenoptera, observed by Fabre,
+      the burrowing wasp, which in order to provide a supply of fresh meat for
+      her offspring after her own decease, calls in the science of anatomy to
+      amplify the resources of her instinctive cruelty, and, having made a
+      collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds with marvellous knowledge and
+      skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of locomotion (but
+      none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the paralysed
+      insect, beside which her egg is laid, will furnish the larva, when it is
+      hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive quarry, incapable either of flight
+      or of resistance, but perfectly fresh for the larder: in the same way
+      Françoise had adopted, to minister to her permanent and unfaltering
+      resolution to render the house uninhabitable to any other servant, a
+      series of crafty and pitiless stratagems. Many years later we discovered
+      that, if we had been fed on asparagus day after day throughout that whole
+      season, it was because the smell of the plants gave the poor kitchen-maid,
+      who had to prepare them, such violent attacks of asthma that she was
+      finally obliged to leave my aunt's service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas! we had definitely to alter our opinion of M. Legrandin. On one of
+      the Sundays following our meeting with him on the Pont-Vieux, after which
+      my father had been forced to confess himself mistaken, as mass drew to an
+      end, and, with the sunshine and the noise of the outer world, something
+      else invaded the church, an atmosphere so far from sacred that Mme.
+      Goupil, Mme. Percepied (all those, in fact, who a moment ago, when I
+      arrived a little late, had been sitting motionless, their eyes fixed on
+      their prayer-books; who, I might even have thought, had not seen me come
+      in, had not their feet moved slightly to push away the little
+      kneeling-desk which was preventing me from getting to my chair) began in
+      loud voices to discuss with us all manner of utterly mundane topics, as
+      though we were already outside in the Square, we saw, standing on the
+      sun-baked steps of the porch, dominating the many-coloured tumult of the
+      market, Legrandin himself, whom the husband of the lady we had seen with
+      him, on the previous occasion, was just going to introduce to the wife of
+      another large landed proprietor of the district. Legrandin's face shewed
+      an extraordinary zeal and animation; he made a profound bow, with a
+      subsidiary backward movement which brought his spine sharply up into a
+      position behind its starting-point, a gesture in which he must have been
+      trained by the husband of his sister, Mme. de Cambremer. This rapid
+      recovery caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin's
+      hips, which I had not supposed to be so fleshy; I cannot say why, but this
+      undulation of pure matter, this wholly carnal fluency, with not the least
+      hint in it of spiritual significance, this wave lashed to a fury by the
+      wind of an assiduity, an obsequiousness of the basest sort, awoke my mind
+      suddenly to the possibility of a Legrandin altogether different from the
+      one whom we knew. The lady gave him some message for her coachman, and
+      while he was stepping down to her carriage the impression of joy, timid
+      and devout, which the introduction had stamped there, still lingered on
+      his face. Carried away in a sort of dream, he smiled, then he began to
+      hurry back towards the lady; he was walking faster than usual, and his
+      shoulders swayed backwards and forwards, right and left, in the most
+      absurd fashion; altogether he looked, so utterly had he abandoned himself
+      to it, ignoring all other considerations, as though he were the lifeless
+      and wire-pulled puppet of his own happiness. Meanwhile we were coming out
+      through the porch; we were passing close beside him; he was too well bred
+      to turn his head away; but he fixed his eyes, which had suddenly changed
+      to those of a seer, lost in the profundity of his vision, on so distant a
+      point of the horizon that he could not see us, and so had not to
+      acknowledge our presence. His face emerged, still with an air of
+      innocence, from his straight and pliant coat, which looked as though
+      conscious of having been led astray, in spite of itself, and plunged into
+      surroundings of a detested splendour. And a spotted necktie, stirred by
+      the breezes of the Square, continued to float in front of Legrandin, like
+      the standard of his proud isolation, of his noble independence. Just as we
+      reached the house my mother discovered that we had forgotten the
+      'Saint-Honoré,' and asked my father to go back with me and tell them to
+      send it up at once. Near the church we met Legrandin, coming towards us
+      with the same lady, whom he was escorting to her carriage. He brushed past
+      us, and did not interrupt what he was saying to her, but gave us, out of
+      the corner of his blue eye, a little sign, which began and ended, so to
+      speak, inside his eyelids, and as it did not involve the least movement of
+      his facial muscles, managed to pass quite unperceived by the lady; but,
+      striving to compensate by the intensity of his feelings for the somewhat
+      restricted field in which they had to find expression, he made that blue
+      chink, which was set apart for us, sparkle with all the animation of
+      cordiality, which went far beyond mere playfulness, and almost touched the
+      border-line of roguery; he subtilised the refinements of good-fellowship
+      into a wink of connivance, a hint, a hidden meaning, a secret
+      understanding, all the mysteries of complicity in a plot, and finally
+      exalted his assurances of friendship to the level of protestations of
+      affection, even of a declaration of love, lighting up for us, and for us
+      alone, with a secret and languid flame invisible by the great lady upon
+      his other side, an enamoured pupil in a countenance of ice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only the day before he had asked my parents to send me to dine with him on
+      this same Sunday evening. "Come and bear your aged friend company," he had
+      said to me. "Like the nosegay which a traveller sends us from some land to
+      which we shall never go again, come and let me breathe from the far
+      country of your adolescence the scent of those flowers of spring among
+      which I also used to wander, many years ago. Come with the primrose, with
+      the canon's beard, with the gold-cup; come with the stone-crop, whereof
+      are posies made, pledges of love, in the Balzacian flora, come with that
+      flower of the Resurrection morning, the Easter daisy, come with the
+      snowballs of the guelder-rose, which begin to embalm with their fragrance
+      the alleys of your great-aunt's garden ere the last snows of Lent are
+      melted from its soil. Come with the glorious silken raiment of the lily,
+      apparel fit for Solomon, and with the many-coloured enamel of the pansies,
+      but come, above all, with the spring breeze, still cooled by the last
+      frosts of winter, wafting apart, for the two butterflies' sake, that have
+      waited outside all morning, the closed portals of the first Jerusalem
+      rose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question was raised at home whether, all things considered, I ought
+      still to be sent to dine with M. Legrandin. But my grandmother refused to
+      believe that he could have been impolite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You admit yourself that he appears at church there, quite simply dressed,
+      and all that; he hardly looks like a man of fashion." She added that; in
+      any event, even if, at the worst, he had been intentionally rude, it was
+      far better for us to pretend that we had noticed nothing. And indeed my
+      father himself, though more annoyed than any of us by the attitude which
+      Legrandin had adopted, may still have held in reserve a final uncertainty
+      as to its true meaning. It was like every attitude or action which reveals
+      a man's deep and hidden character; they bear no relation to what he has
+      previously said, and we cannot confirm our suspicions by the culprit's
+      evidence, for he will admit nothing; we are reduced to the evidence of our
+      own senses, and we ask ourselves, in the face of this detached and
+      incoherent fragment of recollection, whether indeed our senses have not
+      been the victims of a hallucination; with the result that such attitudes,
+      and these alone are of importance in indicating character, are the most
+      apt to leave us in perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house, by moonlight. "There
+      is a charming quality, is there not," he said to me, "in this silence; for
+      hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist, whom you will read in
+      time to come, claims that there is no remedy but silence and shadow. And
+      see you this, my boy, there comes in all lives a time, towards which you
+      still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of
+      light, the light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the
+      stillroom of darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what the
+      moonlight breathes through the flute of silence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could hear what M. Legrandin was saying; like everything that he said,
+      it sounded attractive; but I was disturbed by the memory of a lady whom I
+      had seen recently for the first time; and thinking, now that I knew that
+      Legrandin was on friendly terms with several of the local aristocracy,
+      that perhaps she also was among his acquaintance, I summoned up all my
+      courage and said to him: "Tell me, sir, do you, by any chance, know the
+      lady—the ladies of Guermantes?" and I felt glad because, in
+      pronouncing the name, I had secured a sort of power over it, by the mere
+      act of drawing it up out of my dreams and giving it an objective existence
+      in the world of spoken things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, at the sound of the word Guermantes, I saw in the middle of each of
+      our friend's blue eyes a little brown dimple appear, as though they had
+      been stabbed by some invisible pin-point, while the rest of his pupils,
+      reacting from the shock, received and secreted the azure overflow. His
+      fringed eyelids darkened, and drooped. His mouth, which had been stiffened
+      and seared with bitter lines, was the first to recover, and smiled, while
+      his eyes still seemed full of pain, like the eyes of a good-looking martyr
+      whose body bristles with arrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I do not know them," he said, but instead of uttering so simple a
+      piece of information, a reply in which there was so little that could
+      astonish me, in the natural and conversational tone which would have
+      befitted it, he recited it with a separate stress upon each word, leaning
+      forward, bowing his head, with at once the vehemence which a man gives, so
+      as to be believed, to a highly improbable statement (as though the fact
+      that he did not know the Guermantes could be due only to some strange
+      accident of fortune) and with the emphasis of a man who, finding himself
+      unable to keep silence about what is to him a painful situation, chooses
+      to proclaim it aloud, so as to convince his hearers that the confession he
+      is making is one that causes him no embarrassment, but is easy, agreeable,
+      spontaneous, that the situation in question, in this case the absence of
+      relations with the Guermantes family, might very well have been not forced
+      upon, but actually designed by Legrandin himself, might arise from some
+      family tradition, some moral principle or mystical vow which expressly
+      forbade his seeking their society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," he resumed, explaining by his words the tone in which they were
+      uttered. "No, I do not know them; I have never wished to know them; I have
+      always made a point of preserving complete independence; at heart, as you
+      know, I am a bit of a Radical. People are always coming to me about it,
+      telling me I am mistaken in not going to Guermantes, that I make myself
+      seem ill-bred, uncivilised, an old bear. But that's not the sort of
+      reputation that can frighten me; it's too true! In my heart of hearts I
+      care for nothing in the world now but a few churches, books—two or
+      three, pictures—rather more, perhaps, and the light of the moon when
+      the fresh breeze of youth (such as yours) wafts to my nostrils the scent
+      of gardens whose flowers my old eyes are not sharp enough, now, to
+      distinguish."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not understand very clearly why, in order to refrain from going to
+      the houses of people whom one did not know, it should be necessary to
+      cling to one's independence, nor how that could give one the appearance of
+      a savage or a bear. But what I did understand was this, that Legrandin was
+      not altogether truthful when he said that he cared only for churches,
+      moonlight, and youth; he cared also, he cared a very great deal, for
+      people who lived in country houses, and would be so much afraid, when in
+      their company, of incurring their displeasure that he would never dare to
+      let them see that he numbered, as well, among his friends middle-class
+      people, the families of solicitors and stockbrokers, preferring, if the
+      truth must be known, that it should be revealed in his absence, when he
+      was out of earshot, that judgment should go against him (if so it must) by
+      default: in a word, he was a snob. Of course he would never have admitted
+      all or any of this in the poetical language which my family and I so much
+      admired. And if I asked him, "Do you know the Guermantes family?"
+      Legrandin the talker would reply, "No, I have never cared to know them."
+      But unfortunately the talker was now subordinated to another Legrandin,
+      whom he kept carefully hidden in his breast, whom he would never
+      consciously exhibit, because this other could tell stories about our own
+      Legrandin and about his snobbishness which would have ruined his
+      reputation for ever; and this other Legrandin had replied to me already in
+      that wounded look, that stiffened smile, the undue gravity of his tone in
+      uttering those few words, in the thousand arrows by which our own
+      Legrandin had instantaneously been stabbed and sickened, like a Saint
+      Sebastian of snobbery:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, how you hurt me! No, I do not know the Guermantes family. Do not
+      remind me of the great sorrow of my life." And since this other, this
+      irrepressible, dominant, despotic Legrandin, if he lacked our Legrandin's
+      charming vocabulary, shewed an infinitely greater promptness in expressing
+      himself, by means of what are called 'reflexes,' it followed that, when
+      Legrandin the talker attempted to silence him, he would already have
+      spoken, and it would be useless for our friend to deplore the bad
+      impression which the revelations of his <i>alter ego</i> must have caused,
+      since he could do no more now than endeavour to mitigate them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not to say that M. Legrandin was anything but sincere when he
+      inveighed against snobs. He could not (from his own knowledge, at least)
+      be aware that he was one also, since it is only with the passions of
+      others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to find out
+      about our own can be no more than what other people have shewn us. Upon
+      ourselves they react but indirectly, through our imagination, which
+      substitutes for our actual, primary motives other, secondary motives, less
+      stark and therefore more decent. Never had Legrandin's snobbishness
+      impelled him to make a habit of visiting a duchess as such. Instead, it
+      would set his imagination to make that duchess appear, in Legrandin's
+      eyes, endowed with all the graces. He would be drawn towards the duchess,
+      assuring himself the while that he was yielding to the attractions of her
+      mind, and her other virtues, which the vile race of snobs could never
+      understand. Only his fellow-snobs knew that he was of their number, for,
+      owing to their inability to appreciate the intervening efforts of his
+      imagination, they saw in close juxtaposition the social activities of
+      Legrandin and their primary cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At home, meanwhile, we had no longer any illusions as to M. Legrandin, and
+      our relations with him had become much more distant. Mamma would be
+      greatly delighted whenever she caught him red-handed in the sin, which he
+      continued to call the unpardonable sin, of snobbery. As for my father, he
+      found it difficult to take Legrandin's airs in so light, in so detached a
+      spirit; and when there was some talk, one year, of sending me to spend the
+      long summer holidays at Balbec with my grandmother, he said: "I must, most
+      certainly, tell Legrandin that you are going to Balbec, to see whether he
+      will offer you an introduction to his sister. He probably doesn't remember
+      telling us that she lived within a mile of the place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My grandmother, who held that, when one went to the seaside, one ought to
+      be on the beach from morning to night, to taste the salt breezes, and that
+      one should not know anyone in the place, because calls and parties and
+      excursions were so much time stolen from what belonged, by rights, to the
+      sea-air, begged him on no account to speak to Legrandin of our plans; for
+      already, in her mind's eye, she could see his sister, Mme. de Cambremer,
+      alighting from her carriage at the door of our hotel just as we were on
+      the point of going out fishing, and obliging us to remain indoors all
+      afternoon to entertain her. But Mamma laughed her fears to scorn, for she
+      herself felt that the danger was not so threatening, and that Legrandin
+      would shew no undue anxiety to make us acquainted with his sister. And, as
+      it happened, there was no need for any of us to introduce the subject of
+      Balbec, for it was Legrandin himself who, without the least suspicion that
+      we had ever had any intention of visiting those parts, walked into the
+      trap uninvited one evening, when we met him strolling on the banks of the
+      Vivonne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are tints in the clouds this evening, violets and blues, which are
+      very beautiful, are they not, my friend?" he said to my father.
+      "Especially a blue which is far more floral than atmospheric, a cineraria
+      blue, which it is surprising to see in the sky. And that little pink cloud
+      there, has it not just the tint of some flower, a carnation or hydrangea?
+      Nowhere, perhaps, except on the shores of the English Channel, where
+      Normandy merges into Brittany, have I been able to find such copious
+      examples of what you might call a vegetable kingdom in the clouds. Down
+      there, close to Balbec, among all those places which are still so
+      uncivilised, there is a little bay, charmingly quiet, where the sunsets of
+      the Auge Valley, those red-and-gold sunsets (which, all the same, I am
+      very far from despising) seem commonplace and insignificant; for in that
+      moist and gentle atmosphere these heavenly flower-beds will break into
+      blossom, in a few moments, in the evenings, incomparably lovely, and often
+      lasting for hours before they fade. Others shed their leaves at once, and
+      then it is more beautiful still to see the sky strewn with the scattering
+      of their innumerable petals, sulphurous yellow and rosy red. In that bay,
+      which they call the Opal Bay, the golden sands appear more charming still
+      from being fastened, like fair Andromeda, to those terrible rocks of the
+      surrounding coast, to that funereal shore, famed for the number of its
+      wrecks, where every winter many a brave vessel falls a victim to the
+      perils of the sea. Balbec! the oldest bone in the geological skeleton that
+      underlies our soil, the true Armor, the sea, the land's end, the accursed
+      region which Anatole France—an enchanter whose works our young
+      friend ought to read—has so well depicted, beneath its eternal fogs,
+      as though it were indeed the land of the Cimmerians in the Odyssey.
+      Balbec; yes, they are building hotels there now, superimposing them upon
+      its ancient and charming soil, which they are powerless to alter; how
+      delightful it is, down there, to be able to step out at once into regions
+      so primitive and so entrancing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed! And do you know anyone at Balbec?" inquired my father. "This
+      young man is just going to spend a couple of months there with his
+      grandmother, and my wife too, perhaps."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Legrandin, taken unawares by the question at a moment when he was looking
+      directly at my father, was unable to turn aside his gaze, and so
+      concentrated it with steadily increasing intensity—smiling
+      mournfully the while—upon the eyes of his questioner, with an air of
+      friendliness and frankness and of not being afraid to look him in the
+      face, until he seemed to have penetrated my father's skull, as it had been
+      a ball of glass, and to be seeing, at the moment, a long way beyond and
+      behind it, a brightly coloured cloud, which provided him with a mental
+      alibi, and would enable him to establish the theory that, just when he was
+      being asked whether he knew anyone at Balbec, he had been thinking of
+      something else, and so had not heard the question. As a rule these tactics
+      make the questioner proceed to ask, "Why, what are you thinking about?"
+      But my father, inquisitive, annoyed, and cruel, repeated: "Have you
+      friends, then, in that neighbourhood, that you know Balbec so well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a final and desperate effort the smiling gaze of Legrandin struggled to
+      the extreme limits of its tenderness, vagueness, candour, and distraction;
+      then feeling, no doubt, that there was nothing left for it now but to
+      answer, he said to us: "I have friends all the world over, wherever there
+      are companies of trees, stricken but not defeated, which have come
+      together to offer a common supplication, with pathetic obstinacy, to an
+      inclement sky which has no mercy upon them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is not quite what I meant," interrupted my father, obstinate as a
+      tree and merciless as the sky. "I asked you, in case anything should
+      happen to my mother-in-law and she wanted to feel that she was not all
+      alone down there, at the ends of the earth, whether you knew any of the
+      people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There as elsewhere, I know everyone and I know no one," replied
+      Legrandin, who was by no means ready yet to surrender; "places I know
+      well, people very slightly. But, down there, the places themselves seem to
+      me just like people, rare and wonderful people, of a delicate quality
+      which would have been corrupted and ruined by the gift of life. Perhaps it
+      is a castle which you encounter upon the cliff's edge; standing there by
+      the roadside, where it has halted to contemplate its sorrows before an
+      evening sky, still rosy, through which a golden moon is climbing; while
+      the fishing-boats, homeward bound, creasing the watered silk of the
+      Channel, hoist its pennant at their mastheads and carry its colours. Or
+      perhaps it is a simple dwelling-house that stands alone, ugly, if
+      anything, timid-seeming but full of romance, hiding from every eye some
+      imperishable secret of happiness and disenchantment. That land which knows
+      not truth," he continued with Machiavellian subtlety, "that land of
+      infinite fiction makes bad reading for any boy; and is certainly not what
+      I should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is already so
+      much inclined to melancholy, for a heart already predisposed to receive
+      its impressions. Climates that breathe amorous secrets and futile regrets
+      may agree with an old and disillusioned man like myself; but they must
+      always prove fatal to a temperament which is still unformed. Believe me,"
+      he went on with emphasis, "the waters of that bay—more Breton than
+      Norman—may exert a sedative influence, though even that is of
+      questionable value, upon a heart which, like mine, is no longer unbroken,
+      a heart for whose wounds there is no longer anything to compensate. But at
+      your age, my boy, those waters are contra-indicated.... Good night to you,
+      neighbours," he added, moving away from us with that evasive abruptness to
+      which we were accustomed; and then, turning towards us, with a physicianly
+      finger raised in warning, he resumed the consultation: "No Balbec before
+      you are fifty!" he called out to me, "and even then it must depend on the
+      state of the heart."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My father spoke to him of it again, as often as we met him, and tortured
+      him with questions, but it was labour in vain: like that scholarly
+      swindler who devoted to the fabrication of forged palimpsests a wealth of
+      skill and knowledge and industry the hundredth part of which would have
+      sufficed to establish him in a more lucrative—but an honourable
+      occupation, M. Legrandin, had we insisted further, would in the end have
+      constructed a whole system of ethics, and a celestial geography of Lower
+      Normandy, sooner than admit to us that, within a mile of Balbec, his own
+      sister was living in her own house; sooner than find himself obliged to
+      offer us a letter of introduction, the prospect of which would never have
+      inspired him with such terror had he been absolutely certain—as,
+      from his knowledge of my grandmother's character, he really ought to have
+      been certain—that in no circumstances whatsoever would we have
+      dreamed of making use of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We used always to return from our walks in good time to pay aunt Léonie a
+      visit before dinner. In the first weeks of our Combray holidays, when the
+      days ended early, we would still be able to see, as we turned into the Rue
+      du Saint-Esprit, a reflection of the western sky from the windows of the
+      house and a band of purple at the foot of the Calvary, which was mirrored
+      further on in the pond; a fiery glow which, accompanied often by a cold
+      that burned and stung, would associate itself in my mind with the glow of
+      the fire over which, at that very moment, was roasting the chicken that
+      was to furnish me, in place of the poetic pleasure I had found in my walk,
+      with the sensual pleasures of good feeding, warmth and rest. But in
+      summer, when we came back to the house, the sun would not have set; and
+      while we were upstairs paying our visit to aunt Léonie its rays, sinking
+      until they touched and lay along her window-sill, would there be caught
+      and held by the large inner curtains and the bands which tied them back to
+      the wall, and split and scattered and filtered; and then, at last, would
+      fall upon and inlay with tiny flakes of gold the lemonwood of her
+      chest-of-drawers, illuminating the room in their passage with the same
+      delicate, slanting, shadowed beams that fall among the boles of forest
+      trees. But on some days, though very rarely, the chest-of-drawers would
+      long since have shed its momentary adornments, there would no longer, as
+      we turned into the Rue du Saint-Esprit, be any reflection from the western
+      sky burning along the line of window-panes; the pond beneath the Calvary
+      would have lost its fiery glow, sometimes indeed had changed already to an
+      opalescent pallor, while a long ribbon of moonlight, bent and broken and
+      broadened by every ripple upon the water's surface, would be lying across
+      it, from end to end. Then, as we drew near the house, we would make out a
+      figure standing upon the doorstep, and Mamma would say to me: "Good
+      heavens! There is Françoise looking out for us; your aunt must be anxious;
+      that means we are late."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And without wasting time by stopping to take off our 'things' we would fly
+      upstairs to my aunt Léonie's room to reassure her, to prove to her by our
+      bodily presence that all her gloomy imaginings were false, that, on the
+      contrary, nothing had happened to us, but that we had gone the 'Guermantes
+      way,' and, good lord, when one took that walk, my aunt knew well enough
+      that one could never say at what time one would be home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There, Françoise," my aunt would say, "didn't I tell you that they must
+      have gone the Guermantes way? Good gracious! They must be hungry! And your
+      nice leg of mutton will be quite dried up now, after all the hours it's
+      been waiting. What a time to come in! Well, and so you went the Guermantes
+      way?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, Leonie, I supposed you knew," Mamma would answer. "I thought that
+      Françoise had seen us go out by the little gate, through the
+      kitchen-garden."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For there were, in the environs of Combray, two 'ways' which we used to
+      take for our walks, and so diametrically opposed that we would actually
+      leave the house by a different door, according to the way we had chosen:
+      the way towards Méséglise-la-Vineuse, which we called also 'Swann's way,'
+      because, to get there, one had to pass along the boundary of M. Swann's
+      estate, and the 'Guermantes way.' Of Méséglise-la-Vineuse, to tell the
+      truth, I never knew anything more than the way there, and the strange
+      people who would come over on Sundays to take the air in Combray, people
+      whom, this time, neither my aunt nor any of us would 'know at all,' and
+      whom we would therefore assume to be 'people who must have come over from
+      Méséglise.' As for Guermantes, I was to know it well enough one day, but
+      that day had still to come; and, during the whole of my boyhood, if
+      Méséglise was to me something as inaccessible as the horizon, which
+      remained hidden from sight, however far one went, by the folds of a
+      country which no longer bore the least resemblance to the country round
+      Combray; Guermantes, on the other hand, meant no more than the ultimate
+      goal, ideal rather than real, of the 'Guermantes way,' a sort of abstract
+      geographical term like the North Pole or the Equator. And so to 'take the
+      Guermantes way' in order to get to Méséglise, or vice versa, would have
+      seemed to me as nonsensical a proceeding as to turn to the east in order
+      to reach the west. Since my father used always to speak of the 'Méséglise
+      way' as comprising the finest view of a plain that he knew anywhere, and
+      of the 'Guermantes way' as typical of river scenery, I had invested each
+      of them, by conceiving them in this way as two distinct entities, with
+      that cohesion, that unity which belongs only to the figments of the mind;
+      the smallest detail of either of them appeared to me as a precious thing,
+      which exhibited the special excellence of the whole, while, immediately
+      beside them, in the first stages of our walk, before we had reached the
+      sacred soil of one or the other, the purely material roads, at definite
+      points on which they were set down as the ideal view over a plain and the
+      ideal scenery of a river, were no more worth the trouble of looking at
+      them than, to a keen playgoer and lover of dramatic art, are the little
+      streets which may happen to run past the walls of a theatre. But, above
+      all, I set between them, far more distinctly than the mere distance in
+      miles and yards and inches which separated one from the other, the
+      distance that there was between the two parts of my brain in which I used
+      to think of them, one of those distances of the mind which time serves
+      only to lengthen, which separate things irremediably from one another,
+      keeping them for ever upon different planes. And this distinction was
+      rendered still more absolute because the habit we had of never going both
+      ways on the same day, or in the course of the same walk, but the
+      'Méséglise way' one time and the 'Guermantes way' another, shut them up,
+      so to speak, far apart and unaware of each other's existence, in the
+      sealed vessels—between which there could be no communication—of
+      separate afternoons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we had decided to go the 'Méséglise way' we would start (without
+      undue haste, and even if the sky were clouded over, since the walk was not
+      very long, and did not take us too far from home), as though we were not
+      going anywhere in particular, by the front-door of my aunt's house, which
+      opened on to the Rue du Saint-Esprit. We would be greeted by the gunsmith,
+      we would drop our letters into the box, we would tell Théodore, from
+      Françoise, as we passed, that she had run out of oil or coffee, and we
+      would leave the town by the road which ran along the white fence of M.
+      Swann's park. Before reaching it we would be met on our way by the scent
+      of his lilac-trees, come out to welcome strangers. Out of the fresh little
+      green hearts of their foliage the lilacs raised inquisitively over the
+      fence of the park their plumes of white or purple blossom, which glowed,
+      even in the shade, with the sunlight in which they had been bathed. Some
+      of them, half-concealed by the little tiled house, called the Archers'
+      Lodge, in which Swann's keeper lived, overtopped its gothic gable with
+      their rosy minaret. The nymphs of spring would have seemed coarse and
+      vulgar in comparison with these young houris, who retained, in this French
+      garden, the pure and vivid colouring of a Persian miniature. Despite my
+      desire to throw my arms about their pliant forms and to draw down towards
+      me the starry locks that crowned their fragrant heads, we would pass them
+      by without stopping, for my parents had ceased to visit Tansonville since
+      Swann's marriage, and, so as not to appear to be looking into his park, we
+      would, instead of taking the road which ran beside its boundary and then
+      climbed straight up to the open fields, choose another way, which led in
+      the same direction, but circuitously, and brought us out rather too far
+      from home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day my grandfather said to my 'father: "Don't you remember Swann's
+      telling us yesterday that his wife and daughter had gone off to Rheims and
+      that he was taking the opportunity of spending a day or two in Paris? We
+      might go along by the park, since the ladies are not at home; that will
+      make it a little shorter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We stopped for a moment by the fence. Lilac-time was nearly over; some of
+      the trees still thrust aloft, in tall purple chandeliers, their tiny balls
+      of blossom, but in many places among their foliage where, only a week
+      before, they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam, these were
+      now spent and shrivelled and discoloured, a hollow scum, dry and
+      scentless. My grandfather pointed out to my father in what respects the
+      appearance of the place was still the same, and how far it had altered
+      since the walk that he had taken with old M. Swann, on the day of his
+      wife's death; and he seized the opportunity to tell us, once again, the
+      story of that walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In front of us a path bordered with nasturtiums rose in the full glare of
+      the sun towards the house. But to our right the park stretched away into
+      the distance, on level ground. Overshadowed by the tall trees which stood
+      close around it, an 'ornamental water' had been constructed by Swann's
+      parents but, even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material
+      upon which man has to work; certain spots will persist in remaining
+      surrounded by the vassals of their own especial sovereignty, and will
+      raise their immemorial standards among all the 'laid-out' scenery of a
+      park, just as they would have done far from any human interference, in a
+      solitude which must everywhere return to engulf them, springing up out of
+      the necessities of their exposed position, and superimposing itself upon
+      the work of man's hands. And so it was that, at the foot of the path which
+      led down to this artificial lake, there might be seen, in its two tiers
+      woven of trailing forget-me-nots below and of periwinkle flowers above,
+      the natural, delicate, blue garland which binds the luminous, shadowed
+      brows of water-nymphs; while the iris, its swords sweeping every way in
+      regal profusion, stretched out over agrimony and water-growing king-cups
+      the lilied sceptres, tattered glories of yellow and purple, of the kingdom
+      of the lake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The absence of Mlle. Swann, which—since it preserved me from the
+      terrible risk of seeing her appear on one of the paths, and of being
+      identified and scorned by this so privileged little girl who had Bergotte
+      for a friend and used to go with him to visit cathedrals—made the
+      exploration of Tansonville, now for the first time permitted me, a matter
+      of indifference to myself, seemed however to invest the property, in my
+      grandfather's and father's eyes, with a fresh and transient charm, and
+      (like an entirely cloudless sky when one is going mountaineering) to make
+      the day extraordinarily propitious for a walk in this direction; I should
+      have liked to see their reckoning proved false, to see, by a miracle,
+      Mlle. Swann appear, with her father, so close to us that we should not
+      have time to escape, and should therefore be obliged to make her
+      acquaintance. And so, when I suddenly noticed a straw basket lying
+      forgotten on the grass by the side of a line whose float was bobbing in
+      the water, I made a great effort to keep my father and grandfather looking
+      in another direction, away from this sign that she might, after all, be in
+      residence. Still, as Swann had told us that he ought not, really, to go
+      away just then, as he had some people staying in the house, the line might
+      equally belong to one of these guests. Not a footstep was to be heard on
+      any of the paths. Somewhere in one of the tall trees, making a stage in
+      its height, an invisible bird, desperately attempting to make the day seem
+      shorter, was exploring with a long, continuous note the solitude that
+      pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer,
+      so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility that, one would
+      have said, it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been
+      trying to make pass more quickly. The sunlight fell so implacably from a
+      fixed sky that one was naturally inclined to slip away out of the reach of
+      its attentions, and even the slumbering water, whose repose was
+      perpetually being invaded by the insects that swarmed above its surface,
+      while it dreamed, no doubt, of some imaginary maelstrom, intensified the
+      uneasiness which the sight of that floating cork had wrought in me, by
+      appearing to draw it at full speed across the silent reaches of a mirrored
+      firmament; now almost vertical, it seemed on the point of plunging down
+      out of sight, and I had begun to ask myself whether, setting aside the
+      longing and the terror that I had of making her acquaintance, it was not
+      actually my duty to warn Mlle. Swann that the fish was biting—when I
+      was obliged to run after my father and grandfather, who were calling me,
+      and were surprised that I had not followed them along the little path,
+      climbing up hill towards the open fields, into which they had already
+      turned. I found the whole path throbbing with the fragrance of
+      hawthorn-blossom. The hedge resembled a series of chapels, whose walls
+      were no longer visible under the mountains of flowers that were heaped
+      upon their altars; while underneath, the sun cast a square of light upon
+      the ground, as though it had shone in upon them through a window; the
+      scent that swept out over me from them was as rich, and as circumscribed
+      in its range, as though I had been standing before the Lady-altar, and the
+      flowers, themselves adorned also, held out each its little bunch of
+      glittering stamens with an air of inattention, fine, radiating 'nerves' in
+      the flamboyant style of architecture, like those which, in church, framed
+      the stair to the rood-loft or closed the perpendicular tracery of the
+      windows, but here spread out into pools of fleshy white, like
+      strawberry-beds in spring. How simple and rustic, in comparison with
+      these, would seem the dog-roses which, in a few weeks' time, would be
+      climbing the same hillside path in the heat of the sun, dressed in the
+      smooth silk of their blushing pink bodices, which would be undone and
+      scattered by the first breath of wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was in vain that I lingered before the hawthorns, to breathe in, to
+      marshal before my mind (which knew not what to make of it), to lose in
+      order to rediscover their invisible and unchanging odour, to absorb myself
+      in the rhythm which disposed their flowers here and there with the
+      light-heartedness of youth, and at intervals as unexpected as certain
+      intervals of music; they offered me an indefinite continuation of the same
+      charm, in an inexhaustible profusion, but without letting me delve into it
+      any more deeply, like those melodies which one can play over a hundred
+      times in succession without coming any nearer to their secret. I turned
+      away from them for a moment so as to be able to return to them with
+      renewed strength. My eyes followed up the slope which, outside the hedge,
+      rose steeply to the fields, a poppy that had strayed and been lost by its
+      fellows, or a few cornflowers that had fallen lazily behind, and decorated
+      the ground here and there with their flowers like the border of a
+      tapestry, in which may be seen at intervals hints of the rustic theme
+      which appears triumphant in the panel itself; infrequent still, spaced
+      apart as the scattered houses which warn us that we are approaching a
+      village, they betokened to me the vast expanse of waving corn beneath the
+      fleecy clouds, and the sight of a single poppy hoisting upon its slender
+      rigging and holding against the breeze its scarlet ensign, over the buoy
+      of rich black earth from which it sprang, made my heart beat as does a
+      wayfarer's when he perceives, upon some low-lying ground, an old and
+      broken boat which is being caulked and made seaworthy, and cries out,
+      although he has not yet caught sight of it, "The Sea!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I returned to my hawthorns, and stood before them as one stands
+      before those masterpieces of painting which, one imagines, one will be
+      better able to 'take in' when one has looked away, for a moment, at
+      something else; but in vain did I shape my fingers into a frame, so as to
+      have nothing but the hawthorns before my eyes; the sentiment which they
+      aroused in me remained obscure and vague, struggling and failing to free
+      itself, to float across and become one with the flowers. They themselves
+      offered me no enlightenment, and I could not call upon any other flowers
+      to satisfy this mysterious longing. And then, inspiring me with that
+      rapture which we feel on seeing a work by our favourite painter quite
+      different from any of those that we already know, or, better still, when
+      some one has taken us and set us down in front of a picture of which we
+      have hitherto seen no more than a pencilled sketch, or when a piece of
+      music which we have heard played over on the piano bursts out again in our
+      ears with all the splendour and fullness of an orchestra, my grandfather
+      called me to him, and, pointing to the hedge of Tansonville, said: "You
+      are fond of hawthorns; just look at this pink one; isn't it pretty?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was indeed a hawthorn, but one whose flowers were pink, and
+      lovelier even than the white. It, too, was in holiday attire, for one of
+      those days which are the only true holidays, the holy days of religion,
+      because they are not appointed by any capricious accident, as secular
+      holidays are appointed, upon days which are not specially ordained for
+      such observances, which have nothing about them that is essentially festal—but
+      it was attired even more richly than the rest, for the flowers which clung
+      to its branches, one above another, so thickly as to leave no part of the
+      tree undecorated, like the tassels wreathed about the crook of a rococo
+      shepherdess, were every one of them 'in colour,' and consequently of a
+      superior quality, by the aesthetic standards of Combray, to the 'plain,'
+      if one was to judge by the scale of prices at the 'stores' in the Square,
+      or at Camus's, where the most expensive biscuits were those whose sugar
+      was pink. And for my own part I set a higher value on cream cheese when it
+      was pink, when I had been allowed to tinge it with crushed strawberries.
+      And these flowers had chosen precisely the colour of some edible and
+      delicious thing, or of some exquisite addition to one's costume for a
+      great festival, which colours, inasmuch as they make plain the reason for
+      their superiority, are those whose beauty is most evident to the eyes of
+      children, and for that reason must always seem more vivid and more natural
+      than any other tints, even after the child's mind has realised that they
+      offer no gratification to the appetite, and have not been selected by the
+      dressmaker. And, indeed, I had felt at once, as I had felt before the
+      white blossom, but now still more marvelling, that it was in no artificial
+      manner, by no device of human construction, that the festal intention of
+      these flowers was revealed, but that it was Nature herself who had
+      spontaneously expressed it (with the simplicity of a woman from a village
+      shop, labouring at the decoration of a street altar for some procession)
+      by burying the bush in these little rosettes, almost too ravishing in
+      colour, this rustic 'pompadour.' High up on the branches, like so many of
+      those tiny rose-trees, their pots concealed in jackets of paper lace,
+      whose slender stems rise in a forest from the altar on the greater
+      festivals, a thousand buds were swelling and opening, paler in colour, but
+      each disclosing as it burst, as at the bottom of a cup of pink marble, its
+      blood-red stain, and suggesting even more strongly than the full-blown
+      flowers the special, irresistible quality of the hawthorn-tree, which,
+      wherever it budded, wherever it was about to blossom, could bud and
+      blossom in pink flowers alone. Taking its place in the hedge, but as
+      different from the rest as a young girl in holiday attire among a crowd of
+      dowdy women in everyday clothes, who are staying at home, equipped and
+      ready for the 'Month of Mary,' of which it seemed already to form a part,
+      it shone and smiled in its cool, rosy garments, a Catholic bush indeed,
+      and altogether delightful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hedge allowed us a glimpse, inside the park, of an alley bordered with
+      jasmine, pansies, and verbenas, among which the stocks held open their
+      fresh plump purses, of a pink as fragrant and as faded as old Spanish
+      leather, while on the gravel-path a long watering-pipe, painted green,
+      coiling across the ground, poured, where its holes were, over the flowers
+      whose perfume those holes inhaled, a vertical and prismatic fan of
+      infinitesimal, rainbow-coloured drops. Suddenly I stood still, unable to
+      move, as happens when something appears that requires not only our eyes to
+      take it in, but involves a deeper kind of perception and takes possession
+      of the whole of our being. A little girl, with fair, reddish hair, who
+      appeared to be returning from a walk, and held a trowel in her hand, was
+      looking at us, raising towards us a face powdered with pinkish freckles.
+      Her black eyes gleamed, and as I did not at that time know, and indeed
+      have never since learned how to reduce to its objective elements any
+      strong impression, since I had not, as they say, enough 'power of
+      observation' to isolate the sense of their colour, for a long time
+      afterwards, whenever I thought of her, the memory of those bright eyes
+      would at once present itself to me as a vivid azure, since her complexion
+      was fair; so much so that, perhaps, if her eyes had not been quite so
+      black—which was what struck one most forcibly on first meeting her—I
+      should not have been, as I was, especially enamoured of their imagined
+      blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I gazed at her, at first with that gaze which is not merely a messenger
+      from the eyes, but in whose window all the senses assemble and lean out,
+      petrified and anxious, that gaze which would fain reach, touch, capture,
+      bear off in triumph the body at which it is aimed, and the soul with the
+      body; then (so frightened was I lest at any moment my grandfather and
+      father, catching sight of the girl, might tear me away from her, by making
+      me run on in front of them) with another, an unconsciously appealing look,
+      whose object was to force her to pay attention to me, to see, to know me.
+      She cast a glance forwards and sideways, so as to take stock of my
+      grandfather and father, and doubtless the impression she formed of them
+      was that we were all absurd people, for she turned away with an
+      indifferent and contemptuous air, withdrew herself so as to spare her face
+      the indignity of remaining within their field of vision; and while they,
+      continuing to walk on without noticing her, had overtaken and passed me,
+      she allowed her eyes to wander, over the space that lay between us, in my
+      direction, without any particular expression, without appearing to have
+      seen me, but with an intensity, a half-hidden smile which I was unable to
+      interpret, according to the instruction I had received in the ways of good
+      breeding, save as a mark of infinite disgust; and her hand, at the same
+      time, sketched in the air an indelicate gesture, for which, when it was
+      addressed in public to a person whom one did not know, the little
+      dictionary of manners which I carried in my mind supplied only one
+      meaning, namely, a deliberate insult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gilberte, come along; what are you doing?" called out in a piercing tone
+      of authority a lady in white, whom I had not seen until that moment,
+      while, a little way beyond her, a gentleman in a suit of linen 'ducks,'
+      whom I did not know either, stared at me with eyes which seemed to be
+      starting from his head; the little girl's smile abruptly faded, and,
+      seizing her trowel, she made off without turning to look again in my
+      direction, with an air of obedience, inscrutable and sly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so was wafted to my ears the name of Gilberte, bestowed on me like a
+      talisman which might, perhaps, enable me some day to rediscover her whom
+      its syllables had just endowed with a definite personality, whereas, a
+      moment earlier, she had been only something vaguely seen. So it came to
+      me, uttered across the heads of the stocks and jasmines, pungent and cool
+      as the drops which fell from the green watering-pipe; impregnating and
+      irradiating the zone of pure air through which it had passed, which it set
+      apart and isolated from all other air, with the mystery of the life of her
+      whom its syllables designated to the happy creatures that lived and walked
+      and travelled in her company; unfolding through the arch of the pink
+      hawthorn, which opened at the height of my shoulder, the quintessence of
+      their familiarity—so exquisitely painful to myself—with her,
+      and with all that unknown world of her existence, into which I should
+      never penetrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment (while we moved away, and my grandfather murmured: "Poor
+      Swann, what a life they are leading him; fancy sending him away so that
+      she can be left alone with her Charlus—for that was Charlus: I
+      recognised him at once! And the child, too; at her age, to be mixed up in
+      all that!") the impression left on me by the despotic tone in which
+      Gilberte's mother had spoken to her, without her replying, by exhibiting
+      her to me as being obliged to yield obedience to some one else, as not
+      being indeed superior to the whole world, calmed my sufferings somewhat,
+      revived some hope in me, and cooled the ardour of my love. But very soon
+      that love surged up again in me like a reaction by which my humiliated
+      heart was endeavouring to rise to Gilberte's level, or to draw her down to
+      its own. I loved her; I was sorry not to have had the time and the
+      inspiration to insult her, to do her some injury, to force her to keep
+      some memory of me. I knew her to be so beautiful that I should have liked
+      to be able to retrace my steps so as to shake my fist at her and shout, "I
+      think you are hideous, grotesque; you are utterly disgusting!" However, I
+      walked away, carrying with me, then and for ever afterwards, as the first
+      illustration of a type of happiness rendered inaccessible to a little boy
+      of my kind by certain laws of nature which it was impossible to
+      transgress, the picture of a little girl with reddish hair, and a skin
+      freckled with tiny pink marks, who held a trowel in her hand, and smiled
+      as she directed towards me a long and subtle and inexpressive stare. And
+      already the charm with which her name, like a cloud of incense, had filled
+      that archway in the pink hawthorn through which she and I had, together,
+      heard its sound, was beginning to conquer, to cover, to embalm, to
+      beautify everything with which it had any association: her grandparents,
+      whom my own had been so unspeakably fortunate as to know, the glorious
+      profession of a stockholder, even the melancholy neighbourhood of the
+      Champs-Elysées, where she lived in Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Léonie," said my grandfather on our return, "I wish we had had you with
+      us this afternoon. You would never have known Tansonville. If I had had
+      the courage I would have cut you a branch of that pink hawthorn you used
+      to like so much." And so my grandfather told her the story of our walk,
+      either just to amuse her, or perhaps because there was still some hope
+      that she might be stimulated to rise from her bed and to go out of doors.
+      For in earlier days she had been very fond of Tansonville, and, moreover,
+      Swann's visits had been the last that she had continued to receive, at a
+      time when she had already closed her doors to all the world. And just as,
+      when he called, in these later days, to inquire for her (and she was still
+      the only person in our household whom he would ask to see), she would send
+      down to say that she was tired at the moment and resting, but that she
+      would be happy to see him another time, so, this evening, she said to my
+      grandfather, "Yes, some day when the weather is fine I shall go for a
+      drive as far as the gate of the park." And in saying this she was quite
+      sincere. She would have liked to see Swann and Tansonville again; but the
+      mere wish to do so sufficed for all that remained of her strength, which
+      its fulfilment would have more than exhausted. Sometimes a spell of fine
+      weather made her a little more energetic, she would rise and put on her
+      clothes; but before she had reached the outer room she would be 'tired'
+      again, and would insist on returning to her bed. The process which had
+      begun in her—and in her a little earlier only than it must come to
+      all of us—was the great and general renunciation which old age makes
+      in preparation for death, the chrysalis stage of life, which may be
+      observed wherever life has been unduly prolonged; even in old lovers who
+      have lived for one another with the utmost intensity of passion, and in
+      old friends bound by the closest ties of mental sympathy, who, after a
+      certain year, cease to make the necessary journey, or even to cross the
+      street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know well that they
+      will communicate no more in this world. My aunt must have been perfectly
+      well aware that she would not see Swann again, that she would never leave
+      her own house any more, but this ultimate seclusion seemed to be accepted
+      by her with all the more readiness for the very reason which, to our
+      minds, ought to have made it more unbearable; namely, that such a
+      seclusion was forced upon her by the gradual and steady diminution in her
+      strength which she was able to measure daily, which, by making every
+      action, every movement 'tiring' to her if not actually painful, gave to
+      inaction, isolation and silence the blessed, strengthening and refreshing
+      charm of repose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My aunt did not go to see the pink hawthorn in the hedge, but at all hours
+      of the day I would ask the rest of my family whether she was not going to
+      go, whether she used not, at one time, to go often to Tansonville, trying
+      to make them speak of Mlle. Swann's parents and grandparents, who appeared
+      to me to be as great and glorious as gods. The name, which had for me
+      become almost mythological, of Swann—when I talked with my family I
+      would grow sick with longing to hear them utter it; I dared not pronounce
+      it myself, but I would draw them into a discussion of matters which led
+      naturally to Gilberte and her family, in which she was involved, in
+      speaking of which I would feel myself not too remotely banished from her
+      company; and I would suddenly force my father (by pretending, for
+      instance, to believe that my grandfather's business had been in our family
+      before his day, or that the hedge with the pink hawthorn which my aunt
+      Léonie wished to visit was on common ground) to correct my statements, to
+      say, as though in opposition to me and of his own accord: "No, no, the
+      business belonged to <i>Swann's</i> father, that hedge is part of <i>Swann's</i>
+      park." And then I would be obliged to pause for breath; so stifling was
+      the pressure, upon that part of me where it was for ever inscribed, of
+      that name which, at the moment when I heard it, seemed to me fuller, more
+      portentous than any other name, because it was burdened with the weight of
+      all the occasions on which I had secretly uttered it in my mind. It caused
+      me a pleasure which I was ashamed to have dared to demand from my parents,
+      for so great was it that to have procured it for me must have involved
+      them in an immensity of effort, and with no recompense, since for them
+      there was no pleasure in the sound. And so I would prudently turn the
+      conversation. And by a scruple of conscience, also. All the singular
+      seductions which I had stored up in the sound of that word Swann, I found
+      again as soon as it was uttered. And then it occurred to me suddenly that
+      my parents could not fail to experience the same emotions, that they must
+      find themselves sharing my point of view, that they perceived in their
+      turn, that they condoned, that they even embraced my visionary longings,
+      and I was as wretched as though I had ravished and corrupted the innocence
+      of their hearts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That year my family fixed the day of their return to Paris rather earlier
+      than usual. On the morning of our departure I had had my hair curled, to
+      be ready to face the photographer, had had a new hat carefully set upon my
+      head, and had been buttoned into a velvet jacket; a little later my
+      mother, after searching everywhere for me, found me standing in tears on
+      that steep little hillside close to Tansonville, bidding a long farewell
+      to my hawthorns, clasping their sharp branches to my bosom, and (like a
+      princess in a tragedy, oppressed by the weight of all her senseless
+      jewellery) with no gratitude towards the officious hand which had, in
+      curling those ringlets, been at pains to collect all my hair upon my
+      forehead; trampling underfoot the curl-papers which I had torn from my
+      head, and my new hat with them. My mother was not at all moved by my
+      tears, but she could not suppress a cry at the sight of my battered
+      headgear and my ruined jacket. I did not, however, hear her. "Oh, my poor
+      little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it is not you
+      that want to make me unhappy, to force me to leave you. You, you have
+      never done me any harm. So I shall always love you." And, drying my eyes,
+      I promised them that, when I grew up, I would never copy the foolish
+      example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring days, instead
+      of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I would make excursions into
+      the country to see the first hawthorn-trees in bloom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once in the fields we never left them again during the rest of our
+      Méséglise walk. They were perpetually crossed, as though by invisible
+      streams of traffic, by the wind, which was to me the tutelary genius of
+      Combray. Every year, on the day of our arrival, in order to feel that I
+      really was at Combray, I would climb the hill to find it running again
+      through my clothing, and setting me running in its wake. One always had
+      the wind for companion when one went the 'Méséglise way,' on that swelling
+      plain which stretched, mile beyond mile, without any disturbance of its
+      gentle contour. I knew that Mlle. Swann used often to go and spend a few
+      days at Laon, and, for all that it was many miles away, the distance was
+      obviated by the absence of any intervening obstacle; when, on hot
+      afternoons, I would see a breath of wind emerge from the farthest horizon,
+      bowing the heads of the corn in distant fields, pouring like a flood over
+      all that vast expanse, and finally settling down, warm and rustling, among
+      the clover and sainfoin at my feet, that plain which was common to us both
+      seemed then to draw us together, to unite us; I would imagine that the
+      same breath had passed by her also, that there was some message from her
+      in what it was whispering to me, without my being able to understand it,
+      and I would catch and kiss it as it passed. On my left was a village
+      called Champieu (<i>Campus Pagani</i>, according to the Curé). On my right
+      I could see across the cornfields the two crocketed, rustic spires of
+      Saint-André-des-Champs, themselves as tapering, scaly, plated,
+      honeycombed, yellowed, and roughened as two ears of wheat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At regular intervals, among the inimitable ornamentation of their leaves,
+      which can be mistaken for those of no other fruit-tree, the apple-trees
+      were exposing their broad petals of white satin, or hanging in shy bunches
+      their unopened, blushing buds. It was while going the 'Méséglise way' that
+      I first noticed the circular shadow which apple-trees cast upon the sunlit
+      ground, and also those impalpable threads of golden silk which the setting
+      sun weaves slantingly downwards from beneath their leaves, and which I
+      would see my father slash through with his stick without ever making them
+      swerve from their straight path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes in the afternoon sky a white moon would creep up like a little
+      cloud, furtive, without display, suggesting an actress who does not have
+      to 'come on' for a while, and so goes 'in front' in her ordinary clothes
+      to watch the rest of the company for a moment, but keeps in the
+      background, not wishing to attract attention to herself. I was glad to
+      find her image reproduced in books and paintings, though these works of
+      art were very different—at least in my earlier years, before Bloch
+      had attuned my eyes and mind to more subtle harmonies—from those in
+      which the moon seems fair to me to-day, but in which I should not have
+      recognised her then. It might be, for instance, some novel by Saintine,
+      some landscape by Gleyre, in which she is cut out sharply against the sky,
+      in the form of a silver sickle, some work as unsophisticated and as
+      incomplete as were, at that date, my own impressions, and which it enraged
+      my grandmother's sisters to see me admire. They held that one ought to set
+      before children, and that children shewed their own innate good taste in
+      admiring, only such books and pictures as they would continue to admire
+      when their minds were developed and mature. No doubt they regarded
+      aesthetic values as material objects which an unclouded vision could not
+      fail to discern, without needing to have their equivalent in experience of
+      life stored up and slowly ripening in one's heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 shewn 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. Vinteuil assured them that it was, and indeed it is
+      remarkable that people never fail to arouse admiration of their normal
+      qualities in the relatives of anyone with whom they are in physical
+      intercourse. Bodily passion, which has been so unjustly decried, compels
+      its victims to display every vestige that is in them of unselfishness and
+      generosity, and so effectively that they shine resplendent in the eyes of
+      all beholders. Dr. Percepied, whose loud voice and bushy eyebrows enabled
+      him to play to his heart's content the part of 'double-dealer,' a part to
+      which he was not, otherwise, adapted, without in the least degree
+      compromising his unassailable and quite unmerited reputation of being a
+      kind-hearted old curmudgeon, could make the Curé and everyone else laugh
+      until they cried by saying in a harsh voice: "What d'ye say to this, now?
+      It seems that she plays music with her friend, Mlle. Vinteuil. That
+      surprises you, does it? Oh, I know nothing, nothing at all. It was Papa
+      Vinteuil who told me all about it yesterday. After all, she has every
+      right to be fond of music, that girl. I should never dream of thwarting
+      the artistic vocation of a child; nor Vinteuil either, it seems. And then
+      he plays music too, with his daughter's friend. Why, gracious heavens, it
+      must be a regular musical box, that house out there! What are you laughing
+      at? I say they've been playing too much music, those people. I met Papa
+      Vinteuil the other day, by the cemetery. It was all he could do to keep on
+      his feet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anyone who, like ourselves, had seen M. Vinteuil, about this time,
+      avoiding people whom he knew, and turning away as soon as he caught sight
+      of them, changed in a few months into an old man, engulfed in a sea of
+      sorrows, incapable of any effort not directly aimed at promoting his
+      daughter's happiness, spending whole days beside his wife's grave, could
+      hardly have failed to realise that he was gradually dying of a broken
+      heart, could hardly have supposed that he paid no attention to the rumours
+      which were going about. He knew, perhaps he even believed, what his
+      neighbours were saying. There is probably no one, however rigid his
+      virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of
+      circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which he
+      himself has been most outspoken in condemning, without at first
+      recognising it beneath the disguise which it assumes on entering his
+      presence, so as to wound him and to make him suffer; the odd words, the
+      unaccountable attitude, one evening, of a person whom he has a thousand
+      reasons for loving. But for a man of M. Vinteuil's sensibility it must
+      have been far more painful than for a hardened man of the world to have to
+      resign himself to one of those situations which are wrongly supposed to
+      occur in Bohemian circles only; for they are produced whenever there needs
+      to establish itself in the security necessary to its development a vice
+      which Nature herself has planted in the soul of a child, perhaps by no
+      more than blending the virtues of its father and mother, as she might
+      blend the colours of their eyes. And yet however much M. Vinteuil may have
+      known of his daughter's conduct it did not follow that his adoration of
+      her grew any less. The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in
+      which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that engendered those
+      beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them; they can aim at them
+      continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them; and
+      an avalanche of miseries and maladies coming, one after another, without
+      interruption into the bosom of a family, will not make it lose faith in
+      either the clemency of its God or the capacity of its physician. But when
+      M. Vinteuil regarded his daughter and himself from the point of view of
+      the world, and of their reputation, when he attempted to place himself by
+      her side in the rank which they occupied in the general estimation of
+      their neighbours, then he was bound to give judgment, to utter his own and
+      her social condemnation in precisely the terms which the inhabitant of
+      Combray most hostile to him and his daughter would have employed; he saw
+      himself and her in 'low,' in the very 'lowest water,' inextricably
+      stranded; and his manners had of late been tinged with that humility, that
+      respect for persons who ranked above him and to whom he must now look up
+      (however far beneath him they might hitherto have been), that tendency to
+      search for some means of rising again to their level, which is an almost
+      mechanical result of any human misfortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, when we were walking with Swann in one of the streets of Combray,
+      M. Vinteuil, turning out of another street, found himself so suddenly face
+      to face with us all that he had not time to escape; and Swann, with that
+      almost arrogant charity of a man of the world who, amid the dissolution of
+      all his own moral prejudices, finds in another's shame merely a reason for
+      treating him with a friendly benevolence, the outward signs of which serve
+      to enhance and gratify the self-esteem of the bestower because he feels
+      that they are all the more precious to him upon whom they are bestowed,
+      conversed at great length with M. Vinteuil, with whom for a long time he
+      had been barely on speaking terms, and invited him, before leaving us, to
+      send his daughter over, one day, to play at Tansonville. It was an
+      invitation which, two years earlier, would have enraged M. Vinteuil, but
+      which now filled him with so much gratitude that he felt himself obliged
+      to refrain from the indiscretion of accepting. Swann's friendly regard for
+      his daughter seemed to him to be in itself so honourable, so precious a
+      support for his cause that he felt it would perhaps be better to make no
+      use of it, so as to have the wholly Platonic satisfaction of keeping it in
+      reserve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a charming man!" he said to us, after Swann had gone, with the same
+      enthusiasm and veneration which make clever and pretty women of the middle
+      classes fall victims to the physical and intellectual charms of a duchess,
+      even though she be ugly and a fool. "What a charming man! What a pity that
+      he should have made such a deplorable marriage!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, so strong an element of hypocrisy is there in even the most
+      sincere of men, who cast off, while they are talking to anyone, the
+      opinion they actually hold of him and will express when he is no longer
+      there, my family joined with M. Vinteuil in deploring Swann's marriage,
+      invoking principles and conventions which (all the more because they
+      invoked them in common with him, as though we were all thorough good
+      fellows of the same sort) they appeared to suggest were in no way
+      infringed at Montjouvain. M. Vinteuil did not send his daughter to visit
+      Swann, an omission which Swann was the first to regret. For constantly,
+      after meeting M. Vinteuil, he would remember that he had been meaning for
+      a long time to ask him about some one of the same name as himself, one of
+      his relatives, Swann supposed. And on this occasion he determined that he
+      would not forget what he had to say to him when M. Vinteuil should appear
+      with his daughter at Tansonville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the 'Méséglise way' was the shorter of the two that we used to take
+      for our walks round Combray, and for that reason was reserved for days of
+      uncertain weather, it followed that the climate of Méséglise shewed an
+      unduly high rainfall, and we would never lose sight of the fringe of
+      Roussainville wood, so that we could, at any moment, run for shelter
+      beneath its dense thatch of leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often the sun would disappear behind a cloud, which impinged on its
+      roundness, but whose edge the sun gilded in return. The brightness, though
+      not the light of day, would then be shut off from a landscape in which all
+      life appeared to be suspended, while the little village of Roussainville
+      carved in relief upon the sky the white mass of its gables, with a
+      startling precision of detail. A gust of wind blew from its perch a rook,
+      which floated away and settled in the distance, while beneath a paling sky
+      the woods on the horizon assumed a deeper tone of blue, as though they
+      were painted in one of those cameos which you still find decorating the
+      walls of old houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on other days would begin to fall the rain, of which we had had due
+      warning from the little barometer-figure which the spectacle-maker hung
+      out in his doorway. Its drops, like migrating birds which fly off in a
+      body at a given moment, would come down out of the sky in close marching
+      order. They would never drift apart, would make no movement at random in
+      their rapid course, but each one, keeping in its place, would draw after
+      it the drop which was following, and the sky would be as greatly darkened
+      as by the swallows flying south. We would take refuge among the trees. And
+      when it seemed that their flight was accomplished, a few last drops,
+      feebler and slower than the rest, would still come down. But we would
+      emerge from our shelter, for the rain was playing a game, now, among the
+      branches, and, even when it was almost dry again underfoot, a stray drop
+      or two, lingering in the hollow of a leaf, would run down and hang
+      glistening from the point of it until suddenly it splashed plump upon our
+      upturned faces from the whole height of the tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often, too, we would hurry for shelter, tumbling in among all its stony
+      saints and patriarchs, into the porch of Saint-André-des-Champs. How
+      typically French that church was! Over its door the saints, the kings of
+      chivalry with lilies in their hands, the wedding scenes and funerals were
+      carved as they might have been in the mind of Françoise. The sculptor had
+      also recorded certain anecdotes of Aristotle and Virgil, precisely as
+      Françoise in her kitchen would break into speech about Saint Louis as
+      though she herself had known him, generally in order to depreciate, by
+      contrast with him, my grandparents, whom she considered less 'righteous.'
+      One could see that the ideas which the mediaeval artist and the mediaeval
+      peasant (who had survived to cook for us in the nineteenth century) had of
+      classical and of early Christian history, ideas whose inaccuracy was
+      atoned for by their honest simplicity, were derived not from books, but
+      from a tradition at once ancient and direct, unbroken, oral, degraded,
+      unrecognisable, and alive. Another Combray person whom I could discern
+      also, potential and typified, in the gothic sculptures of
+      Saint-André-des-Champs was young Théodore, the assistant in Camus's shop.
+      And, indeed, Françoise herself was well aware that she had in him a
+      countryman and contemporary, for when my aunt was too ill for Françoise to
+      be able, unaided, to lift her in her bed or to carry her to her chair,
+      rather than let the kitchen-maid come upstairs and, perhaps, 'make an
+      impression' on my aunt, she would send out for Théodore. And this lad, who
+      was regarded, and quite rightly, in the town as a 'bad character,' was so
+      abounding in that spirit which had served to decorate the porch of
+      Saint-André-des-Champs, and particularly in the feelings of respect due,
+      in Françoise eyes, to all 'poor invalids,' and, above all, to her own
+      'poor mistress,' that he had, when he bent down to raise my aunt's head
+      from her pillow, the same air of préraphaélite simplicity and zeal which
+      the little angels in the bas-reliefs wear, who throng, with tapers in
+      their hands, about the deathbed of Our Lady, as though those carved faces
+      of stone, naked and grey like trees in winter, were, like them, asleep
+      only, storing up life and waiting to flower again in countless plebeian
+      faces, reverend and cunning as the face of Théodore, and glowing with the
+      ruddy brilliance of ripe apples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There, too, not fastened to the wall like the little angels, but detached
+      from the porch, of more than human stature, erect upon her pedestal as
+      upon a footstool, which had been placed there to save her feet from
+      contact with the wet ground, stood a saint with the full cheeks, the firm
+      breasts which swelled out inside her draperies like a cluster of ripe
+      grapes inside a bag, the narrow forehead, short and stubborn nose,
+      deep-set eyes, and strong, thick-skinned, courageous expression of the
+      country-women of those parts. This similarity, which imparted to the
+      statue itself a kindliness that I had not looked to find in it, was
+      corroborated often by the arrival of some girl from the fields, come, like
+      ourselves, for shelter beneath the porch, whose presence there—as
+      when the leaves of a climbing plant have grown up beside leaves carved in
+      stone—seemed intended by fate to allow us, by confronting it with
+      its type in nature, to form a critical estimate of the truth of the work
+      of art. Before our eyes, in the distance, a promised or an accursed land,
+      Roussainville, within whose walls I had never penetrated, Roussainville
+      was now, when the rain had ceased for us, still being chastised, like a
+      village in the Old Testament, by all the innumerable spears and arrows of
+      the storm, which beat down obliquely upon the dwellings of its
+      inhabitants, or else had already received the forgiveness of the Almighty,
+      Who had restored to it the light of His sun, which fell upon it in rays of
+      uneven length, like the rays of a monstrance upon an altar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, when the weather had completely broken, we were obliged to go
+      home and to remain shut up indoors. Here and there, in the distance, in a
+      landscape which, what with the failing light and saturated atmosphere,
+      resembled a seascape rather, a few solitary houses clinging to the lower
+      slopes of a hill whose heights were buried in a cloudy darkness shone out
+      like little boats which had folded their sails and would ride at anchor,
+      all night, upon the sea. But what mattered rain or storm? In summer, bad
+      weather is no more than a passing fit of superficial ill-temper expressed
+      by the permanent, underlying fine weather; a very different thing from the
+      fluid and unstable 'fine weather' of winter, its very opposite, in fact;
+      for has it not (firmly established in the soil, on which it has taken
+      solid form in dense masses of foliage over which the rain may pour in
+      torrents without weakening the resistance offered by their real and
+      lasting happiness) hoisted, to keep them flying throughout the season, in
+      the village streets, on the walls of the houses and in their gardens, its
+      silken banners, violet and white. Sitting in the little parlour, where I
+      would pass the time until dinner with a book, I might hear the water
+      dripping from our chestnut-trees, but I would know that the shower would
+      only glaze and brighten the greenness of their thick, crumpled leaves, and
+      that they themselves had undertaken to remain there, like pledges of
+      summer, all through the rainy night, to assure me of the fine weather's
+      continuing; it might rain as it pleased, but to-morrow, over the white
+      fence of Tansonville, there would surge and flow, numerous as ever, a sea
+      of little heart-shaped leaves; and without the least anxiety I could watch
+      the poplar in the Rue des Perchamps praying for mercy, bowing in
+      desperation before the storm; without the least anxiety I could hear, at
+      the far end of the garden, the last peals of thunder growling among our
+      lilac-trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the weather was bad all morning, my family would abandon the idea of a
+      walk, and I would remain at home. But, later on, I formed the habit of
+      going out by myself on such days, and walking towards
+      Méséglise-la-Vineuse, during that autumn when we had to come to Combray to
+      settle the division of my aunt Léonie's estate; for she had died at last,
+      leaving both parties among her neighbours triumphant in the fact of her
+      demise—those who had insisted that her mode of life was enfeebling
+      and must ultimately kill her, and, equally, those who had always
+      maintained that she suffered from some disease not imaginary, but organic,
+      by the visible proof of which the most sceptical would be obliged to own
+      themselves convinced, once she had succumbed to it; causing no intense
+      grief to any save one of her survivors, but to that one a grief savage in
+      its violence. During the long fortnight of my aunt's last illness
+      Françoise never went out of her room for an instant, never took off her
+      clothes, allowed no one else to do anything for my aunt, and did not leave
+      her body until it was actually in its grave. Then, at last, we understood
+      that the sort of terror in which Françoise had lived of my aunt's harsh
+      words, her suspicions and her anger, had developed in her a sentiment
+      which we had mistaken for hatred, and which was really veneration and
+      love. Her true mistress, whose decisions it had been impossible to
+      foresee, from whose stratagems it had been so hard to escape, of whose
+      good nature it had been so easy to take advantage, her sovereign, her
+      mysterious and omnipotent monarch was no more. Compared with such a
+      mistress we counted for very little. The time had long passed when, on our
+      first coming to spend our holidays at Combray, we had been of equal
+      importance, in Françoise eyes, with my aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During that autumn my parents, finding the days so fully occupied with the
+      legal formalities that had to be gone through, and discussions with
+      solicitors and farmers, that they had little time for walks which, as it
+      happened, the weather made precarious, began to let me go, without them,
+      along the 'Méséglise way,' wrapped up in a huge Highland plaid which
+      protected me from the rain, and which I was all the more ready to throw
+      over my shoulders because I felt that the stripes of its gaudy tartan
+      scandalised Françoise, whom it was impossible to convince that the colour
+      of one's clothes had nothing whatever to do with one's mourning for the
+      dead, and to whom the grief which we had shewn on my aunt's death was
+      wholly unsatisfactory, since we had not entertained the neighbours to a
+      great funeral banquet, and did not adopt a special tone when we spoke of
+      her, while I at times might be heard humming a tune. I am sure that in a
+      book—and to that extent my feelings were closely akin to those of
+      Françoise—such a conception of mourning, in the manner of the <i>Chanson
+      de Roland</i> and of the porch of Saint-André-des-Champs, would have
+      seemed most attractive. But the moment that Françoise herself approached,
+      some evil spirit would urge me to attempt to make her angry, and I would
+      avail myself of the slightest pretext to say to her that I regretted my
+      aunt's death because she had been a good woman in spite of her
+      absurdities, but not in the least because she was my aunt; that she might
+      easily have been my aunt and yet have been so odious that her death would
+      not have caused me a moment's sorrow; statements which, in a book, would
+      have struck me as merely fatuous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if Françoise then, inspired like a poet with a flood of confused
+      reflections upon bereavement, grief, and family memories, were to plead
+      her inability to rebut my theories, saying: "I don't know how to <i>espress</i>
+      myself"—I would triumph over her with an ironical and brutal common
+      sense worthy of Dr. Percepied; and if she went on: "All the same she was a
+      <i>geological</i> relation; there is always the respect due to your <i>geology</i>,"
+      I would shrug my shoulders and say: "It is really very good of me to
+      discuss the matter with an illiterate old woman who cannot speak her own
+      language," adopting, to deliver judgment on Françoise, the mean and narrow
+      outlook of the pedant, whom those who are most contemptuous of him in the
+      impartiality of their own minds are only too prone to copy when they are
+      obliged to play a part upon the vulgar stage of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My walks, that autumn, were all the more delightful because I used to take
+      them after long hours spent over a book. When I was tired of reading,
+      after a whole morning in the house, I would throw my plaid across my
+      shoulders and set out; my body, which in a long spell of enforced
+      immobility had stored up an accumulation of vital energy, was now obliged,
+      like a spinning-top wound and let go, to spend this in every direction.
+      The walls of houses, the Tansonville hedge, the trees of Roussainville
+      wood, the bushes against which Montjouvain leaned its back, all must bear
+      the blows of my walking-stick or umbrella, must hear my shouts of
+      happiness, blows and shouts being indeed no more than expressions of the
+      confused ideas which exhilarated me, and which, not being developed to the
+      point at which they might rest exposed to the light of day, rather than
+      submit to a slow and difficult course of elucidation, found it easier and
+      more pleasant to drift into an immediate outlet. And so it is that the
+      bulk of what appear to be the emotional renderings of our inmost
+      sensations do no more than relieve us of the burden of those sensations by
+      allowing them to escape from us in an indistinct form which does not teach
+      us how it should be interpreted. When I attempt to reckon up all that I
+      owe to the 'Méséglise way,' all the humble discoveries of which it was
+      either the accidental setting or the direct inspiration and cause, I am
+      reminded that it was in that same autumn, on one of those walks, near the
+      bushy precipice which guarded Montjouvain from the rear, that I was struck
+      for the first time by this lack of harmony between our impressions and
+      their normal forms of expression. After an hour of rain and wind, against
+      which I had put up a brisk fight, as I came to the edge of the Montjouvain
+      pond, and reached a little hut, roofed with tiles, in which M. Vinteuil's
+      gardener kept his tools, the sun shone out again, and its golden rays,
+      washed clean by the shower, blazed once more in the sky, on the trees, on
+      the wall of the hut, and on the still wet tiles of the roof, which had a
+      chicken perching upon its ridge. The wind pulled out sideways the wild
+      grass that grew in the wall, and the chicken's downy feathers, both of
+      which things let themselves float upon the wind's breath to their full
+      extent, with the unresisting submissiveness of light and lifeless matter.
+      The tiled roof cast upon the pond, whose reflections were now clear again
+      in the sunlight, a square of pink marble, the like of which I had never
+      observed before. And, seeing upon the water, where it reflected the wall,
+      a pallid smile responding to the smiling sky, I cried aloud in my
+      enthusiasm, brandishing my furled umbrella: "Damn, damn, damn, damn!" But
+      at the same time I felt that I was in duty bound not to content myself
+      with these unilluminating words, but to endeavour to see more clearly into
+      the sources of my enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was at that moment, too—thanks to a peasant who went past,
+      apparently in a bad enough humour already, but more so when he nearly
+      received my umbrella in his face, and who replied without any cordiality
+      to my "Fine day, what! good to be out walking!"—that I learned that
+      identical emotions do not spring up in the hearts of all men
+      simultaneously, by a pre-established order. Later on I discovered that,
+      whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the
+      friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment
+      have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and
+      wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed. And if I had been
+      thinking with affection of my parents, and forming the most sensible and
+      proper plans for giving them pleasure, they would have been using the same
+      interval of time to discover some misdeed that I had already forgotten,
+      and would begin to scold me severely, just as I flung myself upon them
+      with a kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes to the exhilaration which I derived from being alone would be
+      added an alternative feeling, so that I could not be clear in my mind to
+      which I should give the casting vote; a feeling stimulated by the desire
+      to see rise up before my eyes a peasant-girl whom I might clasp in my
+      arms. Coming abruptly, and without giving me time to trace it accurately
+      to its source among so many ideas of a very different kind, the pleasure
+      which accompanied this desire seemed only a degree superior to what was
+      given me by my other thoughts. I found an additional merit in everything
+      that was in my mind at the moment, in the pink reflection of the tiled
+      roof, the wild grass in the wall, the village of Roussainville into which
+      I had long desired to penetrate, the trees of its wood and the steeple of
+      its church, created in them by this fresh emotion which made them appear
+      more desirable only because I thought it was they that had provoked it,
+      and which seemed only to wish to bear me more swiftly towards them when it
+      filled my sails with a potent, unknown, and propitious breeze. But if this
+      desire that a woman should appear added for me something more exalting
+      than the charms of nature, they in their turn enlarged what I might, in
+      the woman's charm, have found too much restricted. It seemed to me that
+      the beauty of the trees was hers also, and that, as for the spirit of
+      those horizons, of the village of Roussainville, of the books which I was
+      reading that year, it was her kiss which would make me master of them all;
+      and, my imagination drawing strength from contact with my sensuality, my
+      sensuality expanding through all the realms of my imagination, my desire
+      had no longer any bounds. Moreover—just as in moments of musing
+      contemplation of nature, the normal actions of the mind being suspended,
+      and our abstract ideas of things set on one side, we believe with the
+      profoundest faith in the originality, in the individual existence of the
+      place in which we may happen to be—the passing figure which my
+      desire evoked seemed to be not any one example of the general type of
+      'woman,' but a necessary and natural product of the soil. For at that time
+      everything which was not myself, the earth and the creatures upon it,
+      seemed to me more precious, more important, endowed with a more real
+      existence than they appear to full-grown men. And between the earth and
+      its creatures I made no distinction. I had a desire for a peasant-girl
+      from Méséglise or Roussainville, for a fisher-girl from Balbec, just as I
+      had a desire for Balbec and Méséglise. The pleasure which those girls were
+      empowered to give me would have seemed less genuine, I should have had no
+      faith in it any longer, if I had been at liberty to modify its conditions
+      as I chose. To meet in Paris a fisher-girl from Balbec or a peasant-girl
+      from Méséglise would have been like receiving the present of a shell which
+      I had never seen upon the beach, or of a fern which I had never found
+      among the woods, would have stripped from the pleasure which she was about
+      to give me all those other pleasures in the thick of which my imagination
+      had enwrapped her. But to wander thus among the woods of Roussainville
+      without a peasant-girl to embrace was to see those woods and yet know
+      nothing of their secret treasure, their deep-hidden beauty. That girl whom
+      I never saw save dappled with the shadows of their leaves, was to me
+      herself a plant of local growth, only taller than the rest, and one whose
+      structure would enable me to approach more closely than in them to the
+      intimate savour of the land from which she had sprung. I could believe
+      this all the more readily (and also that the caresses by which she would
+      bring that savour to my senses were themselves of a particular kind,
+      yielding a pleasure which I could never derive from any but herself) since
+      I was still, and must for long remain, in that period of life when one has
+      not yet separated the fact of this sensual pleasure from the various women
+      in whose company one has tasted it, when one has not reduced it to a
+      general idea which makes one regard them thenceforward as the variable
+      instruments of a pleasure that is always the same. Indeed, that pleasure
+      does not exist, isolated and formulated in the consciousness, as the
+      ultimate object with which one seeks a woman's company, or as the cause of
+      the uneasiness which, in anticipation, one then feels. Hardly even does
+      one think of oneself, but only how to escape from oneself. Obscurely
+      awaited, immanent and concealed, it rouses to such a paroxysm, at the
+      moment when at last it makes itself felt, those other pleasures which we
+      find in the tender glance, in the kiss of her who is by our side, that it
+      seems to us, more than anything else, a sort of transport of gratitude for
+      the kindness of heart of our companion and for her touching predilection
+      of ourselves, which we measure by the benefits, by the happiness that she
+      showers upon us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas, it was in vain that I implored the dungeon-keep of Roussainville,
+      that I begged it to send out to meet me some daughter of its village,
+      appealing to it as to the sole confidant to whom I had disclosed my
+      earliest desire when, from the top floor of our house at Combray, from the
+      little room that smelt of orris-root, I had peered out and seen nothing
+      but its tower, framed in the square of the half-opened window, while, with
+      the heroic scruples of a traveller setting forth for unknown climes, or of
+      a desperate wretch hesitating on the verge of self-destruction, faint with
+      emotion, I explored, across the bounds of my own experience, an untrodden
+      path which, I believed, might lead me to my death, even—until
+      passion spent itself and left me shuddering among the sprays of flowering
+      currant which, creeping in through the window, tumbled all about my body.
+      In vain I called upon it now. In vain I compressed the whole landscape
+      into my field of vision, draining it with an exhaustive gaze which sought
+      to extract from it a female creature. I might go alone as far as the porch
+      of Saint-André-des-Champs: never did I find there the girl whom I should
+      inevitably have met, had I been with my grandfather, and so unable to
+      engage her in conversation. I would fix my eyes, without limit of time,
+      upon the trunk of a distant tree, from behind which she must appear and
+      spring towards me; my closest scrutiny left the horizon barren as before;
+      night was falling; without any hope now would I concentrate my attention,
+      as though to force up out of it the creatures which it must conceal, upon
+      that sterile soil, that stale and outworn land; and it was no longer in
+      lightness of heart, but with sullen anger that I aimed blows at the trees
+      of Roussainville wood, from among which no more living creatures made
+      their appearance than if they had been trees painted on the stretched
+      canvas background of a panorama, when, unable to resign myself to having
+      to return home without having held in my arms the woman I so greatly
+      desired, I was yet obliged to retrace my steps towards Combray, and to
+      admit to myself that the chance of her appearing in my path grew smaller
+      every moment. And if she had appeared, would I have dared to speak to her?
+      I felt that she would have regarded me as mad, for I no longer thought of
+      those desires which came to me on my walks, but were never realized, as
+      being shared by others, or as having any existence apart from myself. They
+      seemed nothing more now than the purely subjective, impotent, illusory
+      creatures of my temperament. They were in no way connected now with
+      nature, with the world of real things, which from now onwards lost all its
+      charm and significance, and meant no more to my life than a purely
+      conventional framework, just as the action of a novel is framed in the
+      railway carriage, on a seat of which a traveller is reading it to pass the
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it is perhaps from another impression which I received at
+      Montjouvain, some years later, an impression which at that time was
+      without meaning, that there arose, long afterwards, my idea of that cruel
+      side of human passion called 'sadism.' We shall see, in due course, that
+      for quite another reason the memory of this impression was to play an
+      important part in my life. It was during a spell of very hot weather; my
+      parents, who had been obliged to go away for the whole day, had told me
+      that I might stay out as late as I pleased; and having gone as far as the
+      Montjouvain pond, where I enjoyed seeing again the reflection of the tiled
+      roof of the hut, I had lain down in the shade and gone to sleep among the
+      bushes on the steep slope that rose up behind the house, just where I had
+      waited for my parents, years before, one day when they had gone to call on
+      M. Vinteuil. It was almost dark when I awoke, and I wished to rise and go
+      away, but I saw Mlle. Vinteuil (or thought, at least, that I recognised
+      her, for I had not seen her often at Combray, and then only when she was
+      still a child, whereas she was now growing into a young woman), who
+      probably had just come in, standing in front of me, and only a few feet
+      away from me, in that room in which her father had entertained mine, and
+      which she had now made into a little sitting-room for herself. The window
+      was partly open; the lamp was lighted; I could watch her every movement
+      without her being able to see me; but, had I gone away, I must have made a
+      rustling sound among the bushes, she would have heard me, and might have
+      thought that I had been hiding there in order to spy upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was in deep mourning, for her father had but lately died. We had not
+      gone to see her; my mother had not cared to go, on account of that virtue
+      which alone in her fixed any bounds to her benevolence—namely,
+      modesty; but she pitied the girl from the depths of her heart. My mother
+      had not forgotten the sad end of M. Vinteuil's life, his complete
+      absorption, first in having to play both mother and nursery-maid to his
+      daughter, and, later, in the suffering which she had caused him; she could
+      see the tortured expression which was never absent from the old man's face
+      in those terrible last years; she knew that he had definitely abandoned
+      the task of transcribing in fair copies the whole of his later work, the
+      poor little pieces, we imagined, of an old music-master, a retired village
+      organist, which, we assumed, were of little or no value in themselves,
+      though we did not despise them, because they were of such great value to
+      him and had been the chief motive of his life before he sacrificed them to
+      his daughter; pieces which, being mostly not even written down, but
+      recorded only in his memory, while the rest were scribbled on loose sheets
+      of paper, and quite illegible, must now remain unknown for ever; my mother
+      thought, also, of that other and still more cruel renunciation to which M.
+      Vinteuil had been driven, that of seeing the girl happily settled, with an
+      honest and respectable future; when she called to mind all this utter and
+      crushing misery that had come upon my aunts' old music-master, she was
+      moved to very real grief, and shuddered to think of that other grief, so
+      different in its bitterness, which Mlle. Vinteuil must now be feeling,
+      tinged with remorse at having virtually killed her father. "Poor M.
+      Vinteuil," my mother would say, "he lived for his daughter, and now he has
+      died for her, without getting his reward. Will he get it now, I wonder,
+      and in what form? It can only come to him from her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the far end of Mlle. Vinteuil's sitting-room, on the mantelpiece, stood
+      a small photograph of her father which she went briskly to fetch, just as
+      the sound of carriage wheels was heard from the road outside, then flung
+      herself down on a sofa and drew close beside her a little table on which
+      she placed the photograph, just as, long ago, M. Vinteuil had 'placed'
+      beside him the piece of music which he would have liked to play over to my
+      parents. And then her friend came in. Mlle. Vinteuil greeted her without
+      rising, clasping her hands behind her head, and drew her body to one side
+      of the sofa, as though to 'make room.' But no sooner had she done this
+      than she appeared to feel that she was perhaps suggesting a particular
+      position to her friend, with an emphasis which might well be regarded as
+      importunate. She thought that her friend would prefer, no doubt, to sit
+      down at some distance from her, upon a chair; she felt that she had been
+      indiscreet; her sensitive heart took fright; stretching herself out again
+      over the whole of the sofa, she closed her eyes and began to yawn, so as
+      to indicate that it was a desire to sleep, and that alone, which had made
+      her lie down there. Despite the rude and hectoring familiarity with which
+      she treated her companion I could recognise in her the obsequious and
+      reticent advances, the abrupt scruples and restraints which had
+      characterised her father. Presently she rose and came to the window, where
+      she pretended to be trying to close the shutters and not succeeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Leave them open," said her friend. "I am hot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it's too dreadful! People will see us," Mlle. Vinteuil answered. And
+      then she guessed, probably, that her friend would think that she had
+      uttered these words simply in order to provoke a reply in certain other
+      words, which she seemed, indeed, to wish to hear spoken, but, from
+      prudence, would let her friend be the first to speak. And so, although I
+      could not see her face clearly enough, I am sure that the expression must
+      have appeared on it which my grandmother had once found so delightful,
+      when she hastily went on: "When I say 'see us' I mean, of course, see us
+      reading. It's so dreadful to think that in every trivial little thing you
+      do some one may be overlooking you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the instinctive generosity of her nature, a courtesy beyond her
+      control, she refrained from uttering the studied words which, she had
+      felt, were indispensable for the full realisation of her desire. And
+      perpetually, in the depths of her being, a shy and suppliant maiden would
+      kneel before that other element, the old campaigner, battered but
+      triumphant, would intercede with him and oblige him to retire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, yes, it is so extremely likely that people are looking at us at this
+      time of night in this densely populated district!" said her friend, with
+      bitter irony. "And what if they are?" she went on, feeling bound to
+      annotate with a malicious yet affectionate wink these words which she was
+      repeating, out of good nature, like a lesson prepared beforehand which,
+      she knew, it would please Mlle. Vinteuil to hear. "And what if they are?
+      All the better that they should see us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mlle. Vinteuil shuddered and rose to her feet. In her sensitive and
+      scrupulous heart she was ignorant what words ought to flow, spontaneously,
+      from her lips, so as to produce the scene for which her eager senses
+      clamoured. She reached out as far as she could across the limitations of
+      her true character to find the language appropriate to a vicious young
+      woman such as she longed to be thought, but the words which, she imagined,
+      such a young woman might have uttered with sincerity sounded unreal in her
+      own mouth. And what little she allowed herself to say was said in a
+      strained tone, in which her ingrained timidity paralysed her tendency to
+      freedom and audacity of speech; while she kept on interrupting herself
+      with: "You're sure you aren't cold? You aren't too hot? You don't want to
+      sit and read by yourself?...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your ladyship's thoughts seem to be rather 'warm' this evening," she
+      concluded, doubtless repeating a phrase which she had heard used, on some
+      earlier occasion, by her friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the V-shaped opening of her crape bodice Mlle. Vinteuil felt the sting
+      of her friend's sudden kiss; she gave a little scream and ran away; and
+      then they began to chase one another about the room, scrambling over the
+      furniture, their wide sleeves fluttering like wings, clucking and crowing
+      like a pair of amorous fowls. At last Mlle. Vinteuil fell down exhausted
+      upon the sofa, where she was screened from me by the stooping body of her
+      friend. But the latter now had her back turned to the little table on
+      which the old music-master's portrait had been arranged. Mlle. Vinteuil
+      realised that her friend would not see it unless her attention were drawn
+      to it, and so exclaimed, as if she herself had just noticed it for the
+      first time: "Oh! there's my father's picture looking at us; I can't think
+      who can have put it there; I'm sure I've told them twenty times, that is
+      not the proper place for it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remembered the words that M. Vinteuil had used to my parents in
+      apologising for an obtrusive sheet of music. This photograph was, of
+      course, in common use in their ritual observances, was subjected to daily
+      profanation, for the friend replied in words which were evidently a
+      liturgical response: "Let him stay there. He can't trouble us any longer.
+      D'you think he'd start whining, d'you think he'd pack you out of the house
+      if he could see you now, with the window open, the ugly old monkey?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To which Mlle. Vinteuil replied, "Oh, please!"—a gentle reproach
+      which testified to the genuine goodness of her nature, not that it was
+      prompted by any resentment at hearing her father spoken of in this fashion
+      (for that was evidently a feeling which she had trained herself, by a long
+      course of sophistries, to keep in close subjection at such moments), but
+      rather because it was the bridle which, so as to avoid all appearance of
+      egotism, she herself used to curb the gratification which her friend was
+      attempting to procure for her. It may well have been, too, that the
+      smiling moderation with which she faced and answered these blasphemies,
+      that this tender and hypocritical rebuke appeared to her frank and
+      generous nature as a particularly shameful and seductive form of that
+      criminal attitude towards life which she was endeavouring to adopt. But
+      she could not resist the attraction of being treated with affection by a
+      woman who had just shewn herself so implacable towards the defenceless
+      dead; she sprang on to the knees of her friend and held out a chaste brow
+      to be kissed; precisely as a daughter would have done to her mother,
+      feeling with exquisite joy that they would thus, between them, inflict the
+      last turn of the screw of cruelty, in robbing M. Vinteuil, as though they
+      were actually rifling his tomb, of the sacred rights of fatherhood. Her
+      friend took the girl's head in her hands and placed a kiss on her brow
+      with a docility prompted by the real affection she had for Mlle. Vinteuil,
+      as well as by the desire to bring what distraction she could into the dull
+      and melancholy life of an orphan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know what I should like to do to that old horror?" she said,
+      taking up the photograph. She murmured in Mlle. Vinteuil's ear something
+      that I could not distinguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! You would never dare."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not dare to spit on it? On that?" shouted the friend with deliberate
+      brutality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I heard no more, for Mlle. Vinteuil, who now seemed weary, awkward,
+      preoccupied, sincere, and rather sad, came back to the window and drew the
+      shutters close; but I knew now what was the reward that M. Vinteuil, in
+      return for all the suffering that he had endured in his lifetime, on
+      account of his daughter, had received from her after his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet I have since reflected that if M. Vinteuil had been able to be
+      present at this scene, he might still, and in spite of everything, have
+      continued to believe in his daughter's soundness of heart, and that he
+      might even, in so doing, have been not altogether wrong. It was true that
+      in all Mlle. Vinteuil's actions the appearance of evil was so strong and
+      so consistent that it would have been hard to find it exhibited in such
+      completeness save in what is nowadays called a 'sadist'; it is behind the
+      footlights of a Paris theatre, and not under the homely lamp of an actual
+      country house, that one expects to see a girl leading her friend on to
+      spit upon the portrait of a father who has lived and died for nothing and
+      no one but herself; and when we find in real life a desire for
+      melodramatic effect, it is generally the 'sadic' instinct that is
+      responsible for it. It is possible that, without being in the least
+      inclined towards 'sadism,' a girl might have shewn the same outrageous
+      cruelty as Mlle. Vinteuil in desecrating the memory and defying the wishes
+      of her dead father, but she would not have given them deliberate
+      expression in an act so crude in its symbolism, so lacking in subtlety;
+      the criminal element in her behaviour would have been less evident to
+      other people, and even to herself, since she would not have admitted to
+      herself that she was doing wrong. But, appearances apart, in Mlle.
+      Vinteuil's soul, at least in the earlier stages, the evil element was
+      probably not unmixed. A 'sadist' of her kind is an artist in evil, which a
+      wholly wicked person could not be, for in that case the evil would not
+      have been external, it would have seemed quite natural to her, and would
+      not even have been distinguishable from herself; and as for virtue,
+      respect for the dead, filial obedience, since she would never have
+      practised the cult of these things, she would take no impious delight in
+      their profanation. 'Sadists' of Mlle. Vinteuil's sort are creatures so
+      purely sentimental, so virtuous by nature, that even sensual pleasure
+      appears to them as something bad, a privilege reserved for the wicked. And
+      when they allow themselves for a moment to enjoy it they endeavour to
+      impersonate, to assume all the outward appearance of wicked people, for
+      themselves and their partners in guilt, so as to gain the momentary
+      illusion of having escaped beyond the control of their own gentle and
+      scrupulous natures into the inhuman world of pleasure. And I could
+      understand how she must have longed for such an escape when I realised
+      that it was impossible for her to effect it. At the moment when she wished
+      to be thought the very antithesis of her father, what she at once
+      suggested to me were the mannerisms, in thought and speech, of the poor
+      old music-master. Indeed, his photograph was nothing; what she really
+      desecrated, what she corrupted into ministering to her pleasures, but what
+      remained between them and her and prevented her from any direct enjoyment
+      of them, was the likeness between her face and his, his mother's blue eyes
+      which he had handed down to her, like some trinket to be kept in the
+      family, those little friendly movements and inclinations which set up
+      between the viciousness of Mlle. Vinteuil and herself a phraseology, a
+      mentality not designed for vice, which made her regard it as not in any
+      way different from the numberless little social duties and courtesies to
+      which she must devote herself every day. It was not evil that gave her the
+      idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather,
+      that seemed evil. And as, every time that she indulged in it, pleasure
+      came to her attended by evil thoughts such as, ordinarily, had no place in
+      her virtuous mind, she came at length to see in pleasure itself something
+      diabolical, to identify it with Evil. Perhaps Mlle. Vinteuil felt that at
+      heart her friend was not altogether bad, not really sincere when she gave
+      vent to those blasphemous utterances. At any rate, she had the pleasure of
+      receiving those kisses on her brow, those smiles, those glances; all
+      feigned, perhaps, but akin in their base and vicious mode of expression to
+      those which would have been discernible on the face of a creature formed
+      not out of kindness and long-suffering, but out of self-indulgence and
+      cruelty. She was able to delude herself for a moment into believing that
+      she was indeed amusing herself in the way in which, with so unnatural an
+      accomplice, a girl might amuse herself who really did experience that
+      savage antipathy towards her father's memory. Perhaps she would not have
+      thought of wickedness as a state so rare, so abnormal, so exotic, one
+      which it was so refreshing to visit, had she been able to distinguish in
+      herself, as in all her fellow-men and women, that indifference to the
+      sufferings which they cause which, whatever names else be given it, is the
+      one true, terrible and lasting form of cruelty.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      If the 'Méséglise way' was so easy, it was a very different matter when we
+      took the 'Guermantes way,' for that meant a long walk, and we must make
+      sure, first, of the weather. When we seemed to have entered upon a spell
+      of fine days, when Françoise, in desperation that not a drop was falling
+      upon the 'poor crops,' gazing up at the sky and seeing there only a little
+      white cloud floating here and there upon its calm, azure surface, groaned
+      aloud and exclaimed: "You would say they were nothing more nor less than a
+      lot of dogfish swimming about and sticking up their snouts! Ah, they never
+      think of making it rain a little for the poor labourers! And then when the
+      corn is all ripe, down it will come, rattling all over the place, and
+      think no more of where it is falling than if it was on the sea!"—when
+      my father's appeals to the gardener had met with the same encouraging
+      answer several times in succession, then some one would say, at dinner:
+      "To-morrow, if the weather holds, we might go the Guermantes way." And off
+      we would set, immediately after luncheon, through the little garden gate
+      which dropped us into the Rue des Perchamps, narrow and bent at a sharp
+      angle, dotted with grass-plots over which two or three wasps would spend
+      the day botanising, a street as quaint as its name, from which its odd
+      characteristics and its personality were, I felt, derived; a street for
+      which one might search in vain through the Combray of to-day, for the
+      public school now rises upon its site. But in my dreams of Combray (like
+      those architects, pupils of Viollet-le-Duc, who, fancying that they can
+      detect, beneath a Renaissance rood-loft and an eighteenth-century altar,
+      traces of a Norman choir, restore the whole church to the state in which
+      it probably was in the twelfth century) I leave not a stone of the modern
+      edifice standing, I pierce through it and 'restore' the Rue des Perchamps.
+      And for such reconstruction memory furnishes me with more detailed
+      guidance than is generally at the disposal of restorers; the pictures
+      which it has preserved—perhaps the last surviving in the world
+      to-day, and soon to follow the rest into oblivion—of what Combray
+      looked like in my childhood's days; pictures which, simply because it was
+      the old Combray that traced their outlines upon my mind before it
+      vanished, are as moving—if I may compare a humble landscape with
+      those glorious works, reproductions of which my grandmother was so fond of
+      bestowing on me—as those old engravings of the 'Cenacolo,' or that
+      painting by Gentile Bellini, in which one sees, in a state in which they
+      no longer exist, the masterpiece of Leonardo and the portico of Saint
+      Mark's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We would pass, in the Rue de l'Oiseau, before the old hostelry of the
+      Oiseau Flesché, into whose great courtyard, once upon a time, would rumble
+      the coaches of the Duchesses de Montpensier, de Guermantes, and de
+      Montmorency, when they had to come down to Combray for some litigation
+      with their farmers, or to receive homage from them. We would come at
+      length to the Mall, among whose treetops I could distinguish the steeple
+      of Saint-Hilaire. And I should have liked to be able to sit down and spend
+      the whole day there, reading and listening to the bells, for it was so
+      charming there and so quiet that, when an hour struck, you would have said
+      not that it broke in upon the calm of the day, but that it relieved the
+      day of its superfluity, and that the steeple, with the indolent,
+      painstaking exactitude of a person who has nothing else to do, had simply,
+      in order to squeeze out and let fall the few golden drops which had slowly
+      and naturally accumulated in the hot sunlight, pressed, at a given moment,
+      the distended surface of the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great charm of the 'Guermantes' way was that we had beside us, almost
+      all the time, the course of the Vivonne. We crossed it first, ten minutes
+      after leaving the house, by a foot-bridge called the Pont-Vieux. And every
+      year, when we arrived at Combray, on Easter morning, after the sermon, if
+      the weather was fine, I would run there to see (amid all the disorder that
+      prevails on the morning of a great festival, the gorgeous preparations for
+      which make the everyday household utensils that they have not contrived to
+      banish seem more sordid than ever) the river flowing past, sky-blue
+      already between banks still black and bare, its only companions a clump of
+      daffodils, come out before their time, a few primroses, the first in
+      flower, while here and there burned the blue flame of a violet, its stem
+      bent beneath the weight of the drop of perfume stored in its tiny horn.
+      The Pont-Vieux led to a tow-path which, at this point, would be overhung
+      in summer by the bluish foliage of a hazel, under which a fisherman in a
+      straw hat seemed to have taken root. At Combray, where I knew everyone,
+      and could always detect the blacksmith or grocer's boy through his
+      disguise of a beadle's uniform or chorister's surplice, this fisherman was
+      the only person whom I was never able to identify. He must have known my
+      family, for he used to raise his hat when we passed; and then I would
+      always be just on the point of asking his name, when some one would make a
+      sign to me to be quiet, or I would frighten the fish. We would follow the
+      tow-path which ran along the top of a steep bank, several feet above the
+      stream. The ground on the other side was lower, and stretched in a series
+      of broad meadows as far as the village and even to the distant
+      railway-station. Over these were strewn the remains, half-buried in the
+      long grass, of the castle of the old Counts of Combray, who, during the
+      Middle Ages, had had on this side the course of the Vivonne as a barrier
+      and defence against attack from the Lords of Guermantes and Abbots of
+      Martinville. Nothing was left now but a few stumps of towers, hummocks
+      upon the broad surface of the fields, hardly visible, broken battlements
+      over which, in their day, the bowmen had hurled down stones, the watchmen
+      had gazed out over Novepont, Clairefontaine, Martinville-le-Sec,
+      Bailleau-l'Exempt, fiefs all of them of Guermantes, a ring in which
+      Combray was locked; but fallen among the grass now, levelled with the
+      ground, climbed and commanded by boys from the Christian Brothers' school,
+      who came there in their playtime, or with lesson-books to be conned;
+      emblems of a past that had sunk down and well-nigh vanished under the
+      earth, that lay by the water's edge now, like an idler taking the air, yet
+      giving me strong food for thought, making the name of Combray connote to
+      me not the little town of to-day only, but an historic city vastly
+      different, seizing and holding my imagination by the remote,
+      incomprehensible features which it half-concealed beneath a spangled veil
+      of buttercups. For the buttercups grew past numbering on this spot which
+      they had chosen for their games among the grass, standing singly, in
+      couples, in whole companies, yellow as the yolk of eggs, and glowing with
+      an added lustre, I felt, because, being powerless to consummate with my
+      palate the pleasure which the sight of them never failed to give me, I
+      would let it accumulate as my eyes ranged over their gilded expanse, until
+      it had acquired the strength to create in my mind a fresh example of
+      absolute, unproductive beauty; and so it had been from my earliest
+      childhood, when from the tow-path I had stretched out my arms towards
+      them, before even I could pronounce their charming name—a name fit
+      for the Prince in some French fairy-tale; colonists, perhaps, in some far
+      distant century from Asia, but naturalised now for ever in the village,
+      well satisfied with their modest horizon, rejoicing in the sunshine and
+      the water's edge, faithful to their little glimpse of the railway-station;
+      yet keeping, none the less, as do some of our old paintings, in their
+      plebeian simplicity, a poetic scintillation from the golden East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would amuse myself by watching the glass jars which the boys used to
+      lower into the Vivonne, to catch minnows, and which, filled by the current
+      of the stream, in which they themselves also were enclosed, at once
+      'containers' whose transparent sides were like solidified water and
+      'contents' plunged into a still larger container of liquid, flowing
+      crystal, suggested an image of coolness more delicious and more provoking
+      than the same water in the same jars would have done, standing upon a
+      table laid for dinner, by shewing it as perpetually in flight between the
+      impalpable water, in which my hands could not arrest it, and the insoluble
+      glass, in which my palate could not enjoy it. I decided that I would come
+      there again with a line and catch fish; I begged for and obtained a morsel
+      of bread from our luncheon basket; and threw into the Vivonne pellets
+      which had the power, it seemed, to bring about a chemical precipitation,
+      for the water at once grew solid round about them in oval clusters of
+      emaciated tadpoles, which until then it had, no doubt, been holding in
+      solution, invisible, but ready and alert to enter the stage of
+      crystallisation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the course of the Vivonne became choked with water-plants. At
+      first they appeared singly, a lily, for instance, which the current,
+      across whose path it had unfortunately grown, would never leave at rest
+      for a moment, so that, like a ferry-boat mechanically propelled, it would
+      drift over to one bank only to return to the other, eternally repeating
+      its double journey. Thrust towards the bank, its stalk would be
+      straightened out, lengthened, strained almost to breaking-point until the
+      current again caught it, its green moorings swung back over their
+      anchorage and brought the unhappy plant to what might fitly be called its
+      starting-point, since it was fated not to rest there a moment before
+      moving off once again. I would still find it there, on one walk after
+      another, always in the same helpless state, suggesting certain victims of
+      neurasthenia, among whom my grandfather would have included my aunt
+      Léonie, who present without modification, year after year, the spectacle
+      of their odd and unaccountable habits, which they always imagine
+      themselves to be on the point of shaking off, but which they always retain
+      to the end; caught in the treadmill of their own maladies and
+      eccentricities, their futile endeavours to escape serve only to actuate
+      its mechanism, to keep in motion the clockwork of their strange,
+      ineluctable, fatal daily round. Such as these was the water-lily, and also
+      like one of those wretches whose peculiar torments, repeated indefinitely
+      throughout eternity, aroused the curiosity of Dante, who would have
+      inquired of them at greater length and in fuller detail from the victims
+      themselves, had not Virgil, striding on ahead, obliged him to hasten after
+      him at full speed, as I must hasten after my parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But farther on the current slackened, where the stream ran through a
+      property thrown open to the public by its owner, who had made a hobby of
+      aquatic gardening, so that the little ponds into which the Vivonne was
+      here diverted were aflower with water-lilies. As the banks at this point
+      were thickly wooded, the heavy shade of the trees gave the water a
+      background which was ordinarily dark green, although sometimes, when we
+      were coming home on a calm evening after a stormy afternoon, I have seen
+      in its depths a clear, crude blue that was almost violet, suggesting a
+      floor of Japanese cloisonné. Here and there, on the surface, floated,
+      blushing like a strawberry, the scarlet heart of a lily set in a ring of
+      white petals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond these the flowers were more frequent, but paler, less glossy, more
+      thickly seeded, more tightly folded, and disposed, by accident, in
+      festoons so graceful that I would fancy I saw floating upon the stream, as
+      though after the dreary stripping of the decorations used in some Watteau
+      festival, moss-roses in loosened garlands. Elsewhere a corner seemed to be
+      reserved for the commoner kinds of lily; of a neat pink or white like
+      rocket-flowers, washed clean like porcelain, with housewifely care; while,
+      a little farther again, were others, pressed close together in a floating
+      garden-bed, as though pansies had flown out of a garden like butterflies
+      and were hovering with blue and burnished wings over the transparent
+      shadowiness of this watery border; this skiey border also, for it set
+      beneath the flowers a soil of a colour more precious, more moving than
+      their own; and both in the afternoon, when it sparkled beneath the lilies
+      in the kaleidoscope of a happiness silent, restless, and alert, and
+      towards evening, when it was filled like a distant heaven with the roseate
+      dreams of the setting sun, incessantly changing and ever remaining in
+      harmony, about the more permanent colour of the flowers themselves, with
+      the utmost profundity, evanescence, and mystery—with a quiet
+      suggestion of infinity; afternoon or evening, it seemed to have set them
+      flowering in the heart of the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After leaving this park the Vivonne began to flow again more swiftly. How
+      often have I watched, and longed to imitate, when I should be free to live
+      as I chose, a rower who had shipped his oars and lay stretched out on his
+      back, his head down, in the bottom of his boat, letting it drift with the
+      current, seeing nothing but the sky which slipped quietly above him,
+      shewing upon his features a foretaste of happiness and peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We would sit down among the irises at the water's edge. In the holiday sky
+      a lazy cloud streamed out to its full length. Now and then, crushed by the
+      burden of idleness, a carp would heave up out of the water, with an
+      anxious gasp. It was time for us to feed. Before starting homewards we
+      would sit for a long time there, eating fruit and bread and chocolate, on
+      the grass, over which came to our ears, horizontal, faint, but solid still
+      and metallic, the sound of the bells of Saint-Hilaire, which had melted
+      not at all in the atmosphere it was so well accustomed to traverse, but,
+      broken piecemeal by the successive palpitation of all their sonorous
+      strokes, throbbed as it brushed the flowers at our feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, at the water's edge and embedded in trees, we would come upon a
+      house of the kind called 'pleasure houses,' isolated and lost, seeing
+      nothing of the world, save the river which bathed its feet. A young woman,
+      whose pensive face and fashionable veils did not suggest a local origin,
+      and who had doubtless come there, in the popular phrase, 'to bury
+      herself,' to taste the bitter sweetness of feeling that her name, and
+      still more the name of him whose heart she had once held, but had been
+      unable to keep, were unknown there, stood framed in a window from which
+      she had no outlook beyond the boat that was moored beside her door. She
+      raised her eyes with an air of distraction when she heard, through the
+      trees that lined the bank, the voices of passers-by of whom, before they
+      came in sight, she might be certain that never had they known, nor would
+      they know, the faithless lover, that nothing in their past lives bore his
+      imprint, which nothing in their future would have occasion to receive. One
+      felt that in her renunciation of life she had willingly abandoned those
+      places in which she would at least have been able to see him whom she
+      loved, for others where he had never trod. And I watched her, as she
+      returned from some walk along a road where she had known that he would not
+      appear, drawing from her submissive fingers long gloves of a precious,
+      useless charm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never, in the course of our walks along the 'Guermantes way,' might we
+      penetrate as far as the source of the Vivonne, of which I had often
+      thought, which had in my mind so abstract, so ideal an existence, that I
+      had been as much surprised when some one told me that it was actually to
+      be found in the same department, and at a given number of miles from
+      Combray, as I had been on the day when I had learned that there was
+      another fixed point somewhere on the earth's surface, where, according to
+      the ancients, opened the jaws of Hell. Nor could we ever reach that other
+      goal, to which I longed so much to attain, Guermantes itself. I knew that
+      it was the residence of its proprietors, the Duc and Duchesse de
+      Guermantes, I knew that they were real personages who did actually exist,
+      but whenever I thought about them I pictured them to myself either in
+      tapestry, as was the 'Coronation of Esther' which hung in our church, or
+      else in changing, rainbow colours, as was Gilbert the Bad in his window,
+      where he passed from cabbage green, when I was dipping my fingers in the
+      holy water stoup, to plum blue when I had reached our row of chairs, or
+      again altogether impalpable, like the image of Geneviève de Brabant,
+      ancestress of the Guermantes family, which the magic lantern sent
+      wandering over the curtains of my room or flung aloft upon the ceiling—in
+      short, always wrapped in the mystery of the Merovingian age, and bathed,
+      as in a sunset, in the orange light which glowed from the resounding
+      syllable 'antes.' And if, in spite of that, they were for me, in their
+      capacity as a duke and a duchess, real people, though of an unfamiliar
+      kind, this ducal personality was in its turn enormously distended,
+      immaterialised, so as to encircle and contain that Guermantes of which
+      they were duke and duchess, all that sunlit 'Guermantes way' of our walks,
+      the course of the Vivonne, its water-lilies and its overshadowing trees,
+      and an endless series of hot summer afternoons. And I knew that they bore
+      not only the titles of Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes, but that since the
+      fourteenth century, when, after vain attempts to conquer its earlier lords
+      in battle, they had allied themselves by marriage, and so became Counts of
+      Combray, the first citizens, consequently, of the place, and yet the only
+      ones among its citizens who did not reside in it—Comtes de Combray,
+      possessing Combray, threading it on their string of names and titles,
+      absorbing it in their personalities, and illustrating, no doubt, in
+      themselves that strange and pious melancholy which was peculiar to
+      Combray; proprietors of the town, though not of any particular house
+      there; dwelling, presumably, out of doors, in the street, between heaven
+      and earth, like that Gilbert de Guermantes, of whom I could see, in the
+      stained glass of the apse of Saint-Hilaire, only the 'other side' in dull
+      black lacquer, if I raised my eyes to look for him, when I was going to
+      Camus's for a packet of salt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then it happened that, going the 'Guermantes way,' I passed
+      occasionally by a row of well-watered little gardens, over whose hedges
+      rose clusters of dark blossom. I would stop before them, hoping to gain
+      some precious addition to my experience, for I seemed to have before my
+      eyes a fragment of that riverside country which I had longed so much to
+      see and know since coming upon a description of it by one of my favourite
+      authors. And it was with that story-book land, with its imagined soil
+      intersected by a hundred bubbling watercourses, that Guermantes, changing
+      its form in my mind, became identified, after I heard Dr. Percepied speak
+      of the flowers and the charming rivulets and fountains that were to be
+      seen there in the ducal park. I used to dream that Mme. de Guermantes,
+      taking a sudden capricious fancy for myself, invited me there, that all
+      day long she stood fishing for trout by my side. And when evening came,
+      holding my hand in her own, as we passed by the little gardens of her
+      vassals, she would point out to me the flowers that leaned their red and
+      purple spikes along the tops of the low walls, and would teach me all
+      their names. She would make me tell her, too, all about the poems that I
+      meant to compose. And these dreams reminded me that, since I wished, some
+      day, to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I
+      was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried
+      to discover some subjects to which I could impart a philosophical
+      significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, I would
+      see before me vacuity, nothing, would feel either that I was wholly devoid
+      of talent, or that, perhaps, a malady of the brain was hindering its
+      development. Sometimes I would depend upon my father's arranging
+      everything for me. He was so powerful, in such favour with the people who
+      'really counted,' that he made it possible for us to transgress laws which
+      Françoise had taught me to regard as more ineluctable than the laws of
+      life and death, as when we were allowed to postpone for a year the
+      compulsory repainting of the walls of our house, alone among all the
+      houses in that part of Paris, or when he obtained permission from the
+      Minister for Mme. Sazerat's son, who had been ordered to some
+      watering-place, to take his degree two months before the proper time,
+      among the candidates whose surnames began with 'A,' instead of having to
+      wait his turn as an 'S.' If I had fallen seriously ill, if I had been
+      captured by brigands, convinced that my father's understanding with the
+      supreme powers was too complete, that his letters of introduction to the
+      Almighty were too irresistible for my illness or captivity to turn out
+      anything but vain illusions, in which there was no danger actually
+      threatening me, I should have awaited with perfect composure the
+      inevitable hour of my return to comfortable realities, of my deliverance
+      from bondage or restoration to health. Perhaps this want of talent, this
+      black cavity which gaped in my mind when I ransacked it for the theme of
+      my future writings, was itself no more, either, than an unsubstantial
+      illusion, and would be brought to an end by the intervention of my father,
+      who would arrange with the Government and with Providence that I should be
+      the first writer of my day. But at other times, while my parents were
+      growing impatient at seeing me loiter behind instead of following them, my
+      actual life, instead of seeming an artificial creation by my father, and
+      one which he could modify as he chose, appeared, on the contrary, to be
+      comprised in a larger reality which had not been created for my benefit,
+      from whose judgments there was no appeal, in the heart of which I was
+      bound, helpless, without friend or ally, and beyond which no further
+      possibilities lay concealed. It was evident to me then that I existed in
+      the same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die
+      like them, and that among them I was to be distinguished merely as one of
+      those who have no aptitude for writing. And so, utterly despondent, I
+      renounced literature for ever, despite the encouragements that had been
+      given me by Bloch. This intimate, spontaneous feeling, this sense of the
+      nullity of my intellect, prevailed against all the flattering speeches
+      that might be lavished upon me, as a wicked man, when everyone is loud in
+      the praise of his good deeds, is gnawed by the secret remorse of
+      conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day my mother said: "You are always talking about Mme. de Guermantes.
+      Well, Dr. Percepied did a great deal for her when she was ill, four years
+      ago, and so she is coming to Combray for his daughter's wedding. You will
+      be able to see her in church." It was from Dr. Percepied, as it happened,
+      that I had heard most about Mme. de Guermantes, and he had even shewn us
+      the number of an illustrated paper in which she was depicted in the
+      costume which she had worn at a fancy dress ball given by the Princesse de
+      Léon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, during the nuptial mass, the beadle, by moving to one side,
+      enabled me to see, sitting in a chapel, a lady with fair hair and a large
+      nose, piercing blue eyes, a billowy scarf of mauve silk, glossy and new
+      and brilliant, and a little spot at the corner of her nose. And because on
+      the surface of her face, which was red, as though she had been very warm,
+      I could make out, diluted and barely perceptible, details which resembled
+      the portrait that had been shewn to me; because, more especially, the
+      particular features which I remarked in this lady, if I attempted to
+      catalogue them, formulated themselves in precisely the same terms:—<i>a
+      large nose, blue eyes</i>, as Dr. Percepied had used when describing in my
+      presence the Duchesse de Guermantes, I said to myself: "This lady is like
+      the Duchesse de Guermantes." Now the chapel from which she was following
+      the service was that of Gilbert the Bad; beneath its flat tombstones,
+      yellowed and bulging like cells of honey in a comb, rested the bones of
+      the old Counts of Brabant; and I remembered having heard it said that this
+      chapel was reserved for the Guermantes family, whenever any of its members
+      came to attend a ceremony at Combray; there was, indeed, but one woman
+      resembling the portrait of Mme. de Guermantes who on that day, the very
+      day on which she was expected to come there, could be sitting in that
+      chapel: it was she! My disappointment was immense. It arose from my not
+      having borne in mind, when I thought of Mme. de Guermantes, that I was
+      picturing her to myself in the colours of a tapestry or a painted window,
+      as living in another century, as being of another substance than the rest
+      of the human race. Never had I taken into account that she might have a
+      red face, a mauve scarf like Mme. Sazerat; and the oval curve of her
+      cheeks reminded me so strongly of people whom I had seen at home that the
+      suspicion brushed against my mind (though it was immediately banished)
+      that this lady in her creative principle, in the molecules of her physical
+      composition, was perhaps not substantially the Duchesse de Guermantes, but
+      that her body, in ignorance of the name that people had given it, belonged
+      to a certain type of femininity which included, also, the wives of doctors
+      and tradesmen. "It is, it must be Mme. de Guermantes, and no one else!"
+      were the words underlying the attentive and astonished expression with
+      which I was gazing upon this image, which, naturally enough, bore no
+      resemblance to those that had so often, under the same title of 'Mme. de
+      Guermantes,' appeared to me in dreams, since this one had not been, like
+      the others, formed arbitrarily by myself, but had sprung into sight for
+      the first time, only a moment ago, here in church; an image which was not
+      of the same nature, was not colourable at will, like those others that
+      allowed themselves to imbibe the orange tint of a sonorous syllable, but
+      which was so real that everything, even to the fiery little spot at the
+      corner of her nose, gave an assurance of her subjection to the laws of
+      life, as in a transformation scene on the stage a crease in the dress of a
+      fairy, a quivering of her tiny finger, indicate the material presence of a
+      living actress before our eyes, whereas we were uncertain, till then,
+      whether we were not looking merely at a projection of limelight from a
+      lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile I was endeavouring to apply to this image, which the prominent
+      nose, the piercing eyes pinned down and fixed in my field of vision
+      (perhaps because it was they that had first struck it, that had made the
+      first impression on its surface, before I had had time to wonder whether
+      the woman who thus appeared before me might possibly be Mme. de
+      Guermantes), to this fresh and unchanging image the idea: "It is Mme. de
+      Guermantes"; but I succeeded only in making the idea pass between me and
+      the image, as though they were two discs moving in separate planes, with a
+      space between. But this Mme. de Guermantes of whom I had so often dreamed,
+      now that I could see that she had a real existence independent of myself,
+      acquired a fresh increase of power over my imagination, which, paralysed
+      for a moment by contact with a reality so different from anything that it
+      had expected, began to react and to say within me: "Great and glorious
+      before the days of Charlemagne, the Guermantes had the right of life and
+      death over their vassals; the Duchesse de Guermantes descends from
+      Geneviève de Brabant. She does not know, nor would she consent to know,
+      any of the people who are here to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then—oh, marvellous independence of the human gaze, tied to the
+      human face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray,
+      alone, as far as it may choose—while Mme. de Guermantes sat in the
+      chapel above the tombs of her dead ancestors, her gaze lingered here and
+      wandered there, rose to the capitals of the pillars, and even rested upon
+      myself, like a ray of sunlight straying down the nave, but a ray of
+      sunlight which, at the moment when I received its caress, appeared
+      conscious of where it fell. As for Mme. de Guermantes herself, since she
+      remained there motionless, sitting like a mother who affects not to notice
+      the rude or awkward conduct of her children who, in the course of their
+      play, are speaking to people whom she does not know, it was impossible for
+      me to determine whether she approved or condemned the vagrancy of her eyes
+      in the careless detachment of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt it to be important that she should not leave the church before I
+      had been able to look long enough upon her, reminding myself that for
+      years past I had regarded the sight of her as a thing eminently to be
+      desired, and I kept my eyes fixed on her, as though by gazing at her I
+      should be able to carry away and incorporate, to store up, for later
+      reference, in myself the memory of that prominent nose, those red cheeks,
+      of all those details which struck me as so much precious, authentic,
+      unparalleled information with regard to her face. And now that, whenever I
+      brought my mind to bear upon that face—and especially, perhaps, in
+      my determination, that form of the instinct of self-preservation with
+      which we guard everything that is best in ourselves, not to admit that I
+      had been in any way deceived—I found only beauty there; setting her
+      once again (since they were one and the same person, this lady who sat
+      before me and that Duchesse de Guermantes whom, until then, I had been
+      used to conjure into an imagined shape) apart from and above that common
+      run of humanity with which the sight, pure and simple, of her in the flesh
+      had made me for a moment confound her, I grew indignant when I heard
+      people saying, in the congregation round me: "She is better looking than
+      Mme. Sazerat" or "than Mlle. Vinteuil," as though she had been in any way
+      comparable with them. And my gaze resting upon her fair hair, her blue
+      eyes, the lines of her neck, and overlooking the features which might have
+      reminded me of the faces of other women, I cried out within myself, as I
+      admired this deliberately unfinished sketch: "How lovely she is! What true
+      nobility! it is indeed a proud Guermantes, the descendant of Geneviève de
+      Brabant, that I have before me!" And the care which I took to focus all my
+      attention upon her face succeeded in isolating it so completely that
+      to-day, when I call that marriage ceremony to mind, I find it impossible
+      to visualise any single person who was present except her, and the beadle
+      who answered me in the affirmative when I inquired whether the lady was,
+      indeed, Mme. de Guermantes. But her, I can see her still quite clearly,
+      especially at the moment when the procession filed into the sacristy,
+      lighted by the intermittent, hot sunshine of a windy and rainy day, where
+      Mme. de Guermantes found herself in the midst of all those Combray people
+      whose names, even, she did not know, but whose inferiority proclaimed her
+      own supremacy so loud that she must, in return, feel for them a genuine,
+      pitying sympathy, and whom she might count on impressing even more
+      forcibly by virtue of her simplicity and natural charm. And then, too,
+      since she could not bring into play the deliberate glances, charged with a
+      definite meaning, which one directs, in a crowd, towards people whom one
+      knows, but must allow her vague thoughts to escape continually from her
+      eyes in a flood of blue light which she was powerless to control, she was
+      anxious not to distress in any way, not to seem to be despising those
+      humbler mortals over whom that current flowed, by whom it was everywhere
+      arrested. I can see again to-day, above her mauve scarf, silky and
+      buoyant, the gentle astonishment in her eyes, to which she had added,
+      without daring to address it to anyone in particular, but so that everyone
+      might enjoy his share of it, the almost timid smile of a sovereign lady
+      who seems to be making an apology for her presence among the vassals whom
+      she loves. This smile rested upon myself, who had never ceased to follow
+      her with my eyes. And I, remembering the glance which she had let fall
+      upon me during the service, blue as a ray of sunlight that had penetrated
+      the window of Gilbert the Bad, said to myself, "Of course, she is thinking
+      about me." I fancied that I had found favour in her sight, that she would
+      continue to think of me after she had left the church, and would, perhaps,
+      grow pensive again, that evening, at Guermantes, on my account. And at
+      once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to make us
+      love a woman that she looks on us with contempt, as I supposed Mlle. Swann
+      to have done, while we imagine that she cannot ever be ours, it is enough,
+      also, sometimes that she looks on us kindly, as Mme. de Guermantes did
+      then, while we think of her as almost ours already. Her eyes waxed blue as
+      a periwinkle flower, wholly beyond my reach, yet dedicated by her to me;
+      and the sun, bursting out again from behind a threatening cloud and
+      darting the full force of its rays on to the Square and into the sacristy,
+      shed a geranium glow over the red carpet laid down for the wedding, along
+      which Mme. de Guermantes smilingly advanced, and covered its woollen
+      texture with a nap of rosy velvet, a bloom of light, giving it that sort
+      of tenderness, of solemn sweetness in the pomp of a joyful celebration,
+      which characterises certain pages of <i>Lohengrin</i>, certain paintings
+      by Carpaccio, and makes us understand how Baudelaire was able to apply to
+      the sound of the trumpet the epithet 'delicious.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the 'Guermantes
+      way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect on my lack of
+      qualification for a literary career, and that I must abandon all hope of
+      ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I felt for this, while I
+      lingered alone to dream for a little by myself, made me suffer so acutely
+      that, in order not to feel it, my mind of its own accord, by a sort of
+      inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased entirely to think of
+      verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on which my want of talent
+      precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart from all those literary
+      preoccupations, and without definite attachment to anything, suddenly a
+      roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a stone, the smell of a road
+      would make me stop still, to enjoy the special pleasure that each of them
+      gave me, and also because they appeared to be concealing, beneath what my
+      eyes could see, something which they invited me to approach and seize from
+      them, but which, despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As I
+      felt that the mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand
+      there in front of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavouring to
+      penetrate with my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And if I had then
+      to hasten after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still seek
+      to recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concentrate upon
+      recalling exactly the line of the roof, the colour of the stone, which,
+      without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to be teeming,
+      ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which they were
+      themselves no more than the outer coverings. It was certainly not any
+      impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had lost of
+      succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of them was
+      associated with some material object devoid of any intellectual value, and
+      suggesting no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an unreasoning
+      pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and in that way
+      distracted me from the tedium, from the sense of my own impotence which I
+      had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme for some great literary
+      work. So urgent was the task imposed on my conscience by these impressions
+      of form or perfume or colour—to strive for a perception of what lay
+      hidden beneath them, that I was never long in seeking an excuse which
+      would allow me to relax so strenuous an effort and to spare myself the
+      fatigue that it involved. As good luck would have it, my parents called
+      me; I felt that I had not, for the moment, the calm environment necessary
+      for a successful pursuit of my researches, and that it would be better to
+      think no more of the matter until I reached home, and not to exhaust
+      myself in the meantime to no purpose. And so I concerned myself no longer
+      with the mystery that lay hidden in a form or a perfume, quite at ease in
+      my mind, since I was taking it home with me, protected by its visible and
+      tangible covering, beneath which I should find it still alive, like the
+      fish which, on days when I had been allowed to go out fishing, I used to
+      carry back in my basket, buried in a couch of grass which kept them cool
+      and fresh. Once in the house again I would begin to think of something
+      else, and so my mind would become littered (as my room was with the
+      flowers that I had gathered on my walks, or the odds and ends that people
+      had given me) with a stone from the surface of which the sunlight was
+      reflected, a roof, the sound of a bell, the smell of fallen leaves, a
+      confused mass of different images, under which must have perished long ago
+      the reality of which I used to have some foreboding, but which I never had
+      the energy to discover and bring to light. Once, however, when we had
+      prolonged our walk far beyond its ordinary limits, and so had been very
+      glad to encounter, half way home, as afternoon darkened into evening, Dr.
+      Percepied, who drove past us at full speed in his carriage, saw and
+      recognised us, stopped, and made us jump in beside him, I received an
+      impression of this sort which I did not abandon without having first
+      subjected it to an examination a little more thorough. I had been set on
+      the box beside the coachman, we were going like the wind because the
+      Doctor had still, before returning to Combray, to call at
+      Martinville-le-Sec, at the house of a patient, at whose door he asked us
+      to wait for him. At a bend in the road I experienced, suddenly, that
+      special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other, when I caught
+      sight of the twin steeples of Martinville, on which the setting sun was
+      playing, while the movement of the carriage and the windings of the road
+      seemed to keep them continually changing their position; and then of a
+      third steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, which, although separated from them by a
+      hill and a valley, and rising from rather higher ground in the distance,
+      appeared none the less to be standing by their side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In ascertaining and noting the shape of their spires, the changes of
+      aspect, the sunny warmth of their surfaces, I felt that I was not
+      penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay
+      behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at once
+      to contain and to conceal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The steeples appeared so distant, and we ourselves seemed to come so
+      little nearer them, that I was astonished when, a few minutes later, we
+      drew up outside the church of Martinville. I did not know the reason for
+      the pleasure which I had found in seeing them upon the horizon, and the
+      business of trying to find out what that reason was seemed to me irksome;
+      I wished only to keep in reserve in my brain those converging lines,
+      moving in the sunshine, and, for the time being, to think of them no more.
+      And it is probable that, had I done so, those two steeples would have
+      vanished for ever, in a great medley of trees and roofs and scents and
+      sounds which I had noticed and set apart on account of the obscure sense
+      of pleasure which they gave me, but without ever exploring them more
+      fully. I got down from the box to talk to my parents while we were waiting
+      for the Doctor to reappear. Then it was time to start; I climbed up again
+      to my place, turning my head to look back, once more, at my steeples, of
+      which, a little later, I caught a farewell glimpse at a turn in the road.
+      The coachman, who seemed little inclined for conversation, having barely
+      acknowledged my remarks, I was obliged, in default of other society, to
+      fall back on my own, and to attempt to recapture the vision of my
+      steeples. And presently their outlines and their sunlit surface, as though
+      they had been a sort of rind, were stripped apart; a little of what they
+      had concealed from me became apparent; an idea came into my mind which had
+      not existed for me a moment earlier, framed itself in words in my head;
+      and the pleasure with which the first sight of them, just now, had filled
+      me was so much enhanced that, overpowered by a sort of intoxication, I
+      could no longer think of anything but them. At this point, although we had
+      now travelled a long way from Martinville, I turned my head and caught
+      sight of them again, quite black this time, for the sun had meanwhile set.
+      Every few minutes a turn in the road would sweep them out of sight; then
+      they shewed themselves for the last time, and so I saw them no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without admitting to myself that what lay buried within the steeples of
+      Martinville must be something analogous to a charming phrase, since it was
+      in the form of words which gave me pleasure that it had appeared to me, I
+      borrowed a pencil and some paper from the Doctor, and composed, in spite
+      of the jolting of the carriage, to appease my conscience and to satisfy my
+      enthusiasm, the following little fragment, which I have since discovered,
+      and now reproduce, with only a slight revision here and there.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Alone, rising from the level of the plain, and seemingly lost in that
+      expanse of open country, climbed to the sky the twin steeples of
+      Martinville. Presently we saw three: springing into position confronting
+      them by a daring volt, a third, a dilatory steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, was
+      come to join them. The minutes passed, we were moving rapidly, and yet the
+      three steeples were always a long way ahead of us, like three birds
+      perched upon the plain, motionless and conspicuous in the sunlight. Then
+      the steeple of Vieuxvicq withdrew, took its proper distance, and the
+      steeples of Martinville remained alone, gilded by the light of the setting
+      sun, which, even at that distance, I could see playing and smiling upon
+      their sloped sides. We had been so long in approaching them that I was
+      thinking of the time that must still elapse before we could reach them
+      when, of a sudden, the carriage, having turned a corner, set us down at
+      their feet; and they had flung themselves so abruptly in our path that we
+      had barely time to stop before being dashed against the porch of the
+      church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We resumed our course; we had left Martinville some little time, and the
+      village, after accompanying us for a few seconds, had already disappeared,
+      when, lingering alone on the horizon to watch our flight, its steeples and
+      that of Vieuxvicq waved once again, in token of farewell, their sun-bathed
+      pinnacles. Sometimes one would withdraw, so that the other two might watch
+      us for a moment still; then the road changed direction, they veered in the
+      light like three golden pivots, and vanished from my gaze. But, a little
+      later, when we were already close to Combray, the sun having set
+      meanwhile, I caught sight of them for the last time, far away, and seeming
+      no more now than three flowers painted upon the sky above the low line of
+      fields. They made me think, too, of three maidens in a legend, abandoned
+      in a solitary place over which night had begun to fall; and while we drew
+      away from them at a gallop, I could see them timidly seeking their way,
+      and, after some awkward, stumbling movements of their noble silhouettes,
+      drawing close to one another, slipping one behind another, shewing nothing
+      more, now, against the still rosy sky than a single dusky form, charming
+      and resigned, and so vanishing in the night.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      I never thought again of this page, but at the moment when, on my corner
+      of the box-seat, where the Doctor's coachman was in the habit of placing,
+      in a hamper, the fowls which he had bought at Martinville market, I had
+      finished writing it, I found such a sense of happiness, felt that it had
+      so entirely relieved my mind of the obsession of the steeples, and of the
+      mystery which they concealed, that, as though I myself were a hen and had
+      just laid an egg, I began to sing at the top of my voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day long, during these walks, I had been able to muse upon the
+      pleasure that there would be in the friendship of the Duchesse de
+      Guermantes, in fishing for trout, in drifting by myself in a boat on the
+      Vivonne; and, greedy for happiness, I asked nothing more from life, in
+      such moments, than that it should consist always of a series of joyous
+      afternoons. But when, on our way home, I had caught sight of a farm, on
+      the left of the road, at some distance from two other farms which were
+      themselves close together, and from which, to return to Combray, we need
+      only turn down an avenue of oaks, bordered on one side by a series of
+      orchard-closes, each one planted at regular intervals with apple-trees
+      which cast upon the ground, when they were lighted by the setting sun, the
+      Japanese stencil of their shadows; then, sharply, my heart would begin to
+      beat, I would know that in half an hour we should be at home, and that
+      there, as was the rule on days when we had taken the 'Guermantes way' and
+      dinner was, in consequence, served later than usual, I should be sent to
+      bed as soon as I had swallowed my soup, so that my mother, kept at table,
+      just as though there had been company to dinner, would not come upstairs
+      to say good night to me in bed. The zone of melancholy which I then
+      entered was totally distinct from that other zone, in which I had been
+      bounding for joy a moment earlier, just as sometimes in the sky a band of
+      pink is separated, as though by a line invisibly ruled, from a band of
+      green or black. You may see a bird flying across the pink; it draws near
+      the border-line, touches it, enters and is lost upon the black. The
+      longings by which I had just now been absorbed, to go to Guermantes, to
+      travel, to live a life of happiness—I was now so remote from them
+      that their fulfilment would have afforded me no pleasure. How readily
+      would I have sacrificed them all, just to be able to cry, all night long,
+      in the arms of Mamma! Shuddering with emotion, I could not take my
+      agonised eyes from my mother's face, which was not to appear that evening
+      in the bedroom where I could see myself already lying, in imagination; and
+      wished only that I were lying dead. And this state would persist until the
+      morrow, when, the rays of morning leaning their bars of light, as the
+      gardener might lean his ladder, against the wall overgrown with
+      nasturtiums, which clambered up it as far as my window-sill, I would leap
+      out of bed to run down at once into the garden, with no thought of the
+      fact that evening must return, and with it the hour when I must leave my
+      mother. And so it was from the 'Guermantes way' that I learned to
+      distinguish between these states which reigned alternately in my mind,
+      during certain periods, going so far as to divide every day between them,
+      each one returning to dispossess the other with the regularity of a fever
+      and ague: contiguous, and yet so foreign to one another, so devoid of
+      means of communication, that I could no longer understand, or even picture
+      to myself, in one state what I had desired or dreaded or even done in the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the 'Méséglise way' and the 'Guermantes way' remain for me linked with
+      many of the little incidents of that one of all the divers lives along
+      whose parallel lines we are moved, which is the most abundant in sudden
+      reverses of fortune, the richest in episodes; I mean the life of the mind.
+      Doubtless it makes in us an imperceptible progress, and the truths which
+      have changed for us its meaning and its aspect, which have opened new
+      paths before our feet, we had for long been preparing for their discovery;
+      but that preparation was unconscious; and for us those truths date only
+      from the day, from the minute when they became apparent. The flowers which
+      played then among the grass, the water which rippled past in the sunshine,
+      the whole landscape which served as environment to their apparition
+      lingers around the memory of them still with its unconscious or unheeding
+      air; and, certainly, when they were slowly scrutinised by this humble
+      passer-by, by this dreaming child—as the face of a king is
+      scrutinised by a petitioner lost in the crowd—that scrap of nature,
+      that corner of a garden could never suppose that it would be thanks to him
+      that they would be elected to survive in all their most ephemeral details;
+      and yet the scent of hawthorn which strays plundering along the hedge from
+      which, in a little while, the dog-roses will have banished it, a sound of
+      footsteps followed by no echo, upon a gravel path, a bubble formed at the
+      side of a waterplant by the current, and formed only to burst—my
+      exaltation of mind has borne them with it, and has succeeded in making
+      them traverse all these successive years, while all around them the
+      one-trodden ways have vanished, while those who thronged those ways, and
+      even the memory of those who thronged those trodden ways, are dead.
+      Sometimes the fragment of landscape thus transported into the present will
+      detach itself in such isolation from all associations that it floats
+      uncertainly upon my mind, like a flowering isle of Delos, and I am unable
+      to say from what place, from what time—perhaps, quite simply, from
+      which of my dreams—it comes. But it is pre-eminently as the deepest
+      layer of my mental soil, as firm sites on which I still may build, that I
+      regard the Méséglise and Guermantes 'ways.' It is because I used to think
+      of certain things, of certain people, while I was roaming along them, that
+      the things, the people which they taught me to know, and these alone, I
+      still take seriously, still give me joy. Whether it be that the faith
+      which creates has ceased to exist in me, or that reality will take shape
+      in the memory alone, the flowers that people shew me nowadays for the
+      first time never seem to me to be true flowers. The 'Méséglise way' with
+      its lilacs, its hawthorns, its cornflowers, its poppies, its apple-trees,
+      the 'Guermantes way' with its river full of tadpoles, its water-lilies,
+      and its buttercups have constituted for me for all time the picture of the
+      land in which I fain would pass my life, in which my only requirements are
+      that I may go out fishing, drift idly in a boat, see the ruins of a gothic
+      fortress in the grass, and find hidden among the cornfields—as
+      Saint-André-des-Champs lay hidden—an old church, monumental, rustic,
+      and yellow like a mill-stone; and the cornflowers, the hawthorns, the
+      apple-trees which I may happen, when I go walking, to encounter in the
+      fields, because they are situated at the same depth, on the level of my
+      past life, at once establish contact with my heart. And yet, because there
+      is an element of individuality in places, when I am seized with a desire
+      to see again the 'Guermantes way,' it would not be satisfied were I led to
+      the banks of a river in which were lilies as fair, or even fairer than
+      those in the Vivonne, any more than on my return home in the evening, at
+      the hour when there awakened in me that anguish which, later on in life,
+      transfers itself to the passion of love, and may even become its
+      inseparable companion, I should have wished for any strange mother to come
+      in and say good night to me, though she were far more beautiful and more
+      intelligent than my own. No: just as the one thing necessary to send me to
+      sleep contented (in that untroubled peace which no mistress, in later
+      years, has ever been able to give me, since one has doubts of them at the
+      moment when one believes in them, and never can possess their hearts as I
+      used to receive, in her kiss, the heart of my mother, complete, without
+      scruple or reservation, unburdened by any liability save to myself) was
+      that it should be my mother who came, that she should incline towards me
+      that face on which there was, beneath her eye, something that was, it
+      appears, a blemish, and which I loved as much as all the rest—so
+      what I want to see again is the 'Guermantes way' as I knew it, with the
+      farm that stood a little apart from the two neighbouring farms, pressed so
+      close together, at the entrance to the oak avenue; those meadows upon
+      whose surface, when it is polished by the sun to the mirroring radiance of
+      a lake, are outlined the leaves of the apple-trees; that whole landscape
+      whose individuality sometimes, at night, in my dreams, binds me with a
+      power that is almost fantastic, of which I can discover no trace when I
+      awake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt, by virtue of having permanently and indissolubly combined in me
+      groups of different impressions, for no reason save that they had made me
+      feel several separate things at the same time, the Méséglise and
+      Guermantes 'ways' left me exposed, in later life, to much disillusionment,
+      and even to many mistakes. For often I have wished to see a person again
+      without realising that it was simply because that person recalled to me a
+      hedge of hawthorns in blossom; and I have been led to believe, and to make
+      some one else believe in an aftermath of affection, by what was no more
+      than an inclination to travel. But by the same qualities, and by their
+      persistence in those of my impressions, to-day, to which they can find an
+      attachment, the two 'ways' give to those impressions a foundation, depth,
+      a dimension lacking from the rest. They invest them, too, with a charm, a
+      significance which is for me alone. When, on a summer evening, the
+      resounding sky growls like a tawny lion, and everyone is complaining of
+      the storm, it is along the 'Méséglise way' that my fancy strays alone in
+      ecstasy, inhaling, through the noise of falling rain, the odour of
+      invisible and persistent lilac-trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so I would often lie until morning, dreaming of the old days at
+      Combray, of my melancholy and wakeful evenings there; of other days
+      besides, the memory of which had been more lately restored to me by the
+      taste—by what would have been called at Combray the 'perfume'—-of
+      a cup of tea; and, by an association of memories, of a story which, many
+      years after I had left the little place, had been told me of a love affair
+      in which Swann had been involved before I was born; with that accuracy of
+      detail which it is easier, often, to obtain when we are studying the lives
+      of people who have been dead for centuries than when we are trying to
+      chronicle those of our own most intimate friends, an accuracy which it
+      seems as impossible to attain as it seemed impossible to speak from one
+      town to another, before we learned of the contrivance by which that
+      impossibility has been overcome. All these memories, following one after
+      another, were condensed into a single substance, but had not so far
+      coalesced that I could not discern between the three strata, between my
+      oldest, my instinctive memories, those others, inspired more recently by a
+      taste or 'perfume,' and those which were actually the memories of another,
+      from whom I had acquired them at second hand—no fissures, indeed, no
+      geological faults, but at least those veins, those streaks of colour which
+      in certain rocks, in certain marbles, point to differences of origin, age,
+      and formation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true that, when morning drew near, I would long have settled the
+      brief uncertainty of my waking dream, I would know in what room I was
+      actually lying, would have reconstructed it round about me in the
+      darkness, and—fixing my orientation by memory alone, or with the
+      assistance of a feeble glimmer of light at the foot of which I placed the
+      curtains and the window—would have reconstructed it complete and
+      with its furniture, as an architect and an upholsterer might do, working
+      upon an original, discarded plan of the doors and windows; would have
+      replaced the mirrors and set the chest-of-drawers on its accustomed site.
+      But scarcely had daylight itself—and no longer the gleam from a
+      last, dying ember on a brass curtain-rod, which I had mistaken for
+      daylight—traced across the darkness, as with a stroke of chalk
+      across a blackboard, its first white correcting ray, when the window, with
+      its curtains, would leave the frame of the doorway, in which I had
+      erroneously placed it, while, to make room for it, the writing-table,
+      which my memory had clumsily fixed where the window ought to be, would
+      hurry off at full speed, thrusting before it the mantelpiece, and sweeping
+      aside the wall of the passage; the well of the courtyard would be
+      enthroned on the spot where, a moment earlier, my dressing-room had lain,
+      and the dwelling-place which I had built up for myself in the darkness
+      would have gone to join all those other dwellings of which I had caught
+      glimpses from the whirlpool of awakening; put to flight by that pale sign
+      traced above my window-curtains by the uplifted forefinger of day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SWANN IN LOVE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      To admit you to the 'little nucleus,' the 'little group,' the 'little
+      clan' at the Verdurins', one condition sufficed, but that one was
+      indispensable; you must give tacit adherence to a Creed one of whose
+      articles was that the young pianist, whom Mme. Verdurin had taken under
+      her patronage that year, and of whom she said "Really, it oughtn't to be
+      allowed, to play Wagner as well as that!" left both Planté and Rubinstein
+      'sitting'; while Dr. Cottard was a more brilliant diagnostician than
+      Potain. Each 'new recruit' whom the Verdurins failed to persuade that the
+      evenings spent by other people, in other houses than theirs, were as dull
+      as ditch-water, saw himself banished forthwith. Women being in this
+      respect more rebellious than men, more reluctant to lay aside all worldly
+      curiosity and the desire to find out for themselves whether other
+      drawing-rooms might not sometimes be as entertaining, and the Verdurins
+      feeling, moreover, that this critical spirit and this demon of frivolity
+      might, by their contagion, prove fatal to the orthodoxy of the little
+      church, they had been obliged to expel, one after another, all those of
+      the 'faithful' who were of the female sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apart from the doctor's young wife, they were reduced almost exclusively
+      that season (for all that Mme. Verdurin herself was a thoroughly 'good'
+      woman, and came of a respectable middle-class family, excessively rich and
+      wholly undistinguished, with which she had gradually and of her own accord
+      severed all connection) to a young woman almost of a 'certain class,' a
+      Mme. de Crécy, whom Mme. Verdurin called by her Christian name, Odette,
+      and pronounced a 'love,' and to the pianist's aunt, who looked as though
+      she had, at one period, 'answered the bell': ladies quite ignorant of the
+      world, who in their social simplicity were so easily led to believe that
+      the Princesse de Sagan and the Duchesse de Guermantes were obliged to pay
+      large sums of money to other poor wretches, in order to have anyone at
+      their dinner-parties, that if somebody had offered to procure them an
+      invitation to the house of either of those great dames, the old doorkeeper
+      and the woman of 'easy virtue' would have contemptuously declined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Verdurins never invited you to dinner; you had your 'place laid'
+      there. There was never any programme for the evening's entertainment. The
+      young pianist would play, but only if he felt inclined, for no one was
+      forced to do anything, and, as M. Verdurin used to say: "We're all friends
+      here. Liberty Hall, you know!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the pianist suggested playing the Ride of the Valkyries, or the Prelude
+      to Tristan, Mme. Verdurin would protest, not that the music was
+      displeasing to her, but, on the contrary, that it made too violent an
+      impression. "Then you want me to have one of my headaches? You know quite
+      well, it's the same every time he plays that. I know what I'm in for.
+      Tomorrow, when I want to get up—nothing doing!" If he was not going
+      to play they talked, and one of the friends—usually the painter who
+      was in favour there that year—would "spin," as M. Verdurin put it,
+      "a damned funny yarn that made 'em all split with laughter," and
+      especially Mme. Verdurin, for whom—so strong was her habit of taking
+      literally the figurative accounts of her emotions—Dr. Cottard, who
+      was then just starting in general practice, would "really have to come one
+      day and set her jaw, which she had dislocated with laughing too much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evening dress was barred, because you were all 'good pals,' and didn't
+      want to look like the 'boring people' who were to be avoided like the
+      plague, and only asked to the big evenings, which were given as seldom as
+      possible, and then only if it would amuse the painter or make the musician
+      better known. The rest of the time you were quite happy playing charades
+      and having supper in fancy dress, and there was no need to mingle any
+      strange element with the little 'clan.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just as the 'good pals' came to take a more and more prominent place
+      in Mme. Verdurin's life, so the 'bores,' the 'nuisances' grew to include
+      everybody and everything that kept her friends away from her, that made
+      them sometimes plead 'previous engagements,' the mother of one, the
+      professional duties of another, the 'little place in the country' of a
+      third. If Dr. Cottard felt bound to say good night as soon as they rose
+      from table, so as to go back to some patient who was seriously ill; "I
+      don't know," Mme. Verdurin would say, "I'm sure it will do him far more
+      good if you don't go disturbing him again this evening; he will have a
+      good night without you; to-morrow morning you can go round early and you
+      will find him cured." From the beginning of December it would make her
+      quite ill to think that the 'faithful' might fail her on Christmas and New
+      Year's Days. The pianist's aunt insisted that he must accompany her, on
+      the latter, to a family dinner at her mother's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't suppose she'll die, your mother," exclaimed Mme. Verdurin
+      bitterly, "if you don't have dinner with her on New Year's Day, like
+      people in the <i>provinces</i>!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her uneasiness was kindled again in Holy Week: "Now you, Doctor, you're a
+      sensible, broad-minded man; you'll come, of course, on Good Friday, just
+      like any other day?" she said to Cottard in the first year of the little
+      'nucleus,' in a loud and confident voice, as though there could be no
+      doubt of his answer. But she trembled as she waited for it, for if he did
+      not come she might find herself condemned to dine alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall come on Good Friday—to say good-bye to you, for we are
+      going to spend the holidays in Auvergne."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In Auvergne? To be eaten by fleas and all sorts of creatures! A fine lot
+      of good that will do you!" And after a solemn pause: "If you had only told
+      us, we would have tried to get up a party, and all gone there together,
+      comfortably."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, too, if one of the 'faithful' had a friend, or one of the ladies a
+      young man, who was liable, now and then, to make them miss an evening, the
+      Verdurins, who were not in the least afraid of a woman's having a lover,
+      provided that she had him in their company, loved him in their company and
+      did not prefer him to their company, would say: "Very well, then, bring
+      your friend along." And he would be put to the test, to see whether he was
+      willing to have no secrets from Mme. Verdurin, whether he was susceptible
+      of being enrolled in the 'little clan.' If he failed to pass, the faithful
+      one who had introduced him would be taken on one side, and would be
+      tactfully assisted to quarrel with the friend or mistress. But if the test
+      proved satisfactory, the newcomer would in turn be numbered among the
+      'faithful.' And so when, in the course of this same year, the courtesan
+      told M. Verdurin that she had made the acquaintance of such a charming
+      gentleman, M. Swann, and hinted that he would very much like to be allowed
+      to come, M. Verdurin carried the request at once to his wife. He never
+      formed an opinion on any subject until she had formed hers, his special
+      duty being to carry out her wishes and those of the 'faithful' generally,
+      which he did with boundless ingenuity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear, Mme. de Crécy has something to say to you. She would like to
+      bring one of her friends here, a M. Swann. What do you say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, as if anybody could refuse anything to a little piece of perfection
+      like that. Be quiet; no one asked your opinion. I tell you that you are a
+      piece of perfection."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just as you like," replied Odette, in an affected tone, and then went on:
+      "You know I'm not fishing for compliments."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well; bring your friend, if he's nice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now there was no connection whatsoever between the 'little nucleus' and
+      the society which Swann frequented, and a purely worldly man would have
+      thought it hardly worth his while, when occupying so exceptional a
+      position in the world, to seek an introduction to the Verdurins. But Swann
+      was so ardent a lover that, once he had got to know almost all the women
+      of the aristocracy, once they had taught him all that there was to learn,
+      he had ceased to regard those naturalisation papers, almost a patent of
+      nobility, which the Faubourg Saint-Germain had bestowed upon him, save as
+      a sort of negotiable bond, a letter of credit with no intrinsic value,
+      which allowed him to improvise a status for himself in some little hole in
+      the country, or in some obscure quarter of Paris, where the good-looking
+      daughter of a local squire or solicitor had taken his fancy. For at such
+      times desire, or love itself, would revive in him a feeling of vanity from
+      which he was now quite free in his everyday life, although it was, no
+      doubt, the same feeling which had originally prompted him towards that
+      career as a man of fashion in which he had squandered his intellectual
+      gifts upon frivolous amusements, and had made use of his erudition in
+      matters of art only to advise society ladies what pictures to buy and how
+      to decorate their houses; and this vanity it was which made him eager to
+      shine, in the sight of any fair unknown who had captivated him for the
+      moment, with a brilliance which the name of Swann by itself did not emit.
+      And he was most eager when the fair unknown was in humble circumstances.
+      Just as it is not by other men of intelligence that an intelligent man is
+      afraid of being thought a fool, so it is not by the great gentleman but by
+      boors and 'bounders' that a man of fashion is afraid of finding his social
+      value underrated. Three-fourths of the mental ingenuity displayed, of the
+      social falsehoods scattered broadcast ever since the world began by people
+      whose importance they have served only to diminish, have been aimed at
+      inferiors. And Swann, who behaved quite simply and was at his ease when
+      with a duchess, would tremble for fear of being despised, and would
+      instantly begin to pose, were he to meet her grace's maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unlike so many people, who, either from lack of energy or else from a
+      resigned sense of the obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur
+      to remain moored like houseboats to a certain point on the bank of the
+      stream of life, abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them above
+      and below that point, that degree in life in which they will remain fixed
+      until the day of their death, and are content, in the end, to describe as
+      pleasures, for want of any better, those mediocre distractions, that just
+      not intolerable tedium which is enclosed there with them; Swann would
+      endeavour not to find charm and beauty in the women with whom he must pass
+      time, but to pass his time among women whom he had already found to be
+      beautiful and charming. And these were, as often as not, women whose
+      beauty was of a distinctly 'common' type, for the physical qualities which
+      attracted him instinctively, and without reason, were the direct opposite
+      of those that he admired in the women painted or sculptured by his
+      favourite masters. Depth of character, or a melancholy expression on a
+      woman's face would freeze his senses, which would, however, immediately
+      melt at the sight of healthy, abundant, rosy human flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If on his travels he met a family whom it would have been more correct for
+      him to make no attempt to know, but among whom a woman caught his eye,
+      adorned with a special charm that was new to him, to remain on his 'high
+      horse' and to cheat the desire that she had kindled in him, to substitute
+      a pleasure different from that which he might have tasted in her company
+      by writing to invite one of his former mistresses to come and join him,
+      would have seemed to him as cowardly an abdication in the face of life, as
+      stupid a renunciation of a new form of happiness as if, instead of
+      visiting the country where he was, he had shut himself up in his own rooms
+      and looked at 'views' of Paris. He did not immure himself in the solid
+      structure of his social relations, but had made of them, so as to be able
+      to set it up afresh upon new foundations wherever a woman might take his
+      fancy, one of those collapsible tents which explorers carry about with
+      them. Any part of it which was not portable or could not be adapted to
+      some fresh pleasure he would discard as valueless, however enviable it
+      might appear to others. How often had his credit with a duchess, built up
+      of the yearly accumulation of her desire to do him some favour for which
+      she had never found an opportunity, been squandered in a moment by his
+      calling upon her, in an indiscreetly worded message, for a recommendation
+      by telegraph which would put him in touch at once with one of her agents
+      whose daughter he had noticed in the country, just as a starving man might
+      barter a diamond for a crust of bread. Indeed, when it was too late, he
+      would laugh at himself for it, for there was in his nature, redeemed by
+      many rare refinements, an element of clownishness. Then he belonged to
+      that class of intelligent men who have led a life of idleness, and who
+      seek consolation and, perhaps, an excuse in the idea, which their idleness
+      offers to their intelligence, of objects as worthy of their interest as
+      any that could be attained by art or learning, the idea that 'Life'
+      contains situations more interesting and more romantic than all the
+      romances ever written. So, at least, he would assure and had no difficulty
+      in persuading the more subtle among his friends in the fashionable world,
+      notably the Baron de Charlus, whom he liked to amuse with stories of the
+      startling adventures that had befallen him, such as when he had met a
+      woman in the train, and had taken her home with him, before discovering
+      that she was the sister of a reigning monarch, in whose hands were
+      gathered, at that moment, all the threads of European politics, of which
+      he found himself kept informed in the most delightful fashion, or when, in
+      the complexity of circumstances, it depended upon the choice which the
+      Conclave was about to make whether he might or might not become the lover
+      of somebody's cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not only the brilliant phalanx of virtuous dowagers, generals and
+      academicians, to whom he was bound by such close ties, that Swann
+      compelled with so much cynicism to serve him as panders. All his friends
+      were accustomed to receive, from time to time, letters which called on
+      them for a word of recommendation or introduction, with a diplomatic
+      adroitness which, persisting throughout all his successive 'affairs' and
+      using different pretexts, revealed more glaringly than the clumsiest
+      indiscretion, a permanent trait in his character and an unvarying quest. I
+      used often to recall to myself when, many years later, I began to take an
+      interest in his character because of the similarities which, in wholly
+      different respects, it offered to my own, how, when he used to write to my
+      grandfather (though not at the time we are now considering, for it was
+      about the date of my own birth that Swann's great 'affair' began, and made
+      a long interruption in his amatory practices) the latter, recognising his
+      friend's handwriting on the envelope, would exclaim: "Here is Swann asking
+      for something; on guard!" And, either from distrust or from the
+      unconscious spirit of devilry which urges us to offer a thing only to
+      those who do not want it, my grandparents would meet with an obstinate
+      refusal the most easily satisfied of his prayers, as when he begged them
+      for an introduction to a girl who dined with us every Sunday, and whom
+      they were obliged, whenever Swann mentioned her, to pretend that they no
+      longer saw, although they would be wondering, all through the week, whom
+      they could invite to meet her, and often failed, in the end, to find
+      anyone, sooner than make a sign to him who would so gladly have accepted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally a couple of my grandparents' acquaintance, who had been
+      complaining for some time that they never saw Swann now, would announce
+      with satisfaction, and perhaps with a slight inclination to make my
+      grandparents envious of them, that he had suddenly become as charming as
+      he could possibly be, and was never out of their house. My grandfather
+      would not care to shatter their pleasant illusion, but would look at my
+      grandmother, as he hummed the air of:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  What is this mystery?
+  I cannot understand it;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      or of:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Vision fugitive...;
+  In matters such as this
+  'Tis best to close one's eyes.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A few months later, if my grandfather asked Swann's new friend "What about
+      Swann? Do you still see as much of him as ever?" the other's face would
+      lengthen: "Never mention his name to me again!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I thought that you were such friends..."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been intimate in this way for several months with some cousins of
+      my grandmother, dining almost every evening at their house. Suddenly, and
+      without any warning, he ceased to appear. They supposed him to be ill, and
+      the lady of the house was going to send to inquire for him when, in her
+      kitchen, she found a letter in his hand, which her cook had left by
+      accident in the housekeeping book. In this he announced that he was
+      leaving Paris and would not be able to come to the house again. The cook
+      had been his mistress, and at the moment of breaking off relations she was
+      the only one of the household whom he had thought it necessary to inform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when his mistress for the time being was a woman in society, or at
+      least one whose birth was not so lowly, nor her position so irregular that
+      he was unable to arrange for her reception in 'society,' then for her sake
+      he would return to it, but only to the particular orbit in which she moved
+      or into which he had drawn her. "No good depending on Swann for this
+      evening," people would say; "don't you remember, it's his American's night
+      at the Opera?" He would secure invitations for her to the most exclusive
+      drawing-rooms, to those houses where he himself went regularly, for weekly
+      dinners or for poker; every evening, after a slight 'wave' imparted to his
+      stiffly brushed red locks had tempered with a certain softness the ardour
+      of his bold green eyes, he would select a flower for his buttonhole and
+      set out to meet his mistress at the house of one or other of the women of
+      his circle; and then, thinking of the affection and admiration which the
+      fashionable folk, whom he always treated exactly as he pleased, would,
+      when he met them there, lavish upon him in the presence of the woman whom
+      he loved, he would find a fresh charm in that worldly existence of which
+      he had grown weary, but whose substance, pervaded and warmly coloured by
+      the flickering light which he had slipped into its midst, seemed to him
+      beautiful and rare, now that he had incorporated in it a fresh love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But while each of these attachments, each of these flirtations had been
+      the realisation, more or less complete, of a dream born of the sight of a
+      face or a form which Swann had spontaneously, and without effort on his
+      part, found charming, it was quite another matter when, one day at the
+      theatre, he was introduced to Odette de Crécy by an old friend of his own,
+      who had spoken of her to him as a ravishing creature with whom he might
+      very possibly come to an understanding; but had made her out to be harder
+      of conquest than she actually was, so as to appear to be conferring a
+      special favour by the introduction. She had struck Swann not, certainly,
+      as being devoid of beauty, but as endowed with a style of beauty which
+      left him indifferent, which aroused in him no desire, which gave him,
+      indeed, a sort of physical repulsion; as one of those women of whom every
+      man can name some, and each will name different examples, who are the
+      converse of the type which our senses demand. To give him any pleasure her
+      profile was too sharp, her skin too delicate, her cheek-bones too
+      prominent, her features too tightly drawn. Her eyes were fine, but so
+      large that they seemed to be bending beneath their own weight, strained
+      the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell or in an ill
+      humour. Some time after this introduction at the theatre she had written
+      to ask Swann whether she might see his collections, which would interest
+      her so much, she, "an ignorant woman with a taste for beautiful things,"
+      saying that she would know him better when once she had seen him in his
+      'home,' where she imagined him to be "so comfortable with his tea and his
+      books"; although she had not concealed her surprise at his being in that
+      part of the town, which must be so depressing, and was "not nearly smart
+      enough for such a very smart man." And when he allowed her to come she had
+      said to him as she left how sorry she was to have stayed so short a time
+      in a house into which she was so glad to have found her way at last,
+      speaking of him as though he had meant something more to her than the rest
+      of the people she knew, and appearing to unite their two selves with a
+      kind of romantic bond which had made him smile. But at the time of life,
+      tinged already with disenchantment, which Swann was approaching, when a
+      man can content himself with being in love for the pleasure of loving
+      without expecting too much in return, this linking of hearts, if it is no
+      longer, as in early youth, the goal towards which love, of necessity,
+      tends, still is bound to love by so strong an association of ideas that it
+      may well become the cause of love if it presents itself first. In his
+      younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he
+      loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be
+      enough to make him fall in love with her. And so, at an age when it would
+      appear—since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective
+      pleasure—that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger
+      part in its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most
+      physical order, without any foundation in desire. At this time of life a
+      man has already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no
+      longer evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws,
+      before his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we falsify it
+      by memory and by suggestion; recognising one of its symptoms we recall and
+      recreate the rest. Since we possess its hymn, engraved on our hearts in
+      its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the opening lines,
+      potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for us to remember
+      all that follows. And if she begin in the middle, where it sings of our
+      existing, henceforward, for one another only, we are well enough attuned
+      to that music to be able to take it up and follow our partner, without
+      hesitation, at the first pause in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odette de Crécy came again to see Swann; her visits grew more frequent,
+      and doubtless each visit revived the sense of disappointment which he felt
+      at the sight of a face whose details he had somewhat forgotten in the
+      interval, not remembering it as either so expressive or, in spite of her
+      youth, so faded; he used to regret, while she was talking to him, that her
+      really considerable beauty was not of the kind which he spontaneously
+      admired. It must be remarked that Odette's face appeared thinner and more
+      prominent than it actually was, because her forehead and the upper part of
+      her cheeks, a single and almost plane surface, were covered by the masses
+      of hair which women wore at that period, drawn forward in a fringe, raised
+      in crimped waves and falling in stray locks over her ears; while as for
+      her figure, and she was admirably built, it was impossible to make out its
+      continuity (on account of the fashion then prevailing, and in spite of her
+      being one of the best-dressed women in Paris) for the corset, jetting
+      forwards in an arch, as though over an imaginary stomach, and ending in a
+      sharp point, beneath which bulged out the balloon of her double skirts,
+      gave a woman, that year, the appearance of being composed of different
+      sections badly fitted together; to such an extent did the frills, the
+      flounces, the inner bodice follow, in complete independence, controlled
+      only by the fancy of their designer or the rigidity of their material, the
+      line which led them to the knots of ribbon, falls of lace, fringes of
+      vertically hanging jet, or carried them along the bust, but nowhere
+      attached themselves to the living creature, who, according as the
+      architecture of their fripperies drew them towards or away from her own,
+      found herself either strait-laced to suffocation or else completely
+      buried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, after Odette had left him, Swann would think with a smile of her
+      telling him how the time would drag until he allowed her to come again; he
+      remembered the anxious, timid way in which she had once begged him that it
+      might not be very long, and the way in which she had looked at him then,
+      fixing upon him her fearful and imploring gaze, which gave her a touching
+      air beneath the bunches of artificial pansies fastened in the front of her
+      round bonnet of white straw, tied with strings of black velvet. "And won't
+      you," she had ventured, "come just once and take tea with me?" He had
+      pleaded pressure of work, an essay—which, in reality, he had
+      abandoned years ago—on Vermeer of Delft. "I know that I am quite
+      useless," she had replied, "a little wild thing like me beside a learned
+      great man like you. I should be like the frog in the fable! And yet I
+      should so much like to learn, to know things, to be initiated. What fun it
+      would be to become a regular bookworm, to bury my nose in a lot of old
+      papers!" she had gone on, with that self-satisfied air which a smart woman
+      adopts when she insists that her one desire is to give herself up, without
+      fear of soiling her fingers, to some unclean task, such as cooking the
+      dinner, with her "hands right in the dish itself." "You will only laugh at
+      me, but this painter who stops you from seeing me," she meant Vermeer, "I
+      have never even heard of him; is he alive still? Can I see any of his
+      things in Paris, so as to have some idea of what is going on behind that
+      great brow which works so hard, that head which I feel sure is always
+      puzzling away about things; just to be able to say 'There, that's what
+      he's thinking about!' What a dream it would be to be able to help you with
+      your work."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had sought an excuse in his fear of forming new friendships, which he
+      gallantly described as his fear of a hopeless passion. "You are afraid of
+      falling in love? How funny that is, when I go about seeking nothing else,
+      and would give my soul just to find a little love somewhere!" she had
+      said, so naturally and with such an air of conviction that he had been
+      genuinely touched. "Some woman must have made you suffer. And you think
+      that the rest are all like her. She can't have understood you: you are so
+      utterly different from ordinary men. That's what I liked about you when I
+      first saw you; I felt at once that you weren't like everybody else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then, besides, there's yourself——" he had continued, "I
+      know what women are; you must have a whole heap of things to do, and never
+      any time to spare."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I? Why, I have never anything to do. I am always free, and I always will
+      be free if you want me. At whatever hour of the day or night it may suit
+      you to see me, just send for me, and I shall be only too delighted to
+      come. Will you do that? Do you know what I should really like—to
+      introduce you to Mme. Verdurin, where I go every evening. Just fancy my
+      finding you there, and thinking that it was a little for my sake that you
+      had gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt, in thus remembering their conversations, in thinking about her
+      thus when he was alone, he did no more than call her image into being
+      among those of countless other women in his romantic dreams; but if,
+      thanks to some accidental circumstance (or even perhaps without that
+      assistance, for the circumstance which presents itself at the moment when
+      a mental state, hitherto latent, makes itself felt, may well have had no
+      influence whatsoever upon that state), the image of Odette de Crécy came
+      to absorb the whole of his dreams, if from those dreams the memory of her
+      could no longer be eliminated, then her bodily imperfections would no
+      longer be of the least importance, nor would the conformity of her body,
+      more or less than any other, to the requirements of Swann's taste; since,
+      having become the body of her whom he loved, it must henceforth be the
+      only one capable of causing him joy or anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It so happened that my grandfather had known—which was more than
+      could be said of any other actual acquaintance—the family of these
+      Verdurins. But he had entirely severed his connection with what he called
+      "young Verdurin," taking a general view of him as one who had fallen—though
+      without losing hold of his millions—among the riff-raff of Bohemia.
+      One day he received a letter from Swann asking whether my grandfather
+      could put him in touch with the Verdurins. "On guard! on guard!" he
+      exclaimed as he read it, "I am not at all surprised; Swann was bound to
+      finish up like this. A nice lot of people! I cannot do what he asks,
+      because, in the first place, I no longer know the gentleman in question.
+      Besides, there must be a woman in it somewhere, and I don't mix myself up
+      in such matters. Ah, well, we shall see some fun if Swann begins running
+      after the little Verdurins."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And on my grandfather's refusal to act as sponsor, it was Odette herself
+      who had taken Swann to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Verdurins had had dining with them, on the day when Swann made his
+      first appearance, Dr. and Mme. Cottard, the young pianist and his aunt,
+      and the painter then in favour, while these were joined, in the course of
+      the evening, by several more of the 'faithful.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Cottard was never quite certain of the tone in which he ought to reply
+      to any observation, or whether the speaker was jesting or in earnest. And
+      so in any event he would embellish all his facial expressions with the
+      offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose expectant subtlety would
+      exonerate him from the charge of being a simpleton, if the remark
+      addressed to him should turn out to have been facetious. But as he must
+      also be prepared to face the alternative, he never dared to allow this
+      smile a definite expression on his features, and you would see there a
+      perpetually flickering uncertainty, in which you might decipher the
+      question that he never dared to ask: "Do you really mean that?" He was no
+      more confident of the manner in which he ought to conduct himself in the
+      street, or indeed in life generally, than he was in a drawing-room; and he
+      might be seen greeting passers-by, carriages, and anything that occurred
+      with a malicious smile which absolved his subsequent behaviour of all
+      impropriety, since it proved, if it should turn out unsuited to the
+      occasion, that he was well aware of that, and that if he had assumed a
+      smile, the jest was a secret of his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On all those points, however, where a plain question appeared to him to be
+      permissible, the Doctor was unsparing in his endeavours to cultivate the
+      wilderness of his ignorance and uncertainty and so to complete his
+      education.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was that, following the advice given him by a wise mother on his
+      first coming up to the capital from his provincial home, he would never
+      let pass either a figure of speech or a proper name that was new to him
+      without an effort to secure the fullest information upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As regards figures of speech, he was insatiable in his thirst for
+      knowledge, for often imagining them to have a more definite meaning than
+      was actually the case, he would want to know what, exactly, was intended
+      by those which he most frequently heard used: 'devilish pretty,' 'blue
+      blood,' 'a cat and dog life,' 'a day of reckoning,' 'a queen of fashion,
+      'to give a free hand,' 'to be at a deadlock,' and so forth; and in what
+      particular circumstances he himself might make use of them in
+      conversation. Failing these, he would adorn it with puns and other 'plays
+      upon words' which he had learned by rote. As for the names of strangers
+      which were uttered in his hearing, he used merely to repeat them to
+      himself in a questioning tone, which, he thought, would suffice to furnish
+      him with explanations for which he would not ostensibly seek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the critical faculty, on the universal application of which he prided
+      himself, was, in reality, completely lacking, that refinement of good
+      breeding which consists in assuring some one whom you are obliging in any
+      way, without expecting to be believed, that it is really yourself that is
+      obliged to him, was wasted on Cottard, who took everything that he heard
+      in its literal sense. However blind she may have been to his faults, Mme.
+      Verdurin was genuinely annoyed, though she still continued to regard him
+      as brilliantly clever, when, after she had invited him to see and hear
+      Sarah Bernhardt from a stage box, and had said politely: "It is very good
+      of you to have come, Doctor, especially as I'm sure you must often have
+      heard Sarah Bernhardt; and besides, I'm afraid we're rather too near the
+      stage," the Doctor, who had come into the box with a smile which waited
+      before settling upon or vanishing from his face until some one in
+      authority should enlighten him as to the merits of the spectacle, replied:
+      "To be sure, we are far too near the stage, and one is getting sick of
+      Sarah Bernhardt. But you expressed a wish that I should come. For me, your
+      wish is a command. I am only too glad to be able to do you this little
+      service. What would one not do to please you, you are so good." And he
+      went on, "Sarah Bernhardt; that's what they call the Voice of God, ain't
+      it? You see, often, too, that she 'sets the boards on fire.' That's an odd
+      expression, ain't it?" in the hope of an enlightening commentary, which,
+      however, was not forthcoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "D'you know," Mme. Verdurin had said to her husband, "I believe we are
+      going the wrong way to work when we depreciate anything we offer the
+      Doctor. He is a scientist who lives quite apart from our everyday
+      existence; he knows nothing himself of what things are worth, and he
+      accepts everything that we say as gospel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never dared to mention it," M. Verdurin had answered, "but I've noticed
+      the same thing myself." And on the following New Year's Day, instead of
+      sending Dr. Cottard a ruby that cost three thousand francs, and pretending
+      that it was a mere trifle, M. Verdurin bought an artificial stone for
+      three hundred, and let it be understood that it was something almost
+      impossible to match.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mme. Verdurin had announced that they were to see M. Swann that
+      evening; "Swann!" the Doctor had exclaimed in a tone rendered brutal by
+      his astonishment, for the smallest piece of news would always take utterly
+      unawares this man who imagined himself to be perpetually in readiness for
+      anything. And seeing that no one answered him, "Swann! Who on earth is
+      Swann?" he shouted, in a frenzy of anxiety which subsided as soon as Mme.
+      Verdurin had explained, "Why, Odette's friend, whom she told us about."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, good, good; that's all right, then," answered the Doctor, at once
+      mollified. As for the painter, he was overjoyed at the prospect of Swann's
+      appearing at the Verdurins', because he supposed him to be in love with
+      Odette, and was always ready to assist at lovers' meetings. "Nothing
+      amuses me more than match-making," he confided to Cottard; "I have been
+      tremendously successful, even with women!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In telling the Verdurins that Swann was extremely 'smart,' Odette had
+      alarmed them with the prospect of another 'bore.' When he arrived,
+      however, he made an excellent impression, an indirect cause of which,
+      though they did not know it, was his familiarity with the best society. He
+      had, indeed, one of those advantages which men who have lived and moved in
+      the world enjoy over others, even men of intelligence and refinement, who
+      have never gone into society, namely that they no longer see it
+      transfigured by the longing or repulsion with which it fills the
+      imagination, but regard it as quite unimportant. Their good nature, freed
+      from all taint of snobbishness and from the fear of seeming too friendly,
+      grown independent, in fact, has the ease, the grace of movement of a
+      trained gymnast each of whose supple limbs will carry out precisely the
+      movement that is required without any clumsy participation by the rest of
+      his body. 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 shewed 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 Dr. Cottard; for seeing
+      him close one eye with an ambiguous smile, before they had yet spoken to
+      one another (a grimace which Cottard styled "letting 'em all come"), Swann
+      supposed that the Doctor recognised him from having met him already
+      somewhere, probably in some house of 'ill-fame,' though these he himself
+      very rarely visited, never having made a habit of indulging in the
+      mercenary sort of love. Regarding such an allusion as in bad taste,
+      especially before Odette, whose opinion of himself it might easily alter
+      for the worse, Swann assumed his most icy manner. But when he learned that
+      the lady next to the Doctor was Mme. Cottard, he decided that so young a
+      husband would not deliberately, in his wife's hearing, have made any
+      allusion to amusements of that order, and so ceased to interpret the
+      Doctor's expression in the sense which he had at first suspected. The
+      painter at once invited Swann to visit his studio with Odette, and Swann
+      found him very pleasant. "Perhaps you will be more highly favoured than I
+      have been," Mme. Verdurin broke in, with mock resentment of the favour,
+      "perhaps you will be allowed to see Cottard's portrait" (for which she had
+      given the painter a commission). "Take care, Master Biche," she reminded
+      the painter, whom it was a time-honoured pleasantry to address as
+      'Master,' "to catch that nice look in his eyes, that witty little twinkle.
+      You know, what I want to have most of all is his smile; that's what I've
+      asked you to paint—the portrait of his smile." And since the phrase
+      struck her as noteworthy, she repeated it very loud, so as to make sure
+      that as many as possible of her guests should hear it, and even made use
+      of some indefinite pretext to draw the circle closer before she uttered it
+      again. Swann begged to be introduced to everyone, even to an old friend of
+      the Verdurins, called Saniette, whose shyness, simplicity and good-nature
+      had deprived him of all the consideration due to his skill in
+      palaeography, his large fortune, and the distinguished family to which he
+      belonged. When he spoke, his words came with a confusion which was
+      delightful to hear because one felt that it indicated not so much a defect
+      in his speech as a quality of his soul, as it were a survival from the age
+      of innocence which he had never wholly outgrown. All the consonants which
+      he did not manage to pronounce seemed like harsh utterances of which his
+      gentle lips were incapable. By asking to be made known to M. Saniette,
+      Swann made M. Verdurin reverse the usual form of introduction (saying, in
+      fact, with emphasis on the distinction: "M. Swann, pray let me present to
+      you our friend Saniette") but he aroused in Saniette himself a warmth of
+      gratitude, which, however, the Verdurins never disclosed to Swann, since
+      Saniette rather annoyed them, and they did not feel bound to provide him
+      with friends. On the other hand the Verdurins were extremely touched by
+      Swann's next request, for he felt that he must ask to be introduced to the
+      pianist's aunt. She wore a black dress, as was her invariable custom, for
+      she believed that a woman always looked well in black, and that nothing
+      could be more distinguished; but her face was exceedingly red, as it
+      always was for some time after a meal. She bowed to Swann with deference,
+      but drew herself up again with great dignity. As she was entirely
+      uneducated, and was afraid of making mistakes in grammar and
+      pronunciation, she used purposely to speak in an indistinct and garbling
+      manner, thinking that if she should make a slip it would be so buried in
+      the surrounding confusion that no one could be certain whether she had
+      actually made it or not; with the result that her talk was a sort of
+      continuous, blurred expectoration, out of which would emerge, at rare
+      intervals, those sounds and syllables of which she felt positive. Swann
+      supposed himself entitled to poke a little mild fun at her in conversation
+      with M. Verdurin, who, however, was not at all amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is such an excellent woman!" he rejoined. "I grant you that she is
+      not exactly brilliant; but I assure you that she can talk most charmingly
+      when you are alone with her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure she can," Swann hastened to conciliate him. "All I meant was
+      that she hardly struck me as 'distinguished,'" he went on, isolating the
+      epithet in the inverted commas of his tone, "and, after all, that is
+      something of a compliment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wait a moment," said M. Verdurin, "now, this will surprise you; she
+      writes quite delightfully. You have never heard her nephew play? It is
+      admirable; eh, Doctor? Would you like me to ask him to play something, M.
+      Swann?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should count myself most fortunate..." Swann was beginning, a trifle
+      pompously, when the Doctor broke in derisively. Having once heard it said,
+      and never having forgotten that in general conversation emphasis and the
+      use of formal expressions were out of date, whenever he heard a solemn
+      word used seriously, as the word 'fortunate' had been used just now by
+      Swann, he at once assumed that the speaker was being deliberately
+      pedantic. And if, moreover, the same word happened to occur, also, in what
+      he called an old 'tag' or 'saw,' however common it might still be in
+      current usage, the Doctor jumped to the conclusion that the whole thing
+      was a joke, and interrupted with the remaining words of the quotation,
+      which he seemed to charge the speaker with having intended to introduce at
+      that point, although in reality it had never entered his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Most fortunate for France!" he recited wickedly, shooting up both arms
+      with great vigour. M. Verdurin could not help laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are all those good people laughing at over there? There's no sign of
+      brooding melancholy down in your corner," shouted Mme. Verdurin. "You
+      don't suppose I find it very amusing to be stuck up here by myself on the
+      stool of repentance," she went on peevishly, like a spoiled child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. Verdurin was sitting upon a high Swedish chair of waxed pine-wood,
+      which a violinist from that country had given her, and which she kept in
+      her drawing-room, although in appearance it suggested a school 'form,' and
+      'swore,' as the saying is, at the really good antique furniture which she
+      had besides; but she made a point of keeping on view the presents which
+      her 'faithful' were in the habit of making her from time to time, so that
+      the donors might have the pleasure of seeing them there when they came to
+      the house. She tried to persuade them to confine their tributes to flowers
+      and sweets, which had at least the merit of mortality; but she was never
+      successful, and the house was gradually filled with a collection of
+      foot-warmers, cushions, clocks, screens, barometers and vases, a constant
+      repetition and a boundless incongruity of useless but indestructible
+      objects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this lofty perch she would take her spirited part in the conversation
+      of the 'faithful,' and would revel in all their fun; but, since the
+      accident to her jaw, she had abandoned the effort involved in real
+      hilarity, and had substituted a kind of symbolical dumb-show which
+      signified, without endangering or even fatiguing her in any way, that she
+      was 'laughing until she cried.' At the least witticism aimed by any of the
+      circle against a 'bore,' or against a former member of the circle who was
+      now relegated to the limbo of 'bores'—and to the utter despair of M.
+      Verdurin, who had always made out that he was just as easily amused as his
+      wife, but who, since his laughter was the 'real thing,' was out of breath
+      in a moment, and so was overtaken and vanquished by her device of a
+      feigned but continuous hilarity—she would utter a shrill cry, shut
+      tight her little bird-like eyes, which were beginning to be clouded over
+      by a cataract, and quickly, as though she had only just time to avoid some
+      indecent sight or to parry a mortal blow, burying her face in her hands,
+      which completely engulfed it, and prevented her from seeing anything at
+      all, she would appear to be struggling to suppress, to eradicate a laugh
+      which, were she to give way to it, must inevitably leave her inanimate.
+      So, stupefied with the gaiety of the 'faithful,' drunken with comradeship,
+      scandal and asseveration, Mme. Verdurin, perched on her high seat like a
+      cage-bird whose biscuit has been steeped in mulled wine, would sit aloft
+      and sob with fellow-feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile M. Verdurin, after first asking Swann's permission to light his
+      pipe ("No ceremony here, you understand; we're all pals!"), went and
+      begged the young musician to sit down at the piano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Leave him alone; don't bother him; he hasn't come here to be tormented,"
+      cried Mme. Verdurin. "I won't have him tormented."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But why on earth should it bother him?" rejoined M. Verdurin. "I'm sure
+      M. Swann has never heard the sonata in F sharp which we discovered; he is
+      going to play us the pianoforte arrangement."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no, no, not my sonata!" she screamed, "I don't want to be made to cry
+      until I get a cold in the head, and neuralgia all down my face, like last
+      time; thanks very much, I don't intend to repeat that performance; you are
+      all very kind and considerate; it is easy to see that none of you will
+      have to stay in bed, for a week."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This little scene, which was re-enacted as often as the young pianist sat
+      down to play, never failed to delight the audience, as though each of them
+      were witnessing it for the first time, as a proof of the seductive
+      originality of the 'Mistress' as she was styled, and of the acute
+      sensitiveness of her musical 'ear.' Those nearest to her would attract the
+      attention of the rest, who were smoking or playing cards at the other end
+      of the room, by their cries of 'Hear, hear!' which, as in Parliamentary
+      debates, shewed that something worth listening to was being said. And next
+      day they would commiserate with those who had been prevented from coming
+      that evening, and would assure them that the 'little scene' had never been
+      so amusingly done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, all right, then," said M. Verdurin, "he can play just the andante."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just the <i>andante</i>! How you do go on," cried his wife. "As if it
+      weren't 'just the <i>andante</i>' that breaks every bone in my body. The
+      'Master' is really too priceless! Just as though, 'in the Ninth,' he said
+      'we need only have the <i>finale</i>,' or 'just the overture' of the <i>Meistersinger</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor, however, urged Mme. Verdurin to let the pianist play, not
+      because he supposed her to be malingering when she spoke of the
+      distressing effects that music always had upon her, for he recognised the
+      existence of certain neurasthenic states—but from his habit, common
+      to many doctors, of at once relaxing the strict letter of a prescription
+      as soon as it appeared to jeopardise, what seemed to him far more
+      important, the success of some social gathering at which he was present,
+      and of which the patient whom he had urged for once to forget her
+      dyspepsia or headache formed an essential factor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You won't be ill this time, you'll find," he told her, seeking at the
+      same time to subdue her mind by the magnetism of his gaze. "And, if you
+      are ill, we will cure you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you, really?" Mme. Verdurin spoke as though, with so great a favour
+      in store for her, there was nothing for it but to capitulate. Perhaps,
+      too, by dint of saying that she was going to be ill, she had worked
+      herself into a state in which she forgot, occasionally, that it was all
+      only a 'little scene,' and regarded things, quite sincerely, from an
+      invalid's point of view. For it may often be remarked that invalids grow
+      weary of having the frequency of their attacks depend always on their own
+      prudence in avoiding them, and like to let themselves think that they are
+      free to do everything that they most enjoy doing, although they are always
+      ill after doing it, provided only that they place themselves in the hands
+      of a higher authority which, without putting them to the least
+      inconvenience, can and will, by uttering a word or by administering a
+      tabloid, set them once again upon their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odette had gone to sit on a tapestry-covered sofa near the piano, saying
+      to Mme. Verdurin, "I have my own little corner, haven't I?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mme. Verdurin, seeing Swann by himself upon a chair, made him get up.
+      "You're not at all comfortable there; go along and sit by Odette; you can
+      make room for M. Swann there, can't you, Odette?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What charming Beauvais!" said Swann, stopping to admire the sofa before
+      he sat down on it, and wishing to be polite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am glad you appreciate my sofa," replied Mme. Verdurin, "and I warn you
+      that if you expect ever to see another like it you may as well abandon the
+      idea at once. They never made any more like it. And these little chairs,
+      too, are perfect marvels. You can look at them in a moment. The emblems in
+      each of the bronze mouldings correspond to the subject of the tapestry on
+      the chair; you know, you combine amusement with instruction when you look
+      at them;—I can promise you a delightful time, I assure you. Just
+      look at the little border around the edges; here, look, the little vine on
+      a red background in this one, the Bear and the Grapes. Isn't it well
+      drawn? What do you say? I think they knew a thing or two about design!
+      Doesn't it make your mouth water, this vine? My husband makes out that I
+      am not fond of fruit, because I eat less than he does. But not a bit of
+      it, I am greedier than any of you, but I have no need to fill my mouth
+      with them when I can feed on them with my eyes. What are you all laughing
+      at now, pray? Ask the Doctor; he will tell you that those grapes act on me
+      like a regular purge. Some people go to Fontainebleau for cures; I take my
+      own little Beauvais cure here. But, M. Swann, you mustn't run away without
+      feeling the little bronze mouldings on the backs. Isn't it an exquisite
+      surface? No, no, not with your whole hand like that; feel them properly!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If Mme. Verdurin is going to start playing about with her bronzes," said
+      the painter, "we shan't get any music to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Be quiet, you wretch! And yet we poor women," she went on, "are forbidden
+      pleasures far less voluptuous than this. There is no flesh in the world as
+      soft as these. None. When M. Verdurin did me the honour of being madly
+      jealous... come, you might at least be polite. Don't say that you never
+      have been jealous!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, my dear, I have said absolutely nothing. Look here, Doctor, I call
+      you as a witness; did I utter a word?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann had begun, out of politeness, to finger the bronzes, and did not
+      like to stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come along; you can caress them later; now it is you that are going to be
+      caressed, caressed in the ear; you'll like that, I think. Here's the young
+      gentleman who will take charge of that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the pianist had played, Swann felt and shewed more interest in him
+      than in any of the other guests, for the following reason:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music played
+      on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the material
+      quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a
+      source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the violin-part,
+      delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole, he had suddenly
+      perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of
+      sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent, level, and
+      breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea,
+      silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at a given
+      moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a
+      name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to
+      collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony—he knew not
+      which—that had just been played, and had opened and expanded his
+      soul, just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of
+      evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils. Perhaps it was owing to
+      his own ignorance of music that he had been able to receive so confused an
+      impression, one of those that are, notwithstanding, our only purely
+      musical impressions, limited in their extent, entirely original, and
+      irreducible into any other kind. An impression of this order, vanishing in
+      an instant, is, so to speak, an impression <i>sine materia</i>. Presumably
+      the notes which we hear at such moments tend to spread out before our
+      eyes, over surfaces greater or smaller according to their pitch and
+      volume; to trace arabesque designs, to give us the sensation of breadth or
+      tenuity, stability or caprice. But the notes themselves have vanished
+      before these sensations have developed sufficiently to escape submersion
+      under those which the following, or even simultaneous notes have already
+      begun to awaken in us. And this indefinite perception would continue to
+      smother in its molten liquidity the <i>motifs</i> which now and then
+      emerge, barely discernible, to plunge again and disappear and drown;
+      recognised only by the particular kind of pleasure which they instil,
+      impossible to describe, to recollect, to name; ineffable;—if our
+      memory, like a labourer who toils at the laying down of firm foundations
+      beneath the tumult of the waves, did not, by fashioning for us facsimiles
+      of those fugitive phrases, enable us to compare and to contrast them with
+      those that follow. And so, hardly had the delicious sensation, which Swann
+      had experienced, died away, before his memory had furnished him with an
+      immediate transcript, summary, it is true, and provisional, but one on
+      which he had kept his eyes fixed while the playing continued, so
+      effectively that, when the same impression suddenly returned, it was no
+      longer uncapturable. He was able to picture to himself its extent, its
+      symmetrical arrangement, its notation, the strength of its expression; he
+      had before him that definite object which was no longer pure music, but
+      rather design, architecture, thought, and which allowed the actual music
+      to be recalled. This time he had distinguished, quite clearly, a phrase
+      which emerged for a few moments from the waves of sound. It had at once
+      held out to him an invitation to partake of intimate pleasures, of whose
+      existence, before hearing it, he had never dreamed, into which he felt
+      that nothing but this phrase could initiate him; and he had been filled
+      with love for it, as with a new and strange desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here, there, everywhere,
+      towards a state of happiness noble, unintelligible, yet clearly indicated.
+      And then, suddenly having reached a certain point from which he was
+      prepared to follow it, after pausing for a moment, abruptly it changed its
+      direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, multiform, melancholy,
+      incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards a vista of joys unknown.
+      Then it vanished. He hoped, with a passionate longing, that he might find
+      it again, a third time. And reappear it did, though without speaking to
+      him more clearly, bringing him, indeed, a pleasure less profound. But when
+      he was once more at home he needed it, he was like a man into whose life a
+      woman, whom he has seen for a moment passing by, has brought a new form of
+      beauty, which strengthens and enlarges his own power of perception,
+      without his knowing even whether he is ever to see her again whom he loves
+      already, although he knows nothing of her, not even her name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed this passion for a phrase of music seemed, in the first few months,
+      to be bringing into Swann's life the possibility of a sort of
+      rejuvenation. He had so long since ceased to direct his course towards any
+      ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of ephemeral
+      satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally
+      stating his belief even to himself, that he would remain all his life in
+      that condition, which death alone could alter. More than this, since his
+      mind no longer entertained any lofty ideals, he had ceased to believe in
+      (although he could not have expressly denied) their reality. He had grown
+      also into the habit of taking refuge in trivial considerations, which
+      allowed him to set on one side matters of fundamental importance. Just as
+      he had never stopped to ask himself whether he would not have done better
+      by not going into society, knowing very well that if he had accepted an
+      invitation he must put in an appearance, and that afterwards, if he did
+      not actually call, he must at least leave cards upon his hostess; so in
+      his conversation he took care never to express with any warmth a personal
+      opinion about a thing, but instead would supply facts and details which
+      had a value of a sort in themselves, and excused him from shewing how much
+      he really knew. He would be extremely precise about the recipe for a dish,
+      the dates of a painter's birth and death, and the titles of his works.
+      Sometimes, in spite of himself, he would let himself go so far as to utter
+      a criticism of a work of art, or of some one's interpretation of life, but
+      then he would cloak his words in a tone of irony, as though he did not
+      altogether associate himself with what he was saying. But now, like a
+      confirmed invalid whom, all of a sudden, a change of air and surroundings,
+      or a new course of treatment, or, as sometimes happens, an organic change
+      in himself, spontaneous and unaccountable, seems to have so far recovered
+      from his malady that he begins to envisage the possibility, hitherto
+      beyond all hope, of starting to lead—and better late than never—a
+      wholly different life, Swann found in himself, in the memory of the phrase
+      that he had heard, in certain other sonatas which he had made people play
+      over to him, to see whether he might not, perhaps, discover his phrase
+      among them, the presence of one of those invisible realities in which he
+      had ceased to believe, but to which, as though the music had had upon the
+      moral barrenness from which he was suffering a sort of recreative
+      influence, he was conscious once again of a desire, almost, indeed, of the
+      power to consecrate his life. But, never having managed to find out whose
+      work it was that he had heard played that evening, he had been unable to
+      procure a copy, and finally had forgotten the quest. He had indeed, in the
+      course of the next few days, encountered several of the people who had
+      been at the party with him, and had questioned them; but most of them had
+      either arrived after or left before the piece was played; some had indeed
+      been in the house, but had gone into another room to talk, and those who
+      had stayed to listen had no clearer impression than the rest. As for his
+      hosts, they knew that it was a recently published work which the musicians
+      whom they had engaged for the evening had asked to be allowed to play;
+      but, as these last were now on tour somewhere, Swann could learn nothing
+      further. He had, of course, a number of musical friends, but, vividly as
+      he could recall the exquisite and inexpressible pleasure which the little
+      phrase had given him, and could see, still, before his eyes the forms that
+      it had traced in outline, he was quite incapable of humming over to them
+      the air. And so, at last, he ceased to think of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to-night, at Mme. Verdurin's, scarcely had the little pianist begun to
+      play when, suddenly, after a high note held on through two whole bars,
+      Swann saw it approaching, stealing forth from underneath that resonance,
+      which was prolonged and stretched out over it, like a curtain of sound, to
+      veil the mystery of its birth—and recognised, secret, whispering,
+      articulate, the airy and fragrant phrase that he had loved. And it was so
+      peculiarly itself, it had so personal a charm, which nothing else could
+      have replaced, that Swann felt as though he had met, in a friend's
+      drawing-room, a woman whom he had seen and admired, once, in the street,
+      and had despaired of ever seeing her again. Finally the phrase withdrew
+      and vanished, pointing, directing, diligent among the wandering currents
+      of its fragrance, leaving upon Swann's features a reflection of its smile.
+      But now, at last, he could ask the name of his fair unknown (and was told
+      that it was the <i>andante</i> movement of Vinteuil's sonata for the piano
+      and violin), he held it safe, could have it again to himself, at home, as
+      often as he would, could study its language and acquire its secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, when the pianist had finished, Swann crossed the room and thanked
+      him with a vivacity which delighted Mme. Verdurin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Isn't he charming?" she asked Swann, "doesn't he just understand it, his
+      sonata, the little wretch? You never dreamed, did you, that a piano could
+      be made to express all that? Upon my word, there's everything in it except
+      the piano! I'm caught out every time I hear it; I think I'm listening to
+      an orchestra. Though it's better, really, than an orchestra, more
+      complete."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young pianist bent over her as he answered, smiling and underlining
+      each of his words as though he were making an epigram: "You are most
+      generous to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while Mme. Verdurin was saying to her husband, "Run and fetch him a
+      glass of orangeade; it's well earned!" Swann began to tell Odette how he
+      had fallen in love with that little phrase. When their hostess, who was a
+      little way off, called out, "Well! It looks to me as though some one was
+      saying nice things to you, Odette!" she replied, "Yes, very nice," and he
+      found her simplicity delightful. Then he asked for some information about
+      this Vinteuil; what else he had done, and at what period in his life he
+      had composed the sonata;—what meaning the little phrase could have
+      had for him, that was what Swann wanted most to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But none of these people who professed to admire this musician (when Swann
+      had said that the sonata was really charming Mme. Verdurin had exclaimed,
+      "I quite believe it! Charming, indeed! But you don't dare to confess that
+      you don't know Vinteuil's sonata; you have no right not to know it!"—and
+      the painter had gone on with, "Ah, yes, it's a very fine bit of work,
+      isn't it? Not, of course, if you want something 'obvious,' something
+      'popular,' but, I mean to say, it makes a very great impression on us
+      artists."), none of them seemed ever to have asked himself these
+      questions, for none of them was able to reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even to one or two particular remarks made by Swann on his favourite
+      phrase, "D'you know, that's a funny thing; I had never noticed it; I may
+      as well tell you that I don't much care about peering at things through a
+      microscope, and pricking myself on pin-points of difference; no; we don't
+      waste time splitting hairs in this house; why not? well, it's not a habit
+      of ours, that's all," Mme. Verdurin replied, while Dr. Cottard gazed at
+      her with open-mouthed admiration, and yearned to be able to follow her as
+      she skipped lightly from one stepping-stone to another of her stock of
+      ready-made phrases. Both he, however, and Mme. Cottard, with a kind of
+      common sense which is shared by many people of humble origin, would always
+      take care not to express an opinion, or to pretend to admire a piece of
+      music which they would confess to each other, once they were safely at
+      home, that they no more understood than they could understand the art of
+      'Master' Biche. Inasmuch as the public cannot recognise the charm, the
+      beauty, even the outlines of nature save in the stereotyped impressions of
+      an art which they have gradually assimilated, while an original artist
+      starts by rejecting those impressions, so M. and Mme. Cottard, typical, in
+      this respect, of the public, were incapable of finding, either in
+      Vinteuil's sonata or in Biche's portraits, what constituted harmony, for
+      them, in music or beauty in painting. It appeared to them, when the
+      pianist played his sonata, as though he were striking haphazard from the
+      piano a medley of notes which bore no relation to the musical forms to
+      which they themselves were accustomed, and that the painter simply flung
+      the colours haphazard upon his canvas. When, on one of these, they were
+      able to distinguish a human form, they always found it coarsened and
+      vulgarised (that is to say lacking all the elegance of the school of
+      painting through whose spectacles they themselves were in the habit of
+      seeing the people—real, living people, who passed them in the
+      streets) and devoid of truth, as though M. Biche had not known how the
+      human shoulder was constructed, or that a woman's hair was not,
+      ordinarily, purple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet, when the 'faithful' were scattered out of earshot, the Doctor
+      felt that the opportunity was too good to be missed, and so (while Mme.
+      Verdurin was adding a final word of commendation of Vinteuil's sonata)
+      like a would-be swimmer who jumps into the water, so as to learn, but
+      chooses a moment when there are not too many people looking on: "Yes,
+      indeed; he's what they call a musician <i>di primo cartello</i>!" he
+      exclaimed, with a sudden determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann discovered no more than that the recent publication of Vinteuil's
+      sonata had caused a great stir among the most advanced school of
+      musicians, but that it was still unknown to the general public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know some one, quite well, called Vinteuil," said Swann, thinking of
+      the old music-master at Combray who had taught my grandmother's sisters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps that's the man!" cried Mme. Verdurin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, no!" Swann burst out laughing. "If you had ever seen him for a moment
+      you wouldn't put the question."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then to put the question is to solve the problem?" the Doctor suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it may well be some relative," Swann went on. "That would be bad
+      enough; but, after all, there is no reason why a genius shouldn't have a
+      cousin who is a silly old fool. And if that should be so, I swear there's
+      no known or unknown form of torture I wouldn't undergo to get the old fool
+      to introduce me to the man who composed the sonata; starting with the
+      torture of the old fool's company, which would be ghastly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter understood that Vinteuil was seriously ill at the moment, and
+      that Dr. Potain despaired of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What!" cried Mme. Verdurin, "Do people still call in Potain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! Mme. Verdurin," Cottard simpered, "you forget that you are speaking
+      of one of my colleagues—I should say, one of my masters."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter had heard, somewhere, that Vinteuil was threatened with the
+      loss of his reason. And he insisted that signs of this could be detected
+      in certain passages in the sonata. This remark did not strike Swann as
+      ridiculous; rather, it puzzled him. For, since a purely musical work
+      contains none of those logical sequences, the interruption or confusion of
+      which, in spoken or written language, is a proof of insanity, so insanity
+      diagnosed in a sonata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as the insanity
+      of a dog or a horse, although instances may be observed of these.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't speak to me about 'your masters'; you know ten times as much as he
+      does!" Mme. Verdurin answered Dr. Cottard, in the tone of a woman who has
+      the courage of her convictions, and is quite ready to stand up to anyone
+      who disagrees with her. "Anyhow, you don't kill your patients!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, Madame, he is in the Academy." The Doctor smiled with bitter irony.
+      "If a sick person prefers to die at the hands of one of the Princes of
+      Science... It is far more smart to be able to say, 'Yes, I have Potain.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, indeed! More smart, is it?" said Mme. Verdurin. "So there are
+      fashions, nowadays, in illness, are there? I didn't know that.... Oh, you
+      do make me laugh!" she screamed, suddenly, burying her face in her hands.
+      "And here was I, poor thing, talking quite seriously, and never seeing
+      that you were pulling my leg."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for M. Verdurin, finding it rather a strain to start laughing again
+      over so small a matter, he was content with puffing out a cloud of smoke
+      from his pipe, while he reflected sadly that he could never again hope to
+      keep pace with his wife in her Atalanta-flights across the field of mirth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "D'you know; we like your friend so very much," said Mme. Verdurin, later,
+      when Odette was bidding her good night. "He is so unaffected, quite
+      charming. If they're all like that, the friends you want to bring here, by
+      all means bring them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Verdurin remarked that Swann had failed, all the same, to appreciate
+      the pianist's aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say he felt a little strange, poor man," suggested Mme. Verdurin.
+      "You can't expect him to catch the tone of the house the first time he
+      comes; like Cottard, who has been one of our little 'clan' now for years.
+      The first time doesn't count; it's just for looking round and finding out
+      things. Odette, he understands all right, he's to join us to-morrow at the
+      Châtelet. Perhaps you might call for him and bring him."
+    </p>
+    <p>      
+      "No, he doesn't want that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, very well; just as you like. Provided he doesn't fail us at the last
+      moment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Greatly to Mme. Verdurin's surprise, he never failed them. He would go to
+      meet them, no matter where, at restaurants outside Paris (not that they
+      went there much at first, for the season had not yet begun), and more
+      frequently at the play, in which Mme. Verdurin delighted. One evening,
+      when they were dining at home, he heard her complain that she had not one
+      of those permits which would save her the trouble of waiting at doors and
+      standing in crowds, and say how useful it would be to them at
+      first-nights, and gala performances at the Opera, and what a nuisance it
+      had been, not having one, on the day of Gambetta's funeral. Swann never
+      spoke of his distinguished friends, but only of such as might be regarded
+      as detrimental, whom, therefore, he thought it snobbish, and in not very
+      good taste to conceal; while he frequented the Faubourg Saint-Germain he
+      had come to include, in the latter class, all his friends in the official
+      world of the Third Republic, and so broke in, without thinking: "I'll see
+      to that, all right. You shall have it in time for the <i>Danicheff</i>
+      revival. I shall be lunching with the Prefect of Police to-morrow, as it
+      happens, at the Elysée."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's that? The Elysée?" Dr. Cottard roared in a voice of thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, at M. Grévy's," replied Swann, feeling a little awkward at the
+      effect which his announcement had produced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you often taken like that?" the painter asked Cottard, with
+      mock-seriousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a rule, once an explanation had been given, Cottard would say: "Ah,
+      good, good; that's all right, then," after which he would shew not the
+      least trace of emotion. But this time Swann's last words, instead of the
+      usual calming effect, had that of heating, instantly, to boiling-point his
+      astonishment at the discovery that a man with whom he himself was actually
+      sitting at table, a man who had no official position, no honours or
+      distinction of any sort, was on visiting terms with the Head of the State.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's that you say? M. Grévy? Do you know M. Grévy?" he demanded of
+      Swann, in the stupid and incredulous tone of a constable on duty at the
+      palace, when a stranger has come up and asked to see the President of the
+      Republic; until, guessing from his words and manner what, as the
+      newspapers say, 'it is a case of,' he assures the poor lunatic that he
+      will be admitted at once, and points the way to the reception ward of the
+      police infirmary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know him slightly; we have some friends in common" (Swann dared not add
+      that one of these friends was the Prince of Wales). "Anyhow, he is very
+      free with his invitations, and, I assure you, his luncheon-parties are not
+      the least bit amusing; they're very simple affairs, too, you know; never
+      more than eight at table," he went on, trying desperately to cut out
+      everything that seemed to shew off his relations with the President in a
+      light too dazzling for the Doctor's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon Cottard, at once conforming in his mind to the literal
+      interpretation of what Swann was saying, decided that invitations from M.
+      Grévy were very little sought after, were sent out, in fact, into the
+      highways and hedge-rows. And from that moment he never seemed at all
+      surprised to hear that Swann, or anyone else, was 'always at the Elysée';
+      he even felt a little sorry for a man who had to go to luncheon-parties
+      which, he himself admitted, were a bore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, good, good; that's quite all right then," he said, in the tone of a
+      customs official who has been suspicious up to now, but, after hearing
+      your explanations, stamps your passport and lets you proceed on your
+      journey without troubling to examine your luggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can well believe you don't find them amusing, those parties; indeed,
+      it's very good of you to go to them!" said Mme. Verdurin, who regarded the
+      President of the Republic only as a 'bore' to be especially dreaded, since
+      he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion, which,
+      if employed to captivate her 'faithful,' might easily make them 'fail.'
+      "It seems, he's as deaf as a post; and eats with his fingers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Upon my word! Then it can't be much fun for you, going there." A note of
+      pity sounded in the Doctor's voice; and then struck by the number—only
+      eight at table—"Are these luncheons what you would describe as
+      'intimate'?" he inquired briskly, not so much out of idle curiosity as in
+      his linguistic zeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But so great and glorious a figure was the President of the French
+      Republic in the eyes of Dr. Cottard that neither the modesty of Swann nor
+      the spite of Mme. Verdurin could ever wholly efface that first impression,
+      and he never sat down to dinner with the Verdurins without asking
+      anxiously, "D'you think we shall see M. Swann here this evening? He is a
+      personal friend of M. Grévy's. I suppose that means he's what you'd call a
+      'gentleman'?" He even went to the length of offering Swann a card of
+      invitation to the Dental Exhibition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This will let you in, and anyone you take with you," he explained, "but
+      dogs are not admitted. I'm just warning you, you understand, because some
+      friends of mine went there once, who hadn't been told, and there was the
+      devil to pay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for M. Verdurin, he did not fail to observe the distressing effect upon
+      his wife of the discovery that Swann had influential friends of whom he
+      had never spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If no arrangement had been made to 'go anywhere,' it was at the Verdurins'
+      that Swann would find the 'little nucleus' assembled, but he never
+      appeared there except in the evenings, and would hardly ever accept their
+      invitations to dinner, in spite of Odette's entreaties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could dine with you alone somewhere, if you'd rather," she suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what about Mme. Verdurin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, that's quite simple. I need only say that my dress wasn't ready, or
+      that my cab came late. There is always some excuse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How charming of you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette feel (by
+      consenting to meet her only after dinner) that there were other pleasures
+      which he preferred to that of her company, then the desire that she felt
+      for his would be all the longer in reaching the point of satiety. Besides,
+      as he infinitely preferred to Odette's style of beauty that of a little
+      working girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with whom he happened to be
+      simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the first part of the
+      evening with her, knowing that he was sure to see Odette later on. For the
+      same reason, he would never allow Odette to call for him at his house, to
+      take him on to the Verdurins'. The little girl used to wait, not far from
+      his door, at a street corner; Rémi, his coachman, knew where to stop; she
+      would jump in beside him, and hold him in her arms until the carriage drew
+      up at the Verdurins'. He would enter the drawing-room; and there, while
+      Mme. Verdurin, pointing to the roses which he had sent her that morning,
+      said: "I am furious with you!" and sent him to the place kept for him, by
+      the side of Odette, the pianist would play to them—for their two
+      selves, and for no one else—that little phrase by Vinteuil which
+      was, so to speak, the national anthem of their love. He began, always,
+      with a sustained tremolo from the violin part, which, for several bars,
+      was unaccompanied, and filled all the foreground; until suddenly it seemed
+      to be drawn aside, and—just as in those interiors by Pieter de
+      Hooch, where the subject is set back a long way through the narrow
+      framework of a half-opened door—infinitely remote, in colour quite
+      different, velvety with the radiance of some intervening light, the little
+      phrase appeared, dancing, pastoral, interpolated, episodic, belonging to
+      another world. It passed, with simple and immortal movements, scattering
+      on every side the bounties of its grace, smiling ineffably still; but
+      Swann thought that he could now discern in it some disenchantment. It
+      seemed to be aware how vain, how hollow was the happiness to which it
+      shewed the way. In its airy grace there was, indeed, something definitely
+      achieved, and complete in itself, like the mood of philosophic detachment
+      which follows an outburst of vain regret. But little did that matter to
+      him; he looked upon the sonata less in its own light—as what it
+      might express, had, in fact, expressed to a certain musician, ignorant
+      that any Swann or Odette, anywhere in the world, existed, when he composed
+      it, and would express to all those who should hear it played in centuries
+      to come—than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the
+      Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same time,
+      of himself—which bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that
+      point he had (whimsically entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of
+      getting some 'professional' to play over to him the whole sonata, of which
+      he still knew no more than this one passage. "Why do you want the rest?"
+      she had asked him. "Our little bit; that's all we need." He went farther;
+      agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by him, so near
+      and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed to their ears,
+      it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had a meaning of its
+      own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to themselves, just as
+      in the jewels given to us, or even in the letters written to us by a woman
+      with whom we are in love, we find fault with the 'water' of a stone, or
+      with the words of a sentence because they are not fashioned exclusively
+      from the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of a 'lass unparalleled.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would happen, as often as not, that he had stayed so long outside, with
+      his little girl, before going to the Verdurins' that, as soon as the
+      little phrase had been rendered by the pianist, Swann would discover that
+      it was almost time for Odette to go home. He used to take her back as far
+      as the door of her little house in the Rue La Pérouse, behind the Arc de
+      Triomphe. And it was perhaps on this account, and so as not to demand the
+      monopoly of her favours, that he sacrificed the pleasure (not so essential
+      to his well-being) of seeing her earlier in the evening, of arriving with
+      her at the Verdurins', to the exercise of this other privilege, for which
+      she was grateful, of their leaving together; a privilege which he valued
+      all the more because, thanks to it, he had the feeling that no one else
+      would see her, no one would thrust himself between them, no one could
+      prevent him from remaining with her in spirit, after he had left her for
+      the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, night after night, she would be taken home in Swann's carriage;
+      and one night, after she had got down, and while he stood at the gate and
+      murmured "Till to-morrow, then!" she turned impulsively from him, plucked
+      a last lingering chrysanthemum in the tiny garden which flanked the
+      pathway from the street to her house, and as he went back to his carriage
+      thrust it into his hand. He held it pressed to his lips during the drive
+      home, and when, in due course, the flower withered, locked it away, like
+      something very precious, in a secret drawer of his desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would escort her to her gate, but no farther. Twice only had he gone
+      inside to take part in the ceremony—of such vital importance in her
+      life—of 'afternoon tea.' The loneliness and emptiness of those short
+      streets (consisting, almost entirely, of low-roofed houses, self-contained
+      but not detached, their monotony interrupted here and there by the dark
+      intrusion of some sinister little shop, at once an historical document and
+      a sordid survival from the days when the district was still one of ill
+      repute), the snow which had lain on the garden-beds or clung to the
+      branches of the trees, the careless disarray of the season, the assertion,
+      in this man-made city, of a state of nature, had all combined to add an
+      element of mystery to the warmth, the flowers, the luxury which he had
+      found inside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passing by (on his left-hand side, and on what, although raised some way
+      above the street, was the ground floor of the house) Odette's bedroom,
+      which looked out to the back over another little street running parallel
+      with her own, he had climbed a staircase that went straight up between
+      dark painted walls, from which hung Oriental draperies, strings of Turkish
+      beads, and a huge Japanese lantern, suspended by a silken cord from the
+      ceiling (which last, however, so that her visitors should not have to
+      complain of the want of any of the latest comforts of Western
+      civilisation, was lighted by a gas-jet inside), to the two drawing-rooms,
+      large and small. These were entered through a narrow lobby, the wall of
+      which, chequered with the lozenges of a wooden trellis such as you see on
+      garden walls, only gilded, was lined from end to end by a long rectangular
+      box in which bloomed, as though in a hothouse, a row of large
+      chrysanthemums, at that time still uncommon, though by no means so large
+      as the mammoth blossoms which horticulturists have since succeeded in
+      making grow. Swann was irritated, as a rule, by the sight of these
+      flowers, which had then been 'the rage' in Paris for about a year, but it
+      had pleased him, on this occasion, to see the gloom of the little lobby
+      shot with rays of pink and gold and white by the fragrant petals of these
+      ephemeral stars, which kindle their cold fires in the murky atmosphere of
+      winter afternoons. Odette had received him in a tea-gown of pink silk,
+      which left her neck and arms bare. She had made him sit down beside her in
+      one of the many mysterious little retreats which had been contrived in the
+      various recesses of the room, sheltered by enormous palmtrees growing out
+      of pots of Chinese porcelain, or by screens upon which were fastened
+      photographs and fans and bows of ribbon. She had said at once, "You're not
+      comfortable there; wait a minute, I'll arrange things for you," and with a
+      titter of laughter, the complacency of which implied that some little
+      invention of her own was being brought into play, she had installed behind
+      his head and beneath his feet great cushions of Japanese silk, which she
+      pummelled and buffeted as though determined to lavish on him all her
+      riches, and regardless of their value. But when her footman began to come
+      into the room, bringing, one after another, the innumerable lamps which
+      (contained, mostly, in porcelain vases) burned singly or in pairs upon the
+      different pieces of furniture as upon so many altars, rekindling in the
+      twilight, already almost nocturnal, of this winter afternoon, the glow of
+      a sunset more lasting, more roseate, more human—filling, perhaps,
+      with romantic wonder the thoughts of some solitary lover, wandering in the
+      street below and brought to a standstill before the mystery of the human
+      presence which those lighted windows at once revealed and screened from
+      sight—she had kept an eye sharply fixed on the servant, to see
+      whether he set each of the lamps down in the place appointed it. She felt
+      that, if he were to put even one of them where it ought not to be, the
+      general effect of her drawing-room would be destroyed, and that her
+      portrait, which rested upon a sloping easel draped with plush, would not
+      catch the light. And so, with feverish impatience, she followed the man's
+      clumsy movements, scolding him severely when he passed too close to a pair
+      of beaupots, which she made a point of always tidying herself, in case the
+      plants should be knocked over—and went across to them now to make
+      sure that he had not broken off any of the flowers. She found something
+      'quaint' in the shape of each of her Chinese ornaments, and also in her
+      orchids, the cattleyas especially (these being, with chrysanthemums, her
+      favourite flowers), because they had the supreme merit of not looking in
+      the least like other flowers, but of being made, apparently, out of scraps
+      of silk or satin. "It looks just as though it had been cut out of the
+      lining of my cloak," she said to Swann, pointing to an orchid, with a
+      shade of respect in her voice for so 'smart' a flower, for this
+      distinguished, unexpected sister whom nature had suddenly bestowed upon
+      her, so far removed from her in the scale of existence, and yet so
+      delicate, so refined, so much more worthy than many real women of
+      admission to her drawing-room. As she drew his attention, now to the
+      fiery-tongued dragons painted upon a bowl or stitched upon a fire-screen,
+      now to a fleshy cluster of orchids, now to a dromedary of inlaid
+      silver-work with ruby eyes, which kept company, upon her mantelpiece, with
+      a toad carved in jade, she would pretend now to be shrinking from the
+      ferocity of the monsters or laughing at their absurdity, now blushing at
+      the indecency of the flowers, now carried away by an irresistible desire
+      to run across and kiss the toad and dromedary, calling them 'darlings.'
+      And these affectations were in sharp contrast to the sincerity of some of
+      her attitudes, notably her devotion to Our Lady of the Laghetto who had
+      once, when Odette was living at Nice, cured her of a mortal illness, and
+      whose medal, in gold, she always carried on her person, attributing to it
+      unlimited powers. She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon or cream?"
+      and, on his answering "Cream, please," went on, smiling, "A cloud!" And as
+      he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you like it." This
+      tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to her, something
+      precious, and love is so far obliged to find some justification for
+      itself, some guarantee of its duration in pleasures which, on the
+      contrary, would have no existence apart from love and must cease with its
+      passing, that when he left her, at seven o'clock, to go and dress for the
+      evening, all the way home, sitting bolt upright in his brougham, unable to
+      repress the happiness with which the afternoon's adventure had filled him,
+      he kept on repeating to himself: "What fun it would be to have a little
+      woman like that in a place where one could always be certain of finding,
+      what one never can be certain of finding, a really good cup of tea." An
+      hour or so later he received a note from Odette, and at once recognised
+      that florid handwriting, in which an affectation of British stiffness
+      imposed an apparent discipline upon its shapeless characters, significant,
+      perhaps, to less intimate eyes than his, of an untidiness of mind, a
+      fragmentary education, a want of sincerity and decision. Swann had left
+      his cigarette-case at her house. "Why," she wrote, "did you not forget
+      your heart also? I should never have let you have that back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More important, perhaps, was a second visit which he paid her, a little
+      later. On his way to the house, as always when he knew that they were to
+      meet, he formed a picture of her in his mind; and the necessity, if he was
+      to find any beauty in her face, of fixing his eyes on the fresh and rosy
+      protuberance of her cheekbones, and of shutting out all the rest of those
+      cheeks which were so often languorous and sallow, except when they were
+      punctuated with little fiery spots, plunged him in acute depression, as
+      proving that one's ideal is always unattainable, and one's actual
+      happiness mediocre. He was taking her an engraving which she had asked to
+      see. She was not very well; she received him, wearing a wrapper of mauve
+      <i>crêpe de Chine</i>, which draped her bosom, like a mantle, with a
+      richly embroidered web. As she stood there beside him, brushing his cheek
+      with the loosened tresses of her hair, bending one knee in what was almost
+      a dancer's pose, so that she could lean without tiring herself over the
+      picture, at which she was gazing, with bended head, out of those great
+      eyes, which seemed so weary and so sullen when there was nothing to
+      animate her, Swann was struck by her resemblance to the figure of
+      Zipporah, Jethro's Daughter, which is to be seen in one of the Sistine
+      frescoes. He had always found a peculiar fascination in tracing in the
+      paintings of the Old Masters, not merely the general characteristics of
+      the people whom he encountered in his daily life, but rather what seems
+      least susceptible of generalisation, the individual features of men and
+      women whom he knew, as, for instance, in a bust of the Doge Loredan by
+      Antonio Rizzo, the prominent cheekbones, the slanting eyebrows, in short,
+      a speaking likeness to his own coachman Rémi; in the colouring of a
+      Ghirlandaio, the nose of M. de Palancy; in a portrait by Tintoretto, the
+      invasion of the plumpness of the cheek by an outcrop of whisker, the
+      broken nose, the penetrating stare, the swollen eyelids of Dr. du Boulbon.
+      Perhaps because he had always regretted, in his heart, that he had
+      confined his attention to the social side of life, had talked, always,
+      rather than acted, he felt that he might find a sort of indulgence
+      bestowed upon him by those great artists, in his perception of the fact
+      that they also had regarded with pleasure and had admitted into the canon
+      of their works such types of physiognomy as give those works the strongest
+      possible certificate of reality and trueness to life; a modern, almost a
+      topical savour; perhaps, also, he had so far succumbed to the prevailing
+      frivolity of the world of fashion that he felt the necessity of finding in
+      an old masterpiece some such obvious and refreshing allusion to a person
+      about whom jokes could be made and repeated and enjoyed to-day. Perhaps,
+      on the other hand, he had retained enough of the artistic temperament to
+      be able to find a genuine satisfaction in watching these individual
+      features take on a more general significance when he saw them, uprooted
+      and disembodied, in the abstract idea of similarity between an historic
+      portrait and a modern original, whom it was not intended to represent.
+      However that might be, and perhaps because the abundance of impressions
+      which he, for some time past, had been receiving—though, indeed,
+      they had come to him rather through the channel of his appreciation of
+      music—had enriched his appetite for painting as well, it was with an
+      unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting
+      effect upon his character and conduct, that Swann remarked Odette's
+      resemblance to the Zipporah of that Alessandro de Mariano, to whom one
+      shrinks from giving his more popular surname, now that 'Botticelli'
+      suggests not so much the actual work of the Master as that false and banal
+      conception of it which has of late obtained common currency. He no longer
+      based his estimate of the merit of Odette's face on the more or less good
+      quality of her cheeks, and the softness and sweetness—as of
+      carnation-petals—which, he supposed, would greet his lips there,
+      should he ever hazard an embrace, but regarded it rather as a skein of
+      subtle and lovely silken threads, which his gazing eyes collected and
+      wound together, following the curving line from the skein to the ball,
+      where he mingled the cadence of her neck with the spring of her hair and
+      the droop of her eyelids, as though from a portrait of herself, in which
+      her type was made clearly intelligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood gazing at her; traces of the old fresco were apparent in her face
+      and limbs, and these he tried incessantly, afterwards, to recapture, both
+      when he was with Odette, and when he was only thinking of her in her
+      absence; and, albeit his admiration for the Florentine masterpiece was
+      probably based upon his discovery that it had been reproduced in her, the
+      similarity enhanced her beauty also, and rendered her more precious in his
+      sight. Swann reproached himself with his failure, hitherto, to estimate at
+      her true worth a creature whom the great Sandro would have adored, and
+      counted himself fortunate that his pleasure in the contemplation of Odette
+      found a justification in his own system of aesthetic. He told himself
+      that, in choosing the thought of Odette as the inspiration of his dreams
+      of ideal happiness, he was not, as he had until then supposed, falling
+      back, merely, upon an expedient of doubtful and certainly inadequate
+      value, since she contained in herself what satisfied the utmost refinement
+      of his taste in art. He failed to observe that this quality would not
+      naturally avail to bring Odette into the category of women whom he found
+      desirable, simply because his desires had always run counter to his
+      aesthetic taste. The words 'Florentine painting' were invaluable to Swann.
+      They enabled him (gave him, as it were, a legal title) to introduce the
+      image of Odette into a world of dreams and fancies which, until then, she
+      had been debarred from entering, and where she assumed a new and nobler
+      form. And whereas the mere sight of her in the flesh, by perpetually
+      reviving his misgivings as to the quality of her face, her figure, the
+      whole of her beauty, used to cool the ardour of his love, those misgivings
+      were swept away and that love confirmed now that he could re-erect his
+      estimate of her on the sure foundations of his aesthetic principles; while
+      the kiss, the bodily surrender which would have seemed natural and but
+      moderately attractive, had they been granted him by a creature of somewhat
+      withered flesh and sluggish blood, coming, as now they came, to crown his
+      adoration of a masterpiece in a gallery, must, it seemed, prove as
+      exquisite as they would be supernatural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when he was tempted to regret that, for months past, he had done
+      nothing but visit Odette, he would assure himself that he was not
+      unreasonable in giving up much of his time to the study of an inestimably
+      precious work of art, cast for once in a new, a different, an especially
+      charming metal, in an unmatched exemplar which he would contemplate at one
+      moment with the humble, spiritual, disinterested mind of an artist, at
+      another with the pride, the selfishness, the sensual thrill of a
+      collector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his study table, at which he worked, he had placed, as it were a
+      photograph of Odette, a reproduction of Jethro's Daughter. He would gaze
+      in admiration at the large eyes, the delicate features in which the
+      imperfection of her skin might be surmised, the marvellous locks of hair
+      that fell along her tired cheeks; and, adapting what he had already felt
+      to be beautiful, on aesthetic grounds, to the idea of a living woman, he
+      converted it into a series of physical merits which he congratulated
+      himself on finding assembled in the person of one whom he might,
+      ultimately, possess. The vague feeling of sympathy which attracts a
+      spectator to a work of art, now that he knew the type, in warm flesh and
+      blood, of Jethro's Daughter, became a desire which more than compensated,
+      thenceforward, for that with which Odette's physical charms had at first
+      failed to inspire him. When he had sat for a long time gazing at the
+      Botticelli, he would think of his own living Botticelli, who seemed all
+      the lovelier in contrast, and as he drew towards him the photograph of
+      Zipporah he would imagine that he was holding Odette against his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not only Odette's indifference, however, that he must take pains to
+      circumvent; it was also, not infrequently, his own; feeling that, since
+      Odette had had every facility for seeing him, she seemed no longer to have
+      very much to say to him when they did meet, he was afraid lest the manner—at
+      once trivial, monotonous, and seemingly unalterable—which she now
+      adopted when they were together should ultimately destroy in him that
+      romantic hope, that a day might come when she would make avowal of her
+      passion, by which hope alone he had become and would remain her lover. And
+      so to alter, to give a fresh moral aspect to that Odette, of whose
+      unchanging mood he was afraid of growing weary, he wrote, suddenly, a
+      letter full of hinted discoveries and feigned indignation, which he sent
+      off so that it should reach her before dinner-time. He knew that she would
+      be frightened, and that she would reply, and he hoped that, when the fear
+      of losing him clutched at her heart, it would force from her words such as
+      he had never yet heard her utter: and he was right—by repeating this
+      device he had won from her the most affectionate letters that she had, so
+      far, written him, one of them (which she had sent to him at midday by a
+      special messenger from the Maison Dorée—it was the day of the
+      Paris-Murcie Fête given for the victims of the recent floods in Murcia)
+      beginning "My dear, my hand trembles so that I can scarcely write——";
+      and these letters he had kept in the same drawer as the withered
+      chrysanthemum. Or else, if she had not had time to write, when he arrived
+      at the Verdurins' she would come running up to him with an "I've something
+      to say to you!" and he would gaze curiously at the revelation in her face
+      and speech of what she had hitherto kept concealed from him of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even as he drew near to the Verdurins' door, and caught sight of the great
+      lamp-lit spaces of the drawing-room windows, whose shutters were never
+      closed, he would begin to melt at the thought of the charming creature
+      whom he would see, as he entered the room, basking in that golden light.
+      Here and there the figures of the guests stood out, sharp and black,
+      between lamp and window, shutting off the light, like those little
+      pictures which one sees sometimes pasted here and there upon a glass
+      screen, whose other panes are mere transparencies. He would try to make
+      out Odette. And then, when he was once inside, without thinking, his eyes
+      sparkled suddenly with such radiant happiness that M. Verdurin said to the
+      painter: "H'm. Seems to be getting warm." Indeed, her presence gave the
+      house what none other of the houses that he visited seemed to possess: a
+      sort of tactual sense, a nervous system which ramified into each of its
+      rooms and sent a constant stimulus to his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the simple and regular manifestations of a social organism, namely
+      the 'little clan,' were transformed for Swann into a series of daily
+      encounters with Odette, and enabled him to feign indifference to the
+      prospect of seeing her, or even a desire not to see her; in doing which he
+      incurred no very great risk since, even although he had written to her
+      during the day, he would of necessity see her in the evening and accompany
+      her home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one evening, when, irritated by the thought of that inevitable dark
+      drive together, he had taken his other 'little girl' all the way to the
+      Bois, so as to delay as long as possible the moment of his appearance at
+      the Verdurins', he was so late in reaching them that Odette, supposing
+      that he did not intend to come, had already left. Seeing the room bare of
+      her, Swann felt his heart wrung by sudden anguish; he shook with the sense
+      that he was being deprived of a pleasure whose intensity he began then for
+      the first time to estimate, having always, hitherto, had that certainty of
+      finding it whenever he would, which (as in the case of all our pleasures)
+      reduced, if it did not altogether blind him to its dimensions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you notice the face he pulled when he saw that she wasn't here?" M.
+      Verdurin asked his wife. "I think we may say that he's hooked."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The face he pulled?" exploded Dr. Cottard who, having left the house for
+      a moment to visit a patient, had just returned to fetch his wife and did
+      not know whom they were discussing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "D'you mean to say you didn't meet him on the doorstep—the loveliest
+      of Swanns?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No. M. Swann has been here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just for a moment. We had a glimpse of a Swann tremendously agitated. In
+      a state of nerves. You see, Odette had left."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mean to say that she has gone the 'whole hog' with him; that she has
+      'burned her boats'?" inquired the Doctor cautiously, testing the meaning
+      of his phrases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, of course not; there's absolutely nothing in it; in fact, between
+      you and me, I think she's making a great mistake, and behaving like a
+      silly little fool, which she is, incidentally."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, come, come!" said M. Verdurin, "How on earth do you know that
+      there's 'nothing in it'? We haven't been there to see, have we now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She would have told me," answered Mme. Verdurin with dignity. "I may say
+      that she tells me everything. As she has no one else at present, I told
+      her that she ought to live with him. She makes out that she can't; she
+      admits, she was immensely attracted by him, at first; but he's always shy
+      with her, and that makes her shy with him. Besides, she doesn't care for
+      him in that way, she says; it's an ideal love, 'Platonic,' you know; she's
+      afraid of rubbing the bloom off—oh, I don't know half the things she
+      says, how should I? And yet he's exactly the sort of man she wants."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg to differ from you," M. Verdurin courteously interrupted. "I am
+      only half satisfied with the gentleman. I feel that he 'poses.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. Verdurin's whole body stiffened, her eyes stared blankly as though
+      she had suddenly been turned into a statue; a device by means of which she
+      might be supposed not to have caught the sound of that unutterable word
+      which seemed to imply that it was possible for people to 'pose' in her
+      house, and, therefore, that there were people in the world who 'mattered
+      more' than herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Anyhow, if there is nothing in it, I don't suppose it's because our
+      friend believes in her virtue. And yet, you never know; he seems to
+      believe in her intelligence. I don't know whether you heard the way he
+      lectured her the other evening about Vinteuil's sonata. I am devoted to
+      Odette, but really—to expound theories of aesthetic to her—the
+      man must be a prize idiot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, I won't have you saying nasty things about Odette," broke in
+      Mme. Verdurin in her 'spoiled child' manner. "She is charming."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's no reason why she shouldn't be charming; we are not saying
+      anything nasty about her, only that she is not the embodiment of either
+      virtue or intellect. After all," he turned to the painter, "does it matter
+      so very much whether she is virtuous or not? You can't tell; she might be
+      a great deal less charming if she were."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the landing Swann had run into the Verdurins' butler, who had been
+      somewhere else a moment earlier, when he arrived, and who had been asked
+      by Odette to tell Swann (but that was at least an hour ago) that she would
+      probably stop to drink a cup of chocolate at Prévost's on her way home.
+      Swann set off at once for Prévost's, but every few yards his carriage was
+      held up by others, or by people crossing the street, loathsome obstacles
+      each of which he would gladly have crushed beneath his wheels, were it not
+      that a policeman fumbling with a note-book would delay him even longer
+      than the actual passage of the pedestrian. He counted the minutes
+      feverishly, adding a few seconds to each so as to be quite certain that he
+      had not given himself short measure, and so, possibly, exaggerated
+      whatever chance there might actually be of his arriving at Prévost's in
+      time, and of finding her still there. And then, in a moment of
+      illumination, like a man in a fever who awakes from sleep and is conscious
+      of the absurdity of the dream-shapes among which his mind has been
+      wandering without any clear distinction between himself and them, Swann
+      suddenly perceived how foreign to his nature were the thoughts which he
+      had been revolving in his mind ever since he had heard at the Verdurins'
+      that Odette had left, how novel the heartache from which he was suffering,
+      but of which he was only now conscious, as though he had just woken up.
+      What! all this disturbance simply because he would not see Odette, now,
+      till to-morrow, exactly what he had been hoping, not an hour before, as he
+      drove toward Mme. Verdurin's. He was obliged to admit also that now, as he
+      sat in the same carriage and drove to Prévost's, he was no longer the same
+      man, was no longer alone even—but that a new personality was there
+      beside him, adhering to him, amalgamated with him, a creature from whom he
+      might, perhaps, be unable to liberate himself, towards whom he might have
+      to adopt some such stratagem as one uses to outwit a master or a malady.
+      And yet, during this last moment in which he had felt that another, a
+      fresh personality was thus conjoined with his own, life had seemed,
+      somehow, more interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in vain that he assured himself that this possible meeting at
+      Prévost's (the tension of waiting for which so ravished, stripped so bare
+      the intervening moments that he could find nothing, not one idea, not one
+      memory in his mind beneath which his troubled spirit might take shelter
+      and repose) would probably, after all, should it take place, be much the
+      same as all their meetings, of no great importance. As on every other
+      evening, once he was in Odette's company, once he had begun to cast
+      furtive glances at her changing countenance, and instantly to withdraw his
+      eyes lest she should read in them the first symbols of desire and believe
+      no more in his indifference, he would cease to be able even to think of
+      her, so busy would he be in the search for pretexts which would enable him
+      not to leave her immediately, and to assure himself, without betraying his
+      concern, that he would find her again, next evening, at the Verdurins';
+      pretexts, that is to say, which would enable him to prolong for the time
+      being, and to renew for one day more the disappointment, the torturing
+      deception that must always come to him with the vain presence of this
+      woman, whom he might approach, yet never dared embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not at Prevost's; he must search for her, then, in every
+      restaurant upon the boulevards. To save time, while he went in one
+      direction, he sent in the other his coachman Rémi (Rizzo's Doge Loredan)
+      for whom he presently—after a fruitless search—found himself
+      waiting at the spot where the carriage was to meet him. It did not appear,
+      and Swann tantalised himself with alternate pictures of the approaching
+      moment, as one in which Rémi would say to him: "Sir, the lady is there,"
+      or as one in which Rémi would say to him: "Sir, the lady was not in any of
+      the cafés." And so he saw himself faced by the close of his evening—a
+      thing uniform, and yet bifurcated by the intervening accident which would
+      either put an end to his agony by discovering Odette, or would oblige him
+      to abandon any hope of finding her that night, to accept the necessity of
+      returning home without having seen her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coachman returned; but, as he drew up opposite him, Swann asked, not
+      "Did you find the lady?" but "Remind me, to-morrow, to order in some more
+      firewood. I am sure we must be running short." Perhaps he had persuaded
+      himself that, if Rémi had at last found Odette in some café, where she was
+      waiting for him still, then his night of misery was already obliterated by
+      the realisation, begun already in his mind, of a night of joy, and that
+      there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness
+      already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his
+      grasp again. But it was also by the force of inertia; there was in his
+      soul that want of adaptability which can be seen in the bodies of certain
+      people who, when the moment comes to avoid a collision, to snatch their
+      clothes out of reach of a flame, or to perform any other such necessary
+      movement, take their time (as the saying is), begin by remaining for a
+      moment in their original position, as though seeking to find in it a
+      starting-point, a source of strength and motion. And probably, if the
+      coachman had interrupted him with, "I have found the lady," he would have
+      answered, "Oh, yes, of course; that's what I told you to do. I had quite
+      forgotten," and would have continued to discuss his supply of firewood, so
+      as to hide from his servant the emotion that he had felt, and to give
+      himself time to break away from the thraldom of his anxieties and abandon
+      himself to pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coachman came back, however, with the report that he could not find
+      her anywhere, and added the advice, as an old and privileged servant, "I
+      think, sir, that all we can do now is to go home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the air of indifference which Swann could so lightly assume when Rémi
+      uttered his final, unalterable response, fell from him like a cast-off
+      cloak when he saw Rémi attempt to make him abandon hope and retire from
+      the quest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly not!" he exclaimed. "We must find the lady. It is most
+      important. She would be extremely put out—it's a business matter—and
+      vexed with me if she didn't see me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I do not see how the lady can be vexed, sir," answered Rémi, "since
+      it was she that went away without waiting for you, sir, and said she was
+      going to Prévost's, and then wasn't there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the restaurants were closing, and their lights began to go out.
+      Under the trees of the boulevards there were still a few people strolling
+      to and fro, barely distinguishable in the gathering darkness. Now and then
+      the ghost of a woman glided up to Swann, murmured a few words in his ear,
+      asked him to take her home, and left him shuddering. Anxiously he explored
+      every one of these vaguely seen shapes, as though among the phantoms of
+      the dead, in the realms of darkness, he had been searching for a lost
+      Eurydice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the
+      agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious
+      as the great gust of agitation which, now and then, sweeps over the human
+      spirit. For then the creature in whose company we are seeking amusement at
+      the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided, that is the
+      creature whom we shall henceforward love. It is not necessary that she
+      should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or even as much as others.
+      All that is necessary is that our taste for her should become exclusive.
+      And that condition is fulfilled so soon as—in the moment when she
+      has failed to meet us—for the pleasure which we were on the point of
+      enjoying in her charming company is abruptly substituted an anxious
+      torturing desire, whose object is the creature herself, an irrational,
+      absurd desire, which the laws of civilised society make it impossible to
+      satisfy and difficult to assuage—the insensate, agonising desire to
+      possess her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann made Rémi drive him to such restaurants as were still open; it was
+      the sole hypothesis, now, of that happiness which he had contemplated so
+      calmly; he no longer concealed his agitation, the price he set upon their
+      meeting, and promised, in case of success, to reward his coachman, as
+      though, by inspiring in him a will to triumph which would reinforce his
+      own, he could bring it to pass, by a miracle, that Odette—assuming
+      that she had long since gone home to bed,—might yet be found seated
+      in some restaurant on the boulevards. He pursued the quest as far as the
+      Maison Dorée, burst twice into Tortoni's and, still without catching sight
+      of her, was emerging from the Café Anglais, striding with haggard gaze
+      towards his carriage, which was waiting for him at the corner of the
+      Boulevard des Italiens, when he collided with a person coming in the
+      opposite direction; it was Odette; she explained, later, that there had
+      been no room at Prévost's, that she had gone, instead, to sup at the
+      Maison Dorée, and had been sitting there in an alcove where he must have
+      overlooked her, and that she was now looking for her carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had so little expected to see him that she started back in alarm. As
+      for him, he had ransacked the streets of Paris, not that he supposed it
+      possible that he should find her, but because he would have suffered even
+      more cruelly by abandoning the attempt. But now the joy (which, his reason
+      had never ceased to assure him, was not, that evening at least, to be
+      realised) was suddenly apparent, and more real than ever before; for he
+      himself had contributed nothing to it by anticipating probabilities,—it
+      remained integral and external to himself; there was no need for him to
+      draw on his own resources to endow it with truth—'twas from itself
+      that there emanated, 'twas itself that projected towards him that truth
+      whose glorious rays melted and scattered like the cloud of a dream the
+      sense of loneliness which had lowered over him, that truth upon which he
+      had supported, nay founded, albeit unconsciously, his vision of bliss. So
+      will a traveller, who has come down, on a day of glorious weather, to the
+      Mediterranean shore, and is doubtful whether they still exist, those lands
+      which he has left, let his eyes be dazzled, rather than cast a backward
+      glance, by the radiance streaming towards him from the luminous and
+      unfading azure at his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He climbed after her into the carriage which she had kept waiting, and
+      ordered his own to follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had in her hand a bunch of cattleyas, and Swann could see, beneath the
+      film of lace that covered her head, more of the same flowers fastened to a
+      swansdown plume. She was wearing, under her cloak, a flowing gown of black
+      velvet, caught up on one side so as to reveal a large triangular patch of
+      her white silk skirt, with an 'insertion,' also of white silk, in the
+      cleft of her low-necked bodice, in which were fastened a few more
+      cattleyas. She had scarcely recovered from the shock which the sight of
+      Swann had given her, when some obstacle made the horse start to one side.
+      They were thrown forward from their seats; she uttered a cry, and fell
+      back quivering and breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's all right," he assured her, "don't be frightened." And he slipped
+      his arm round her shoulder, supporting her body against his own; then went
+      on: "Whatever you do, don't utter a word; just make a sign, yes or no, or
+      you'll be out of breath again. You won't mind if I put the flowers
+      straight on your bodice; the jolt has loosened them. I'm afraid of their
+      dropping out; I'm just going to fasten them a little more securely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not used to being treated with so much formality by men, and
+      smiled as she answered: "No, not at all; I don't mind in the least."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he, chilled a little by her answer, perhaps, also, to bear out the
+      pretence that he had been sincere in adopting the stratagem, or even
+      because he was already beginning to believe that he had been, exclaimed:
+      "No, no; you mustn't speak. You will be out of breath again. You can
+      easily answer in signs; I shall understand. Really and truly now, you
+      don't mind my doing this? Look, there is a little—I think it must be
+      pollen, spilt over your dress,—may I brush it off with my hand?
+      That's not too hard; I'm not hurting you, am I? I'm tickling you, perhaps,
+      a little; but I don't want to touch the velvet in case I rub it the wrong
+      way. But, don't you see, I really had to fasten the flowers; they would
+      have fallen out if I hadn't. Like that, now; if I just push them a little
+      farther down.... Seriously, I'm not annoying you, am I? And if I just
+      sniff them to see whether they've really lost all their scent? I don't
+      believe I ever smelt any before; may I? Tell the truth, now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still smiling, she shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly, as who should
+      say, "You're quite mad; you know very well that I like it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He slipped his other hand upwards along Odette's cheek; she fixed her eyes
+      on him with that languishing and solemn air which marks the women of the
+      old Florentine's paintings, in whose faces he had found the type of hers;
+      swimming at the brink of her fringed lids, her brilliant eyes, large and
+      finely drawn as theirs, seemed on the verge of breaking from her face and
+      rolling down her cheeks like two great tears. She bent her neck, as all
+      their necks may be seen to bend, in the pagan scenes as well as in the
+      scriptural. And although her attitude was, doubtless, habitual and
+      instinctive, one which she knew to be appropriate to such moments, and was
+      careful not to forget to assume, she seemed to need all her strength to
+      hold her face back, as though some invisible force were drawing it down
+      towards Swann's. And Swann it was who, before she allowed her face, as
+      though despite her efforts, to fall upon his lips, held it back for a
+      moment longer, at a little distance between his hands. He had intended to
+      leave time for her mind to overtake her body's movements, to recognise the
+      dream which she had so long cherished and to assist at its realisation,
+      like a mother invited as a spectator when a prize is given to the child
+      whom she has reared and loves. Perhaps, moreover, Swann himself was fixing
+      upon these features of an Odette not yet possessed, not even kissed by
+      him, on whom he was looking now for the last time, that comprehensive gaze
+      with which, on the day of his departure, a traveller strives to bear away
+      with him in memory the view of a country to which he may never return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was so shy in approaching her that, after this evening which had
+      begun by his arranging her cattleyas and had ended in her complete
+      surrender, whether from fear of chilling her, or from reluctance to
+      appear, even retrospectively, to have lied, or perhaps because he lacked
+      the audacity to formulate a more urgent requirement than this (which could
+      always be repeated, since it had not annoyed her on the first occasion),
+      he resorted to the same pretext on the following days. If she had any
+      cattleyas pinned to her bodice, he would say: "It is most unfortunate; the
+      cattleyas don't need tucking in this evening; they've not been disturbed
+      as they were the other night; I think, though, that this one isn't quite
+      straight. May I see if they have more scent than the others?" Or else, if
+      she had none: "Oh! no cattleyas this evening; then there's nothing for me
+      to arrange." So that for some time there was no change from the procedure
+      which he had followed on that first evening, when he had started by
+      touching her throat, with his fingers first and then with his lips, but
+      their caresses began invariably with this modest exploration. And long
+      afterwards, when the arrangement (or, rather, the ritual pretence of an
+      arrangement) of her cattleyas had quite fallen into desuetude, the
+      metaphor "Do a cattleya," transmuted into a simple verb which they would
+      employ without a thought of its original meaning when they wished to refer
+      to the act of physical possession (in which, paradoxically, the possessor
+      possesses nothing), survived to commemorate in their vocabulary the long
+      forgotten custom from which it sprang. And yet possibly this particular
+      manner of saying "to make love" had not the precise significance of its
+      synonyms. However disillusioned we may be about women, however we may
+      regard the possession of even the most divergent types as an invariable
+      and monotonous experience, every detail of which is known and can be
+      described in advance, it still becomes a fresh and stimulating pleasure if
+      the women concerned be—or be thought to be—so difficult as to
+      oblige us to base our attack upon some unrehearsed incident in our
+      relations with them, as was originally for Swann the arrangement of the
+      cattleyas. He trembled as he hoped, that evening, (but Odette, he told
+      himself, if she were deceived by his stratagem, could not guess his
+      intention) that it was the possession of this woman that would emerge for
+      him from their large and richly coloured petals; and the pleasure which he
+      already felt, and which Odette tolerated, he thought, perhaps only because
+      she was not yet aware of it herself, seemed to him for that reason—as
+      it might have seemed to the first man when he enjoyed it amid the flowers
+      of the earthly paradise—a pleasure which had never before existed,
+      which he was striving now to create, a pleasure—and the special name
+      which he was to give to it preserved its identity—entirely
+      individual and new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ice once broken, every evening, when he had taken her home, he must
+      follow her into the house; and often she would come out again in her
+      dressing-gown, and escort him to his carriage, and would kiss him before
+      the eyes of his coachman, saying: "What on earth does it matter what
+      people see?" And on evenings when he did not go to the Verdurins' (which
+      happened occasionally, now that he had opportunities of meeting Odette
+      elsewhere), when—more and more rarely—he went into society,
+      she would beg him to come to her on his way home, however late he might
+      be. The season was spring, the nights clear and frosty. He would come away
+      from an evening party, jump into his victoria, spread a rug over his
+      knees, tell the friends who were leaving at the same time, and who
+      insisted on his going home with them, that he could not, that he was not
+      going in their direction; then the coachman would start off at a fast trot
+      without further orders, knowing quite well where he had to go. His friends
+      would be left marvelling, and, as a matter of fact, Swann was no longer
+      the same man. No one ever received a letter from him now demanding an
+      introduction to a woman. He had ceased to pay any attention to women, and
+      kept away from the places in which they were ordinarily to be met. In a
+      restaurant, or in the country, his manner was deliberately and directly
+      the opposite of that by which, only a few days earlier, his friends would
+      have recognised him, that manner which had seemed permanently and
+      unalterably his own. To such an extent does passion manifest itself in us
+      as a temporary and distinct character, which not only takes the place of
+      our normal character but actually obliterates the signs by which that
+      character has hitherto been discernible. On the other hand, there was one
+      thing that was, now, invariable, namely that wherever Swann might be
+      spending the evening, he never failed to go on afterwards to Odette. The
+      interval of space separating her from him was one which he must as
+      inevitably traverse as he must descend, by an irresistible gravitation,
+      the steep slope of life itself. To be frank, as often as not, when he had
+      stayed late at a party, he would have preferred to return home at once,
+      without going so far out of his way, and to postpone their meeting until
+      the morrow; but the very fact of his putting himself to such inconvenience
+      at an abnormal hour in order to visit her, while he guessed that his
+      friends, as he left them, were saying to one another: "He is tied hand and
+      foot; there must certainly be a woman somewhere who insists on his going
+      to her at all hours," made him feel that he was leading the life of the
+      class of men whose existence is coloured by a love-affair, and in whom the
+      perpetual sacrifice which they are making of their comfort and of their
+      practical interests has engendered a spiritual charm. Then, though he may
+      not consciously have taken this into consideration, the certainty that she
+      was waiting for him, that she was not anywhere or with anyone else, that
+      he would see her before he went home, drew the sting from that anguish,
+      forgotten, it is true, but latent and ever ready to be reawakened, which
+      he had felt on the evening when Odette had left the Verdurins' before his
+      arrival, an anguish the actual cessation of which was so agreeable that it
+      might even be called a state of happiness. Perhaps it was to that hour of
+      anguish that there must be attributed the importance which Odette had
+      since assumed in his life. Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to
+      us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so
+      much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to
+      belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, makes of our
+      lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on which that person and
+      ourselves are ever more or less in contact. Swann could not without
+      anxiety ask himself what Odette would mean to him in the years that were
+      to come. Sometimes, as he looked up from his victoria on those fine and
+      frosty nights of early spring, and saw the dazzling moonbeams fall between
+      his eyes and the deserted streets, he would think of that other face,
+      gleaming and faintly roseate like the moon's, which had, one day, risen on
+      the horizon of his mind and since then had shed upon the world that
+      mysterious light in which he saw it bathed. If he arrived after the hour
+      at which Odette sent her servants to bed, before ringing the bell at the
+      gate of her little garden, he would go round first into the other street,
+      over which, at the ground-level, among the windows (all exactly alike, but
+      darkened) of the adjoining houses, shone the solitary lighted window of
+      her room. He would rap upon the pane, and she would hear the signal, and
+      answer, before running to meet him at the gate. He would find, lying open
+      on the piano, some of her favourite music, the <i>Valse des Roses</i>, the
+      <i>Pauvre Fou</i> of Tagliafico (which, according to the instructions
+      embodied in her will, was to be played at her funeral); but he would ask
+      her, instead, to give him the little phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. It was
+      true that Odette played vilely, but often the fairest impression that
+      remains in our minds of a favourite air is one which has arisen out of a
+      jumble of wrong notes struck by unskilful fingers upon a tuneless piano.
+      The little phrase was associated still, in Swann's mind, with his love for
+      Odette. He felt clearly that this love was something to which there were
+      no corresponding external signs, whose meaning could not be proved by any
+      but himself; he realised, too, that Odette's qualities were not such as to
+      justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in her company.
+      And often, when the cold government of reason stood unchallenged, he would
+      readily have ceased to sacrifice so many of his intellectual and social
+      interests to this imaginary pleasure. But the little phrase, as soon as it
+      struck his ear, had the power to liberate in him the room that was needed
+      to contain it; the proportions of Swann's soul were altered; a margin was
+      left for a form of enjoyment which corresponded no more than his love for
+      Odette to any external object, and yet was not, like his enjoyment of that
+      love, purely individual, but assumed for him an objective reality superior
+      to that of other concrete things. This thirst for an untasted charm, the
+      little phrase would stimulate it anew in him, but without bringing him any
+      definite gratification to assuage it. With the result that those parts of
+      Swann's soul in which the little phrase had obliterated all care for
+      material interests, those human considerations which affect all men alike,
+      were left bare by it, blank pages on which he was at liberty to inscribe
+      the name of Odette. Moreover, where Odette's affection might seem ever so
+      little abrupt and disappointing, the little phrase would come to
+      supplement it, to amalgamate with it its own mysterious essence. Watching
+      Swann's face while he listened to the phrase, one would have said that he
+      was inhaling an anaesthetic which allowed him to breathe more deeply. And
+      the pleasure which the music gave him, which was shortly to create in him
+      a real longing, was in fact closely akin, at such moments, to the pleasure
+      which he would have derived from experimenting with perfumes, from
+      entering into contract with a world for which we men were not created,
+      which appears to lack form because our eyes cannot perceive it, to lack
+      significance because it escapes our intelligence, to which we may attain
+      by way of one sense only. Deep repose, mysterious refreshment for Swann,—for
+      him whose eyes, although delicate interpreters of painting, whose mind,
+      although an acute observer of manners, must bear for ever the indelible
+      imprint of the barrenness of his life,—to feel himself transformed
+      into a creature foreign to humanity, blinded, deprived of his logical
+      faculty, almost a fantastic unicorn, a chimaera-like creature conscious of
+      the world through his two ears alone. And as, notwithstanding, he sought
+      in the little phrase for a meaning to which his intelligence could not
+      descend, with what a strange frenzy of intoxication must he strip bare his
+      innermost soul of the whole armour of reason, and make it pass,
+      unattended, through the straining vessel, down into the dark filter of
+      sound. He began to reckon up how much that was painful, perhaps even how
+      much secret and unappeased sorrow underlay the sweetness of the phrase;
+      and yet to him it brought no suffering. What matter though the phrase
+      repeated that love is frail and fleeting, when his love was so strong! He
+      played with the melancholy which the phrase diffused, he felt it stealing
+      over him, but like a caress which only deepened and sweetened his sense of
+      his own happiness. He would make Odette play him the phrase again, ten,
+      twenty times on end, insisting that, while she played, she must never
+      cease to kiss him. Every kiss provokes another. Ah, in those earliest days
+      of love how naturally the kisses spring into life. How closely, in their
+      abundance, are they pressed one against another; until lovers would find
+      it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour, as to count the
+      flowers in a meadow in May. Then she would pretend to stop, saying: "How
+      do you expect me to play when you keep on holding me? I can't do
+      everything at once. Make up your mind what you want; am I to play the
+      phrase or do you want to play with me?" Then he would become annoyed, and
+      she would burst out with a laugh which was transformed, as it left her
+      lips, and descended upon him in a shower of kisses. Or else she would look
+      at him sulkily, and he would see once again a face worthy to figure in
+      Botticelli's 'Life of Moses,' he would place it there, giving to Odette's
+      neck the necessary inclination; and when he had finished her portrait in
+      distemper, in the fifteenth century, on the wall of the Sixtine, the idea
+      that she was, none the less, in the room with him still, by the piano, at
+      that very moment, ready to be kissed and won, the idea of her material
+      existence, of her being alive, would sweep over him with so violent an
+      intoxication that, with eyes starting from his head and jaws that parted
+      as though to devour her, he would fling himself upon this Botticelli
+      maiden and kiss and bite her cheeks. And then, as soon as he had left the
+      house, not without returning to kiss her once again, because he had
+      forgotten to take away with him, in memory, some detail of her fragrance
+      or of her features, while he drove home in his victoria, blessing the name
+      of Odette who allowed him to pay her these daily visits, which, although
+      they could not, he felt, bring any great happiness to her, still, by
+      keeping him immune from the fever of jealousy—by removing from him
+      every possibility of a fresh outbreak of the heart-sickness which had
+      manifested itself in him that evening, when he had failed to find her at
+      the Verdurins'—might help him to arrive, without any recurrence of
+      those crises, of which the first had been so distressing that it must also
+      be the last, at the termination of this strange series of hours in his
+      life, hours almost enchanted, in the same manner as these other, following
+      hours, in which he drove through a deserted Paris by the light of the
+      moon: noticing as he drove home that the satellite had now changed its
+      position, relatively to his own, and was almost touching the horizon;
+      feeling that his love, also, was obedient to these immutable laws of
+      nature, he asked himself whether this period, upon which he had entered,
+      was to last much longer, whether presently his mind's eye would cease to
+      behold that dear countenance, save as occupying a distant and diminished
+      position, and on the verge of ceasing to shed on him the radiance of its
+      charm. For Swann was finding in things once more, since he had fallen in
+      love, the charm that he had found when, in his adolescence, he had fancied
+      himself an artist; with this difference, that what charm lay in them now
+      was conferred by Odette alone. He could feel reawakening in himself the
+      inspirations of his boyhood, which had been dissipated among the
+      frivolities of his later life, but they all bore, now, the reflection, the
+      stamp of a particular being; and during the long hours which he now found
+      a subtle pleasure in spending at home, alone with his convalescent spirit,
+      he became gradually himself again, but himself in thraldom to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to her only in the evenings, and knew nothing of how she spent her
+      time during the day, any more than he knew of her past; so little, indeed,
+      that he had not even the tiny, initial clue which, by allowing us to
+      imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge. And so he
+      never asked himself what she might be doing, or what her life had been.
+      Only he smiled sometimes at the thought of how, some years earlier, when
+      he still did not know her, some one had spoken to him of a woman who, if
+      he remembered rightly, must certainly have been Odette, as of a 'tart,' a
+      'kept' woman, one of those women to whom he still attributed (having lived
+      but little in their company) the entire set of characteristics,
+      fundamentally perverse, with which they had been, for many years, endowed
+      by the imagination of certain novelists. He would say to himself that one
+      has, as often as not, only to take the exact counterpart of the reputation
+      created by the world in order to judge a person fairly, when with such a
+      character he contrasted that of Odette, so good, so simple, so
+      enthusiastic in the pursuit of ideals, so nearly incapable of not telling
+      the truth that, when he had once begged her, so that they might dine
+      together alone, to write to Mme. Verdurin, saying that she was unwell, the
+      next day he had seen her, face to face with Mme. Verdurin, who asked
+      whether she had recovered, blushing, stammering, and, in spite of herself,
+      revealing in every feature how painful, what a torture it was to her to
+      act a lie; and, while in her answer she multiplied the fictitious details
+      of an imaginary illness, seeming to ask pardon, by her suppliant look and
+      her stricken accents, for the obvious falsehood of her words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On certain days, however, though these came seldom, she would call upon
+      him in the afternoon, to interrupt his musings or the essay on Vermeer to
+      which he had latterly returned. His servant would come in to say that Mme.
+      de Crécy was in the small drawing-room. He would go in search of her, and,
+      when he opened the door, on Odette's blushing countenance, as soon as she
+      caught sight of Swann, would appear—changing the curve of her lips,
+      the look in her eyes, the moulding of her cheeks—an all-absorbing
+      smile. Once he was left alone he would see again that smile, and her smile
+      of the day before, another with which she had greeted him sometime else,
+      the smile which had been her answer, in the carriage that night, when he
+      had asked her whether she objected to his rearranging her cattleyas; and
+      the life of Odette at all other times, since he knew nothing of it,
+      appeared to him upon a neutral and colourless background, like those
+      sheets of sketches by Watteau upon which one sees, here and there, in
+      every corner and in all directions, traced in three colours upon the buff
+      paper, innumerable smiles. But, once in a while, illuminating a chink of
+      that existence which Swann still saw as a complete blank, even if his mind
+      assured him that it was not so, because he was unable to imagine anything
+      that might occupy it, some friend who knew them both, and suspecting that
+      they were in love, had not dared to tell him anything about her that was
+      of the least importance, would describe Odette's figure, as he had seen
+      her, that very morning, going on foot up the Rue Abbattucci, in a cape
+      trimmed with skunks, wearing a Rembrandt hat, and a bunch of violets in
+      her bosom. This simple outline reduced Swann to utter confusion by
+      enabling him suddenly to perceive that Odette had an existence which was
+      not wholly subordinated to his own; he burned to know whom she had been
+      seeking to fascinate by this costume in which he had never seen her; he
+      registered a vow to insist upon her telling him where she had been going
+      at that intercepted moment, as though, in all the colourless life—a
+      life almost nonexistent, since she was then invisible to him—of his
+      mistress, there had been but a single incident apart from all those smiles
+      directed towards himself; namely, her walking abroad beneath a Rembrandt
+      hat, with a bunch of violets in her bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Except when he asked her for Vinteuil's little phrase instead of the <i>Valse
+      des Roses</i>, Swann made no effort to induce her to play the things that
+      he himself preferred, nor, in literature any more than in music, to
+      correct the manifold errors of her taste. He fully realised that she was
+      not intelligent. When she said how much she would like him to tell her
+      about the great poets, she had imagined that she would suddenly get to
+      know whole pages of romantic and heroic verse, in the style of the Vicomte
+      de Borelli, only even more moving. As for Vermeer of Delft, she asked
+      whether he had been made to suffer by a woman, if it was a woman that had
+      inspired him, and once Swann had told her that no one knew, she had lost
+      all interest in that painter. She would often say: "I'm sure, poetry;
+      well, of course, there'd be nothing like it if it was all true, if the
+      poets really believed the things they said. But as often as not you'll
+      find there's no one so mean and calculating as those fellows. I know
+      something about poetry. I had a friend, once, who was in love with a poet
+      of sorts. In his verses he never spoke of anything but love, and heaven,
+      and the stars. Oh! she was properly taken in! He had more than three
+      hundred thousand francs out of her before he'd finished." If, then, Swann
+      tried to shew her in what artistic beauty consisted, how one ought to
+      appreciate poetry or painting, after a minute or two she would cease to
+      listen, saying: "Yes... I never thought it would be like that." And he
+      felt that her disappointment was so great that he preferred to lie to her,
+      assuring her that what he had said was nothing, that he had only touched
+      the surface, that he had not time to go into it all properly, that there
+      was more in it than that. Then she would interrupt with a brisk, "More in
+      it? What?... Do tell me!", but he did not tell her, for he realised how
+      petty it would appear to her, and how different from what she had
+      expected, less sensational and less touching; he was afraid, too, lest,
+      disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the same time be
+      disillusioned in the greater matter of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the result that she found Swann inferior, intellectually, to what she
+      had supposed. "You're always so reserved; I can't make you out." She
+      marvelled increasingly at his indifference to money, at his courtesy to
+      everyone alike, at the delicacy of his mind. And indeed it happens, often
+      enough, to a greater man than Swann ever was, to a scientist or artist,
+      when he is not wholly misunderstood by the people among whom he lives,
+      that the feeling in them which proves that they have been convinced of the
+      superiority of his intellect is created not by any admiration for his
+      ideas—for those are entirely beyond them—but by their respect
+      for what they term his good qualities. There was also the respect with
+      which Odette was inspired by the thought of Swann's social position,
+      although she had no desire that he should attempt to secure invitations
+      for herself. Perhaps she felt that such attempts would be bound to fail;
+      perhaps, indeed, she feared lest, merely by speaking of her to his
+      friends, he should provoke disclosures of an unwelcome kind. The fact
+      remains that she had consistently held him to his promise never to mention
+      her name. Her reason for not wishing to go into society was, she had told
+      him, a quarrel which she had had, long ago, with another girl, who had
+      avenged herself by saying nasty things about her. "But," Swann objected,
+      "surely, people don't all know your friend." "Yes, don't you see, it's
+      like a spot of oil; people are so horrid." Swann was unable, frankly, to
+      appreciate this point; on the other hand, he knew that such
+      generalisations as "People are so horrid," and "A word of scandal spreads
+      like a spot of oil," were generally accepted as true; there must,
+      therefore, be cases to which they were literally applicable. Could
+      Odette's case be one of these? He teased himself with the question, though
+      not for long, for he too was subject to that mental oppression which had
+      so weighed upon his father, whenever he was faced by a difficult problem.
+      In any event, that world of society which concealed such terrors for
+      Odette inspired her, probably, with no very great longing to enter it,
+      since it was too far removed from the world which she already knew for her
+      to be able to form any clear conception of it. At the same time, while in
+      certain respects she had retained a genuine simplicity (she had, for
+      instance, kept up a friendship with a little dressmaker, now retired from
+      business, up whose steep and dark and fetid staircase she clambered almost
+      every day), she still thirsted to be in the fashion, though her idea of it
+      was not altogether that held by fashionable people. For the latter,
+      fashion is a thing that emanates from a comparatively small number of
+      leaders, who project it to a considerable distance—with more or less
+      strength according as one is nearer to or farther from their intimate
+      centre—over the widening circle of their friends and the friends of
+      their friends, whose names form a sort of tabulated index. People 'in
+      society' know this index by heart, they are gifted in such matters with an
+      erudition from which they have extracted a sort of taste, of tact, so
+      automatic in its operation that Swann, for example, without needing to
+      draw upon his knowledge of the world, if he read in a newspaper the names
+      of the people who had been guests at a dinner, could tell at once how
+      fashionable the dinner had been, just as a man of letters, merely by
+      reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author.
+      But Odette was one of those persons (an extremely numerous class, whatever
+      the fashionable world may think, and to be found in every section of
+      society) who do not share this knowledge, but imagine fashion to be
+      something of quite another kind, which assumes different aspects according
+      to the circle to which they themselves belong, but has the special
+      characteristic—common alike to the fashion of which Odette used to
+      dream and to that before which Mme. Cottard bowed—of being directly
+      accessible to all. The other kind, the fashion of 'fashionable people,'
+      is, it must be admitted, accessible also; but there are inevitable delays.
+      Odette would say of some one: "He never goes to any place that isn't
+      really smart."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if Swann were to ask her what she meant by that, she would answer,
+      with a touch of contempt, "Smart places! Why, good heavens, just fancy, at
+      your age, having to be told what the smart places are in Paris! What do
+      you expect me to say? Well, on Sunday mornings there's the Avenue de
+      l'Impératrice, and round the lake at five o'clock, and on Thursdays the
+      Eden-Théâtre, and the Hippodrome on Fridays; then there are the balls..."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What balls?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, silly, the balls people give in Paris; the smart ones, I mean. Wait
+      now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of the
+      jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the
+      best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears such
+      swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a
+      light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with that
+      old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave a ball
+      the other night, and all the smart people in Paris were there. I should
+      have loved to go! but you had to shew your invitation at the door, and I
+      couldn't get one anywhere. After all, I'm just as glad, now, that I didn't
+      go; I should have been killed in the crush, and seen nothing. Still, just
+      to be able to say one had been to Herbinger's ball. You know how vain I
+      am! However, you may be quite certain that half the people who tell you
+      they were there are telling stories.... But I am surprised that you
+      weren't there, a regular 'tip-topper' like you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann made no attempt, however, to modify this conception of fashion;
+      feeling that his own came no nearer to the truth, was just as fatuous,
+      devoid of all importance, he saw no advantage to be gained by imparting it
+      to his mistress, with the result that, after a few months, she ceased to
+      take any interest in the people to whose houses he went, except when they
+      were the means of his obtaining tickets for the paddock at race-meetings
+      or first-nights at the theatre. She hoped that he would continue to
+      cultivate such profitable acquaintances, but she had come to regard them
+      as less smart since the day when she had passed the Marquise de
+      Villeparisis in the street, wearing a black serge dress and a bonnet with
+      strings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But she looks like a pew-opener, like an old charwoman, darling! That a
+      marquise! Goodness knows I'm not a marquise, but you'd have to pay me a
+      lot of money before you'd get me to go about Paris rigged out like that!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor could she understand Swann's continuing to live in his house on the
+      Quai d'Orléans, which, though she dared not tell him so, she considered
+      unworthy of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true that she claimed to be fond of 'antiques,' and used to assume
+      a rapturous and knowing air when she confessed how she loved to spend the
+      whole day 'rummaging' in second-hand shops, hunting for 'bric-à-brac,' and
+      things of the 'right date.' Although it was a point of honour, to which
+      she obstinately clung, as though obeying some old family custom, that she
+      should never answer any questions, never give any account of what she did
+      during the daytime, she spoke to Swann once about a friend to whose house
+      she had been invited, and had found that everything in it was 'of the
+      period.' Swann could not get her to tell him what 'period' it was. Only
+      after thinking the matter over she replied that it was 'mediaeval'; by
+      which she meant that the walls were panelled. Some time later she spoke to
+      him again of her friend, and added, in the hesitating but confident tone
+      in which one refers to a person whom one has met somewhere, at dinner, the
+      night before, of whom one had never heard until then, but whom one's hosts
+      seemed to regard as some one so celebrated and important that one hopes
+      that one's listener will know quite well who is meant, and will be duly
+      impressed: "Her dining-room... is... eighteenth century!" Incidentally,
+      she had thought it hideous, all bare, as though the house were still
+      unfinished; women looked frightful in it, and it would never become the
+      fashion. She mentioned it again, a third time, when she shewed Swann a
+      card with the name and address of the man who had designed the
+      dining-room, and whom she wanted to send for, when she had enough money,
+      to see whether he could not do one for her too; not one like that, of
+      course, but one of the sort she used to dream of, one which,
+      unfortunately, her little house would not be large enough to contain, with
+      tall sideboards, Renaissance furniture and fireplaces like the Château at
+      Blois. It was on this occasion that she let out to Swann what she really
+      thought of his abode on the Quai d'Orléans; he having ventured the
+      criticism that her friend had indulged, not in the Louis XVI style, for,
+      he went on, although that was not, of course, done, still it might be made
+      charming, but in the 'Sham-Antique.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You wouldn't have her live, like you, among a lot of broken-down chairs
+      and threadbare carpets!" she exclaimed, the innate respectability of the
+      middle-class housewife rising impulsively to the surface through the
+      acquired dilettantism of the 'light woman.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People who enjoyed 'picking-up' things, who admired poetry, despised
+      sordid calculations of profit and loss, and nourished ideals of honour and
+      love, she placed in a class by themselves, superior to the rest of
+      humanity. There was no need actually to have those tastes, provided one
+      talked enough about them; when a man had told her at dinner that he loved
+      to wander about and get his hands all covered with dust in the old
+      furniture shops, that he would never be really appreciated in this
+      commercial age, since he was not concerned about the things that
+      interested it, and that he belonged to another generation altogether, she
+      would come home saying: "Why, he's an adorable creature; so sensitive! I
+      had no idea," and she would conceive for him a strong and sudden
+      friendship. But, on the other hand, men who, like Swann, had these tastes
+      but did not speak of them, left her cold. She was obliged, of course, to
+      admit that Swann was most generous with his money, but she would add,
+      pouting: "It's not the same thing, you see, with him," and, as a matter of
+      fact, what appealed to her imagination was not the practice of
+      disinterestedness, but its vocabulary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Feeling that, often, he could not give her in reality the pleasures of
+      which she dreamed, he tried at least to ensure that she should be happy in
+      his company, tried not to contradict those vulgar ideas, that bad taste
+      which she displayed on every possible occasion, which all the same he
+      loved, as he could not help loving everything that came from her, which
+      even fascinated him, for were they not so many more of those
+      characteristic features, by virtue of which the essential qualities of the
+      woman emerged, and were made visible? And so, when she was in a happy mood
+      because she was going to see the <i>Reine Topaze</i>, or when her eyes
+      grew serious, troubled, petulant, if she was afraid of missing the
+      flower-show, or merely of not being in time for tea, with muffins and
+      toast, at the Rue Royale tea-rooms, where she believed that regular
+      attendance was indispensable, and set the seal upon a woman's certificate
+      of 'smartness,' Swann, enraptured, as all of us are, at times, by the
+      natural behaviour of a child, or by the likeness of a portrait, which
+      appears to be on the point of speaking, would feel so distinctly the soul
+      of his mistress rising to fill the outlines of her face that he could not
+      refrain from going across and welcoming it with his lips. "Oh, then, so
+      little Odette wants us to take her to the flower-show, does she? she wants
+      to be admired, does she? very well, we will take her there, we can but
+      obey her wishes." As Swann's sight was beginning to fail, he had to resign
+      himself to a pair of spectacles, which he wore at home, when working,
+      while to face the world he adopted a single eyeglass, as being less
+      disfiguring. The first time that she saw it in his eye, she could not
+      contain herself for joy: "I really do think—for a man, that is to
+      say—it is tremendously smart! How nice you look with it! Every inch
+      a gentleman. All you want now is a title!" she concluded, with a tinge of
+      regret in her voice. He liked Odette to say these things, just as, if he
+      had been in love with a Breton girl, he would have enjoyed seeing her in
+      her coif and hearing her say that she believed in ghosts. Always until
+      then, as is common among men whose taste for the fine arts develops
+      independently of their sensuality, a grotesque disparity had existed
+      between the satisfactions which he would accord to either taste
+      simultaneously; yielding to the seduction of works of art which grew more
+      and more subtle as the women in whose company he enjoyed them grew more
+      illiterate and common, he would take a little servant-girl to a screened
+      box in a theatre where there was some decadent piece which he had wished
+      to see performed, or to an exhibition of impressionist painting, with the
+      conviction, moreover, that an educated, 'society' woman would have
+      understood them no better, but would not have managed to keep quiet about
+      them so prettily. But, now that he was in love with Odette, all this was
+      changed; to share her sympathies, to strive to be one with her in spirit
+      was a task so attractive that he tried to find satisfaction in the things
+      that she liked, and did find a pleasure, not only in copying her habits
+      but in adopting her opinions, which was all the deeper because, as those
+      habits and opinions sprang from no roots in her intelligence, they
+      suggested to him nothing except that love, for the sake of which he had
+      preferred them to his own. If he went again to <i>Serge Panine</i>, if he
+      looked out for opportunities of going to watch Olivier Métra conducting,
+      it was for the pleasure of being initiated into every one of the ideas in
+      Odette's mind, of feeling that he had an equal share in all her tastes.
+      This charm of drawing him closer to her, which her favourite plays and
+      pictures and places possessed, struck him as being more mysterious than
+      the intrinsic charm of more beautiful things and places, which appealed to
+      him by their beauty, but without recalling her. Besides, having allowed
+      the intellectual beliefs of his youth to grow faint, until his scepticism,
+      as a finished 'man of the world,' had gradually penetrated them unawares,
+      he held (or at least he had held for so long that he had fallen into the
+      habit of saying) that the objects which we admire have no absolute value
+      in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of dates and castes, and
+      consists in a series of fashions, the most vulgar of which are worth just
+      as much as those which are regarded as the most refined. And as he had
+      decided that the importance which Odette attached to receiving cards for a
+      private view was not in itself any more ridiculous than the pleasure which
+      he himself had at one time felt in going to luncheon with the Prince of
+      Wales, so he did not think that the admiration which she professed for
+      Monte-Carlo or for the Righi was any more unreasonable than his own liking
+      for Holland (which she imagined as ugly) and for Versailles (which bored
+      her to tears). And so he denied himself the pleasure of visiting those
+      places, consoling himself with the reflection that it was for her sake
+      that he wished to feel, to like nothing that was not equally felt and
+      liked by her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like everything else that formed part of Odette's environment, and was no
+      more, in a sense, than the means whereby he might see and talk to her more
+      often, he enjoyed the society of the Verdurins. With them, since, at the
+      heart of all their entertainments, dinners, musical evenings, games,
+      suppers in fancy dress, excursions to the country, theatre parties, even
+      the infrequent 'big evenings' when they entertained 'bores,' there were
+      the presence of Odette, the sight of Odette, conversation with Odette, an
+      inestimable boon which the Verdurins, by inviting him to their house,
+      bestowed on Swann, he was happier in the little 'nucleus' than anywhere
+      else, and tried to find some genuine merit in each of its members,
+      imagining that his tastes would lead him to frequent their society for the
+      rest of his life. Never daring to whisper to himself, lest he should doubt
+      the truth of the suggestion, that he would always be in love with Odette,
+      at least when he tried to suppose that he would always go to the
+      Verdurins' (a proposition which, a priori, raised fewer fundamental
+      objections on the part of his intelligence), he saw himself for the future
+      continuing to meet Odette every evening; that did not, perhaps, come quite
+      to the same thing as his being permanently in love with her, but for the
+      moment while he was in love with her, to feel that he would not, one day,
+      cease to see her was all that he could ask. "What a charming atmosphere!"
+      he said to himself. "How entirely genuine life is to these people! They
+      are far more intelligent, far more artistic, surely, than the people one
+      knows. Mme. Verdurin, in spite of a few trifling exaggerations which are
+      rather absurd, has a sincere love of painting and music! What a passion
+      for works of art, what anxiety to give pleasure to artists! Her ideas
+      about some of the people one knows are not quite right, but then their
+      ideas about artistic circles are altogether wrong! Possibly I make no
+      great intellectual demands upon conversation, but I am perfectly happy
+      talking to Cottard, although he does trot out those idiotic puns. And as
+      for the painter, if he is rather unpleasantly affected when he tries to be
+      paradoxical, still he has one of the finest brains that I have ever come
+      across. Besides, what is most important, one feels quite free there, one
+      does what one likes without constraint or fuss. What a flow of humour
+      there is every day in that drawing-room! Certainly, with a few rare
+      exceptions, I never want to go anywhere else again. It will become more
+      and more of a habit, and I shall spend the rest of my life among them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the qualities which he supposed to be an intrinsic part of the
+      Verdurin character were no more, really, than their superficial reflection
+      of the pleasure which had been enjoyed in their society by his love for
+      Odette, those qualities became more serious, more profound, more vital, as
+      that pleasure increased. Since Mme. Verdurin gave Swann, now and then,
+      what alone could constitute his happiness; since, on an evening when he
+      felt anxious because Odette had talked rather more to one of the party
+      than to another, and, in a spasm of irritation, would not take the
+      initiative by asking her whether she was coming home, Mme. Verdurin
+      brought peace and joy to his troubled spirit by the spontaneous
+      exclamation: "Odette! You'll see M. Swann home, won't you?"; since, when
+      the summer holidays came, and after he had asked himself uneasily whether
+      Odette might not leave Paris without him, whether he would still be able
+      to see her every day, Mme. Verdurin was going to invite them both to spend
+      the summer with her in the country; Swann, unconsciously allowing
+      gratitude and self-interest to filter into his intelligence and to
+      influence his ideas, went so far as to proclaim that Mme. Verdurin was "a
+      great and noble soul." Should any of his old fellow-pupils in the Louvre
+      school of painting speak to him of some rare or eminent artist, "I'd a
+      hundred times rather," he would reply, "have the Verdurins." And, with a
+      solemnity of diction which was new in him: "They are magnanimous
+      creatures, and magnanimity is, after all, the one thing that matters, the
+      one thing that gives us distinction here on earth. Look you, there are
+      only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have reached
+      an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all whom one is
+      going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes, and, to make
+      up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to leave them again
+      as long as one lives. Very well!" he went on, with the slight emotion
+      which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of what he is
+      doing, he says something, not because it is true but because he enjoys
+      saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words as though they
+      came from some one else, "The die is now cast; I have elected to love none
+      but magnanimous souls, and to live only in an atmosphere of magnanimity.
+      You ask me whether Mme. Verdurin is really intelligent. I can assure you
+      that she has given me proofs of a nobility of heart, of a loftiness of
+      soul, to which no one could possibly attain—how could they?—without
+      a corresponding loftiness of mind. Without question, she has a profound
+      understanding of art. But it is not, perhaps, in that that she is most
+      admirable; every little action, ingeniously, exquisitely kind, which she
+      has performed for my sake, every friendly attention, simple little things,
+      quite domestic and yet quite sublime, reveal a more profound comprehension
+      of existence than all your textbooks of philosophy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He might have reminded himself, all the same, that there were various old
+      friends of his family who were just as simple as the Verdurins, companions
+      of his early days who were just as fond of art, that he knew other
+      'great-hearted creatures,' and that, nevertheless, since he had cast his
+      vote in favour of simplicity, the arts, and magnanimity, he had entirely
+      ceased to see them. But these people did not know Odette, and, if they had
+      known her, would never have thought of introducing her to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so there was probably not, in the whole of the Verdurin circle, a
+      single one of the 'faithful' who loved them, or believed that he loved
+      them, as dearly as did Swann. And yet, when M. Verdurin said that he was
+      not satisfied with Swann, he had not only expressed his own sentiments, he
+      had unwittingly discovered his wife's. Doubtless Swann had too particular
+      an affection for Odette, as to which he had failed to take Mme. Verdurin
+      daily into his confidence; doubtless the very discretion with which he
+      availed himself of the Verdurins' hospitality, refraining, often, from
+      coming to dine with them for a reason which they never suspected, and in
+      place of which they saw only an anxiety on his part not to have to decline
+      an invitation to the house of some 'bore' or other; doubtless, also, and
+      despite all the precautions which he had taken to keep it from them, the
+      gradual discovery which they were making of his brilliant position in
+      society—doubtless all these things contributed to their general
+      annoyance with Swann. But the real, the fundamental reason was quite
+      different. What had happened was that they had at once discovered in him a
+      locked door, a reserved, impenetrable chamber in which he still professed
+      silently to himself that the Princesse de Sagan was not grotesque, and
+      that Cottard's jokes were not amusing; in a word (and for all that he
+      never once abandoned his friendly attitude towards them all, or revolted
+      from their dogmas), they had discovered an impossibility of imposing those
+      dogmas upon him, of entirely converting him to their faith, the like of
+      which they had never come across in anyone before. They would have
+      forgiven his going to the houses of 'bores' (to whom, as it happened, in
+      his heart of hearts he infinitely preferred the Verdurins and all their
+      little 'nucleus') had he consented to set a good example by openly
+      renouncing those 'bores' in the presence of the 'faithful.' But that was
+      an abjuration which, as they well knew, they were powerless to extort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a difference was there in a 'newcomer' whom Odette had asked them to
+      invite, although she herself had met him only a few times, and on whom
+      they were building great hopes—the Comte de Forcheville! (It turned
+      out that he was nothing more nor less than the brother-in-law of Saniette,
+      a discovery which filled all the 'faithful' with amazement: the manners of
+      the old palaeographer were so humble that they had always supposed him to
+      be of a class inferior, socially, to their own, and had never expected to
+      learn that he came of a rich and relatively aristocratic family.) Of
+      course, Forcheville was enormously the 'swell,' which Swann was not or had
+      quite ceased to be; of course, he would never dream of placing, as Swann
+      now placed, the Verdurin circle above any other. But he lacked that
+      natural refinement which prevented Swann from associating himself with the
+      criticisms (too obviously false to be worth his notice) that Mme. Verdurin
+      levelled at people whom he knew. As for the vulgar and affected tirades in
+      which the painter sometimes indulged, the bag-man's pleasantries which
+      Cottard used to hazard,—whereas Swann, who liked both men sincerely,
+      could easily find excuses for these without having either the courage or
+      the hypocrisy to applaud them, Forcheville, on the other hand, was on an
+      intellectual level which permitted him to be stupified, amazed by the
+      invective (without in the least understanding what it all was about), and
+      to be frankly delighted by the wit. And the very first dinner at the
+      Verdurins' at which Forcheville was present threw a glaring light upon all
+      the differences between them, made his qualities start into prominence and
+      precipitated the disgrace of Swann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was, at this dinner, besides the usual party, a professor from the
+      Sorbonne, one Brichot, who had met M. and Mme. Verdurin at a
+      watering-place somewhere, and, if his duties at the university and his
+      other works of scholarship had not left him with very little time to
+      spare, would gladly have come to them more often. For he had that
+      curiosity, that superstitious outlook on life, which, combined with a
+      certain amount of scepticism with regard to the object of their studies,
+      earn for men of intelligence, whatever their profession, for doctors who
+      do not believe in medicine, for schoolmasters who do not believe in Latin
+      exercises, the reputation of having broad, brilliant, and indeed superior
+      minds. He affected, when at Mme. Verdurin's, to choose his illustrations
+      from among the most topical subjects of the day, when he spoke of
+      philosophy or history, principally because he regarded those sciences as
+      no more, really, than a preparation for life itself, and imagined that he
+      was seeing put into practice by the 'little clan' what hitherto he had
+      known only from books; and also, perhaps, because, having had drilled into
+      him as a boy, and having unconsciously preserved, a feeling of reverence
+      for certain subjects, he thought that he was casting aside the scholar's
+      gown when he ventured to treat those subjects with a conversational
+      licence, which seemed so to him only because the folds of the gown still
+      clung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early in the course of the dinner, when M. de Forcheville, seated on the
+      right of Mme. Verdurin, who, in the 'newcomer's' honour, had taken great
+      pains with her toilet, observed to her: "Quite original, that white
+      dress," the Doctor, who had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was
+      he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a "de," and was on
+      the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as to come
+      into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective '<i>blanche</i>'
+      and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out, "<i>Blanche</i>?
+      Blanche of Castile?" then, without moving his head, shot a furtive glance
+      to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the whole. While Swann,
+      by the painful and futile effort which he made to smile, testified that he
+      thought the pun absurd, Forcheville had shewn at once that he could
+      appreciate its subtlety, and that he was a man of the world, by keeping
+      within its proper limits a mirth the spontaneity of which had charmed Mme.
+      Verdurin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you to say of a scientist like that?" she asked Forcheville.
+      "You can't talk seriously to him for two minutes on end. Is that the sort
+      of thing you tell them at your hospital?" she went on, turning to the
+      Doctor. "They must have some pretty lively times there, if that's the
+      case. I can see that I shall have to get taken in as a patient!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I heard the Doctor speak of that wicked old humbug, Blanche of
+      Castile, if I may so express myself. Am I not right, Madame?" Brichot
+      appealed to Mme. Verdurin, who, swooning with merriment, her eyes tightly
+      closed, had buried her face in her two hands, from between which, now and
+      then, escaped a muffled scream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good gracious, Madame, I would not dream of shocking the reverent-minded,
+      if there are any such around this table, <i>sub rosa</i>... I recognise,
+      moreover, that our ineffable and Athenian—oh, how infinitely
+      Athenian—Republic is capable of honouring, in the person of that
+      obscurantist old she-Capet, the first of our chiefs of police. Yes,
+      indeed, my dear host, yes, indeed!" he repeated in his ringing voice,
+      which sounded a separate note for each syllable, in reply to a protest by
+      M. Verdurin. "The Chronicle of Saint Denis, and the authenticity of its
+      information is beyond question, leaves us no room for doubt on that point.
+      No one could be more fitly chosen as Patron by a secularising proletariat
+      than that mother of a Saint, who let him see some pretty fishy saints
+      besides, as Suger says, and other great St. Bernards of the sort; for with
+      her it was a case of taking just what you pleased."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is that gentleman?" Forcheville asked Mme. Verdurin. "He seems to
+      speak with great authority."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! Do you mean to say you don't know the famous Brichot? Why, he's
+      celebrated all over Europe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, that's Bréchot, is it?" exclaimed Forcheville, who had not quite
+      caught the name. "You must tell me all about him"; he went on, fastening a
+      pair of goggle eyes on the celebrity. "It's always interesting to meet
+      well-known people at dinner. But, I say, you ask us to very select parties
+      here. No dull evenings in this house, I'm sure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you know what it is really," said Mme. Verdurin modestly. "They
+      feel safe here. They can talk about whatever they like, and the
+      conversation goes off like fireworks. Now Brichot, this evening, is
+      nothing. I've seen him, don't you know, when he's been with me, simply
+      dazzling; you'd want to go on your knees to him. Well, with anyone else
+      he's not the same man, he's not in the least witty, you have to drag the
+      words out of him, he's even boring."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's strange," remarked Forcheville with fitting astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sort of wit like Brichot's would have been regarded as out-and-out
+      stupidity by the people among whom Swann had spent his early life, for all
+      that it is quite compatible with real intelligence. And the intelligence
+      of the Professor's vigorous and well-nourished brain might easily have
+      been envied by many of the people in society who seemed witty enough to
+      Swann. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into him their likes
+      and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained to their ordinary
+      social existence, including that annex to social existence which belongs,
+      strictly speaking, to the domain of intelligence, namely, conversation,
+      that Swann could not see anything in Brichot's pleasantries; to him they
+      were merely pedantic, vulgar, and disgustingly coarse. He was shocked,
+      too, being accustomed to good manners, by the rude, almost barrack-room
+      tone which this student-in-arms adopted, no matter to whom he was
+      speaking. Finally, perhaps, he had lost all patience that evening as he
+      watched Mme. Verdurin welcoming, with such unnecessary warmth, this
+      Forcheville fellow, whom it had been Odette's unaccountable idea to bring
+      to the house. Feeling a little awkward, with Swann there also, she had
+      asked him on her arrival: "What do you think of my guest?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he, suddenly realising for the first time that Forcheville, whom he
+      had known for years, could actually attract a woman, and was quite a good
+      specimen of a man, had retorted: "Beastly!" He had, certainly, no idea of
+      being jealous of Odette, but did not feel quite so happy as usual, and
+      when Brichot, having begun to tell them the story of Blanche of Castile's
+      mother, who, according to him, "had been with Henry Plantagenet for years
+      before they were married," tried to prompt Swann to beg him to continue
+      the story, by interjecting "Isn't that so, M. Swann?" in the martial
+      accents which one uses in order to get down to the level of an
+      unintelligent rustic or to put the 'fear of God' into a trooper, Swann cut
+      his story short, to the intense fury of their hostess, by begging to be
+      excused for taking so little interest in Blanche of Castile, as he had
+      something that he wished to ask the painter. He, it appeared, had been
+      that afternoon to an exhibition of the work of another artist, also a
+      friend of Mme. Verdurin, who had recently died, and Swann wished to find
+      out from him (for he valued his discrimination) whether there had really
+      been anything more in this later work than the virtuosity which had struck
+      people so forcibly in his earlier exhibitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "From that point of view it was extraordinary, but it did not seem to me
+      to be a form of art which you could call 'elevated,'" said Swann with a
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elevated... to the height of an Institute!" interrupted Cottard, raising
+      his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table burst out laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did I tell you?" said Mme. Verdurin to Forcheville. "It's simply
+      impossible to be serious with him. When you least expect it, out he comes
+      with a joke."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she observed that Swann, and Swann alone, had not unbent. For one
+      thing he was none too well pleased with Cottard for having secured a laugh
+      at his expense in front of Forcheville. But the painter, instead of
+      replying in a way that might have interested Swann, as he would probably
+      have done had they been alone together, preferred to win the easy
+      admiration of the rest by exercising his wit upon the talent of their dead
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I went up to one of them," he began, "just to see how it was done; I
+      stuck my nose into it. Yes, I don't think! Impossible to say whether it
+      was done with glue, with soap, with sealing-wax, with sunshine, with
+      leaven, with excrem..."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And one make twelve!" shouted the Doctor, wittily, but just too late, for
+      no one saw the point of his interruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It looks as though it were done with nothing at all," resumed the
+      painter. "No more chance of discovering the trick than there is in the
+      'Night Watch,' or the 'Regents,' and it's even bigger work than either
+      Rembrandt or Hals ever did. It's all there,—and yet, no, I'll take
+      my oath it isn't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, just as singers who have reached the highest note in their compass,
+      proceed to hum the rest of the air in falsetto, he had to be satisfied
+      with murmuring, smiling the while, as if, after all, there had been
+      something irresistibly amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting: "It
+      smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your breath; you
+      feel ticklish all over—and not the faintest clue to how it's done.
+      The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring-trick, it's a miracle,"
+      bursting outright into laughter, "it's dishonest!" Then stopping, solemnly
+      raising his head, pitching his voice on a double-bass note which he
+      struggled to bring into harmony, he concluded, "And it's so loyal!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Except at the moment when he had called it "bigger than the 'Night
+      Watch,'" a blasphemy which had called forth an instant protest from Mme.
+      Verdurin, who regarded the 'Night Watch' as the supreme masterpiece of the
+      universe (conjointly with the 'Ninth' and the 'Samothrace'), and at the
+      word "excrement," which had made Forcheville throw a sweeping glance round
+      the table to see whether it was 'all right,' before he allowed his lips to
+      curve in a prudish and conciliatory smile, all the party (save Swann) had
+      kept their fascinated and adoring eyes fixed upon the painter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do so love him when he goes up in the air like that!" cried Mme.
+      Verdurin, the moment that he had finished, enraptured that the table-talk
+      should have proved so entertaining on the very night that Forcheville was
+      dining with them for the first time. "Hallo, you!" she turned to her
+      husband, "what's the matter with you, sitting there gaping like a great
+      animal? You know, though, don't you," she apologised for him to the
+      painter, "that he can talk quite well when he chooses; anybody would think
+      it was the first time he had ever listened to you. If you had only seen
+      him while you were speaking; he was just drinking it all in. And to-morrow
+      he will tell us everything you said, without missing a word."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, really, I'm not joking!" protested the painter, enchanted by the
+      success of his speech. "You all look as if you thought I was pulling your
+      legs, that it was just a trick. I'll take you to see the show, and then
+      you can say whether I've been exaggerating; I'll bet you anything you
+      like, you'll come away more 'up in the air' than I am!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But we don't suppose for a moment that you're exaggerating; we only want
+      you to go on with your dinner, and my husband too. Give M. Biche some more
+      sole, can't you see his has got cold? We're not in any hurry; you're
+      dashing round as if the house was on fire. Wait a little; don't serve the
+      salad just yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. Cottard, who was a shy woman and spoke but seldom, was not lacking,
+      for all that, in self-assurance when a happy inspiration put the right
+      word in her mouth. She felt that it would be well received; the thought
+      gave her confidence, and what she was doing was done with the object not
+      so much of shining herself, as of helping her husband on in his career.
+      And so she did not allow the word 'salad,' which Mme. Verdurin had just
+      uttered, to pass unchallenged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's not a Japanese salad, is it?" she whispered, turning towards Odette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, in her joy and confusion at the combination of neatness and
+      daring which there had been in making so discreet and yet so unmistakable
+      an allusion to the new and brilliantly successful play by Dumas, she broke
+      down in a charming, girlish laugh, not very loud, but so irresistible that
+      it was some time before she could control it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is that lady? She seems devilish clever," said Forcheville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, it is not. But we will have one for you if you will all come to
+      dinner on Friday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will think me dreadfully provincial, sir," said Mme. Cottard to
+      Swann, "but, do you know, I haven't been yet to this famous <i>Francillon</i>
+      that everybody's talking about. The Doctor has been (I remember now, he
+      told me what a very great pleasure it had been to him to spend the evening
+      with you there) and I must confess, I don't see much sense in spending
+      money on seats for him to take me, when he's seen the play already. Of
+      course an evening at the Théâtre-Français is never wasted, really; the
+      acting's so good there always; but we have some very nice friends," (Mme.
+      Cottard would hardly ever utter a proper name, but restricted herself to
+      "some friends of ours" or "one of my friends," as being more
+      'distinguished,' speaking in an affected tone and with all the importance
+      of a person who need give names only when she chooses) "who often have a
+      box, and are kind enough to take us to all the new pieces that are worth
+      going to, and so I'm certain to see this <i>Francillon</i> sooner or
+      later, and then I shall know what to think. But I do feel such a fool
+      about it, I must confess, for, whenever I pay a call anywhere, I find
+      everybody talking—it's only natural—about that wretched
+      Japanese salad. Really and truly, one's beginning to get just a little
+      tired of hearing about it," she went on, seeing that Swann seemed less
+      interested than she had hoped in so burning a topic. "I must admit,
+      though, that it's sometimes quite amusing, the way they joke about it:
+      I've got a friend, now, who is most original, though she's really a
+      beautiful woman, most popular in society, goes everywhere, and she tells
+      me that she got her cook to make one of these Japanese salads, putting in
+      everything that young M. Dumas says you're to put in, in the play. Then
+      she asked just a few friends to come and taste it. I was not among the
+      favoured few, I'm sorry to say. But she told us all about it on her next
+      'day'; it seems it was quite horrible, she made us all laugh till we
+      cried. I don't know; perhaps it was the way she told it," Mme. Cottard
+      added doubtfully, seeing that Swann still looked grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, imagining that it was, perhaps, because he had not been amused by <i>Francillon</i>:
+      "Well, I daresay I shall be disappointed with it, after all. I don't
+      suppose it's as good as the piece Mme. de Crécy worships, <i>Serge Panine</i>.
+      There's a play, if you like; so deep, makes you think! But just fancy
+      giving a receipt for a salad on the stage of the Théâtre-Français! Now, <i>Serge
+      Panine</i>—! But then, it's like everything that comes from the pen
+      of M. Georges Ohnet, it's so well written. I wonder if you know the <i>Maître
+      des Forges</i>, which I like even better than <i>Serge Panine</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pardon me," said Swann with polite irony, "but I can assure you that my
+      want of admiration is almost equally divided between those masterpieces."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Really, now; that's very interesting. And what don't you like about them?
+      Won't you ever change your mind? Perhaps you think he's a little too sad.
+      Well, well, what I always say is, one should never argue about plays or
+      novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things, and what may be
+      horrible to you is, perhaps, just what I like best."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was interrupted by Forcheville's addressing Swann. What had happened
+      was that, while Mme. Cottard was discussing <i>Francillon</i>, Forcheville
+      had been expressing to Mme. Verdurin his admiration for what he called the
+      "little speech" of the painter. "Your friend has such a flow of language,
+      such a memory!" he had said to her when the painter had come to a
+      standstill, "I've seldom seen anything like it. He'd make a first-rate
+      preacher. By Jove, I wish I was like that. What with him and M. Bréchot
+      you've drawn two lucky numbers to-night; though I'm not so sure that,
+      simply as a speaker, this one doesn't knock spots off the Professor. It
+      comes more naturally with him, less like reading from a book. Of course,
+      the way he goes on, he does use some words that are a bit realistic, and
+      all that; but that's quite the thing nowadays; anyhow, it's not often I've
+      seen a man hold the floor as cleverly as that, 'hold the spittoon,' as we
+      used to say in the regiment, where, by the way, we had a man he rather
+      reminds me of. You could take anything you liked—I don't know what—this
+      glass, say; and he'd talk away about it for hours; no, not this glass;
+      that's a silly thing to say, I'm sorry; but something a little bigger,
+      like the battle of Waterloo, or anything of that sort, he'd tell you
+      things you simply wouldn't believe. Why, Swann was in the regiment then;
+      he must have known him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you see much of M. Swann?" asked Mme. Verdurin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh dear, no!" he answered, and then, thinking that if he made himself
+      pleasant to Swann he might find favour with Odette, he decided to take
+      this opportunity of flattering him by speaking of his fashionable friends,
+      but speaking as a man of the world himself, in a tone of good-natured
+      criticism, and not as though he were congratulating Swann upon some
+      undeserved good fortune: "Isn't that so, Swann? I never see anything of
+      you, do I?—But then, where on earth is one to see him? The creature
+      spends all his time shut up with the La Trémoïlles, with the Laumes and
+      all that lot!" The imputation would have been false at any time, and was
+      all the more so, now that for at least a year Swann had given up going to
+      almost any house but the Verdurins'. But the mere names of families whom
+      the Verdurins did not know were received by them in a reproachful silence.
+      M. Verdurin, dreading the painful impression which the mention of these
+      'bores,' especially when flung at her in this tactless fashion, and in
+      front of all the 'faithful,' was bound to make on his wife, cast a covert
+      glance at her, instinct with anxious solicitude. He saw then that in her
+      fixed resolution to take no notice, to have escaped contact, altogether,
+      with the news which had just been addressed to her, not merely to remain
+      dumb but to have been deaf as well, as we pretend to be when a friend who
+      has been in the wrong attempts to slip into his conversation some excuse
+      which we should appear to be accepting, should we appear to have heard it
+      without protesting, or when some one utters the name of an enemy, the very
+      mention of whom in our presence is forbidden; Mme. Verdurin, so that her
+      silence should have the appearance, not of consent but of the unconscious
+      silence which inanimate objects preserve, had suddenly emptied her face of
+      all life, of all mobility; her rounded forehead was nothing, now, but an
+      exquisite study in high relief, which the name of those La Trémoïlles,
+      with whom Swann was always 'shut up,' had failed to penetrate; her nose,
+      just perceptibly wrinkled in a frown, exposed to view two dark cavities
+      that were, surely, modelled from life. You would have said that her
+      half-opened lips were just about to speak. It was all no more, however,
+      than a wax cast, a mask in plaster, the sculptor's design for a monument,
+      a bust to be exhibited in the Palace of Industry, where the public would
+      most certainly gather in front of it and marvel to see how the sculptor,
+      in expressing the unchallengeable dignity of the Verdurins, as opposed to
+      that of the La Trémoïlles or Laumes, whose equals (if not, indeed, their
+      betters) they were, and the equals and betters of all other 'bores' upon
+      the face of the earth, had managed to invest with a majesty that was
+      almost Papal the whiteness and rigidity of his stone. But the marble at
+      last grew animated and let it be understood that it didn't do to be at all
+      squeamish if one went to that house, since the woman was always tipsy and
+      the husband so uneducated that he called a corridor a 'collidor'!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'd need to pay me a lot of money before I'd let any of that lot set
+      foot inside my house," Mme. Verdurin concluded, gazing imperially down on
+      Swann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could scarcely have expected him to capitulate so completely as to
+      echo the holy simplicity of the pianist's aunt, who at once exclaimed: "To
+      think of that, now! What surprises me is that they can get anybody to go
+      near them; I'm sure I should be afraid; one can't be too careful. How can
+      people be so common as to go running after them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he might, at least, have replied, like Forcheville: "Gad, she's a
+      duchess; there are still plenty of people who are impressed by that sort
+      of thing," which would at least have permitted Mme. Verdurin the final
+      retort, "And a lot of good may it do them!" Instead of which, Swann merely
+      smiled, in a manner which shewed, quite clearly, that he could not, of
+      course, take such an absurd suggestion seriously. M. Verdurin, who was
+      still casting furtive and intermittent glances at his wife, could see with
+      regret, and could understand only too well that she was now inflamed with
+      the passion of a Grand Inquisitor who cannot succeed in stamping out a
+      heresy; and so, in the hope of bringing Swann round to a retractation (for
+      the courage of one's opinions is always a form of calculating cowardice in
+      the eyes of the 'other side'), he broke in:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell us frankly, now, what you think of them yourself. We shan't repeat
+      it to them, you may be sure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To which Swann answered: "Why, I'm not in the least afraid of the Duchess
+      (if it is of the La Trémoïlles that you're speaking). I can assure you
+      that everyone likes going to see her. I don't go so far as to say that
+      she's at all 'deep'—" he pronounced the word as if it meant
+      something ridiculous, for his speech kept the traces of certain mental
+      habits which the recent change in his life, a rejuvenation illustrated by
+      his passion for music, had inclined him temporarily to discard, so that at
+      times he would actually state his views with considerable warmth—"but
+      I am quite sincere when I say that she is intelligent, while her husband
+      is positively a bookworm. They are charming people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His explanation was terribly effective; Mme. Verdurin now realised that
+      this one state of unbelief would prevent her 'little nucleus' from ever
+      attaining to complete unanimity, and was unable to restrain herself, in
+      her fury at the obstinacy of this wretch who could not see what anguish
+      his words were causing her, but cried aloud, from the depths of her
+      tortured heart, "You may think so if you wish, but at least you need not
+      say so to us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It all depends upon what you call intelligence." Forcheville felt that it
+      was his turn to be brilliant. "Come now, Swann, tell us what you mean by
+      intelligence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There," cried Odette, "that's one of the big things I beg him to tell me
+      about, and he never will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, but..." protested Swann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, but nonsense!" said Odette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A water-butt?" asked the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To you," pursued Forcheville, "does intelligence mean what they call
+      clever talk; you know, the sort of people who worm their way into
+      society?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Finish your sweet, so that they can take your plate away!" said Mme.
+      Verdurin sourly to Saniette, who was lost in thought and had stopped
+      eating. And then, perhaps a little ashamed of her rudeness, "It doesn't
+      matter; take your time about it; there's no hurry; I only reminded you
+      because of the others, you know; it keeps the servants back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is," began Brichot, with a resonant smack upon every syllable, "a
+      rather curious definition of intelligence by that pleasing old anarchist
+      Fénelon..."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just listen to this!" Mme. Verdurin rallied Forcheville and the Doctor.
+      "He's going to give us Fénelon's definition of intelligence. That's
+      interesting. It's not often you get a chance of hearing that!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Brichot was keeping Fénelon's definition until Swann should have given
+      his own. Swann remained silent, and, by this fresh act of recreancy,
+      spoiled the brilliant tournament of dialectic which Mme. Verdurin was
+      rejoicing at being able to offer to Forcheville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You see, it's just the same as with me!" Odette was peevish. "I'm not at
+      all sorry to see that I'm not the only one he doesn't find quite up to his
+      level."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These de La Trémouailles whom Mme. Verdurin has exhibited to us as so
+      little to be desired," inquired Brichot, articulating vigorously, "are
+      they, by any chance, descended from the couple whom that worthy old snob,
+      Sévigné, said she was delighted to know, because it was so good for her
+      peasants? True, the Marquise had another reason, which in her case
+      probably came first, for she was a thorough journalist at heart, and
+      always on the look-out for 'copy.' And, in the journal which she used to
+      send regularly to her daughter, it was Mme. de La Trémouaille, kept
+      well-informed through all her grand connections, who supplied the foreign
+      politics."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh dear, no. I'm quite sure they aren't the same family," said Mme.
+      Verdurin desperately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saniette who, ever since he had surrendered his untouched plate to the
+      butler, had been plunged once more in silent meditation, emerged finally
+      to tell them, with a nervous laugh, a story of how he had once dined with
+      the Duc de La Trémoïlle, the point of which was that the Duke did not know
+      that George Sand was the pseudonym of a woman. Swann, who really liked
+      Saniette, felt bound to supply him with a few facts illustrative of the
+      Duke's culture, which would prove that such ignorance on his part was
+      literally impossible; but suddenly he stopped short; he had realised, as
+      he was speaking, that Saniette needed no proof, but knew already that the
+      story was untrue for the simple reason that he had at that moment invented
+      it. The worthy man suffered acutely from the Verdurins' always finding him
+      so dull; and as he was conscious of having been more than ordinarily
+      morose this evening, he had made up his mind that he would succeed in
+      being amusing, at least once, before the end of dinner. He surrendered so
+      quickly, looked so wretched at the sight of his castle in ruins, and
+      replied in so craven a tone to Swann, appealing to him not to persist in a
+      refutation which was already superfluous, "All right; all right; anyhow,
+      even if I have made a mistake that's not a crime, I hope," that Swann
+      longed to be able to console him by insisting that the story was
+      indubitably true and exquisitely funny. The Doctor, who had been
+      listening, had an idea that it was the right moment to interject "<i>Se
+      non è vero</i>," but he was not quite certain of the words, and was afraid
+      of being caught out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner, Forcheville went up to the Doctor. "She can't have been at
+      all bad looking, Mme. Verdurin; anyhow, she's a woman you can really talk
+      to; that's all I want. Of course she's getting a bit broad in the beam.
+      But Mme. de Crécy! There's a little woman who knows what's what, all
+      right. Upon my word and soul, you can see at a glance she's got the
+      American eye, that girl has. We are speaking of Mme. de Crécy," he
+      explained, as M. Verdurin joined them, his pipe in his mouth. "I should
+      say that, as a specimen of the female form—"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'd rather have it in my bed than a clap of thunder!" the words came
+      tumbling from Cottard, who had for some time been waiting in vain until
+      Forcheville should pause for breath, so that he might get in his hoary old
+      joke, a chance for which might not, he feared, come again, if the
+      conversation should take a different turn; and he produced it now with
+      that excessive spontaneity and confidence which may often be noticed
+      attempting to cover up the coldness, and the slight flutter of emotion,
+      inseparable from a prepared recitation. Forcheville knew and saw the joke,
+      and was thoroughly amused. As for M. Verdurin, he was unsparing of his
+      merriment, having recently discovered a way of expressing it by a symbol,
+      different from his wife's, but equally simple and obvious. Scarcely had he
+      begun the movement of head and shoulders of a man who was 'shaking with
+      laughter' than he would begin also to cough, as though, in laughing too
+      violently, he had swallowed a mouthful of smoke from his pipe. And by
+      keeping the pipe firmly in his mouth he could prolong indefinitely the
+      dumb-show of suffocation and hilarity. So he and Mme. Verdurin (who, at
+      the other side of the room, where the painter was telling her a story, was
+      shutting her eyes preparatory to flinging her face into her hands)
+      resembled two masks in a theatre, each representing Comedy, but in a
+      different way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Verdurin had been wiser than he knew in not taking his pipe out of his
+      mouth, for Cottard, having occasion to leave the room for a moment,
+      murmured a witty euphemism which he had recently acquired and repeated now
+      whenever he had to go to the place in question: "I must just go and see
+      the Duc d'Aumale for a minute," so drolly, that M. Verdurin's cough began
+      all over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, then, take your pipe out of your mouth; can't you see, you'll choke
+      if you try to bottle up your laughter like that," counselled Mme.
+      Verdurin, as she came round with a tray of liqueurs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a delightful man your husband is; he has the wit of a dozen!"
+      declared Forcheville to Mme. Cottard. "Thank you, thank you, an old
+      soldier like me can never say 'No' to a drink."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "M. de Forcheville thinks Odette charming," M. Verdurin told his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, do you know, she wants so much to meet you again some day at
+      luncheon. We must arrange it, but don't on any account let Swann hear
+      about it. He spoils everything, don't you know. I don't mean to say that
+      you're not to come to dinner too, of course; we hope to see you very
+      often. Now that the warm weather's coming, we're going to have dinner out
+      of doors whenever we can. That won't bore you, will it, a quiet little
+      dinner, now and then, in the Bois? Splendid, splendid, that will be quite
+      delightful....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aren't you going to do any work this evening, I say?" she screamed
+      suddenly to the little pianist, seeing an opportunity for displaying,
+      before a 'newcomer' of Forcheville's importance, at once her unfailing wit
+      and her despotic power over the 'faithful.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "M. de Forcheville was just going to say something dreadful about you,"
+      Mme. Cottard warned her husband as he reappeared in the room. And he,
+      still following up the idea of Forcheville's noble birth, which had
+      obsessed him all through dinner, began again with: "I am treating a
+      Baroness just now, Baroness Putbus; weren't there some Putbuses in the
+      Crusades? Anyhow they've got a lake in Pomerania that's ten times the size
+      of the Place de la Concorde. I am treating her for dry arthritis; she's a
+      charming woman. Mme. Verdurin knows her too, I believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which enabled Forcheville, a moment later, finding himself alone with Mme.
+      Cottard, to complete his favourable verdict on her husband with: "He's an
+      interesting man, too; you can see that he knows some good people. Gad! but
+      they get to know a lot of things, those doctors."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "D'you want me to play the phrase from the sonata for M. Swann?" asked the
+      pianist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What the devil's that? Not the sonata-snake, I hope!" shouted M. de
+      Forcheville, hoping to create an effect. But Dr. Cottard, who had never
+      heard this pun, missed the point of it, and imagined that M. de
+      Forcheville had made a mistake. He dashed in boldly to correct it: "No,
+      no. The word isn't <i>serpent-à-sonates</i>, it's <i>serpent-à-sonnettes</i>!"
+      he explained in a tone at once zealous, impatient, and triumphant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forcheville explained the joke to him. The Doctor blushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll admit it's not bad, eh, Doctor?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! I've known it for ages."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they were silenced; heralded by the waving tremolo of the
+      violin-part, which formed a bristling bodyguard of sound two octaves above
+      it—and as in a mountainous country, against the seeming immobility
+      of a vertically falling torrent, one may distinguish, two hundred feet
+      below, the tiny form of a woman walking in the valley—the little
+      phrase had just appeared, distant but graceful, protected by the long,
+      gradual unfurling of its transparent, incessant and sonorous curtain. And
+      Swann, in his heart of hearts, turned to it, spoke to it as to a confidant
+      in the secret of his love, as to a friend of Odette who would assure him
+      that he need pay no attention to this Forcheville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! you've come too late!" Mme. Verdurin greeted one of the 'faithful,'
+      whose invitation had been only 'to look in after dinner,' "we've been
+      having a simply incomparable Brichot! You never heard such eloquence! But
+      he's gone. Isn't that so, M. Swann? I believe it's the first time you've
+      met him," she went on, to emphasize the fact that it was to her that Swann
+      owed the introduction. "Isn't that so; wasn't he delicious, our Brichot?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann bowed politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No? You weren't interested?" she asked dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, but I assure you, I was quite enthralled. He is perhaps a little too
+      peremptory, a little too jovial for my taste. I should like to see him a
+      little less confident at times, a little more tolerant, but one feels that
+      he knows a great deal, and on the whole he seems a very sound fellow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The party broke up very late. Cottard's first words to his wife were: "I
+      have rarely seen Mme. Verdurin in such form as she was to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What exactly is your Mme. Verdurin? A bit of a bad hat, eh?" said
+      Forcheville to the painter, to whom he had offered a 'lift.' Odette
+      watched his departure with regret; she dared not refuse to let Swann take
+      her home, but she was moody and irritable in the carriage, and, when he
+      asked whether he might come in, replied, "I suppose so," with an impatient
+      shrug of her shoulders. When they had all gone, Mme. Verdurin said to her
+      husband: "Did you notice the way Swann laughed, such an idiotic laugh,
+      when we spoke about Mme. La Trémoïlle?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had remarked, more than once, how Swann and Forcheville suppressed the
+      particle 'de' before that lady's name. Never doubting that it was done on
+      purpose, to shew that they were not afraid of a title, she had made up her
+      mind to imitate their arrogance, but had not quite grasped what
+      grammatical form it ought to take. Moreover, the natural corruptness of
+      her speech overcoming her implacable republicanism, she still said
+      instinctively "the de La Trémoïlles," or, rather (by an abbreviation
+      sanctified by the usage of music-hall singers and the writers of the
+      'captions' beneath caricatures, who elide the 'de'), "the d'La
+      Trémoïlles," but she corrected herself at once to "Madame La Trémoïlle.—The
+      <i>Duchess</i>, as Swann calls her," she added ironically, with a smile
+      which proved that she was merely quoting, and would not, herself, accept
+      the least responsibility for a classification so puerile and absurd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't mind saying that I thought him extremely stupid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Verdurin took it up. "He's not sincere. He's a crafty customer, always
+      hovering between one side and the other. He's always trying to run with
+      the hare and hunt with the hounds. What a difference between him and
+      Forcheville. There, at least, you have a man who tells you straight out
+      what he thinks. Either you agree with him or you don't. Not like the other
+      fellow, who's never definitely fish or fowl. Did you notice, by the way,
+      that Odette seemed all out for Forcheville, and I don't blame her, either.
+      And then, after all, if Swann tries to come the man of fashion over us,
+      the champion of distressed Duchesses, at any rate the other man has got a
+      title; he's always Comte de Forcheville!" he let the words slip delicately
+      from his lips, as though, familiar with every page of the history of that
+      dignity, he were making a scrupulously exact estimate of its value, in
+      relation to others of the sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't mind saying," Mme. Verdurin went on, "that he saw fit to utter
+      some most venomous, and quite absurd insinuations against Brichot.
+      Naturally, once he saw that Brichot was popular in this house, it was a
+      way of hitting back at us, of spoiling our party. I know his sort, the
+      dear, good friend of the family, who pulls you all to pieces on the stairs
+      as he's going away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didn't I say so?" retorted her husband. "He's simply a failure; a poor
+      little wretch who goes through life mad with jealousy of anything that's
+      at all big."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the truth been known, there was not one of the 'faithful' who was not
+      infinitely more malicious than Swann; but the others would all take the
+      precaution of tempering their malice with obvious pleasantries, with
+      little sparks of emotion and cordiality; while the least indication of
+      reserve on Swann's part, undraped in any such conventional formula as "Of
+      course, I don't want to say anything—" to which he would have
+      scorned to descend, appeared to them a deliberate act of treachery. There
+      are certain original and distinguished authors in whom the least 'freedom
+      of speech' is thought revolting because they have not begun by flattering
+      the public taste, and serving up to it the commonplace expressions to
+      which it is used; it was by the same process that Swann infuriated M.
+      Verdurin. In his case as in theirs it was the novelty of his language
+      which led his audience to suspect the blackness of his designs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann was still unconscious of the disgrace that threatened him at the
+      Verdurins', and continued to regard all their absurdities in the most rosy
+      light, through the admiring eyes of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a rule he made no appointments with Odette except for the evenings; he
+      was afraid of her growing tired of him if he visited her during the day as
+      well; at the same time he was reluctant to forfeit, even for an hour, the
+      place that he held in her thoughts, and so was constantly looking out for
+      an opportunity of claiming her attention, in any way that would not be
+      displeasing to her. If, in a florist's or a jeweller's window, a plant or
+      an ornament caught his eye, he would at once think of sending them to
+      Odette, imagining that the pleasure which the casual sight of them had
+      given him would instinctively be felt, also, by her, and would increase
+      her affection for himself; and he would order them to be taken at once to
+      the Rue La pérouse, so as to accelerate the moment in which, as she
+      received an offering from him, he might feel himself, in a sense,
+      transported into her presence. He was particularly anxious, always, that
+      she should receive these presents before she went out for the evening, so
+      that her sense of gratitude towards him might give additional tenderness
+      to her welcome when he arrived at the Verdurins', might even—for all
+      he knew—if the shopkeeper made haste, bring him a letter from her
+      before dinner, or herself, in person, upon his doorstep, come on a little
+      extraordinary visit of thanks. As in an earlier phase, when he had
+      experimented with the reflex action of anger and contempt upon her
+      character, he sought now by that of gratification to elicit from her fresh
+      particles of her intimate feelings, which she had never yet revealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often she was embarrassed by lack of money, and under pressure from a
+      creditor would come to him for assistance. He enjoyed this, as he enjoyed
+      everything which could impress Odette with his love for herself, or merely
+      with his influence, with the extent of the use that she might make of him.
+      Probably if anyone had said to him, at the beginning, "It's your position
+      that attracts her," or at this stage, "It's your money that she's really
+      in love with," he would not have believed the suggestion, nor would he
+      have been greatly distressed by the thought that people supposed her to be
+      attached to him, that people felt them to be united by any ties so
+      binding as those of snobbishness or wealth. But even if he had accepted
+      the possibility, it might not have caused him any suffering to discover
+      that Odette's love for him was based on a foundation more lasting than
+      mere affection, or any attractive qualities which she might have found in
+      him; on a sound, commercial interest; an interest which would postpone for
+      ever the fatal day on which she might be tempted to bring their relations
+      to an end. For the moment, while he lavished presents upon her, and
+      performed all manner of services, he could rely on advantages not
+      contained in his person, or in his intellect, could forego the endless,
+      killing effort to make himself attractive. And this delight in being a
+      lover, in living by love alone, of the reality of which he was inclined to
+      be doubtful, the price which, in the long run, he must pay for it, as a
+      dilettante in immaterial sensations, enhanced its value in his eyes—as
+      one sees people who are doubtful whether the sight of the sea and the
+      sound of its waves are really enjoyable, become convinced that they are,
+      as also of the rare quality and absolute detachment of their own taste,
+      when they have agreed to pay several pounds a day for a room in an hotel,
+      from which that sight and that sound may be enjoyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, when reflections of this order had brought him once again to the
+      memory of the time when some one had spoken to him of Odette as of a
+      'kept' woman, and when, once again, he had amused himself with contrasting
+      that strange personification, the 'kept' woman—an iridescent mixture
+      of unknown and demoniacal qualities, embroidered, as in some fantasy of
+      Gustave Moreau, with poison-dripping flowers, interwoven with precious
+      jewels—with that Odette upon whose face he had watched the passage
+      of the same expressions of pity for a sufferer, resentment of an act of
+      injustice, gratitude for an act of kindness, which he had seen, in earlier
+      days, on his own mother's face, and on the faces of friends; that Odette,
+      whose conversation had so frequently turned on the things that he himself
+      knew better than anyone, his collections, his room, his old servant, his
+      banker, who kept all his title-deeds and bonds;—the thought of the
+      banker reminded him that he must call on him shortly, to draw some money.
+      And indeed, if, during the current month, he were to come less liberally
+      to the aid of Odette in her financial difficulties than in the month
+      before, when he had given her five thousand francs, if he refrained from
+      offering her a diamond necklace for which she longed, he would be allowing
+      her admiration for his generosity to decline, that gratitude which had
+      made him so happy, and would even be running the risk of her imagining
+      that his love for her (as she saw its visible manifestations grow fewer)
+      had itself diminished. And then, suddenly, he asked himself whether that
+      was not precisely what was implied by 'keeping' a woman (as if, in fact,
+      that idea of 'keeping' could be derived from elements not at all
+      mysterious nor perverse, but belonging to the intimate routine of his
+      daily life, such as that thousand-franc note, a familiar and domestic
+      object, torn in places and mended with gummed paper, which his valet,
+      after paying the household accounts and the rent, had locked up in a
+      drawer in the old writing-desk whence he had extracted it to send it, with
+      four others, to Odette) and whether it was not possible to apply to
+      Odette, since he had known her (for he never imagined for a moment that
+      she could ever have taken a penny from anyone else, before), that title,
+      which he had believed so wholly inapplicable to her, of 'kept' woman. He
+      could not explore the idea further, for a sudden access of that mental
+      lethargy which was, with him, congenital, intermittent and providential,
+      happened, at that moment, to extinguish every particle of light in his
+      brain, as instantaneously as, at a later period, when electric lighting
+      had been everywhere installed, it became possible, merely by fingering a
+      switch, to cut off all the supply of light from a house. His mind fumbled,
+      for a moment, in the darkness, he took off his spectacles, wiped the
+      glasses, passed his hands over his eyes, but saw no light until he found
+      himself face to face with a wholly different idea, the realisation that he
+      must endeavour, in the coming month, to send Odette six or seven
+      thousand-franc notes instead of five, simply as a surprise for her and to
+      give her pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening, when he did not stay at home until it was time to meet
+      Odette at the Verdurins', or rather at one of the open-air restaurants
+      which they liked to frequent in the Bois and especially at Saint-Cloud, he
+      would go to dine in one of those fashionable houses in which, at one time,
+      he had been a constant guest. He did not wish to lose touch with people
+      who, for all that he knew, might be of use, some day, to Odette, and
+      thanks to whom he was often, in the meantime, able to procure for her some
+      privilege or pleasure. Besides, he had been used for so long to the
+      refinement and comfort of good society that, side by side with his
+      contempt, there had grown up also a desperate need for it, with the result
+      that, when he had reached the point after which the humblest lodgings
+      appeared to him as precisely on a par with the most princely mansions, his
+      senses were so thoroughly accustomed to the latter that he could not enter
+      the former without a feeling of acute discomfort. He had the same regard—to
+      a degree of identity which they would never have suspected—for the
+      little families with small incomes who asked him to dances in their flats
+      ("straight upstairs to the fifth floor, and the door on the left") as for
+      the Princesse de Parme, who gave the most splendid parties in Paris; but
+      he had not the feeling of being actually 'at the ball' when he found
+      himself herded with the fathers of families in the bedroom of the lady of
+      the house, while the spectacle of wash-hand-stands covered over with
+      towels, and of beds converted into cloak-rooms, with a mass of hats and
+      great-coats sprawling over their counterpanes, gave him the same stifling
+      sensation that, nowadays, people who have been used for half a lifetime to
+      electric light derive from a smoking lamp or a candle that needs to be
+      snuffed. If he were dining out, he would order his carriage for half-past
+      seven; while he changed his clothes, he would be wondering, all the time,
+      about Odette, and in this way was never alone, for the constant thought of
+      Odette gave to the moments in which he was separated from her the same
+      peculiar charm as to those in which she was at his side. He would get into
+      his carriage and drive off, but he knew that this thought had jumped in
+      after him and had settled down upon his knee, like a pet animal which he
+      might take everywhere, and would keep with him at the dinner-table,
+      unobserved by his fellow-guests. He would stroke and fondle it, warm
+      himself with it, and, as a feeling of languor swept over him, would give
+      way to a slight shuddering movement which contracted his throat and
+      nostrils—a new experience, this,—as he fastened the bunch of
+      columbines in his buttonhole. He had for some time been feeling neither
+      well nor happy, especially since Odette had brought Forcheville to the
+      Verdurins', and he would have liked to go away for a while to rest in the
+      country. But he could never summon up courage to leave Paris, even for a
+      day, while Odette was there. The weather was warm; it was the finest part
+      of the spring. And for all that he was driving through a city of stone to
+      immure himself in a house without grass or garden, what was incessantly
+      before his eyes was a park which he owned, near Combray, where, at four in
+      the afternoon, before coming to the asparagus-bed, thanks to the breeze
+      that was wafted across the fields from Méséglise, he could enjoy the
+      fragrant coolness of the air as well beneath an arbour of hornbeams in the
+      garden as by the bank of the pond, fringed with forget-me-not and iris;
+      and where, when he sat down to dinner, trained and twined by the
+      gardener's skilful hand, there ran all about his table currant-bush and
+      rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner, if he had an early appointment in the Bois or at
+      Saint-Cloud, he would rise from table and leave the house so abruptly—especially
+      if it threatened to rain, and so to scatter the 'faithful' before their
+      normal time—that on one occasion the Princesse des Laumes (at whose
+      house dinner had been so late that Swann had left before the coffee came
+      in, to join the Verdurins on the Island in the Bois) observed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Really, if Swann were thirty years older, and had diabetes, there might
+      be some excuse for his running away like that. He seems to look upon us
+      all as a joke."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He persuaded himself that the spring-time charm, which he could not go
+      down to Combray to enjoy, he would find at least on the Ile des Cygnes or
+      at Saint-Cloud. But as he could think only of Odette, he would return home
+      not knowing even if he had tasted the fragrance of the young leaves, or if
+      the moon had been shining. He would be welcomed by the little phrase from
+      the sonata, played in the garden on the restaurant piano. If there was
+      none in the garden, the Verdurins would have taken immense pains to have a
+      piano brought out either from a private room or from the restaurant
+      itself; not because Swann was now restored to favour; far from it. But the
+      idea of arranging an ingenious form of entertainment for some one, even
+      for some one whom they disliked, would stimulate them, during the time
+      spent in its preparation, to a momentary sense of cordiality and
+      affection. Now and then he would remind himself that another fine spring
+      evening was drawing to a close, and would force himself to notice the
+      trees and the sky. But the state of excitement into which Odette's
+      presence never failed to throw him, added to a feverish ailment which, for
+      some time now, had scarcely left him, robbed him of that sense of quiet
+      and comfort which is an indispensable background to the impressions that
+      we derive from nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, when Swann had consented to dine with the Verdurins, and had
+      mentioned during dinner that he had to attend, next day, the annual
+      banquet of an old comrades' association, Odette had at once exclaimed
+      across the table, in front of everyone, in front of Forcheville, who was
+      now one of the 'faithful,' in front of the painter, in front of Cottard:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I know, you have your banquet to-morrow; I sha'n't see you, then,
+      till I get home; don't be too late."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And although Swann had never yet taken offence, at all seriously, at
+      Odette's demonstrations of friendship for one or other of the 'faithful,'
+      he felt an exquisite pleasure on hearing her thus avow, before them all,
+      with that calm immodesty, the fact that they saw each other regularly
+      every evening, his privileged position in her house, and her own
+      preference for him which it implied. It was true that Swann had often
+      reflected that Odette was in no way a remarkable woman; and in the
+      supremacy which he wielded over a creature so distinctly inferior to
+      himself there was nothing that especially flattered him when he heard it
+      proclaimed to all the 'faithful'; but since he had observed that, to
+      several other men than himself, Odette seemed a fascinating and desirable
+      woman, the attraction which her body held for him had aroused a painful
+      longing to secure the absolute mastery of even the tiniest particles of
+      her heart. And he had begun to attach an incalculable value to those
+      moments passed in her house in the evenings, when he held her upon his
+      knee, made her tell him what she thought about this or that, and counted
+      over that treasure to which, alone of all his earthly possessions, he
+      still clung. And so, after this dinner, drawing her aside, he took care to
+      thank her effusively, seeking to indicate to her by the extent of his
+      gratitude the corresponding intensity of the pleasures which it was in her
+      power to bestow on him, the supreme pleasure being to guarantee him
+      immunity, for as long as his love should last and he remain vulnerable,
+      from the assaults of jealousy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came away from his banquet, the next evening, it was pouring rain,
+      and he had nothing but his victoria. A friend offered to take him home in
+      a closed carriage, and as Odette, by the fact of her having invited him to
+      come, had given him an assurance that she was expecting no one else, he
+      could, with a quiet mind and an untroubled heart, rather than set off thus
+      in the rain, have gone home and to bed. But perhaps, if she saw that he
+      seemed not to adhere to his resolution to end every evening, without
+      exception, in her company, she might grow careless, and fail to keep free
+      for him just the one evening on which he particularly desired it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after eleven when he reached her door, and as he made his apology
+      for having been unable to come away earlier, she complained that it was
+      indeed very late; the storm had made her unwell, her head ached, and she
+      warned him that she would not let him stay longer than half an hour, that
+      at midnight she would send him away; a little while later she felt tired
+      and wished to sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No cattleya, then, to-night?" he asked, "and I've been looking forward so
+      to a nice little cattleya."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was irresponsive; saying nervously: "No, dear, no cattleya
+      tonight. Can't you see, I'm not well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It might have done you good, but I won't bother you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She begged him to put out the light before he went; he drew the curtains
+      close round her bed and left her. But, when he was in his own house again,
+      the idea suddenly struck him that, perhaps, Odette was expecting some one
+      else that evening, that she had merely pretended to be tired, that she had
+      asked him to put the light out only so that he should suppose that she was
+      going to sleep, that the moment he had left the house she had lighted it
+      again, and had reopened her door to the stranger who was to be her guest
+      for the night. He looked at his watch. It was about an hour and a half
+      since he had left her; he went out, took a cab, and stopped it close to
+      her house, in a little street running at right angles to that other
+      street, which lay at the back of her house, and along which he used to go,
+      sometimes, to tap upon her bedroom window, for her to let him in. He left
+      his cab; the streets were all deserted and dark; he walked a few yards and
+      came out almost opposite her house. Amid the glimmering blackness of all
+      the row of windows, the lights in which had long since been put out, he
+      saw one, and only one, from which overflowed, between the slats of its
+      shutters, dosed like a wine-press over its mysterious golden juice, the
+      light that filled the room within, a light which on so many evenings, as
+      soon as he saw it, far off, as he turned into the street, had rejoiced his
+      heart with its message: "She is there—expecting you," and now
+      tortured him with: "She is there with the man she was expecting." He must
+      know who; he tiptoed along by the wall until he reached the window, but
+      between the slanting bars of the shutters he could see nothing; he could
+      hear, only, in the silence of the night, the murmur of conversation. What
+      agony he suffered as he watched that light, in whose golden atmosphere
+      were moving, behind the closed sash, the unseen and detested pair, as he
+      listened to that murmur which revealed the presence of the man who had
+      crept in after his own departure, the perfidy of Odette, and the pleasures
+      which she was at that moment tasting with the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet he was not sorry that he had come; the torment which had forced
+      him to leave his own house had lost its sharpness when it lost its
+      uncertainty, now that Odette's other life, of which he had had, at that
+      first moment, a sudden helpless suspicion, was definitely there, almost
+      within his grasp, before his eyes, in the full glare of the lamp-light,
+      caught and kept there, an unwitting prisoner, in that room into which,
+      when he would, he might force his way to surprise and seize it; or rather
+      he would tap upon the shutters, as he had often done when he had come
+      there very late, and by that signal Odette would at least learn that he
+      knew, that he had seen the light and had heard the voices; while he
+      himself, who a moment ago had been picturing her as laughing at him, as
+      sharing with that other the knowledge of how effectively he had been
+      tricked, now it was he that saw them, confident and persistent in their
+      error, tricked and trapped by none other than himself, whom they believed
+      to be a mile away, but who was there, in person, there with a plan, there
+      with the knowledge that he was going, in another minute, to tap upon the
+      shutter. And, perhaps, what he felt (almost an agreeable feeling) at that
+      moment was something more than relief at the solution of a doubt, at the
+      soothing of a pain; was an intellectual pleasure. If, since he had fallen
+      in love, things had recovered a little of the delicate attraction that
+      they had had for him long ago—though only when a light was shed upon
+      them by a thought, a memory of Odette—now it was another of the
+      faculties, prominent in the studious days of his youth, that Odette had
+      quickened with new life, the passion for truth, but for a truth which,
+      too, was interposed between himself and his mistress, receiving its light
+      from her alone, a private and personal truth the sole object of which (an
+      infinitely precious object, and one almost impersonal in its absolute
+      beauty) was Odette—Odette in her activities, her environment, her
+      projects, and her past. At every other period in his life, the little
+      everyday words and actions of another person had always seemed wholly
+      valueless to Swann; if gossip about such things were repeated to him, he
+      would dismiss it as insignificant, and while he listened it was only the
+      lowest, the most commonplace part of his mind that was interested; at such
+      moments he felt utterly dull and uninspired. But in this strange phase of
+      love the personality of another person becomes so enlarged, so deepened,
+      that the curiosity which he could now feel aroused in himself, to know the
+      least details of a woman's daily occupation, was the same thirst for
+      knowledge with which he had once studied history. And all manner of
+      actions, from which, until now, he would have recoiled in shame, such as
+      spying, to-night, outside a window, to-morrow, for all he knew, putting
+      adroitly provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants,
+      listening at doors, seemed to him, now, to be precisely on a level with
+      the deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the
+      interpretation of old monuments, that was to say, so many different
+      methods of scientific investigation, each one having a definite
+      intellectual value and being legitimately employable in the search for
+      truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As his hand stole out towards the shutters he felt a pang of shame at the
+      thought that Odette would now know that he had suspected her, that he had
+      returned, that he had posted himself outside her window. She had often
+      told him what a horror she had of jealous men, of lovers who spied. What
+      he was going to do would be extremely awkward, and she would detest him
+      for ever after, whereas now, for the moment, for so long as he refrained
+      from knocking, perhaps even in the act of infidelity, she loved him still.
+      How often is not the prospect of future happiness thus sacrificed to one's
+      impatient insistence upon an immediate gratification. But his desire to
+      know the truth was stronger, and seemed to him nobler than his desire for
+      her. He knew that the true story of certain events, which he would have
+      given his life to be able to reconstruct accurately and in full, was to be
+      read within that window, streaked with bars of light, as within the
+      illuminated, golden boards of one of those precious manuscripts, by whose
+      wealth of artistic treasures the scholar who consults them cannot remain
+      unmoved. He yearned for the satisfaction of knowing the truth which so
+      impassioned him in that brief, fleeting, precious transcript, on that
+      translucent page, so warm, so beautiful. And besides, the advantage which
+      he felt—which he so desperately wanted to feel—that he had
+      over them, lay perhaps not so much in knowing as in being able to shew
+      them that he knew. He drew himself up on tiptoe. He knocked. They had not
+      heard; he knocked again; louder; their conversation ceased. A man's voice—he
+      strained his ears to distinguish whose, among such of Odette's friends as
+      he knew, the voice could be—asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who's that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not be certain of the voice. He knocked once again. The window
+      first, then the shutters were thrown open. It was too late, now, to
+      retire, and since she must know all, so as not to seem too contemptible,
+      too jealous and inquisitive, he called out in a careless, hearty,
+      welcoming tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Please don't bother; I just happened to be passing, and saw the light. I
+      wanted to know if you were feeling better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked up. Two old gentlemen stood facing him, in the window, one of
+      them with a lamp in his hand; and beyond them he could see into the room,
+      a room that he had never seen before. Having fallen into the habit, when
+      he came late to Odette, of identifying her window by the fact that it was
+      the only one still lighted in a row of windows otherwise all alike, he had
+      been misled, this time, by the light, and had knocked at the window beyond
+      hers, in the adjoining house. He made what apology he could and hurried
+      home, overjoyed that the satisfaction of his curiosity had preserved their
+      love intact, and that, having feigned for so long, when in Odette's
+      company, a sort of indifference, he had not now, by a demonstration of
+      jealousy, given her that proof of the excess of his own passion which, in
+      a pair of lovers, fully and finally dispenses the recipient from the
+      obligation to love the other enough. He never spoke to her of this
+      misadventure, he ceased even to think of it himself. But now and then his
+      thoughts in their wandering course would come upon this memory where it
+      lay unobserved, would startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down
+      into his consciousness, and leave him aching with a sharp, far-rooted
+      pain. As though this had been a bodily pain, Swann's mind was powerless to
+      alleviate it; in the case of bodily pain, however, since it is independent
+      of the mind, the mind can dwell upon it, can note that it has diminished,
+      that it has momentarily ceased. But with this mental pain, the mind,
+      merely by recalling it, created it afresh. To determine not to think of it
+      was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still. And when, in
+      conversation with his friends, he forgot his sufferings, suddenly a word
+      casually uttered would make him change countenance as a wounded man does
+      when a clumsy hand has touched his aching limb. When he came away from
+      Odette, he was happy, he felt calm, he recalled the smile with which, in
+      gentle mockery, she had spoken to him of this man or of that, a smile
+      which was all tenderness for himself; he recalled the gravity of her head
+      which she seemed to have lifted from its axis to let it droop and fall, as
+      though against her will, upon his lips, as she had done on that first
+      evening in the carriage; her languishing gaze at him while she lay
+      nestling in his arms, her bended head seeming to recede between her
+      shoulders, as though shrinking from the cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But then, at once, his jealousy, as it had been the shadow of his love,
+      presented him with the complement, with the converse of that new smile
+      with which she had greeted him that very evening,—with which, now,
+      perversely, she was mocking Swann while she tendered her love to another—of
+      that lowering of her head, but lowered now to fall on other lips, and (but
+      bestowed upon a stranger) of all the marks of affection that she had shewn
+      to him. And all these voluptuous memories which he bore away from her
+      house were, as one might say, but so many sketches, rough plans, like the
+      schemes of decoration which a designer submits to one in outline, enabling
+      Swann to form an idea of the various attitudes, aflame or faint with
+      passion, which she was capable of adopting for others. With the result
+      that he came to regret every pleasure that he tasted in her company, every
+      new caress that he invented (and had been so imprudent as to point out to
+      her how delightful it was), every fresh charm that he found in her, for he
+      knew that, a moment later, they would go to enrich the collection of
+      instruments in his secret torture-chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fresh turn was given to the screw when Swann recalled a sudden
+      expression which he had intercepted, a few days earlier, and for the first
+      time, in Odette's eyes. It was after dinner at the Verdurins'. Whether it
+      was because Forcheville, aware that Saniette, his brother-in-law, was not
+      in favour with them, had decided to make a butt of him, and to shine at
+      his expense, or because he had been annoyed by some awkward remark which
+      Saniette had made to him, although it had passed unnoticed by the rest of
+      the party who knew nothing of whatever tactless allusion it might conceal,
+      or possibly because he had been for some time looking out for an
+      opportunity of securing the expulsion from the house of a fellow-guest who
+      knew rather too much about him, and whom he knew to be so nice-minded that
+      he himself could not help feeling embarrassed at times merely by his
+      presence in the room, Forcheville replied to Saniette's tactless utterance
+      with such a volley of abuse, going out of his way to insult him,
+      emboldened, the louder he shouted, by the fear, the pain, the entreaties
+      of his victim, that the poor creature, after asking Mme. Verdurin whether
+      he should stay and receiving no answer, had left the house in stammering
+      confusion and with tears in his eyes. Odette had looked on, impassive, at
+      this scene; but when the door had closed behind Saniette, she had forced
+      the normal expression of her face down, as the saying is, by several pegs,
+      so as to bring herself on to the same level of vulgarity as Forcheville;
+      her eyes had sparkled with a malicious smile of congratulation upon his
+      audacity, of ironical pity for the poor wretch who had been its victim;
+      she had darted at him a look of complicity in the crime, which so clearly
+      implied: "That's finished him off, or I'm very much mistaken. Did you see
+      what a fool he looked? He was actually crying," that Forcheville, when his
+      eyes met hers, sobered in a moment from the anger, or pretended anger with
+      which he was still flushed, smiled as he explained: "He need only have
+      made himself pleasant and he'd have been here still; a good scolding does
+      a man no harm, at any time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day when Swann had gone out early in the afternoon to pay a call, and
+      had failed to find the person at home whom he wished to see, it occurred
+      to him to go, instead, to Odette, at an hour when, although he never went
+      to her house then as a rule, he knew that she was always at home, resting
+      or writing letters until tea-time, and would enjoy seeing her for a
+      moment, if it did not disturb her. The porter told him that he believed
+      Odette to be in; Swann rang the bell, thought that he heard a sound, that
+      he heard footsteps, but no one came to the door. Anxious and annoyed, he
+      went round to the other little street, at the back of her house, and stood
+      beneath her bedroom window; the curtains were drawn and he could see
+      nothing; he knocked loudly upon the pane, he shouted; still no one came.
+      He could see that the neighbours were staring at him. He turned away,
+      thinking that, after all, he had perhaps been mistaken in believing that
+      he heard footsteps; but he remained so preoccupied with the suspicion that
+      he could turn his mind to nothing else. After waiting for an hour, he
+      returned. He found her at home; she told him that she had been in the
+      house when he rang, but had been asleep; the bell had awakened her; she
+      had guessed that it must be Swann, and had run out to meet him, but he had
+      already gone. She had, of course, heard him knocking at the window. Swann
+      could at once detect in this story one of those fragments of literal truth
+      which liars, when taken by surprise, console themselves by introducing
+      into the composition of the falsehood which they have to invent, thinking
+      that it can be safely incorporated, and will lend the whole story an air
+      of verisimilitude. It was true that, when Odette had just done something
+      which she did not wish to disclose, she would take pains to conceal it in
+      a secret place in her heart. But as soon as she found herself face to face
+      with the man to whom she was obliged to lie, she became uneasy, all her
+      ideas melted like wax before a flame, her inventive and her reasoning
+      faculties were paralysed, she might ransack her brain but would find only
+      a void; still, she must say something, and there lay within her reach
+      precisely the fact which she had wished to conceal, which, being the
+      truth, was the one thing that had remained. She broke off from it a tiny
+      fragment, of no importance in itself, assuring herself that, after all, it
+      was the best thing to do, since it was a detail of the truth, and less
+      dangerous, therefore, than a falsehood. "At any rate, this is true," she
+      said to herself; "that's always something to the good; he may make
+      inquiries; he will see that this is true; it won't be this, anyhow, that
+      will give me away." But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she had
+      not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth had sharp
+      edges which could not be made to fit in, except to those contiguous
+      fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily detached it, edges
+      which, whatever the fictitious details in which she might embed it, would
+      continue to shew, by their overlapping angles and by the gaps which she
+      had forgotten to fill, that its proper place was elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She admits that she heard me ring, and then knock, that she knew it was
+      myself, that she wanted to see me," Swann thought to himself. "But that
+      doesn't correspond with the fact that she did not let me in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not, however, draw her attention to this inconsistency, for he
+      thought that, if left to herself, Odette might perhaps produce some
+      falsehood which would give him a faint indication of the truth; she spoke;
+      he did not interrupt her, he gathered up, with an eager and sorrowful
+      piety, the words that fell from her lips, feeling (and rightly feeling,
+      since she was hiding the truth behind them as she spoke) that, like the
+      veil of a sanctuary, they kept a vague imprint, traced a faint outline of
+      that infinitely precious and, alas, undiscoverable truth;—what she
+      had been doing, that afternoon, at three o'clock, when he had called,—a
+      truth of which he would never possess any more than these falsifications,
+      illegible and divine traces, a truth which would exist henceforward only
+      in the secretive memory of this creature, who would contemplate it in
+      utter ignorance of its value, but would never yield it up to him. It was
+      true that he had, now and then, a strong suspicion that Odette's daily
+      activities were not in themselves passionately interesting, and that such
+      relations as she might have with other men did not exhale, naturally, in a
+      universal sense, or for every rational being, a spirit of morbid gloom
+      capable of infecting with fever or of inciting to suicide. He realised, at
+      such moments, that that interest, that gloom, existed in him only as a
+      malady might exist, and that, once he was cured of the malady, the actions
+      of Odette, the kisses that she might have bestowed, would become once
+      again as innocuous as those of countless other women. But the
+      consciousness that the painful curiosity with which Swann now studied them
+      had its origin only in himself was not enough to make him decide that it
+      was unreasonable to regard that curiosity as important, and to take every
+      possible step to satisfy it. Swann had, in fact, reached an age the
+      philosophy of which—supported, in his case, by the current
+      philosophy of the day, as well as by that of the circle in which he had
+      spent most of his life, the group that surrounded the Princesse des
+      Laumes, in which one's intelligence was understood to increase with the
+      strength of one's disbelief in everything, and nothing real and
+      incontestable was to be discovered, except the individual tastes of each
+      of its members—is no longer that of youth, but a positive, almost a
+      medical philosophy, the philosophy of men who, instead of fixing their
+      aspirations upon external objects, endeavour to separate from the
+      accumulation of the years already spent a definite residue of habits and
+      passions which they can regard as characteristic and permanent, and with
+      which they will deliberately arrange, before anything else, that the kind
+      of existence which they choose to adopt shall not prove inharmonious.
+      Swann deemed it wise to make allowance in his life for the suffering which
+      he derived from not knowing what Odette had done, just as he made
+      allowance for the impetus which a damp climate always gave to his eczema;
+      to anticipate in his budget the expenditure of a considerable sum on
+      procuring, with regard to the daily occupations of Odette, information the
+      lack of which would make him unhappy, just as he reserved a margin for the
+      gratification of other tastes from which he knew that pleasure was to be
+      expected (at least, before he had fallen in love) such as his taste for
+      collecting things, or for good cooking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he proposed to take leave of Odette, and to return home, she begged
+      him to stay a little longer, and even detained him forcibly, seizing him
+      by the arm as he was opening the door to go. But he gave no thought to
+      that, for, among the crowd of gestures and speeches and other little
+      incidents which go to make up a conversation, it is inevitable that we
+      should pass (without noticing anything that arouses our interest) by those
+      that hide a truth for which our suspicions are blindly searching, whereas
+      we stop to examine others beneath which nothing lies concealed. She kept
+      on saying: "What a dreadful pity; you never by any chance come in the
+      afternoon, and the one time you do come then I miss you." He knew very
+      well that she was not sufficiently in love with him to be so keenly
+      distressed merely at having missed his visit, but as she was a
+      good-natured woman, anxious to give him pleasure, and often sorry when she
+      had done anything that annoyed him, he found it quite natural that she
+      should be sorry, on this occasion, that she had deprived him of that
+      pleasure of spending an hour in her company, which was so very great a
+      pleasure, if not to herself, at any rate to him. All the same, it was a
+      matter of so little importance that her air of unrelieved sorrow began at
+      length to bewilder him. She reminded him, even more than was usual, of the
+      faces of some of the women created by the painter of the Primavera.' She
+      had, at that moment, their downcast, heartbroken expression, which seems
+      ready to succumb beneath the burden of a grief too heavy to be borne, when
+      they are merely allowing the Infant Jesus to play with a pomegranate, or
+      watching Moses pour water into a trough. He had seen the same sorrow once
+      before on her face, but when, he could no longer say. Then, suddenly, he
+      remembered it; it was when Odette had lied, in apologising to Mme.
+      Verdurin on the evening after the dinner from which she had stayed away on
+      a pretext of illness, but really so that she might be alone with Swann.
+      Surely, even had she been the most scrupulous of women, she could hardly
+      have felt remorse for so innocent a lie. But the lies which Odette
+      ordinarily told were less innocent, and served to prevent discoveries
+      which might have involved her in the most terrible difficulties with one
+      or another of her friends. And so, when she lied, smitten with fear,
+      feeling herself to be but feebly armed for her defence, unconfident of
+      success, she was inclined to weep from sheer exhaustion, as children weep
+      sometimes when they have not slept. She knew, also, that her lie, as a
+      rule, was doing a serious injury to the man to whom she was telling it,
+      and that she might find herself at his mercy if she told it badly.
+      Therefore she felt at once humble and culpable in his presence. And when
+      she had to tell an insignificant, social lie its hazardous associations,
+      and the memories which it recalled, would leave her weak with a sense of
+      exhaustion and penitent with a consciousness of wrongdoing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What depressing lie was she now concocting for Swann's benefit, to give
+      her that pained expression, that plaintive voice, which seemed to falter
+      beneath the effort that she was forcing herself to make, and to plead for
+      pardon? He had an idea that it was not merely the truth about what had
+      occurred that afternoon that she was endeavouring to hide from him, but
+      something more immediate, something, possibly, which had not yet happened,
+      but might happen now at any time, and, when it did, would throw a light
+      upon that earlier event. At that moment, he heard the front-door bell
+      ring. Odette never stopped speaking, but her words dwindled into an
+      inarticulate moan. Her regret at not having seen Swann that afternoon, at
+      not having opened the door to him, had melted into a universal despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could hear the gate being closed, and the sound of a carriage, as
+      though some one were going away—probably the person whom Swann must
+      on no account meet—after being told that Odette was not at home. And
+      then, when he reflected that, merely by coming at an hour when he was not
+      in the habit of coming, he had managed to disturb so many arrangements of
+      which she did not wish him to know, he had a feeling of discouragement
+      that amounted, almost, to distress. But since he was in love with Odette,
+      since he was in the habit of turning all his thoughts towards her, the
+      pity with which he might have been inspired for himself he felt for her
+      only, and murmured: "Poor darling!" When finally he left her, she took up
+      several letters which were lying on the table, and asked him if he would
+      be so good as to post them for her. He walked along to the post-office,
+      took the letters from his pocket, and, before dropping each of them into
+      the box, scanned its address. They were all to tradesmen, except the last,
+      which was to Forcheville. He kept it in his hand. "If I saw what was in
+      this," he argued, "I should know what she calls him, what she says to him,
+      whether there really is anything between them. Perhaps, if I don't look
+      inside, I shall be lacking in delicacy towards Odette, since in this way
+      alone I can rid myself of a suspicion which is, perhaps, a calumny on her,
+      which must, in any case, cause her suffering, and which can never possibly
+      be set at rest, once the letter is posted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He left the post-office and went home, but he had kept the last letter in
+      his pocket. He lighted a candle, and held up close to its flame the
+      envelope which he had not dared to open. At first he could distinguish
+      nothing, but the envelope was thin, and by pressing it down on to the
+      stiff card which it enclosed he was able, through the transparent paper,
+      to read the concluding words. They were a coldly formal signature. If,
+      instead of its being himself who was looking at a letter addressed to
+      Forcheville, it had been Forcheville who had read a letter addressed to
+      Swann, he might have found words in it of another, a far more tender kind!
+      He took a firm hold of the card, which was sliding to and fro, the
+      envelope being too large for it and then, by moving it with his finger and
+      thumb, brought one line after another beneath the part of the envelope
+      where the paper was not doubled, through which alone it was possible to
+      read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of all these manoeuvres he could not make it out clearly. Not
+      that it mattered, for he had seen enough to assure himself that the letter
+      was about some trifling incident of no importance, and had nothing at all
+      to do with love; it was something to do with Odette's uncle. Swann had
+      read quite plainly at the beginning of the line "I was right," but did not
+      understand what Odette had been right in doing, until suddenly a word
+      which he had not been able, at first, to decipher, came to light and made
+      the whole sentence intelligible: "I was right to open the door; it was my
+      uncle." To open the door! Then Forcheville had been there when Swann rang
+      the bell, and she had sent him away; hence the sound that Swann had heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that he read the whole letter; at the end she apologised for having
+      treated Forcheville with so little ceremony, and reminded him that he had
+      left his cigarette-case at her house, precisely what she had written to
+      Swann after one of his first visits. But to Swann she had added: "Why did
+      you not forget your heart also? I should never have let you have that
+      back." To Forcheville nothing of that sort; no allusion that could suggest
+      any intrigue between them. And, really, he was obliged to admit that in
+      all this business Forcheville had been worse treated than himself, since
+      Odette was writing to him to make him believe that her visitor had been an
+      uncle. From which it followed that he, Swann, was the man to whom she
+      attached importance, and for whose sake she had sent the other away. And
+      yet, if there had been nothing between Odette and Forcheville, why not
+      have opened the door at once, why have said, "I was right to open the
+      door; it was my uncle." Right? if she was doing nothing wrong at that
+      moment how could Forcheville possibly have accounted for her not opening
+      the door? For a time Swann stood still there, heartbroken, bewildered, and
+      yet happy; gazing at this envelope which Odette had handed to him without
+      a scruple, so absolute was her trust in his honour; through its
+      transparent window there had been disclosed to him, with the secret
+      history of an incident which he had despaired of ever being able to learn,
+      a fragment of the life of Odette, seen as through a narrow, luminous
+      incision, cut into its surface without her knowledge. Then his jealousy
+      rejoiced at the discovery, as though that jealousy had had an independent
+      existence, fiercely egotistical, gluttonous of every thing that would feed
+      its vitality, even at the expense of Swann himself. Now it had food in
+      store, and Swann could begin to grow uneasy afresh every evening, over the
+      visits that Odette had received about five o'clock, and could seek to
+      discover where Forcheville had been at that hour. For Swann's affection
+      for Odette still preserved the form which had been imposed on it, from the
+      beginning, by his ignorance of the occupations in which she passed her
+      days, as well as by the mental lethargy which prevented him from
+      supplementing that ignorance by imagination. He was not jealous, at first,
+      of the whole of Odette's life, but of those moments only in which an
+      incident, which he had perhaps misinterpreted, had led him to suppose that
+      Odette might have played him false. His jealousy, like an octopus which
+      throws out a first, then a second, and finally a third tentacle, fastened
+      itself irremovably first to that moment, five o'clock in the afternoon,
+      then to another, then to another again. But Swann was incapable of
+      inventing his sufferings. They were only the memory, the perpetuation of a
+      suffering that had come to him from without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From without, however, everything brought him fresh suffering. He decided
+      to separate Odette from Forcheville, by taking her away for a few days to
+      the south. But he imagined that she was coveted by every male person in
+      the hotel, and that she coveted them in return. And so he, who, in old
+      days, when he travelled, used always to seek out new people and crowded
+      places, might now be seen fleeing savagely from human society as if it had
+      cruelly injured him. And how could he not have turned misanthrope, when in
+      every man he saw a potential lover for Odette? Thus his jealousy did even
+      more than the happy, passionate desire which he had originally felt for
+      Odette had done to alter Swann's character, completely changing, in the
+      eyes of the world, even the outward signs by which that character had been
+      intelligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month after the evening on which he had intercepted and read Odette's
+      letter to Forcheville, Swann went to a dinner which the Verdurins were
+      giving in the Bois. As the party was breaking up he noticed a series of
+      whispered discussions between Mme. Verdurin and several of her guests, and
+      thought that he heard the pianist being reminded to come next day to a
+      party at Chatou; now he, Swann, had not been invited to any party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Verdurins had spoken only in whispers, and in vague terms, but the
+      painter, perhaps without thinking, shouted out: "There must be no lights
+      of any sort, and he must play the Moonlight Sonata in the dark, for us to
+      see by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. Verdurin, seeing that Swann was within earshot, assumed that
+      expression in which the two-fold desire to make the speaker be quiet and
+      to preserve, oneself, an appearance of guilelessness in the eyes of the
+      listener, is neutralised in an intense vacuity; in which the unflinching
+      signs of intelligent complicity are overlaid by the smiles of innocence,
+      an expression invariably adopted by anyone who has noticed a blunder, the
+      enormity of which is thereby at once revealed if not to those who have
+      made it, at any rate to him in whose hearing it ought not to have been
+      made. Odette seemed suddenly to be in despair, as though she had decided
+      not to struggle any longer against the crushing difficulties of life, and
+      Swann was anxiously counting the minutes that still separated him from the
+      point at which, after leaving the restaurant, while he drove her home, he
+      would be able to ask for an explanation, to make her promise, either that
+      she would not go to Chatou next day, or that she would procure an
+      invitation for him also, and to lull to rest in her arms the anguish that
+      still tormented him. At last the carriages were ordered. Mme. Verdurin
+      said to Swann:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good-bye, then. We shall see you soon, I hope," trying, by the
+      friendliness of her manner and the constraint of her smile, to prevent him
+      from noticing that she was not saying, as she would always have until
+      then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To-morrow, then, at Chatou, and at my house the day after." M. and Mme.
+      Verdurin made Forcheville get into their carriage; Swann's was drawn up
+      behind it, and he waited for theirs to start before helping Odette into
+      his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Odette, we'll take you," said Mme. Verdurin, "we've kept a little corner
+      specially for you, beside M. de Forcheville."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Mme. Verdurin," said Odette meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! I thought I was to take you home," cried Swann, flinging discretion
+      to the winds, for the carriage-door hung open, time was precious, and he
+      could not, in his present state, go home without her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mme. Verdurin has asked me..."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's all right, you can quite well go home alone; we've left you like
+      this dozens of times," said Mme. Verdurin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I had something important to tell Mme. de Crécy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well, you can write it to her instead."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good-bye," said Odette, holding out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried hard to smile, but could only succeed in looking utterly
+      dejected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you think of the airs that Swann is pleased to put on with us?"
+      Mme. Verdurin asked her husband when they had reached home. "I was afraid
+      he was going to eat me, simply because we offered to take Odette back. It
+      really is too bad, that sort of thing. Why doesn't he say, straight out,
+      that we keep a disorderly house? I can't conceive how Odette can stand
+      such manners. He positively seems to be saying, all the time, 'You belong
+      to me!' I shall tell Odette exactly what I think about it all, and I hope
+      she will have the sense to understand me." A moment later she added,
+      inarticulate with rage: "No, but, don't you see, the filthy creature..."
+      using unconsciously, and perhaps in satisfaction of the same obscure need
+      to justify herself—like Françoise at Combray when the chicken
+      refused to die—the very words which the last convulsions of an
+      inoffensive animal in its death agony wring from the peasant who is
+      engaged in taking its life. And when Mme. Verdurin's carriage had moved
+      on, and Swann's took its place, his coachman, catching sight of his face,
+      asked whether he was unwell, or had heard bad news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann sent him away; he preferred to walk, and it was on foot, through the
+      Bois, that he came home. He talked to himself, aloud, and in the same
+      slightly affected tone which he had been used to adopt when describing the
+      charms of the 'little nucleus' and extolling the magnanimity of the
+      Verdurins. But just as the conversation, the smiles, the kisses of Odette
+      became as odious to him as he had once found them charming, if they were
+      diverted to others than himself, so the Verdurins' drawing-room, which,
+      not an hour before, had still seemed to him amusing, inspired with a
+      genuine feeling for art and even with a sort of moral aristocracy, now
+      that it was another than himself whom Odette was going to meet there, to
+      love there without restraint, laid bare to him all its absurdities, its
+      stupidity, its shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew a fanciful picture, at which he shuddered in disgust, of the party
+      next evening at Chatou. "Imagine going to Chatou, of all places! Like a
+      lot of drapers after closing time! Upon my word, these people are sublime
+      in their smugness; they can't really exist; they must all have come out of
+      one of Labiche's plays!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cottards would be there; possibly Brichot. "Could anything be more
+      grotesque than the lives of these little creatures, hanging on to one
+      another like that. They'd imagine they were utterly lost, upon my soul
+      they would, if they didn't all meet again to-morrow at <i>Chatou</i>!"
+      Alas! there would be the painter there also, the painter who enjoyed
+      match-making, who would invite Forcheville to come with Odette to his
+      studio. He could see Odette, in a dress far too smart for the country,
+      "for she is so vulgar in that way, and, poor little thing, she is such a
+      fool!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could hear the jokes that Mme. Verdurin would make after dinner, jokes
+      which, whoever the 'bore' might be at whom they were aimed, had always
+      amused him because he could watch Odette laughing at them, laughing with
+      him, her laughter almost a part of his. Now he felt that it was possibly
+      at him that they would make Odette laugh. "What a fetid form of humour!"
+      he exclaimed, twisting his mouth into an expression of disgust so violent
+      that he could feel the muscles of his throat stiffen against his collar.
+      "How, in God's name, can a creature made in His image find anything to
+      laugh at in those nauseating witticisms? The least sensitive nose must be
+      driven away in horror from such stale exhalations. It is really impossible
+      to believe that any human being is incapable of understanding that, in
+      allowing herself merely to smile at the expense of a fellow-creature who
+      has loyally held out his hand to her, she is casting herself into a mire
+      from which it will be impossible, with the best will in the world, ever to
+      rescue her. I dwell so many miles above the puddles in which these filthy
+      little vermin sprawl and crawl and bawl their cheap obscenities, that I
+      cannot possibly be spattered by the witticisms of a Verdurin!" he cried,
+      tossing up his head and arrogantly straightening his body. "God knows that
+      I have honestly attempted to pull Odette out of that sewer, and to teach
+      her to breathe a nobler and a purer air. But human patience has its
+      limits, and mine is at an end," he concluded, as though this sacred
+      mission to tear Odette away from an atmosphere of sarcasms dated from
+      longer than a few minutes ago, as though he had not undertaken it only
+      since it had occurred to him that those sarcasms might, perchance, be
+      directed at himself, and might have the effect of detaching Odette from
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could see the pianist sitting down to play the Moonlight Sonata, and
+      the grimaces of Mme. Verdurin, in terrified anticipation of the wrecking
+      of her nerves by Beethoven's music. "Idiot, liar!" he shouted, "and a
+      creature like that imagines that she's fond of <i>Art</i>!" She would say
+      to Odette, after deftly insinuating a few words of praise for Forcheville,
+      as she had so often done for himself: "You can make room for M. de
+      Forcheville there, can't you, Odette?"... '"In the dark!' Codfish!
+      Pander!"... 'Pander' was the name he applied also to the music which would
+      invite them to sit in silence, to dream together, to gaze in each other's
+      eyes, to feel for each other's hands. He felt that there was much to be
+      said, after all, for a sternly censorous attitude towards the arts, such
+      as Plato adopted, and Bossuet, and the old school of education in France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a word, the life which they led at the Verdurins', which he had so
+      often described as 'genuine,' seemed to him now the worst possible form of
+      life, and their 'little nucleus' the most degraded class of society. "It
+      really is," he repeated, "beneath the lowest rung of the social ladder,
+      the nethermost circle of Dante. Beyond a doubt, the august words of the
+      Florentine refer to the Verdurins! When one comes to think of it, surely
+      people 'in society' (and, though one may find fault with them now and
+      then, still, after all they are a very different matter from that gang of
+      blackmailers) shew a profound sagacity in refusing to know them, or even
+      to dirty the tips of their fingers with them. What a sound intuition there
+      is in that '<i>Noli me tangere</i>' motto of the Faubourg Saint-Germain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had long since emerged from the paths and avenues of the Bois, he had
+      almost reached his own house, and still, for he had not yet thrown off the
+      intoxication of grief, or his whim of insincerity, but was ever more and
+      more exhilarated by the false intonation, the artificial sonority of his
+      own voice, he continued to perorate aloud in the silence of the night:
+      "People 'in society' have their failings, as no one knows better than I;
+      but, after all, they are people to whom some things, at least, are
+      impossible. So-and-so" (a fashionable woman whom he had known) "was far
+      from being perfect, but, after all, one did find in her a fundamental
+      delicacy, a loyalty in her conduct which made her, whatever happened,
+      incapable of a felony, which fixes a vast gulf between her and an old hag
+      like Verdurin. Verdurin! What a name! Oh, there's something complete about
+      them, something almost fine in their trueness to type; they're the most
+      perfect specimens of their disgusting class! Thank God, it was high time
+      that I stopped condescending to promiscuous intercourse with such infamy,
+      such dung."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, just as the virtues which he had still attributed, an hour or so
+      earlier, to the Verdurins, would not have sufficed, even although the
+      Verdurins had actually possessed them, if they had not also favoured and
+      protected his love, to excite Swann to that state of intoxication in which
+      he waxed tender over their magnanimity, an intoxication which, even when
+      disseminated through the medium of other persons, could have come to him
+      from Odette alone;—so the immorality (had it really existed) which
+      he now found in the Verdurins would have been powerless, if they had not
+      invited Odette with Forcheville and without him, to unstop the vials of
+      his wrath and to make him scarify their 'infamy.' Doubtless Swann's voice
+      shewed a finer perspicacity than his own when it refused to utter those
+      words full of disgust at the Verdurins and their circle, and of joy at his
+      having shaken himself free of it, save in an artificial and rhetorical
+      tone, and as though his words had been chosen rather to appease his anger
+      than to express his thoughts. The latter, in fact, while he abandoned
+      himself to invective, were probably, though he did not know it, occupied
+      with a wholly different matter, for once he had reached his house, no
+      sooner had he closed the front-door behind him than he suddenly struck his
+      forehead, and, making his servant open the door again, dashed out into the
+      street shouting, in a voice which, this time, was quite natural; "I
+      believe I have found a way of getting invited to the dinner at Chatou
+      to-morrow!" But it must have been a bad way, for M. Swann was not invited;
+      Dr. Cottard, who, having been summoned to attend a serious case in the
+      country, had not seen the Verdurins for some days, and had been prevented
+      from appearing at Chatou, said, on the evening after this dinner, as he
+      sat down to table at their house:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, aren't we going to see M. Swann this evening? He is quite what you
+      might call a personal friend..." "I sincerely trust that we sha'n't!"
+      cried Mme. Verdurin. "Heaven preserve us from him; he's too deadly for
+      words, a stupid, ill-bred boor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On hearing these words Cottard exhibited an intense astonishment blended
+      with entire submission, as though in the face of a scientific truth which
+      contradicted everything that he had previously believed, but was supported
+      by an irresistible weight of evidence; with timorous emotion he bowed his
+      head over his plate, and merely replied: "Oh—oh—oh—oh—oh!"
+      traversing, in an orderly retirement of his forces, into the depths of his
+      being, along a descending scale, the whole compass of his voice. After
+      which there was no more talk of Swann at the Verdurins'.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      And so that drawing-room which had brought Swann and Odette together
+      became an obstacle in the way of their meeting. She no longer said to him,
+      as she had said in the early days of their love: "We shall meet, anyhow,
+      to-morrow evening; there's a supper-party at the Verdurins'," but "We
+      sha'n't be able to meet to-morrow evening; there's a supper-party at the
+      Verdurins'." Or else the Verdurins were taking her to the Opéra-Comique,
+      to see <i>Une Nuit de Cléopâtre</i>, and Swann could read in her eyes that
+      terror lest he should ask her not to go, which, but a little time before,
+      he could not have refrained from greeting with a kiss as it flitted across
+      the face of his mistress, but which now exasperated him. "Yet I'm not
+      really angry," he assured himself, "when I see how she longs to run away
+      and scratch from maggots in that dunghill of cacophony. I'm disappointed;
+      not for myself, but for her; disappointed to find that, after living for
+      more than six months in daily contact with myself, she has not been
+      capable of improving her mind even to the point of spontaneously
+      eradicating from it a taste for Victor Massé! More than that, to find that
+      she has not arrived at the stage of understanding that there are evenings
+      on which anyone with the least shade of refinement of feeling should be
+      willing to forego an amusement when she is asked to do so. She ought to
+      have the sense to say: 'I shall not go,' if it were only from policy,
+      since it is by what she answers now that the quality of her soul will be
+      determined once and for all." And having persuaded himself that it was
+      solely, after all, in order that he might arrive at a favourable estimate
+      of Odette's spiritual worth that he wished her to stay at home with him
+      that evening instead of going to the Opéra-Comique, he adopted the same
+      line of reasoning with her, with the same degree of insincerity as he had
+      used with himself, or even with a degree more, for in her case he was
+      yielding also to the desire to capture her by her own self-esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I swear to you," he told her, shortly before she was to leave for the
+      theatre, "that, in asking you not to go, I should hope, were I a selfish
+      man, for nothing so much as that you should refuse, for I have a thousand
+      other things to do this evening, and I shall feel that I have been tricked
+      and trapped myself, and shall be thoroughly annoyed, if, after all, you
+      tell me that you are not going. But my occupations, my pleasures are not
+      everything; I must think of you also. A day may come when, seeing me
+      irrevocably sundered from you, you will be entitled to reproach me with
+      not having warned you at the decisive hour in which I felt that I was
+      going to pass judgment on you, one of those stern judgments which love
+      cannot long resist. You see, your <i>Nuit de Cléopâtre</i> (what a title!)
+      has no bearing on the point. What I must know is whether you are indeed
+      one of those creatures in the lowest grade of mentality and even of charm,
+      one of those contemptible creatures who are incapable of foregoing a
+      pleasure. For if you are such, how could anyone love you, for you are not
+      even a person, a definite, imperfect, but at least perceptible entity. You
+      are a formless water that will trickle down any slope that it may come
+      upon, a fish devoid of memory, incapable of thought, which all its life
+      long in its aquarium will continue to dash itself, a hundred times a day,
+      against a wall of glass, always mistaking it for water. Do you realise
+      that your answer will have the effect—I do not say of making me
+      cease from that moment to love you, that goes without saying, but of
+      making you less attractive to my eyes when I realise that you are not a
+      person, that you are beneath everything in the world and have not the
+      intelligence to raise yourself one inch higher? Obviously, I should have
+      preferred to ask you, as though it had been a matter of little or no
+      importance, to give up your <i>Nuit de Cléopâtre</i> (since you compel me
+      to sully my lips with so abject a name), in the hope that you would go to
+      it none the less. But, since I had resolved to weigh you in the balance,
+      to make so grave an issue depend upon your answer, I considered it more
+      honourable to give you due warning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emotion and uncertainty.
+      Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it was
+      to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes which
+      her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying any heed
+      to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not make unless
+      they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in love, it was
+      superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in love later on.
+      And so, she would have heard Swann out with the utmost tranquillity had
+      she not noticed that it was growing late, and that if he went on speaking
+      for any length of time she would "never" as she told him with a fond
+      smile, obstinate but slightly abashed, "get there in time for the
+      Overture."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On other occasions he had assured himself that the one thing which, more
+      than anything else, would make him cease to love her, would be her refusal
+      to abandon the habit of lying. "Even from the point of view of coquetry,
+      pure and simple," he had told her, "can't you see how much of your
+      attraction you throw away when you stoop to lying? By a frank admission—how
+      many faults you might redeem! Really, you are far less intelligent than I
+      supposed!" In vain, however, did Swann expound to her thus all the reasons
+      that she had for not lying; they might have succeeded in overthrowing any
+      universal system of mendacity, but Odette had no such system; she
+      contented herself, merely, whenever she wished Swann to remain in
+      ignorance of anything that she had done, with not telling him of it. So
+      that a lie was, to her, something to be used only as a special expedient;
+      and the one thing that could make her decide whether she should avail
+      herself of a lie or not was a reason which, too, was of a special and
+      contingent order, namely the risk of Swann's discovering that she had not
+      told him the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Physically, she was passing through an unfortunate phase; she was growing
+      stouter, and the expressive, sorrowful charm, the surprised, wistful
+      expressions which she had formerly had, seemed to have vanished with her
+      first youth, with the result that she became most precious to Swann at the
+      very moment when he found her distinctly less good-looking. He would gaze
+      at her for hours on end, trying to recapture the charm which he had once
+      seen in her and could not find again. And yet the knowledge that, within
+      this new and strange chrysalis, it was still Odette that lurked, still the
+      same volatile temperament, artful and evasive, was enough to keep Swann
+      seeking, with as much passion as ever, to captivate her. Then he would
+      look at photographs of her, taken two years before, and would remember how
+      exquisite she had been. And that would console him, a little, for all the
+      sufferings that he voluntarily endured on her account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Verdurins took her off to Saint-Germain, or to Chatou, or to
+      Meulan, as often as not, if the weather was fine, they would propose to
+      remain there for the night, and not go home until next day. Mme. Verdurin
+      would endeavour to set at rest the scruples of the pianist, whose aunt had
+      remained in Paris: "She will be only too glad to be rid of you for a day.
+      How on earth could she be anxious, when she knows you're with us? Anyhow,
+      I'll take you all under my wing; she can put the blame on me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If this attempt failed, M. Verdurin would set off across country until he
+      came to a telegraph office or some other kind of messenger, after first
+      finding out which of the 'faithful' had anyone whom they must warn. But
+      Odette would thank him, and assure him that she had no message for anyone,
+      for she had told Swann, once and for all, that she could not possibly send
+      messages to him, before all those people, without compromising herself.
+      Sometimes she would be absent for several days on end, when the Verdurins
+      took her to see the tombs at Dreux, or to Compiègne, on the painter's
+      advice, to watch the sun setting through the forest—after which they
+      went on to the Château of Pierrefonds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To think that she could visit really historic buildings with me, who have
+      spent ten years in the study of architecture, who am constantly bombarded,
+      by people who really count, to take them over Beauvais or
+      Saint-Loup-de-Naud, and refuse to take anyone but her; and instead of that
+      she trundles off with the lowest, the most brutally degraded of creatures,
+      to go into ecstasies over the petrified excretions of Louis-Philippe and
+      Viollet-le-Duc! One hardly needs much knowledge of art, I should say, to
+      do that; though, surely, even without any particularly refined sense of
+      smell, one would not deliberately choose to spend a holiday in the
+      latrines, so as to be within range of their fragrant exhalations."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when she had set off for Dreux or Pierrefonds—alas, without
+      allowing him to appear there, as though by accident, at her side, for, as
+      she said, that would "create a dreadful impression,"—he would plunge
+      into the most intoxicating romance in the lover's library, the railway
+      timetable, from which he learned the ways of joining her there in the
+      afternoon, in the evening, even in the morning. The ways? More than that,
+      the authority, the right to join her. For, after all, the time-table, and
+      the trains themselves, were not meant for dogs. If the public were
+      carefully informed, by means of printed advertisements, that at eight
+      o'clock in the morning a train started for Pierrefonds which arrived there
+      at ten, that could only be because going to Pierrefonds was a lawful act,
+      for which permission from Odette would be superfluous; an act, moreover,
+      which might be performed from a motive altogether different from the
+      desire to see Odette, since persons who had never even heard of her
+      performed it daily, and in such numbers as justified the labour and
+      expense of stoking the engines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it came to this; that she could not prevent him from going to
+      Pierrefonds if he chose to do so. Now that was precisely what he found
+      that he did choose to do, and would at that moment be doing were he, like
+      the travelling public, not acquainted with Odette. For a long time past he
+      had wanted to form a more definite impression of Viollet-le-Duc's work as
+      a restorer. And the weather being what it was, he felt an overwhelming
+      desire to spend the day roaming in the forest of Compiègne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, indeed, a piece of bad luck that she had forbidden him access to
+      the one spot that tempted him to-day. To-day! Why, if he went down there,
+      in defiance of her prohibition, he would be able to see her that very day!
+      But then, whereas, if she had met, at Pierrefonds, some one who did not
+      matter, she would have hailed him with obvious pleasure: "What, you here?"
+      and would have invited him to come and see her at the hotel where she was
+      staying with the Verdurins, if, on the other hand, it was himself, Swann,
+      that she encountered there, she would be annoyed, would complain that she
+      was being followed, would love him less in consequence, might even turn
+      away in anger when she caught sight of him. "So, then, I am not to be
+      allowed to go away for a day anywhere!" she would reproach him on her
+      return, whereas in fact it was he himself who was not allowed to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had had the sudden idea, so as to contrive to visit Compiègne and
+      Pierrefonds without letting it be supposed that his object was to meet
+      Odette, of securing an invitation from one of his friends, the Marquis de
+      Forestelle, who had a country house in that neighbourhood. This friend, to
+      whom Swann suggested the plan without disclosing its ulterior purpose, was
+      beside himself with joy; he did not conceal his astonishment at Swann's
+      consenting at last, after fifteen years, to come down and visit his
+      property, and since he did not (he told him) wish to stay there, promised
+      to spend some days, at least, in taking him for walks and excursions in
+      the district. Swann imagined himself down there already with M. de
+      Forestelle. Even before he saw Odette, even if he did not succeed in
+      seeing her there, what a joy it would be to set foot on that soil where,
+      not knowing the exact spot in which, at any moment, she was to be found,
+      he would feel all around him the thrilling possibility of her suddenly
+      appearing: in the courtyard of the Château, now beautiful in his eyes
+      since it was on her account that he had gone to visit it; in all the
+      streets of the town, which struck him as romantic; down every ride of the
+      forest, roseate with the deep and tender glow of sunset;—innumerable
+      and alternative hiding-places, to which would fly simultaneously for
+      refuge, in the uncertain ubiquity of his hopes, his happy, vagabond and
+      divided heart. "We mustn't, on any account," he would warn M. de
+      Forestelle, "run across Odette and the Verdurins. I have just heard that
+      they are at Pierrefonds, of all places, to-day. One has plenty of time to
+      see them in Paris; it would hardly be worth while coming down here if one
+      couldn't go a yard without meeting them." And his host would fail to
+      understand why, once they had reached the place, Swann would change his
+      plans twenty times in an hour, inspect the dining-rooms of all the hotels
+      in Compiègne without being able to make up his mind to settle down in any
+      of them, although he had found no trace anywhere of the Verdurins, seeming
+      to be in search of what he had claimed to be most anxious to avoid, and
+      would in fact avoid, the moment he found it, for if he had come upon the
+      little 'group,' he would have hastened away at once with studied
+      indifference, satisfied that he had seen Odette and she him, especially
+      that she had seen him when he was not, apparently, thinking about her. But
+      no; she would guess at once that it was for her sake that he had come
+      there. And when M. de Forestelle came to fetch him, and it was time to
+      start, he excused himself: "No, I'm afraid not; I can't go to Pierrefonds
+      to-day. You see, Odette is there." And Swann was happy in spite of
+      everything in feeling that if he, alone among mortals, had not the right
+      to go to Pierrefonds that day, it was because he was in fact, for Odette,
+      some one who differed from all other mortals, her lover; and because that
+      restriction which for him alone was set upon the universal right to travel
+      freely where one would, was but one of the many forms of that slavery,
+      that love which was so dear to him. Decidedly, it was better not to risk a
+      quarrel with her, to be patient, to wait for her return. He spent his days
+      in poring over a map of the forest of Compiègne, as though it had been
+      that of the 'Pays du Tendre'; he surrounded himself with photographs of
+      the Château of Pierrefonds. When the day dawned on which it was possible
+      that she might return, he opened the time-table again, calculated what
+      train she must have taken, and, should she have postponed her departure,
+      what trains were still left for her to take. He did not leave the house,
+      for fear of missing a telegram, he did not go to bed, in case, having come
+      by the last train, she decided to surprise him with a midnight visit. Yes!
+      The front-door bell rang. There seemed some delay in opening the door, he
+      wanted to awaken the porter, he leaned out of the window to shout to
+      Odette, if it was Odette, for in spite of the orders which he had gone
+      downstairs a dozen times to deliver in person, they were quite capable of
+      telling her that he was not at home. It was only a servant coming in. He
+      noticed the incessant rumble of passing carriages, to which he had never
+      before paid any attention. He could hear them, one after another, a long
+      way off, coming nearer, passing his door without stopping, and bearing
+      away into the distance a message which was not for him. He waited all
+      night, to no purpose, for the Verdurins had returned unexpectedly, and
+      Odette had been in Paris since midday; it had not occurred to her to tell
+      him; not knowing what to do with herself she had spent the evening alone
+      at a theatre, had long since gone home to bed, and was peacefully asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of fact, she had never given him a thought. And such moments
+      as these, in which she forgot Swann's very existence, were of more value
+      to Odette, did more to attach him to her, than all her infidelities. For
+      in this way Swann was kept in that state of painful agitation which had
+      once before been effective in making his interest blossom into love, on
+      the night when he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins' and had
+      hunted for her all evening. And he did not have (as I had, afterwards, at
+      Combray in my childhood) happy days in which to forget the sufferings that
+      would return with the night. For his days, Swann must pass them without
+      Odette; and as he told himself, now and then, to allow so pretty a woman
+      to go out by herself in Paris was just as rash as to leave a case filled
+      with jewels in the middle of the street. In this mood he would scowl
+      furiously at the passers-by, as though they were so many pickpockets. But
+      their faces—a collective and formless mass—escaped the grasp
+      of his imagination, and so failed to feed the flame of his jealousy. The
+      effort exhausted Swann's brain, until, passing his hand over his eyes, he
+      cried out: "Heaven help me!" as people, after lashing themselves into an
+      intellectual frenzy in their endeavours to master the problem of the
+      reality of the external world, or that of the immortality of the soul,
+      afford relief to their weary brains by an unreasoning act of faith. But
+      the thought of his absent mistress was incessantly, indissolubly blended
+      with all the simplest actions of Swann's daily life—when he took his
+      meals, opened his letters, went for a walk or to bed—by the fact of
+      his regret at having to perform those actions without her; like those
+      initials of Philibert the Fair which, in the church of Brou, because of
+      her grief, her longing for him, Margaret of Austria intertwined everywhere
+      with her own. On some days, instead of staying at home, he would go for
+      luncheon to a restaurant not far off, to which he had been attracted, some
+      time before, by the excellence of its cookery, but to which he now went
+      only for one of those reasons, at once mystical and absurd, which people
+      call 'romantic'; because this restaurant (which, by the way, still exists)
+      bore the same name as the street in which Odette lived: the Lapérouse.
+      Sometimes, when she had been away on a short visit somewhere, several days
+      would elapse before she thought of letting him know that she had returned
+      to Paris. And then she would say quite simply, without taking (as she
+      would once have taken) the precaution of covering herself, at all costs,
+      with a little fragment borrowed from the truth, that she had just, at that
+      very moment, arrived by the morning train. What she said was a falsehood;
+      at least for Odette it was a falsehood, inconsistent, lacking (what it
+      would have had, if true) the support of her memory of her actual arrival
+      at the station; she was even prevented from forming a mental picture of
+      what she was saying, while she said it, by the contradictory picture, in
+      her mind, of whatever quite different thing she had indeed been doing at
+      the moment when she pretended to have been alighting from the train. In
+      Swann's mind, however, these words, meeting no opposition, settled and
+      hardened until they assumed the indestructibility of a truth so
+      indubitable that, if some friend happened to tell him that he had come by
+      the same train and had not seen Odette, Swann would have been convinced
+      that it was his friend who had made a mistake as to the day or hour, since
+      his version did not agree with the words uttered by Odette. These words
+      had never appeared to him false except when, before hearing them, he had
+      suspected that they were going to be. For him to believe that she was
+      lying, an anticipatory suspicion was indispensable. It was also, however,
+      sufficient. Given that, everything that Odette might say appeared to him
+      suspect. Did she mention a name: it was obviously that of one of her
+      lovers; once this supposition had taken shape, he would spend weeks in
+      tormenting himself; on one occasion he even approached a firm of 'inquiry
+      agents' to find out the address and the occupation of the unknown rival
+      who would give him no peace until he could be proved to have gone abroad,
+      and who (he ultimately learned) was an uncle of Odette, and had been dead
+      for twenty years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although she would not allow him, as a rule, to meet her at public
+      gatherings, saying that people would talk, it happened occasionally that,
+      at an evening party to which he and she had each been invited—at
+      Forcheville's, at the painter's, or at a charity ball given in one of the
+      Ministries—he found himself in the same room with her. He could see
+      her, but dared not remain for fear of annoying her by seeming to be spying
+      upon the pleasures which she tasted in other company, pleasures which—while
+      he drove home in utter loneliness, and went to bed, as anxiously as I
+      myself was to go to bed, some years later, on the evenings when he came to
+      dine with us at Combray—seemed illimitable to him since he had not
+      been able to see their end. And, once or twice, he derived from such
+      evenings that kind of happiness which one would be inclined (did it not
+      originate in so violent a reaction from an anxiety abruptly terminated) to
+      call peaceful, since it consists in a pacifying of the mind: he had looked
+      in for a moment at a revel in the painter's studio, and was getting ready
+      to go home; he was leaving behind him Odette, transformed into a brilliant
+      stranger, surrounded by men to whom her glances and her gaiety, which were
+      not for him, seemed to hint at some voluptuous pleasure to be enjoyed
+      there or elsewhere (possibly at the Bal des Incohérents, to which he
+      trembled to think that she might be going on afterwards) which made Swann
+      more jealous than the thought of their actual physical union, since it was
+      more difficult to imagine; he was opening the door to go, when he heard
+      himself called back in these words (which, by cutting off from the party
+      that possible ending which had so appalled him, made the party itself seem
+      innocent in retrospect, made Odette's return home a thing no longer
+      inconceivable and terrible, but tender and familiar, a thing that kept
+      close to his side, like a part of his own daily life, in his carriage; a
+      thing that stripped Odette herself of the excess of brilliance and gaiety
+      in her appearance, shewed that it was only a disguise which she had
+      assumed for a moment, for his sake and not in view of any mysterious
+      pleasures, a disguise of which she had already wearied)—in these
+      words, which Odette flung out after him as he was crossing the threshold:
+      "Can't you wait a minute for me? I'm just going; we'll drive back together
+      and you can drop me." It was true that on one occasion Forcheville had
+      asked to be driven home at the same time, but when, on reaching Odette's
+      gate, he had begged to be allowed to come in too, she had replied, with a
+      finger pointed at Swann: "Ah! That depends on this gentleman. You must ask
+      him. Very well, you may come in, just for a minute, if you insist, but you
+      mustn't stay long, for, I warn you, he likes to sit and talk quietly with
+      me, and he's not at all pleased if I have visitors when he's here. Oh, if
+      you only knew the creature as I know him; isn't that so, my love, there's
+      no one that really knows you, is there, except me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Swann was, perhaps, even more touched by the spectacle of her
+      addressing him thus, in front of Forcheville, not only in these tender
+      words of predilection, but also with certain criticisms, such as: "I feel
+      sure you haven't written yet to your friends, about dining with them on
+      Sunday. You needn't go if you don't want to, but you might at least be
+      polite," or "Now, have you left your essay on Vermeer here, so that you
+      can do a little more to it to-morrow? What a lazy-bones! I'm going to make
+      you work, I can tell you," which proved that Odette kept herself in touch
+      with his social engagements and his literary work, that they had indeed a
+      life in common. And as she spoke she bestowed on him a smile which he
+      interpreted as meaning that she was entirely his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, while she was making them some orangeade, suddenly, just as when
+      the reflector of a lamp that is badly fitted begins by casting all round
+      an object, on the wall beyond it, huge and fantastic shadows which, in
+      time, contract and are lost in the shadow of the object itself, all the
+      terrible and disturbing ideas which he had formed of Odette melted away
+      and vanished in the charming creature who stood there before his eyes. He
+      had the sudden suspicion that this hour spent in Odette's house, in the
+      lamp-light, was, perhaps, after all, not an artificial hour, invented for
+      his special use (with the object of concealing that frightening and
+      delicious thing which was incessantly in his thoughts without his ever
+      being able to form a satisfactory impression of it, an hour of Odette's
+      real life, of her life when he was not there, looking on) with theatrical
+      properties and pasteboard fruits, but was perhaps a genuine hour of
+      Odette's life; that, if he himself had not been there, she would have
+      pulled forward the same armchair for Forcheville, would have poured out
+      for him, not any unknown brew, but precisely that orangeade which she was
+      now offering to them both; that the world inhabited by Odette was not that
+      other world, fearful and supernatural, in which he spent his time in
+      placing her—and which existed, perhaps, only in his imagination, but
+      the real universe, exhaling no special atmosphere of gloom, comprising
+      that table at which he might sit down, presently, and write, and this
+      drink which he was being permitted, now, to taste; all the objects which
+      he contemplated with as much curiosity and admiration as gratitude, for
+      if, in absorbing his dreams, they had delivered him from an obsession,
+      they themselves were, in turn, enriched by the absorption; they shewed him
+      the palpable realisation of his fancies, and they interested his mind;
+      they took shape and grew solid before his eyes, and at the same time they
+      soothed his troubled heart. Ah! had fate but allowed him to share a single
+      dwelling with Odette, so that in her house he should be in his own; if,
+      when asking his servant what there would be for luncheon, it had been
+      Odette's bill of fare that he had learned from the reply; if, when Odette
+      wished to go for a walk, in the morning, along the Avenue du
+      Bois-de-Boulogne, his duty as a good husband had obliged him, though he
+      had no desire to go out, to accompany her, carrying her cloak when she was
+      too warm; and in the evening, after dinner, if she wished to stay at home,
+      and not to dress, if he had been forced to stay beside her, to do what she
+      asked; then how completely would all the trivial details of Swann's life,
+      which seemed to him now so gloomy, simply because they would, at the same
+      time, have formed part of the life of Odette, have taken on—like
+      that lamp, that orangeade, that armchair, which had absorbed so much of
+      his dreams, which materialised so much of his longing,—a sort of
+      superabundant sweetness and a mysterious solidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet he was inclined to suspect that the state for which he so much
+      longed was a calm, a peace, which would not have created an atmosphere
+      favourable to his love. When Odette ceased to be for him a creature always
+      absent, regretted, imagined; when the feeling that he had for her was no
+      longer the same mysterious disturbance that was wrought in him by the
+      phrase from the sonata, but constant affection and gratitude, when those
+      normal relations were established between them which would put an end to
+      his melancholy madness; then, no doubt, the actions of Odette's daily life
+      would appear to him as being of but little intrinsic interest—as he
+      had several times, already, felt that they might be, on the day, for
+      instance, when he had read, through its envelope, her letter to
+      Forcheville. Examining his complaint with as much scientific detachment as
+      if he had inoculated himself with it in order to study its effects, he
+      told himself that, when he was cured of it, what Odette might or might not
+      do would be indifferent to him. But in his morbid state, to tell the
+      truth, he feared death itself no more than such a recovery, which would,
+      in fact, amount to the death of all that he then was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After these quiet evenings, Swann's suspicions would be temporarily
+      lulled; he would bless the name of Odette, and next day, in the morning,
+      would order the most attractive jewels to be sent to her, because her
+      kindnesses to him overnight had excited either his gratitude, or the
+      desire to see them repeated, or a paroxysm of love for her which had need
+      of some such outlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at other times, grief would again take hold of him; he would imagine
+      that Odette was Forcheville's mistress, and that, when they had both sat
+      watching him from the depths of the Verdurins' landau, in the Bois, on the
+      evening before the party at Chatou to which he had not been invited, while
+      he implored her in vain, with that look of despair on his face which even
+      his coachman had noticed, to come home with him, and then turned away,
+      solitary, crushed,—she must have employed, to draw Forcheville's
+      attention to him, while she murmured: "Do look at him, storming!" the same
+      glance, brilliant, malicious, sidelong, cunning, as on the evening when
+      Forcheville had driven Saniette from the Verdurins'.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At such times Swann detested her. "But I've been a fool, too," he would
+      argue. "I'm paying for other men's pleasures with my money. All the same,
+      she'd better take care, and not pull the string too often, for I might
+      very well stop giving her anything at all. At any rate, we'd better knock
+      off supplementary favours for the time being. To think that, only
+      yesterday, when she said she would like to go to Bayreuth for the season,
+      I was such an ass as to offer to take one of those jolly little places the
+      King of Bavaria has there, for the two of us. However she didn't seem
+      particularly keen; she hasn't said yes or no yet. Let's hope that she'll
+      refuse. Good God! Think of listening to Wagner for a fortnight on end with
+      her, who takes about as much interest in music as a fish does in little
+      apples; it will be fun!" And his hatred, like his love, needing to
+      manifest itself in action, he amused himself with urging his evil
+      imaginings further and further, because, thanks to the perfidies with
+      which he charged Odette, he detested her still more, and would be able, if
+      it turned out—as he tried to convince himself—that she was
+      indeed guilty of them, to take the opportunity of punishing her, emptying
+      upon her the overflowing vials of his wrath. In this way, he went so far
+      as to suppose that he was going to receive a letter from her, in which she
+      would ask him for money to take the house at Bayreuth, but with the
+      warning that he was not to come there himself, as she had promised
+      Forcheville and the Verdurins to invite them. Oh, how he would have loved
+      it, had it been conceivable that she would have that audacity. What joy he
+      would have in refusing, in drawing up that vindictive reply, the terms of
+      which he amused himself by selecting and declaiming aloud, as though he
+      had actually received her letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very next day, her letter came. She wrote that the Verdurins and their
+      friends had expressed a desire to be present at these performances of
+      Wagner, and that, if he would be so good as to send her the money, she
+      would be able at last, after going so often to their house, to have the
+      pleasure of entertaining the Verdurins in hers. Of him she said not a
+      word; it was to be taken for granted that their presence at Bayreuth would
+      be a bar to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then that annihilating answer, every word of which he had carefully
+      rehearsed overnight, without venturing to hope that it could ever be used,
+      he had the satisfaction of having it conveyed to her. Alas! he felt only
+      too certain that with the money which she had, or could easily procure,
+      she would be able, all the same, to take a house at Bayreuth, since she
+      wished to do so, she who was incapable of distinguishing between Bach and
+      Clapisson. Let her take it, then; she would have to live in it more
+      frugally, that was all. No means (as there would have been if he had
+      replied by sending her several thousand-franc notes) of organising, each
+      evening, in her hired castle, those exquisite little suppers, after which
+      she might perhaps be seized by the whim (which, it was possible, had never
+      yet seized her) of falling into the arms of Forcheville. At any rate, this
+      loathsome expedition, it would not be Swann who had to pay for it. Ah! if
+      he could only manage to prevent it, if she could sprain her ankle before
+      starting, if the driver of the carriage which was to take her to the
+      station would consent (no matter how great the bribe) to smuggle her to
+      some place where she could be kept for a time in seclusion, that
+      perfidious woman, her eyes tinselled with a smile of complicity for
+      Forcheville, which was what Odette had become for Swann in the last
+      forty-eight hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was never that for very long; after a few days the shining, crafty
+      eyes lost their brightness and their duplicity, that picture of an
+      execrable Odette saying to Forcheville: "Look at him storming!" began to
+      grow pale and to dissolve. Then gradually reappeared and rose before him,
+      softly radiant, the face of the other Odette, of that Odette who also
+      turned with a smile to Forcheville, but with a smile in which there was
+      nothing but affection for Swann, when she said: "You mustn't stay long,
+      for this gentleman doesn't much like my having visitors when he's here.
+      Oh! if you only knew the creature as I know him!" that same smile with
+      which she used to thank Swann for some instance of his courtesy which she
+      prized so highly, for some advice for which she had asked him in one of
+      those grave crises in her life, when she could turn to him alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, to this other Odette, he would ask himself what could have induced
+      him to write that outrageous letter, of which, probably, until then, she
+      had never supposed him capable, a letter which must have lowered him from
+      the high, from the supreme place which, by his generosity, by his loyalty,
+      he had won for himself in her esteem. He would become less dear to her,
+      since it was for those qualities, which she found neither in Forcheville
+      nor in any other, that she loved him. It was for them that Odette so often
+      shewed him a reciprocal kindness, which counted for less than nothing in
+      his moments of jealousy, because it was not a sign of reciprocal desire,
+      was indeed a proof rather of affection than of love, but the importance of
+      which he began once more to feel in proportion as the spontaneous
+      relaxation of his suspicions, often accelerated by the distraction brought
+      to him by reading about art or by the conversation of a friend, rendered
+      his passion less exacting of reciprocities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that, after this swing of the pendulum, Odette had naturally returned
+      to the place from which Swann's jealousy had for the moment driven her, in
+      the angle in which he found her charming, he pictured her to himself as
+      full of tenderness, with a look of consent in her eyes, and so beautiful
+      that he could not refrain from moving his lips towards her, as though she
+      had actually been in the room for him to kiss; and he preserved a sense of
+      gratitude to her for that bewitching, kindly glance, as strong as though
+      she had really looked thus at him, and it had not been merely his
+      imagination that had portrayed it in order to satisfy his desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What distress he must have caused her! Certainly he found adequate reasons
+      for his resentment, but they would not have been sufficient to make him
+      feel that resentment, if he had not so passionately loved her. Had he not
+      nourished grievances, just as serious, against other women, to whom he
+      would, none the less, render willing service to-day, feeling no anger
+      towards them because he no longer loved them? If the day ever came when he
+      would find himself in the same state of indifference with regard to
+      Odette, he would then understand that it was his jealousy alone which had
+      led him to find something atrocious, unpardonable, in this desire (after
+      all, so natural a desire, springing from a childlike ingenuousness and
+      also from a certain delicacy in her nature) to be able, in her turn, when
+      an occasion offered, to repay the Verdurins for their hospitality, and to
+      play the hostess in a house of her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned to the other point of view—opposite to that of his love
+      and of his jealousy, to which he resorted at times by a sort of mental
+      equity, and in order to make allowance for different eventualities—from
+      which he tried to form a fresh judgment of Odette, based on the
+      supposition that he had never been in love with her, that she was to him
+      just a woman like other women, that her life had not been (whenever he
+      himself was not present) different, a texture woven in secret apart from
+      him, and warped against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wherefore believe that she would enjoy down there with Forcheville or with
+      other men intoxicating pleasures which she had never known with him, and
+      which his jealousy alone had fabricated in all their elements? At
+      Bayreuth, as in Paris, if it should happen that Forcheville thought of him
+      at all, it would only be as of some one who counted for a great deal in
+      the life of Odette, some one for whom he was obliged to make way, when
+      they met in her house. If Forcheville and she scored a triumph by being
+      down there together in spite of him, it was he who had engineered that
+      triumph by striving in vain to prevent her from going there, whereas if he
+      had approved of her plan, which for that matter was quite defensible, she
+      would have had the appearance of being there by his counsel, she would
+      have felt herself sent there, housed there by him, and for the pleasure
+      which she derived from entertaining those people who had so often
+      entertained her, it was to him that she would have had to acknowledge her
+      indebtedness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if—instead of letting her go off thus, at cross-purposes with
+      him, without having seen him again—he were to send her this money,
+      if he were to encourage her to take this journey, and to go out of his way
+      to make it comfortable and pleasant for her, she would come running to
+      him, happy, grateful, and he would have the joy—the sight of her
+      face—which he had not known for nearly a week, a joy which none
+      other could replace. For the moment that Swann was able to form a picture
+      of her without revulsion, that he could see once again the friendliness in
+      her smile, and that the desire to tear her away from every rival was no
+      longer imposed by his jealousy upon his love, that love once again became,
+      more than anything, a taste for the sensations which Odette's person gave
+      him, for the pleasure which he found in admiring, as one might a
+      spectacle, or in questioning, as one might a phenomenon, the birth of one
+      of her glances, the formation of one of her smiles, the utterance of an
+      intonation of her voice. And this pleasure, different from every other,
+      had in the end created in him a need of her, which she alone, by her
+      presence or by her letters, could assuage, almost as disinterested, almost
+      as artistic, as perverse as another need which characterised this new
+      period in Swann's life, when the sereness, the depression of the preceding
+      years had been followed by a sort of spiritual superabundance, without his
+      knowing to what he owed this unlooked-for enrichment of his life, any more
+      than a person in delicate health who from a certain moment grows stronger,
+      puts on flesh, and seems for a time to be on the road to a complete
+      recovery:—this other need, which, too, developed in him
+      independently of the visible, material world, was the need to listen to
+      music and to learn to know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, by the chemical process of his malady, after he had created
+      jealousy out of his love, he began again to generate tenderness, pity for
+      Odette. She had become once more the old Odette, charming and kind. He was
+      full of remorse for having treated her harshly. He wished her to come to
+      him, and, before she came, he wished to have already procured for her some
+      pleasure, so as to watch her gratitude taking shape in her face and
+      moulding her smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, too, Odette, certain of seeing him come to her in a few days, as
+      tender and submissive as before, and plead with her for a reconciliation,
+      became inured, was no longer afraid of displeasing him, or even of making
+      him angry, and refused him, whenever it suited her, the favours by which
+      he set most store.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps she did not realise how sincere he had been with her during their
+      quarrel, when he had told her that he would not send her any money, but
+      would do what he could to hurt her. Perhaps she did not realise, either,
+      how sincere he still was, if not with her, at any rate with himself, on
+      other occasions when, for the sake of their future relations, to shew
+      Odette that he was capable of doing without her, that a rupture was still
+      possible between them, he decided to wait some time before going to see
+      her again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes several days had elapsed, during which she had caused him no
+      fresh anxiety; and as, from the next few visits which he would pay her, he
+      knew that he was likely to derive not any great pleasure, but, more
+      probably, some annoyance which would put an end to the state of calm in
+      which he found himself, he wrote to her that he was very busy, and would
+      not be able to see her on any of the days that he had suggested.
+      Meanwhile, a letter from her, crossing his, asked him to postpone one of
+      those very meetings. He asked himself, why; his suspicions, his grief,
+      again took hold of him. He could no longer abide, in the new state of
+      agitation into which he found himself plunged, by the arrangements which
+      he had made in his preceding state of comparative calm; he would run to
+      find her, and would insist upon seeing her on each of the following days.
+      And even if she had not written first, if she merely acknowledged his
+      letter, it was enough to make him unable to rest without seeing her. For,
+      upsetting all Swann's calculations, Odette's acceptance had entirely
+      changed his attitude. Like everyone who possesses something precious, so
+      as to know what would happen if he ceased for a moment to possess it, he
+      had detached the precious object from his mind, leaving, as he thought,
+      everything else in the same state as when it was there. But the absence of
+      one part from a whole is not only that, it is not simply a partial
+      omission, it is a disturbance of all the other parts, a new state which it
+      was impossible to foresee from the old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at other times—when Odette was on the point of going away for a
+      holiday—it was after some trifling quarrel for which he had chosen
+      the pretext, that he decided not to write to her and not to see her until
+      her return, giving the appearance (and expecting the reward) of a serious
+      rupture, which she would perhaps regard as final, to a separation, the
+      greater part of which was inevitable, since she was going away, which, in
+      fact, he was merely allowing to start a little sooner than it must. At
+      once he could imagine Odette, puzzled, anxious, distressed at having
+      received neither visit nor letter from him and this picture of her, by
+      calming his jealousy, made it easy for him to break himself of the habit
+      of seeing her. At odd moments, no doubt, in the furthest recesses of his
+      brain, where his determination had thrust it away, and thanks to the
+      length of the interval, the three weeks' separation to which he had
+      agreed, it was with pleasure that he would consider the idea that he would
+      see Odette again on her return; but it was also with so little impatience
+      that he began to ask himself whether he would not readily consent to the
+      doubling of the period of so easy an abstinence. It had lasted, so far,
+      but three days, a much shorter time than he had often, before, passed
+      without seeing Odette, and without having, as on this occasion he had,
+      premeditated a separation. And yet, there and then, some tiny trace of
+      contrariety in his mind, or of weakness in his body,—by inciting him
+      to regard the present as an exceptional moment, one not to be governed by
+      the rules, one in which prudence itself would allow him to take advantage
+      of the soothing effects of a pleasure and to give his will (until the time
+      should come when its efforts might serve any purpose) a holiday—suspended
+      the action of his will, which ceased to exert its inhibitive control; or,
+      without that even, the thought of some information for which he had
+      forgotten to ask Odette, such as if she had decided in what colour she
+      would have her carriage repainted, or, with regard to some investment,
+      whether they were 'ordinary' or 'preference' shares that she wished him to
+      buy (for it was all very well to shew her that he could live without
+      seeing her, but if, after that, the carriage had to be painted over again,
+      if the shares produced no dividend, a fine lot of good he would have
+      done),—and suddenly, like a stretched piece of elastic which is let
+      go, or the air in a pneumatic machine which is ripped open, the idea of
+      seeing her again, from the remote point in time to which it had been
+      attached, sprang back into the field of the present and of immediate
+      possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It sprang back thus without meeting any further resistance, so
+      irresistible, in fact, that Swann had been far less unhappy in watching
+      the end gradually approaching, day by day, of the fortnight which he must
+      spend apart from Odette, than he was when kept waiting ten minutes while
+      his coachman brought round the carriage which was to take him to her,
+      minutes which he passed in transports of impatience and joy, in which he
+      recaptured a thousand times over, to lavish on it all the wealth of his
+      affection, that idea of his meeting with Odette, which, by so abrupt a
+      repercussion, at a moment when he supposed it so remote, was once more
+      present and on the very surface of his consciousness. The fact was that
+      this idea no longer found, as an obstacle in its course, the desire to
+      contrive without further delay to resist its coming, which had ceased to
+      have any place in Swann's mind since, having proved to himself—or
+      so, at least, he believed—that he was so easily capable of resisting
+      it, he no longer saw any inconvenience in postponing a plan of separation
+      which he was now certain of being able to put into operation whenever he
+      would. Furthermore, this idea of seeing her again came back to him adorned
+      with a novelty, a seductiveness, armed with a virulence, all of which long
+      habit had enfeebled, but which had acquired new vigour during this
+      privation, not of three days but of a fortnight (for a period of
+      abstinence may be calculated, by anticipation, as having lasted already
+      until the final date assigned to it), and had converted what had been,
+      until then, a pleasure in store, which could easily be sacrificed, into an
+      unlooked-for happiness which he was powerless to resist. Finally, the idea
+      returned to him with its beauty enhanced by his own ignorance of what
+      Odette might have thought, might, perhaps, have done on finding that he
+      shewed no sign of life, with the result that he was going now to meet with
+      the entrancing revelation of an Odette almost unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she, just as she had supposed that his refusal to send her money was
+      only a feint, saw nothing but a pretext in the question which he came,
+      now, to ask her, about the repainting of her carriage, or the purchase of
+      stock. For she could not reconstruct the several phases of these crises
+      through which he passed, and in the general idea which she formed of them
+      she made no attempt to understand their mechanism, looking only to what
+      she knew beforehand, their necessary, never-failing and always identical
+      termination. An imperfect idea (though possibly all the more profound in
+      consequence), if one were to judge it from the point of view of Swann, who
+      would doubtless have considered that Odette failed to understand him, just
+      as a morphinomaniac or a consumptive, each persuaded that he has been
+      thrown back, one by some outside event, at the moment when he was just
+      going to shake himself free from his inveterate habit, the other by an
+      accidental indisposition at the moment when he was just going to be
+      finally cured, feels himself to be misunderstood by the doctor who does
+      not attach the same importance to these pretended contingencies, mere
+      disguises, according to him, assumed, so as to be perceptible by his
+      patients, by the vice of one and the morbid state of the other, which in
+      reality have never ceased to weigh heavily and incurably upon them while
+      they were nursing their dreams of normality and health. And, as a matter
+      of fact, Swann's love had reached that stage at which the physician and
+      (in the case of certain affections) the boldest of surgeons ask themselves
+      whether to deprive a patient of his vice or to rid him of his malady is
+      still reasonable, or indeed possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly, of the extent of this love Swann had no direct knowledge. When
+      he sought to measure it, it happened sometimes that he found it
+      diminished, shrunken almost to nothing; for instance, the very moderate
+      liking, amounting almost to dislike, which, in the days before he was in
+      love with Odette, he had felt for her expressive features, her faded
+      complexion, returned on certain days. "Really, I am making distinct
+      headway," he would tell himself on the morrow, "when I come to think it
+      over carefully, I find out that I got hardly any pleasure, last night, out
+      of being in bed with her; it's an odd thing, but I actually thought her
+      ugly." And certainly he was sincere, but his love extended a long way
+      beyond the province of physical desire. Odette's person, indeed, no longer
+      held any great place in it. When his eyes fell upon the photograph of
+      Odette on his table, or when she came to see him, he had difficulty in
+      identifying her face, either in the flesh or on the pasteboard, with the
+      painful and continuous anxiety which dwelt in his mind. He would say to
+      himself, almost with astonishment, "It is she!" as when suddenly some one
+      shews us in a detached, externalised form one of our own maladies, and we
+      find in it no resemblance to what we are suffering. "She?"—he tried
+      to ask himself what that meant; for it is something like love, like death
+      (rather than like those vague conceptions of maladies), a thing which one
+      repeatedly calls in question, in order to make oneself probe further into
+      it, in the fear that the question will find no answer, that the substance
+      will escape our grasp—the mystery of personality. And this malady,
+      which was Swann's love, had so far multiplied, was so closely interwoven
+      with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health,
+      his sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so
+      entirely one with him that it would have been impossible to wrest it away
+      without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his case was past
+      operation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this love Swann had been so far detached from all other interests that
+      when by chance he reappeared in the world of fashion, reminding himself
+      that his social relations, like a beautifully wrought setting (although
+      she would not have been able to form any very exact estimate of its
+      worth), might, still, add a little to his own value in Odette's eyes (as
+      indeed they might have done had they not been cheapened by his love
+      itself, which for Odette depreciated everything that it touched by seeming
+      to denounce such things as less precious than itself), he would feel
+      there, simultaneously with his distress at being in places and among
+      people that she did not know, the same detached sense of pleasure as he
+      would have derived from a novel or a painting in which were depicted the
+      amusements of a leisured class; just as, at home, he used to enjoy the
+      thought of the smooth efficiency of his household, the smartness of his
+      own wardrobe and of his servants' liveries, the soundness of his
+      investments, with the same relish as when he read in Saint-Simon, who was
+      one of his favourite authors, of the machinery of daily life at
+      Versailles, what Mme. de Maintenon ate and drank, or the shrewd avarice
+      and great pomp of Lulli. And in the small extent to which this detachment
+      was not absolute, the reason for this new pleasure which Swann was tasting
+      was that he could emigrate for a moment into those few and distant parts
+      of himself which had remained almost foreign to his love and to his pain.
+      In this respect the personality, with which my great-aunt endowed him, of
+      'young Swann,' as distinct from the more individual personality of Charles
+      Swann, was that in which he now most delighted. Once when, because it was
+      the birthday of the Princesse de Parme (and because she could often be of
+      use, indirectly, to Odette, by letting her have seats for galas and
+      jubilees and all that sort of thing), he had decided to send her a basket
+      of fruit, and was not quite sure where or how to order it, he had
+      entrusted the task to a cousin of his mother who, delighted to be doing a
+      commission for him, had written to him, laying stress on the fact that she
+      had not chosen all the fruit at the same place, but the grapes from
+      Crapote, whose speciality they were, the strawberries from Jauret, the
+      pears from Chevet, who always had the best, am soon, "every fruit visited
+      and examined, one by one, by myself." And in the sequel, by the cordiality
+      with which the Princess thanked him, he had been able to judge of the
+      flavour of the strawberries and of the ripeness of the pears. But, most
+      of all, that "every fruit visited and examined one by one, by myself" had
+      brought balm to his sufferings by carrying his mind off to a region which
+      he rarely visited, although it was his by right, as the heir of a rich and
+      respectable middle-class family in which had been handed down from
+      generation to generation the knowledge of the 'right places' and the art
+      of ordering things from shops.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of a truth, he had too long forgotten that he was 'young Swann' not to
+      feel, when he assumed that part again for a moment, a keener pleasure than
+      he was capable of feeling at other times—when, indeed, he was grown
+      sick of pleasure; and if the friendliness of the middle-class people, for
+      whom he had never been anything else than 'young Swann,' was less animated
+      than that of the aristocrats (though more flattering, for all that, since
+      in the middle-class mind friendship is inseparable from respect), no
+      letter from a Royal Personage, offering him some princely entertainment,
+      could ever be so attractive to Swann as the letter which asked him to be a
+      witness, or merely to be present at a wedding in the family of some old
+      friends of his parents; some of whom had 'kept up' with him, like my
+      grandfather, who, the year before these events, had invited him to my
+      mother's wedding, while others barely knew him by sight, but were, they
+      thought, in duty bound to shew civility to the son, to the worthy
+      successor of the late M. Swann.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, by virtue of his intimacy, already time-honoured, with so many of
+      them, the people of fashion, in a certain sense, were also a part of his
+      house, his service, and his family. He felt, when his mind dwelt upon his
+      brilliant connections, the same external support, the same solid comfort
+      as when he looked at the fine estate, the fine silver, the fine
+      table-linen which had come down to him from his forebears. And the thought
+      that, if he were seized by a sudden illness and confined to the house, the
+      people whom his valet would instinctively run to find would be the Duc de
+      Chartres, the Prince de Reuss, the Duc de Luxembourg and the Baron de
+      Charlus, brought him the same consolation as our old Françoise derived
+      from the knowledge that she would, one day, be buried in her own fine
+      clothes, marked with her name, not darned at all (or so exquisitely darned
+      that it merely enhanced one's idea of the skill and patience of the
+      seamstress), a shroud from the constant image of which in her mind's eye
+      she drew a certain satisfactory sense, if not actually of wealth and
+      prosperity, at any rate of self-esteem. But most of all,—since in
+      every one of his actions and thoughts which had reference to Odette, Swann
+      was constantly subdued and swayed by the unconfessed feeling that he was,
+      perhaps not less dear, but at least less welcome to her than anyone, even
+      the most wearisome of the Verdurins' 'faithful,'—when he betook
+      himself to a world in which he was the paramount example of taste, a man
+      whom no pains were spared to attract, whom people were genuinely sorry not
+      to see, he began once again to believe in the existence of a happier life,
+      almost to feel an appetite for it, as an invalid may feel who has been in
+      bed for months and on a strict diet, when he picks up a newspaper and
+      reads the account of an official banquet or the advertisement of a cruise
+      round Sicily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he was obliged to make excuses to his fashionable friends for not
+      paying them visits, it was precisely for the visits that he did pay her
+      that he sought to excuse himself to Odette. He still paid them (asking
+      himself at the end of each month whether, seeing that he had perhaps
+      exhausted her patience, and had certainly gone rather often to see her, it
+      would be enough if he sent her four thousand francs), and for each visit
+      he found a pretext, a present that he had to bring her, some information
+      which she required, M. de Charlus, whom he had met actually going to her
+      house, and who had insisted upon Swann's accompanying him. And, failing
+      any excuse, he would beg M. de Charlus to go to her at once, and to tell
+      her, as though spontaneously, in the course of conversation, that he had
+      just remembered something that he had to say to Swann, and would she
+      please send a message to Swann's house asking him to come to her then and
+      there; but as a rule Swann waited at home in vain, and M. de Charlus
+      informed him, later in the evening, that his device had not proved
+      successful. With the result that, if she was now frequently away from
+      Paris, even when she was there he scarcely saw her; that she who, when she
+      was in love with him, used to say, "I am always free" and "What can it
+      matter to me, what other people think?" now, whenever he wanted to see
+      her, appealed to the proprieties or pleaded some engagement. When he spoke
+      of going to a charity entertainment, or a private view, or a first-night
+      at which she was to be present, she would expostulate that he wished to
+      advertise their relations in public, that he was treating her like a woman
+      off the streets. Things came to such a pitch that, in an effort to save
+      himself from being altogether forbidden to meet her anywhere, Swann,
+      remembering that she knew and was deeply attached to my great-uncle
+      Adolphe, whose friend he himself also had been, went one day to see him in
+      his little flat in the Rue de Bellechasse, to ask him to use his influence
+      with Odette. As it happened, she invariably adopted, when she spoke to
+      Swann about my uncle, a poetical tone, saying: "Ah, he! He is not in the
+      least like you; it is an exquisite thing, a great, a beautiful thing, his
+      friendship for me. He's not the sort of man who would have so little
+      consideration for me as to let himself be seen with me everywhere in
+      public." This was embarrassing for Swann, who did not know quite to what
+      rhetorical pitch he should screw himself up in speaking of Odette to my
+      uncle. He began by alluding to her excellence, <i>a priori</i>, the axiom
+      of her seraphic super-humanity, the revelation of her inexpressible
+      virtues, no conception of which could possibly be formed. "I should like
+      to speak to you about her," he went on, "you, who know what a woman
+      supreme above all women, what an adorable being, what an angel Odette is.
+      But you know, also, what life is in Paris. Everyone doesn't see Odette in
+      the light in which you and I have been privileged to see her. And so there
+      are people who think that I am behaving rather foolishly; she won't even
+      allow me to meet her out of doors, at the theatre. Now you, in whom she
+      has such enormous confidence, couldn't you say a few words for me to her,
+      just to assure her that she exaggerates the harm which my bowing to her in
+      the street might do her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My uncle advised Swann not to see Odette for some days, after which she
+      would love him all the more; he advised Odette to let Swann meet her
+      everywhere, and as often as he pleased. A few days later Odette told Swann
+      that she had just had a rude awakening; she had discovered that my uncle
+      was the same as other men; he had tried to take her by assault. She calmed
+      Swann, who, at first, was for rushing out to challenge my uncle to a duel,
+      but he refused to shake hands with him when they met again. He regretted
+      this rupture all the more because he had hoped, if he had met my uncle
+      Adolphe again sometimes and had contrived to talk things over with him in
+      strict confidence, to be able to get him to throw a light on certain
+      rumours with regard to the life that Odette had led, in the old days, at
+      Nice. For my uncle Adolphe used to spend the winter there, and Swann
+      thought that it might indeed have been there, perhaps, that he had first
+      known Odette. The few words which some one had let fall, in his hearing,
+      about a man who, it appeared, had been Odette's lover, had left Swann
+      dumbfounded. But the very things which he would, before knowing them, have
+      regarded as the most terrible to learn and the most impossible to believe,
+      were, once he knew them, incorporated for all time in the general mass of
+      his sorrow; he admitted them, he could no longer have understood their not
+      existing. Only, each one of them in its passage traced an indelible line,
+      altering the picture that he had formed of his mistress. At one time
+      indeed he felt that he could understand that this moral 'lightness,' of
+      which he would never have suspected Odette, was perfectly well known, and
+      that at Baden or Nice, when she had gone, in the past, to spend several
+      months in one or the other place, she had enjoyed a sort of amorous
+      notoriety. He attempted, in order to question them, to get into touch
+      again with certain men of that stamp; but these were aware that he knew
+      Odette, and, besides, he was afraid of putting the thought of her into
+      their heads, of setting them once more upon her track. But he, to whom, up
+      till then, nothing could have seemed so tedious as was all that pertained
+      to the cosmopolitan life of Baden or of Nice, now that he learned that
+      Odette had, perhaps, led a 'gay' life once in those pleasure-cities,
+      although he could never find out whether it had been solely to satisfy a
+      want of money which, thanks to himself, she no longer felt, or from some
+      capricious instinct which might, at any moment, revive in her, he would
+      lean, in impotent anguish, blinded and dizzy, over the bottomless abyss
+      into which had passed, in which had been engulfed those years of his own,
+      early in MacMahon's <i>Septennat</i>, in which one spent the winter on the
+      Promenade des Anglais, the summer beneath the limes of Baden, and would
+      find in those years a sad but splendid profundity, such as a poet might
+      have lent to them; and he would have devoted to the reconstruction of all
+      the insignificant details that made up the daily round on the Côte d'Azur
+      in those days, if it could have helped him to understand something that
+      still baffled him in the smile or in the eyes of Odette, more enthusiasm
+      than does the aesthete who ransacks the extant documents of
+      fifteenth-century Florence, so as to try to penetrate further into the
+      soul of the Primavera, the fair Vanna or the Venus of Botticelli. He would
+      sit, often, without saying a word to her, only gazing at her and dreaming;
+      and she would comment: "You do look sad!" It was not very long since, from
+      the idea that she was an excellent creature, comparable to the best women
+      that he had known, he had passed to that of her being 'kept'; and yet
+      already, by an inverse process, he had returned from the Odette de Crécy,
+      perhaps too well known to the holiday-makers, to the 'ladies' men' of Nice
+      and Baden, to this face, the expression on which was so often gentle, to
+      this nature so eminently human. He would ask himself: "What does it mean,
+      after all, to say that everyone at Nice knows who Odette de Crécy is?
+      Reputations of that sort, even when they're true, are always based upon
+      other people's ideas"; he would reflect that this legend—even if it
+      were authentic—was something external to Odette, was not inherent in
+      her like a mischievous and ineradicable personality; that the creature who
+      might have been led astray was a woman with frank eyes, a heart full of
+      pity for the sufferings of others, a docile body which he had pressed
+      tightly in his arms and explored with his fingers, a woman of whom he
+      might one day come into absolute possession if he succeeded in making
+      himself indispensable to her. There she was, often tired, her face left
+      blank for the nonce by that eager, feverish preoccupation with the unknown
+      things which made Swann suffer; she would push back her hair with both
+      hands; her forehead, her whole face would seem to grow larger; then,
+      suddenly, some ordinary human thought, some worthy sentiment such as is to
+      be found in all creatures when, in a moment of rest or meditation, they
+      are free to express themselves, would flash out from her eyes like a ray
+      of gold. And immediately the whole of her face would light up like a grey
+      landscape, swathed in clouds which, suddenly, are swept away and the dull
+      scene transfigured, at the moment of the sun's setting. The life which
+      occupied Odette at such times, even the future which she seemed to be
+      dreamily regarding, Swann could have shared with her. No evil disturbance
+      seemed to have left any effect on them. Rare as they became, those moments
+      did not occur in vain. By the process of memory, Swann joined the
+      fragments together, abolished the intervals between them, cast, as in
+      molten gold, the image of an Odette compact of kindness and tranquillity,
+      for whom he was to make, later on (as we shall see in the second part of
+      this story) sacrifices which the other Odette would never have won from
+      him. But how rare those moments were, and how seldom he now saw her! Even
+      in regard to their evening meetings, she would never tell him until the
+      last minute whether she would be able to see him, for, reckoning on his
+      being always free, she wished first to be certain that no one else would
+      offer to come to her. She would plead that she was obliged to wait for an
+      answer which was of the very greatest importance, and if, even after she
+      had made Swann come to her house, any of her friends asked her, half-way
+      through the evening, to join them at some theatre, or at supper
+      afterwards, she would jump for joy and dress herself with all speed. As
+      her toilet progressed, every movement that she made brought Swann nearer
+      to the moment when he would have to part from her, when she would fly off
+      with irresistible force; and when at length she was ready, and, plunging
+      into her mirror a last glance strained and brightened by her anxiety to
+      look well, smeared a little salve on her lips, fixed a stray loci of hair
+      over her brow, and called for her cloak of sky-blue silk with golden
+      tassels, Swann would be looking so wretched that she would be unable to
+      restrain a gesture of impatience as she flung at him: "So that is how you
+      thank me for keeping you here till the last minute! And I thought I was
+      being so nice to you. Well, I shall know better another time!" Sometimes,
+      at the risk of annoying her, he made up his mind that he would find out
+      where she had gone, and even dreamed of a defensive alliance with
+      Forcheville, who might perhaps have been able to tell him. But anyhow,
+      when he knew with whom she was spending the evening, it was very seldom
+      that he could not discover, among all his innumerable acquaintance, some
+      one who knew—if only indirectly—the man with whom she had gone
+      out, and could easily obtain this or that piece of information about him.
+      And while he was writing to one of his friends, asking him to try to get a
+      little light thrown upon some point or other, he would feel a sense of
+      relief on ceasing to vex himself with questions to which there was no
+      answer and transferring to some one else the strain of interrogation. It
+      is true that Swann was little the wiser for such information as he did
+      receive. To know a thing does not enable us, always, to prevent its
+      happening, but after all the things that we know we do hold, if not in our
+      hands, at any rate in our minds, where we can dispose of them as we
+      choose, which gives us the illusion of a sort of power to control them. He
+      was quite happy whenever M. de Charlus was with Odette. He knew that
+      between M. de Charlus and her nothing untoward could ever happen, that
+      when M. de Charlus went anywhere with her, it was out of friendship for
+      himself, and that he would make no difficulty about telling him everything
+      that she had done. Sometimes she had declared so emphatically to Swann
+      that it was impossible for him to see her on a particular evening, she
+      seemed to be looking forward so keenly to some outing, that Swann attached
+      a very real importance to the fact that M. de Charlus was free to
+      accompany her. Next day, without daring to put many questions to M. de
+      Charlus, he would force him, by appearing not quite to understand his
+      first answers, to give him more, after each of which he would feel himself
+      increasingly relieved, for he very soon learned that Odette had spent her
+      evening in the most innocent of dissipations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what do you mean, my dear Mémé, I don't quite understand.... You
+      didn't go straight from her house to the Musée Grévin? Surely you went
+      somewhere else first? No? That is very odd! You don't know how amusing you
+      are, my dear Mémé. But what an odd idea of hers to go on to the Chat Noir
+      afterwards; it was her idea, I suppose? No? Yours? That's strange. After
+      all, it wasn't a bad idea; she must have known dozens of people there? No?
+      She never spoke to a soul? How extraordinary! Then you sat there like
+      that, just you and she, all by yourselves? I can picture you, sitting
+      there! You are a worthy fellow, my dear Mémé; I'm exceedingly fond of
+      you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann was now quite at ease. To him, who had so often happened, when
+      talking to friends who knew nothing of his love, friends to whom he hardly
+      listened, to hear certain detached sentences (as, for instance, "I saw
+      Mme. de Crécy yesterday; she was with a man I didn't know."), sentences
+      which dropped into his heart and passed at once into a solid state, grew
+      hard as stalagmites, and seared and tore him as they lay there
+      irremovable,—how charming, by way of contrast, were the words: "She
+      didn't know a soul; she never spoke to a soul." How freely they coursed
+      through him, how fluid they were, how vaporous, how easy to breathe! And
+      yet, a moment later, he was telling himself that Odette must find him very
+      dull if those were the pleasures that she preferred to his company. And
+      their very insignificance, though it reassured him, pained him as if her
+      enjoyment of them had been an act of treachery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even when he could not discover where she had gone, it would have sufficed
+      to alleviate the anguish that he then felt, for which Odette's presence,
+      the charm of her company, was the sole specific (a specific which in the
+      long run served, like many other remedies, to aggravate the disease, but
+      at least brought temporary relief to his sufferings), it would have
+      sufficed, had Odette only permitted him to remain in her house while she
+      was out, to wait there until that hour of her return, into whose stillness
+      and peace would flow, to be mingled and lost there, all memory of those
+      intervening hours which some sorcery, some cursed spell had made him
+      imagine as, somehow, different from the rest. But she would not; he must
+      return home; he forced himself, on the way, to form various plans, ceased
+      to think of Odette; he even reached the stage, while he undressed, of
+      turning over all sorts of happy ideas in his mind: it was with a light
+      heart, buoyed with the anticipation of going to see some favourite work of
+      art on the morrow, that he jumped into bed and turned out the light; but
+      no sooner had he made himself ready to sleep, relaxing a self-control of
+      which he was not even conscious, so habitual had it become, than an icy
+      shudder convulsed his body and he burst into sobs. He did not wish to know
+      why, but dried his eyes, saying with a smile: "This is delightful; I'm
+      becoming neurasthenic." After which he could not save himself from utter
+      exhaustion at the thought that, next day, he must begin afresh his attempt
+      to find out what Odette had been doing, must use all his influence to
+      contrive to see her. This compulsion to an activity without respite,
+      without variety, without result, was so cruel a scourge that one day,
+      noticing a swelling over his stomach, he felt an actual joy in the idea
+      that he had, perhaps, a tumour which would prove fatal, that he need not
+      concern himself with anything further, that it was his malady which was
+      going to govern his life, to make a plaything of him, until the
+      not-distant end. If indeed, at this period, it often happened that, though
+      without admitting it even to himself, he longed for death, it was in order
+      to escape not so much from the keenness of his sufferings as from the
+      monotony of his struggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet he would have wished to live until the time came when he no longer
+      loved her, when she would have no reason for lying to him, when at length
+      he might learn from her whether, on the day when he had gone to see her in
+      the afternoon, she had or had not been in the arms of Forcheville. Often
+      for several days on end the suspicion that she was in love with some one
+      else would distract his mind from the question of Forcheville, making it
+      almost immaterial to him, like those new developments of a continuous
+      state of ill-health which seem for a little time to have delivered us from
+      their predecessors. There were even days when he was not tormented by any
+      suspicion. He fancied that he was cured. But next morning, when he awoke,
+      he felt in the same place the same pain, a sensation which, the day
+      before, he had, as it were, diluted in the torrent of different
+      impressions. But it had not stirred from its place. Indeed, it was the
+      sharpness of this pain that had awakened him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since Odette never gave him any information as to those vastly important
+      matters which took up so much of her time every day (albeit he had lived
+      long enough in the world to know that such matters are never anything else
+      than pleasures) he could not sustain for any length of time the effort to
+      imagine them; his brain would become a void; then he would pass a finger
+      over his tired eyelids, in the same way as he might have wiped his
+      eyeglass, and would cease altogether to think. There emerged, however,
+      from this unexplored tract, certain occupations which reappeared from time
+      to time, vaguely connected by Odette with some obligation towards distant
+      relatives or old friends who, inasmuch as they were the only people whom
+      she was in the habit of mentioning as preventing her from seeing him,
+      seemed to Swann to compose the necessary, unalterable setting of her life.
+      Because of the tone in which she referred, from time to time, to "the day
+      when I go with my friend to the Hippodrome," if, when he felt unwell and
+      had thought, "Perhaps Odette would be kind and come to see me," he
+      remembered, suddenly, that it was one of those very days, he would correct
+      himself with an "Oh, no! It's not worth while asking her to come; I should
+      have thought of it before, this is the day when she goes with her friend
+      to the Hippodrome. We must confine ourselves to what is possible; no use
+      wasting our time in proposing things that can't be accepted and are
+      declined in advance." And this duty that was incumbent upon Odette, of
+      going to the Hippodrome, to which Swann thus gave way, seemed to him to be
+      not merely ineluctable in itself; but the mark of necessity which stamped
+      it seemed to make plausible and legitimate everything that was even
+      remotely connected with it. If, when Odette, in the street, had
+      acknowledged the salute of a passer-by, which had aroused Swann's
+      jealousy, she replied to his questions by associating the stranger with
+      any of the two or three paramount duties of which she had often spoken to
+      him; if, for instance, she said: "That's a gentleman who was in my
+      friend's box the other day; the one I go to the Hippodrome with," that
+      explanation would set Swann's suspicions at rest; it was, after all,
+      inevitable that this friend should have other guests than Odette in her
+      box at the Hippodrome, but he had never sought to form or succeeded in
+      forming any coherent impression of them. Oh! how he would have loved to
+      know her, that friend who went to the Hippodrome, how he would have loved
+      her to invite him there with Odette. How readily he would have sacrificed
+      all his acquaintance for no matter what person who was in the habit of
+      seeing Odette, were she but a manicurist or a girl out of a shop. He would
+      have taken more trouble, incurred more expense for them than for queens.
+      Would they not have supplied him, out of what was contained in their
+      knowledge of the life of Odette, with the one potent anodyne for his pain?
+      With what joy would he have hastened to spend his days with one or other
+      of those humble folk with whom Odette kept up friendly relations, either
+      with some ulterior motive or from genuine simplicity of nature. How
+      willingly would he have fixed his abode for ever in the attics of some
+      sordid but enviable house, where Odette went but never took him, and
+      where, if he had lived with the little retired dressmaker, whose lover he
+      would readily have pretended to be, he would have been visited by Odette
+      almost daily. In those regions, that were almost slums, what a modest
+      existence, abject, if you please, but delightful, nourished by
+      tranquillity and happiness, he would have consented to lead indefinitely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It sometimes happened, again, that, when, after meeting Swann, she saw
+      some man approaching whom he did not know, he could distinguish upon
+      Odette's face that look of sorrow which she had worn on the day when he
+      had come to her while Forcheville was there. But this was rare; for, on
+      the days when, in spite of all that she had to do, and of her dread of
+      what people would think, she did actually manage to see Swann, the
+      predominant quality in her attitude, now, was self-assurance; a striking
+      contrast, perhaps an unconscious revenge for, perhaps a natural reaction
+      from the timorous emotion which, in the early days of their friendship,
+      she had felt in his presence, and even in his absence, when she began a
+      letter to him with the words: "My dear, my hand trembles so that I can
+      scarcely write." (So, at least, she pretended, and a little of that
+      emotion must have been sincere, or she would not have been anxious to
+      enlarge and emphasise it.) So Swann had been pleasing to her then. Our
+      hands do not tremble except for ourselves, or for those whom we love. When
+      they have ceased to control our happiness how peaceful, how easy, how bold
+      do we become in their presence! In speaking to him, in writing to him now,
+      she no longer employed those words by which she had sought to give herself
+      the illusion that he belonged to her, creating opportunities for saying
+      "my" and "mine" when she referred to him: "You are all that I have in the
+      world; it is the perfume of our friendship, I shall keep it," nor spoke to
+      him of the future, of death itself, as of a single adventure which they
+      would have to share. In those early days, whatever he might say to her,
+      she would answer admiringly: "You know, you will never be like other
+      people!"—she would gaze at his long, slightly bald head, of which
+      people who know only of his successes used to think: "He's not regularly
+      good-looking, if you like, but he is smart; that tuft, that eyeglass, that
+      smile!" and, with more curiosity perhaps to know him as he really was than
+      desire to become his mistress, she would sigh:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do wish I could find out what there is in that head of yours!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, now, whatever he might say, she would answer, in a tone sometimes of
+      irritation, sometimes indulgent: "Ah! so you never will be like other
+      people!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would gaze at his head, which was hardly aged at all by his recent
+      anxieties (though people now thought of it, by the same mental process
+      which enables one to discover the meaning of a piece of symphonic music of
+      which one has read the programme, or the 'likenesses' in a child whose
+      family one has known: "He's not positively ugly, if you like, but he is
+      really rather absurd; that eyeglass, that tuft, that smile!" realising in
+      their imagination, fed by suggestion, the invisible boundary which
+      divides, at a few months' interval, the head of an ardent lover from a
+      cuckold's), and would say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, I do wish I could change you; put some sense into that head of
+      yours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always ready to believe in the truth of what he hoped, if it was only
+      Odette's way of behaving to him that left room for doubt, he would fling
+      himself greedily upon her words: "You can if you like," he would tell her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he tried to explain to her that to comfort him, to control him, to
+      make him work would be a noble task, to which numbers of other women asked
+      for nothing better than to be allowed to devote themselves, though it is
+      only fair to add that in those other women's hands the noble task would
+      have seemed to Swann nothing more than an indiscreet and intolerable
+      usurpation of his freedom of action. "If she didn't love me, just a
+      little," he told himself, "she would not wish to have me altered. To alter
+      me, she will have to see me more often." And so he was able to trace, in
+      these faults which she found in him, a proof at least of her interest,
+      perhaps even of her love; and, in fact, she gave him so little, now, of
+      the last, that he was obliged to regard as proofs of her interest in him
+      the various things which, every now and then, she forbade him to do. One
+      day she announced that she did not care for his coachman, who, she
+      thought, was perhaps setting Swann against her, and, anyhow, did not shew
+      that promptness and deference to Swann's orders which she would have liked
+      to see. She felt that he wanted to hear her say: "Don't have him again
+      when you come to me," just as he might have wanted her to kiss him. So,
+      being in a good temper, she said it; and he was deeply moved. That
+      evening, when talking to M. de Charlus, with whom he had the satisfaction
+      of being able to speak of her openly (for the most trivial remarks that he
+      uttered now, even to people who had never heard of her, had always some
+      sort of reference to Odette), he said to him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe, all the same, that she loves me; she is so nice to me now, and
+      she certainly takes an interest in what I do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if, when he was starting off for her house, getting into his carriage
+      with a friend whom he was to drop somewhere on the way, his friend said:
+      "Hullo! that isn't Loredan on the box?" with what melancholy joy would
+      Swann answer him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! Good heavens, no! I can tell you, I daren't take Loredan when I go to
+      the Rue La Pérouse; Odette doesn't like me to have Loredan, she thinks he
+      doesn't suit me. What on earth is one to do? Women, you know, women. My
+      dear fellow, she would be furious. Oh, lord, yes; I've only to take Rémi
+      there; I should never hear the last of it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These new manners, indifferent, listless, irritable, which Odette now
+      adopted with Swann, undoubtedly made him suffer; but he did not realise
+      how much he suffered; since it had been with a regular progression, day
+      after day, that Odette had chilled towards him, it was only by directly
+      contrasting what she was to-day with what she had been at first that he
+      could have measured the extent of the change that had taken place. Now
+      this change was his deep, his secret wound, which pained him day and
+      night, and whenever he felt that his thoughts were straying too near it,
+      he would quickly turn them into another channel for fear of being made to
+      suffer too keenly. He might say to himself in a vague way: "There was a
+      time when Odette loved me more," but he never formed any definite picture
+      of that time. Just as he had in his study a cupboard at which he contrived
+      never to look, which he turned aside to avoid passing whenever he entered
+      or left the room, because in one of its drawers he had locked away the
+      chrysanthemum which she had given him on one of those first evenings when
+      he had taken her home in his carriage, and the letters in which she said:
+      "Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never have let you have
+      that back," and "At whatever hour of the day or night you may need me,
+      just send me a word, and dispose of me as you please," so there was a
+      place in his heart to which he would never allow his thoughts to trespass
+      too near, forcing them, if need be, to evade it by a long course of
+      reasoning so that they should not have to pass within reach of it; the
+      place in which lingered his memories of happy days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his so meticulous prudence was defeated one evening when he had gone
+      out to a party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte's, on the last, for that season,
+      of the evenings on which she invited people to listen to the musicians who
+      would serve, later on, for her charity concerts. Swann, who had intended
+      to go to each of the previous evenings in turn, but had never been able to
+      make up his mind, received, while he was dressing for this party, a visit
+      from the Baron de Charlus, who came with an offer to go with him to the
+      Marquise's, if his company could be of any use in helping Swann not to
+      feel quite so bored when he got there, to be a little less unhappy. But
+      Swann had thanked him with:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can't conceive how glad I should be of your company. But the greatest
+      pleasure that you can give me will be if you will go instead to see
+      Odette. You know what a splendid influence you have over her. I don't
+      suppose she'll be going anywhere this evening, unless she goes to see her
+      old dressmaker, and I'm sure she would be delighted if you went with her
+      there. In any case, you'll find her at home before then. Try to keep her
+      amused, and also to give her a little sound advice. If you could arrange
+      something for to-morrow which would please her, something that we could
+      all three do together. Try to put out a feeler, too, for the summer; see
+      if there's anything she wants to do, a cruise that we might all three
+      take; anything you can think of. I don't count upon seeing her to-night,
+      myself; still if she would like me to come, or if you find a loophole,
+      you've only to send me a line at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's up till midnight;
+      after that I shall be here. Ever so many thanks for all you are doing for
+      me—you know what I feel about you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend promised to go and do as Swann wished as soon as he had
+      deposited him at the door of the Saint-Euverte house, where he arrived
+      soothed by the thought that M. de Charlus would be spending the evening in
+      the Rue La Pérouse, but in a state of melancholy indifference to
+      everything that did not involve Odette, and in particular to the details
+      of fashionable life, a state which invested them with the charm that is to
+      be found in anything which, being no longer an object of our desire,
+      appears to us in its own guise. On alighting from his carriage, in the
+      foreground of that fictitious summary of their domestic existence which
+      hostesses are pleased to offer to their guests on ceremonial occasions,
+      and in which they shew a great regard for accuracy of costume and setting,
+      Swann was amused to discover the heirs and successors of Balzac's 'tigers'—now
+      'grooms'—. who normally followed their mistress when she walked
+      abroad, but now, hatted and booted, were posted out of doors, in front of
+      the house on the gravelled drive, or outside the stables, as gardeners
+      might be drawn up for inspection at the ends of their several flower-beds.
+      The peculiar tendency which he had always had to look for analogies
+      between living people and the portraits in galleries reasserted itself
+      here, but in a more positive and more general form; it was society as a
+      whole, now that he was detached from it, which presented itself to him in
+      a series of pictures. In the cloak-room, into which, in the old days, when
+      he was still a man of fashion, he would have gone in his overcoat, to
+      emerge from it in evening dress, but without any impression of what had
+      occurred there, his mind having been, during the minute or two that he had
+      spent in it, either still at the party which he had just left, or already
+      at the party into which he was just about to be ushered, he now noticed,
+      for the first time, roused by the unexpected arrival of so belated a
+      guest, the scattered pack of splendid effortless animals, the enormous
+      footmen who were drowsing here and there upon benches and chests, until,
+      pointing their noble greyhound profiles, they towered upon their feet and
+      gathered in a circle round about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of them, of a particularly ferocious aspect, and not unlike the
+      headsman in certain Renaissance pictures which represent executions,
+      tortures, and the like, advanced upon him with an implacable air to take
+      his 'things.' But the harshness of his steely glare was compensated by the
+      softness of his cotton gloves, so effectively that, as he approached
+      Swann, he seemed to be exhibiting at once an utter contempt for his person
+      and the most tender regard for his hat. He took it with a care to which
+      the precision of his movements imparted something that was almost
+      over-fastidious, and with a delicacy that was rendered almost touching by
+      the evidence of his splendid strength. Then he passed it to one of his
+      satellites, a novice and timid, who was expressing the panic that
+      overpowered him by casting furious glances in every direction, and
+      displayed all the dumb agitation of a wild animal in the first hours of
+      its captivity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few feet away, a strapping great lad in livery stood musing, motionless,
+      statuesque, useless, like that purely decorative warrior whom one sees in
+      the most tumultuous of Mantegna's paintings, lost in dreams, leaning upon
+      his shield, while all around him are fighting and bloodshed and death;
+      detached from the group of his companions who were thronging about Swann,
+      he seemed as determined to remain unconcerned in the scene, which he
+      followed vaguely with his cruel, greenish eyes, as if it had been the
+      Massacre of the Innocents or the Martyrdom of Saint James. He seemed
+      precisely to have sprung from that vanished race—if, indeed, it ever
+      existed, save in the reredos of San Zeno and the frescoes of the
+      Eremitani, where Swann had come in contact with it, and where it still
+      dreams—fruit of the impregnation of a classical statue by some one
+      of the Master's Paduan models, or of Albert Duerer's Saxons. And the locks
+      of his reddish hair, crinkled by nature, but glued to his head by
+      brilliantine, were treated broadly as they are in that Greek sculpture
+      which the Mantuan painter never ceased to study, and which, if in its
+      creator's purpose it represents but man, manages at least to extract from
+      man's simple outlines such a variety of richness, borrowed, as it were,
+      from the whole of animated nature, that a head of hair, by the glossy
+      undulation and beak-like points of its curls, or in the overlaying of the
+      florid triple diadem of its brushed tresses, can suggest at once a bunch
+      of seaweed, a brood of fledgling doves, a bed of hyacinths and a serpent's
+      writhing back. Others again, no less colossal, were disposed upon the
+      steps of a monumental staircase which, by their decorative presence and
+      marmorean immobility, was made worthy to be named, like that god-crowned
+      ascent in the Palace of the Doges, the 'Staircase of the Giants,' and on
+      which Swann now set foot, saddened by the thought that Odette had never
+      climbed it. Ah, with what joy would he, on the other hand, have raced up
+      the dark, evil-smelling, breakneck flights to the little dressmaker's, in
+      whose attic he would so gladly have paid the price of a weekly stage-box
+      at the Opera for the right to spend the evening there when Odette came,
+      and other days too, for the privilege of talking about her, of living
+      among people whom she was in the habit of seeing when he was not there,
+      and who, on that account, seemed to keep secret among themselves some part
+      of the life of his mistress more real, more inaccessible and more
+      mysterious than anything that he knew. Whereas upon that pestilential,
+      enviable staircase to the old dressmaker's, since there was no other, no
+      service stair in the building, one saw in the evening outside every door
+      an empty, unwashed milk-can set out, in readiness for the morning round,
+      upon the door-mat; on the despicable, enormous staircase which Swann was
+      at that moment climbing, on either side of him, at different levels,
+      before each anfractuosity made in its walls by the window of the porter's
+      lodge or the entrance to a set of rooms, representing the departments of
+      indoor service which they controlled, and doing homage for them to the
+      guests, a gate-keeper, a major-domo, a steward (worthy men who spent the
+      rest of the week in semi-independence in their own domains, dined there by
+      themselves like small shopkeepers, and might to-morrow lapse to the
+      plebeian service of some successful doctor or industrial magnate),
+      scrupulous in carrying out to the letter all the instructions that had
+      been heaped upon them before they were allowed to don the brilliant livery
+      which they wore only at long intervals, and in which they did not feel
+      altogether at their ease, stood each in the arcade of his doorway, their
+      splendid pomp tempered by a democratic good-fellowship, like saints in
+      their niches, and a gigantic usher, dressed Swiss Guard fashion, like the
+      beadle in a church, struck the pavement with his staff as each fresh
+      arrival passed him. Coming to the top of the staircase, up which he had
+      been followed by a servant with a pallid countenance and a small pigtail
+      clubbed at the back of his head, like one of Goya's sacristans or a
+      tabellion in an old play, Swann passed by an office in which the lackeys,
+      seated like notaries before their massive registers, rose solemnly to
+      their feet and inscribed his name. He next crossed a little hall which—just
+      as certain rooms are arranged by their owners to serve as the setting for
+      a single work of art (from which they take their name), and, in their
+      studied bareness, contain nothing else besides—displayed to him as
+      he entered it, like some priceless effigy by Benvenuto Cellini of an armed
+      watchman, a young footman, his body slightly bent forward, rearing above
+      his crimson gorget an even more crimson face, from which seemed to burst
+      forth torrents of fire, timidity and zeal, who, as he pierced the Aubusson
+      tapestries that screened the door of the room in which the music was being
+      given with his impetuous, vigilant, desperate gaze, appeared, with a
+      soldierly impassibility or a supernatural faith—an allegory of
+      alarums, incarnation of alertness, commemoration of a riot—to be
+      looking out, angel or sentinel, from the tower of dungeon or cathedral,
+      for the approach of the enemy or for the hour of Judgment. Swann had now
+      only to enter the concert-room, the doors of which were thrown open to him
+      by an usher loaded with chains, who bowed low before him as though
+      tendering to him the keys of a conquered city. But he thought of the house
+      in which at that very moment he might have been, if Odette had but
+      permitted, and the remembered glimpse of an empty milk-can upon a door-mat
+      wrung his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He speedily recovered his sense of the general ugliness of the human male
+      when, on the other side of the tapestry curtain, the spectacle of the
+      servants gave place to that of the guests. But even this ugliness of
+      faces, which of course were mostly familiar to him, seemed something new
+      and uncanny, now that their features,—instead of being to him
+      symbols of practical utility in the identification of this or that man,
+      who until then had represented merely so many pleasures to be sought
+      after, boredoms to be avoided, or courtesies to be acknowledged—were
+      at rest, measurable by aesthetic co-ordinates alone, in the autonomy of
+      their curves and angles. And in these men, in the thick of whom Swann now
+      found himself packed, there was nothing (even to the monocle which many of
+      them wore, and which, previously, would, at the most, have enabled Swann
+      to say that so-and-so wore a monocle) which, no longer restricted to the
+      general connotation of a habit, the same in all of them, did not now
+      strike him with a sense of individuality in each. Perhaps because he did
+      not regard General de Froberville and the Marquis de Bréaute, who were
+      talking together just inside the door, as anything more than two figures
+      in a picture, whereas they were the old and useful friends who had put him
+      up for the Jockey Club and had supported him in duels, the General's
+      monocle, stuck like a shell-splinter in his common, scarred, victorious,
+      overbearing face, in the middle of a forehead which it left half-blinded,
+      like the single-eyed flashing front of the Cyclops, appeared to Swann as a
+      monstrous wound which it might have been glorious to receive but which it
+      was certainly not decent to expose, while that which M. de Bréaute wore,
+      as a festive badge, with his pearl-grey gloves, his crush hat and white
+      tie, substituting it for the familiar pair of glasses (as Swann himself
+      did) when he went out to places, bore, glued to its other side, like a
+      specimen prepared on a slide for the microscope, an infinitesimal gaze
+      that swarmed with friendly feeling and never ceased to twinkle at the
+      loftiness of ceilings, the delightfulness of parties, the interestingness
+      of programmes and the excellence of refreshments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hallo! you here! why, it's ages since I've seen you," the General greeted
+      Swann and, noticing the look of strain on his face and concluding that it
+      was perhaps a serious illness that had kept him away, went on, "You're
+      looking well, old man!" while M. de Bréauté turned with, "My dear fellow,
+      what on earth are you doing here?" to a 'society novelist' who had just
+      fitted into the angle of eyebrow and cheek his own monocle, the sole
+      instrument that he used in his psychological investigations and
+      remorseless analyses of character, and who now replied, with an air of
+      mystery and importance, rolling the 'r':—"I am observing!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis de Forestelle's monocle was minute and rimless, and, by
+      enforcing an incessant and painful contraction of the eye over which it
+      was incrusted like a superfluous cartilage, the presence of which there
+      was inexplicable and its substance unimaginable, it gave to his face a
+      melancholy refinement, and led women to suppose him capable of suffering
+      terribly when in love. But that of M. de Saint-Candé, girdled, like
+      Saturn, with an enormous ring, was the centre of gravity of a face which
+      composed itself afresh every moment in relation to the glass, while his
+      thrusting red nose and swollen sarcastic lips endeavoured by their
+      grimaces to rise to the level of the steady flame of wit that sparkled in
+      the polished disk, and saw itself preferred to the most ravishing eyes in
+      the world by the smart, depraved young women whom it set dreaming of
+      artificial charms and a refinement of sensual bliss; and then, behind him,
+      M. de Palancy, who with his huge carp's head and goggling eyes moved
+      slowly up and down the stream of festive gatherings, unlocking his great
+      mandibles at every moment as though in search of his orientation, had the
+      air of carrying about upon his person only an accidental and perhaps
+      purely symbolical fragment of the glass wall of his aquarium, a part
+      intended to suggest the whole which recalled to Swann, a fervent admirer
+      of Giotto's Vices and Virtues at Padua, that Injustice by whose side a
+      leafy bough evokes the idea of the forests that enshroud his secret lair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann had gone forward into the room, under pressure from Mme. de
+      Saint-Euverte and in order to listen to an aria from <i>Orfeo</i> which
+      was being rendered on the flute, and had taken up a position in a corner
+      from which, unfortunately, his horizon was bounded by two ladies of
+      'uncertain' age, seated side by side, the Marquise de Cambremer and the
+      Vicomtesse de Franquetot, who, because they were cousins, used to spend
+      their time at parties in wandering through the rooms, each clutching her
+      bag and followed by her daughter, hunting for one another like people at a
+      railway station, and could never be at rest until they had reserved, by
+      marking them with their fans or handkerchiefs, two adjacent chairs; Mme.
+      de Cambremer, since she knew scarcely anyone, being all the more glad of a
+      companion, while Mme. de Franquetot, who, on the contrary, was extremely
+      popular, thought it effective and original to shew all her fine friends
+      that she preferred to their company that of an obscure country cousin with
+      whom she had childish memories in common. Filled with ironical melancholy,
+      Swann watched them as they listened to the pianoforte intermezzo
+      (Liszt's 'Saint Francis preaching to the birds') which came after the
+      flute, and followed the virtuoso in his dizzy flight; Mme. de Franquetot
+      anxiously, her eyes starting from her head, as though the keys over which
+      his fingers skipped with such agility were a series of trapezes, from any
+      one of which he might come crashing, a hundred feet, to the ground,
+      stealing now and then a glance of astonishment and unbelief at her
+      companion, as who should say: "It isn't possible, I would never have
+      believed that a human being could do all that!"; Mme. de Cambremer, as a
+      woman who had received a sound musical education, beating time with her
+      head—transformed for the nonce into the pendulum of a metronome, the
+      sweep and rapidity of whose movements from one shoulder to the other
+      (performed with that look of wild abandonment in her eye which a sufferer
+      shews who is no longer able to analyse his pain, nor anxious to master it,
+      and says merely "I can't help it") so increased that at every moment her
+      diamond earrings caught in the trimming of her bodice, and she was obliged
+      to put straight the bunch of black grapes which she had in her hair,
+      though without any interruption of her constantly accelerated motion. On
+      the other side (and a little way in front) of Mme. de Franquetot, was the
+      Marquise de Gallardon, absorbed in her favourite meditation, namely upon
+      her own kinship with the Guermantes family, from which she derived both
+      publicly and in private a good deal of glory not unmingled with shame, the
+      most brilliant ornaments of that house remaining somewhat aloof from her,
+      perhaps because she was just a tiresome old woman, or because she was a
+      scandalous old woman, or because she came of an inferior branch of the
+      family, or very possibly for no reason at all. When she found herself
+      seated next to some one whom she did not know, as she was at this moment
+      next to Mme. de Franquetot, she suffered acutely from the feeling that her
+      own consciousness of her Guermantes connection could not be made
+      externally manifest in visible character like those which, in the mosaics
+      in Byzantine churches, placed one beneath another, inscribe in a vertical
+      column by the side of some Sacred Personage the words which he is supposed
+      to be uttering. At this moment she was pondering the fact that she had
+      never received an invitation, or even call, from her young cousin the
+      Princesse des Laumes, during the six years that had already elapsed since
+      the latter's marriage. The thought filled her with anger—and with
+      pride; for, by virtue of having told everyone who expressed surprise at
+      never seeing her at Mme. des Laumes's, that it was because of the risk of
+      meeting the Princesse Mathilde there—a degradation which her own
+      family, the truest and bluest of Legitimists, would never have forgiven
+      her, she had come gradually to believe that this actually was the reason
+      for her not visiting her young cousin. She remembered, it is true, that
+      she had several times inquired of Mme. des Laumes how they might contrive
+      to meet, but she remembered it only in a confused way, and besides did
+      more than neutralise this slightly humiliating reminiscence by murmuring,
+      "After all, it isn't for me to take the first step; I am at least twenty
+      years older than she is." And fortified by these unspoken words she flung
+      her shoulders proudly back until they seemed to part company with her
+      bust, while her head, which lay almost horizontally upon them, made one
+      think of the 'stuck-on' head of a pheasant which is brought to the table
+      regally adorned with its feathers. Not that she in the least degree
+      resembled a pheasant, having been endowed by nature with a short and squat
+      and masculine figure; but successive mortifications had given her a
+      backward tilt, such as one may observe in trees which have taken root on
+      the very edge of a precipice and are forced to grow backwards to preserve
+      their balance. Since she was obliged, in order to console herself for not
+      being quite on a level with the rest of the Guermantes, to repeat to
+      herself incessantly that it was owing to the uncompromising rigidity of
+      her principles and pride that she saw so little of them, the constant
+      iteration had gradually remoulded her body, and had given her a sort of
+      'bearing' which was accepted by the plebeian as a sign of breeding, and
+      even kindled, at times, a momentary spark in the jaded eyes of old
+      gentlemen in clubs. Had anyone subjected Mme. de Gallardon's conversation
+      to that form of analysis which by noting the relative frequency of its
+      several terms would furnish him with the key to a ciphered message, he
+      would at once have remarked that no expression, not even the commonest
+      forms of speech, occurred in it nearly so often as "at my cousins the
+      Guermantes's," "at my aunt Guermantes's," "Elzéar de Guermantes's health,"
+      "my cousin Guermantes's box." If anyone spoke to her of a distinguished
+      personage, she would reply that, although she was not personally
+      acquainted with him, she had seen him hundreds of times at her aunt
+      Guermantes's, but she would utter this reply in so icy a tone, with such a
+      hollow sound, that it was at once quite clear that if she did not know the
+      celebrity personally that was because of all the obstinate, ineradicable
+      principles against which her arching shoulders were stretched back to
+      rest, as on one of those ladders on which gymnastic instructors make us
+      'extend' so as to develop the expansion of our chests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the Princesse des Laumes, who had not been expected to
+      appear at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's that evening, did in fact arrive. To
+      shew that she did not wish any special attention, in a house to which she
+      had come by an act of condescension, to be paid to her superior rank, she
+      had entered the room with her arms pressed close to her sides, even when
+      there was no crowd to be squeezed through, no one attempting to get past
+      her; staying purposely at the back, with the air of being in her proper
+      place, like a king who stands in the waiting procession at the doors of a
+      theatre where the management have not been warned of his coming; and
+      strictly limiting her field of vision—so as not to seem to be
+      advertising her presence and claiming the consideration that was her due—to
+      the study of a pattern in the carpet or of her own skirt, she stood there
+      on the spot which had struck her as the most modest (and from which, as
+      she very well knew, a cry of rapture from Mme. de Saint-Euverte would
+      extricate her as soon as her presence there was noticed), next to Mme. de
+      Cambremer, whom, however, she did not know. She observed the dumb-show by
+      which her neighbour was expressing her passion for music, but she
+      refrained from copying it. This was not to say that, for once that she had
+      consented to spend a few minutes in Mme. de Saint-Euverte's house, the
+      Princesse des Laumes would not have wished (so that the act of politeness
+      to her hostess which she had performed by coming might, so to speak,
+      'count double') to shew herself as friendly and obliging as possible. But
+      she had a natural horror of what she called 'exaggerating,' and always
+      made a point of letting people see that she 'simply must not' indulge in
+      any display of emotion that was not in keeping with the tone of the circle
+      in which she moved, although such displays never failed to make an
+      impression upon her, by virtue of that spirit of imitation, akin to
+      timidity, which is developed in the most self-confident persons, by
+      contact with an unfamiliar environment, even though it be inferior to
+      their own. She began to ask herself whether these gesticulations might
+      not, perhaps, be a necessary concomitant of the piece of music that was
+      being played, a piece which, it might be, was in a different category from
+      all the music that she had ever heard before; and whether to abstain from
+      them was not a sign of her own inability to understand the music, and of
+      discourtesy towards the lady of the house; with the result that, in order
+      to express by a compromise both of her contradictory inclinations in turn,
+      at one moment she would merely straighten her shoulder-straps or feel in
+      her golden hair for the little balls of coral or of pink enamel, frosted
+      with tiny diamonds, which formed its simple but effective ornament,
+      studying, with a cold interest, her impassioned neighbour, while at
+      another she would beat time for a few bars with her fan, but, so as not to
+      forfeit her independence, she would beat a different time from the
+      pianist's. When he had finished the Liszt Intermezzo and had begun a
+      Prelude by Chopin, Mme. de Cambremer turned to Mme. de Franquetot with a
+      tender smile, full of intimate reminiscence, as well as of satisfaction
+      (that of a competent judge) with the performance. She had been taught in
+      her girlhood to fondle and cherish those long-necked, sinuous creatures,
+      the phrases of Chopin, so free, so flexible, so tactile, which begin by
+      seeking their ultimate resting-place somewhere beyond and far wide of the
+      direction in which they started, the point which one might have expected
+      them to reach, phrases which divert themselves in those fantastic bypaths
+      only to return more deliberately—with a more premeditated reaction,
+      with more precision, as on a crystal bowl which, if you strike it, will
+      ring and throb until you cry aloud in anguish—to clutch at one's
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brought up in a provincial household with few friends or visitors, hardly
+      ever invited to a ball, she had fuddled her mind, in the solitude of her
+      old manor-house, over setting the pace, now crawling-slow, now passionate,
+      whirling, breathless, for all those imaginary waltzing couples, gathering
+      them like flowers, leaving the ball-room for a moment to listen, where the
+      wind sighed among the pine-trees, on the shore of the lake, and seeing of
+      a sudden advancing towards her, more different from anything one had ever
+      dreamed of than earthly lovers are, a slender young man, whose voice was
+      resonant and strange and false, in white gloves. But nowadays the
+      old-fashioned beauty of this music seemed to have become a trifle stale.
+      Having forfeited, some years back, the esteem of 'really musical' people,
+      it had lost its distinction and its charm, and even those whose taste was
+      frankly bad had ceased to find in it more than a moderate pleasure to
+      which they hardly liked to confess. Mme. de Cambremer cast a furtive
+      glance behind her. She knew that her young daughter-in-law (full of
+      respect for her new and noble family, except in such matters as related to
+      the intellect, upon which, having 'got as far' as Harmony and the Greek
+      alphabet, she was specially enlightened) despised Chopin, and fell quite
+      ill when she heard him played. But finding herself free from the scrutiny
+      of this Wagnerian, who was sitting, at some distance, in a group of her
+      own contemporaries, Mme. de Cambremer let herself drift upon a stream of
+      exquisite memories and sensations. The Princesse des Laumes was touched
+      also. Though without any natural gift for music, she had received, some
+      fifteen years earlier, the instruction which a music-mistress of the
+      Faubourg Saint-Germain, a woman of genius who had been, towards the end of
+      her life, reduced to penury, had started, at seventy, to give to the
+      daughters and granddaughters of her old pupils. This lady was now dead.
+      But her method, an echo of her charming touch, came to life now and then
+      in the fingers of her pupils, even of those who had been in other respects
+      quite mediocre, had given up music, and hardly ever opened a piano. And so
+      Mme. des Laumes could let her head sway to and fro, fully aware of the
+      cause, with a perfect appreciation of the manner in which the pianist was
+      rendering this Prelude, since she knew it by heart. The closing notes of
+      the phrase that he had begun sounded already on her lips. And she murmured
+      "How charming it is!" with a stress on the opening consonants of the
+      adjective, a token of her refinement by which she felt her lips so
+      romantically compressed, like the petals of a beautiful, budding flower,
+      that she instinctively brought her eyes into harmony, illuminating them
+      for a moment with a vague and sentimental gaze. Meanwhile Mme. de
+      Gallardon had arrived at the point of saying to herself how annoying it
+      was that she had so few opportunities of meeting the Princesse des Laumes,
+      for she meant to teach her a lesson by not acknowledging her bow. She did
+      not know that her cousin was in the room. A movement of Mme. Franquetot's
+      head disclosed the Princess. At once Mme. de Gallardon dashed towards her,
+      upsetting all her neighbours; although determined to preserve a distant
+      and glacial manner which should remind everyone present that she had no
+      desire to remain on friendly terms with a person in whose house one might
+      find oneself, any day, cheek by jowl with the Princesse Mathilde, and to
+      whom it was not her duty to make advances since she was not 'of her
+      generation,' she felt bound to modify this air of dignity and reserve by
+      some non-committal remark which would justify her overture and would force
+      the Princess to engage in conversation; and so, when she reached her
+      cousin, Mme. de Gallardon, with a stern countenance and one hand thrust
+      out as though she were trying to 'force' a card, began with: "How is your
+      husband?" in the same anxious tone that she would have used if the Prince
+      had been seriously ill. The Princess, breaking into a laugh which was one
+      of her characteristics, and was intended at once to shew the rest of an
+      assembly that she was making fun of some one and also to enhance her own
+      beauty by concentrating her features around her animated lips and
+      sparkling eyes, answered: "Why; he's never been better in his life!" And
+      she went on laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Gallardon then drew herself up and, chilling her expression still
+      further, perhaps because she was still uneasy about the Prince's health,
+      said to her cousin:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oriane," (at once Mme. des Laumes looked with amused astonishment towards
+      an invisible third, whom she seemed to call to witness that she had never
+      authorised Mme. de Gallardon to use her Christian name) "I should be so
+      pleased if you would look in, just for a minute, to-morrow evening, to
+      hear a quintet, with the clarinet, by Mozart. I should like to have your
+      opinion of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed not so much to be issuing an invitation as to be asking favour,
+      and to want the Princess's opinion of the Mozart quintet just as though it
+      had been a dish invented by a new cook, whose talent it was most important
+      that an epicure should come to judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I know that quintet quite well. I can tell you now—that I adore
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know, my husband isn't at all well; it's his liver. He would like so
+      much to see you," Mme. de Gallardon resumed, making it now a corporal work
+      of charity for the Princess to appear at her party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Princess never liked to tell people that she would not go to their
+      houses. Every day she would write to express her regret at having been
+      kept away—by the sudden arrival of her husband's mother, by an
+      invitation from his brother, by the Opera, by some excursion to the
+      country—from some party to which she had never for a moment dreamed
+      of going. In this way she gave many people the satisfaction of feeling
+      that she was on intimate terms with them, that she would gladly have come
+      to their houses, and that she had been prevented from doing so only by
+      some princely occurrence which they were flattered to find competing with
+      their own humble entertainment. And then, as she belonged to that witty
+      'Guermantes set'—in which there survived something of the alert
+      mentality, stripped of all commonplace phrases and conventional
+      sentiments, which dated from Mérimée, and found its final expression in
+      the plays of Meilhac and Halévy—she adapted its formula so as to
+      suit even her social engagements, transposed it into the courtesy which
+      was always struggling to be positive and precise, to approximate itself to
+      the plain truth. She would never develop at any length to a hostess the
+      expression of her anxiety to be present at her party; she found it more
+      pleasant to disclose to her all the various little incidents on which it
+      would depend whether it was or was not possible for her to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Listen, and I'll explain," she began to Mme. de Gallardon. "To-morrow
+      evening I must go to a friend of mine, who has been pestering me to fix a
+      day for ages. If she takes us to the theatre afterwards, then I can't
+      possibly come to you, much as I should love to; but if we just stay in the
+      house, I know there won't be anyone else there, so I can slip away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell me, have you seen your friend M. Swann?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No! my precious Charles! I never knew he was here. Where is he? I must
+      catch his eye."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a funny thing that he should come to old Saint-Euverte's," Mme. de
+      Gallardon went on. "Oh, I know he's very clever," meaning by that 'very
+      cunning,' "but that makes no difference; fancy a Jew here, and she the
+      sister and sister-in-law of two Archbishops."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am ashamed to confess that I am not in the least shocked," said the
+      Princesse des Laumes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know he's a converted Jew, and all that, and his parents and
+      grandparents before him. But they do say that the converted ones are worse
+      about their religion than the practising ones, that it's all just a
+      pretence; is that true, d'you think?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can throw no light at all on the matter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pianist, who was 'down' to play two pieces by Chopin, after finishing
+      the Prelude had at once attacked a Polonaise. But once Mme. de Gallardon
+      had informed her cousin that Swann was in the room, Chopin himself might
+      have risen from the grave and played all his works in turn without Mme.
+      des Laumes's paying him the slightest attention. She belonged to that one
+      of the two divisions of the human race in which the untiring curiosity
+      which the other half feels about the people whom it does not know is
+      replaced by an unfailing interest in the people whom it does. As with many
+      women of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the presence, in any room in which
+      she might find herself, of another member of her set, even although she
+      had nothing in particular to say to him, would occupy her mind to the
+      exclusion of every other consideration. From that moment, in the hope that
+      Swann would catch sight of her, the Princess could do nothing but (like a
+      tame white mouse when a lump of sugar is put down before its nose and then
+      taken away) turn her face, in which were crowded a thousand signs of
+      intimate connivance, none of them with the least relevance to the
+      sentiment underlying Chopin's music, in the direction where Swann was,
+      and, if he moved, divert accordingly the course of her magnetic smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oriane, don't be angry with me," resumed Mme. de Gallardon, who could
+      never restrain herself from sacrificing her highest social ambitions, and
+      the hope that she might one day emerge into a light that would dazzle the
+      world, to the immediate and secret satisfaction of saying something
+      disagreeable, "people do say about your M. Swann that he's the sort of man
+      one can't have in the house; is that true?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, you, of all people, ought to know that it's true," replied the
+      Princesse des Laumes, "for you must have asked him a hundred times, and
+      he's never been to your house once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And leaving her cousin mortified afresh, she broke out again into a laugh
+      which scandalised everyone who was trying to listen to the music, but
+      attracted the attention of Mme. de Saint-Euverte, who had stayed, out of
+      politeness, near the piano, and caught sight of the Princess now for the
+      first time. Mme. de Saint-Euverte was all the more delighted to see Mme.
+      des Laumes, as she imagined her to be still at Guermantes, looking after
+      her father-in-law, who was ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Princess, you here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I tucked myself away in a corner, and I've been hearing such lovely
+      things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, you've been in the room quite a time?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, yes, quite a long time, which seemed very short; it was only long
+      because I couldn't see you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Saint-Euverte offered her own chair to the Princess, who declined
+      it with:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, please, no! Why should you? It doesn't matter in the least where I
+      sit." And deliberately picking out, so as the better to display the
+      simplicity of a really great lady, a low seat without a back: "There now,
+      that hassock, that's all I want. It will make me keep my back straight.
+      Oh! Good heavens, I'm making a noise again; they'll be telling you to have
+      me 'chucked out'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, the pianist having doubled his speed, the emotion of the
+      music-lovers was reaching its climax, a servant was handing refreshments
+      about on a salver, and was making the spoons rattle, and, as on every
+      other 'party-night', Mme. de Saint-Euverte was making signs to him, which
+      he never saw, to leave the room. A recent bride, who had been told that a
+      young woman ought never to appear bored, was smiling vigorously, trying to
+      catch her hostess's eye so as to flash a token of her gratitude for the
+      other's having 'thought of her' in connection with so delightful an
+      entertainment. And yet, although she remained more calm than Mme. de
+      Franquetot, it was not without some uneasiness that she followed the
+      flying fingers; what alarmed her being not the pianist's fate but the
+      piano's, on which a lighted candle, jumping at each <i>fortissimo</i>,
+      threatened, if not to set its shade on fire, at least to spill wax upon
+      the ebony. At last she could contain herself no longer, and, running up
+      the two steps of the platform on which the piano stood, flung herself on
+      the candle to adjust its sconce. But scarcely had her hand come within
+      reach of it when, on a final chord, the piece finished, and the pianist
+      rose to his feet. Nevertheless the bold initiative shewn by this young
+      woman and the moment of blushing confusion between her and the pianist
+      which resulted from it, produced an impression that was favourable on the
+      whole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you see what that girl did just now, Princess?" asked General de
+      Froberville, who had come up to Mme. des Laumes as her hostess left her
+      for a moment. "Odd, wasn't it? Is she one of the performers?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, she's a little Mme. de Cambremer," replied the Princess carelessly,
+      and then, with more animation: "I am only repeating what I heard just now,
+      myself; I haven't the faintest notion who said it, it was some one behind
+      me who said that they were neighbours of Mme. de Saint-Euverte in the
+      country, but I don't believe anyone knows them, really. They must be
+      'country cousins'! By the way, I don't know whether you're particularly
+      'well-up' in the brilliant society which we see before us, because I've no
+      idea who all these astonishing people can be. What do you suppose they do
+      with themselves when they're not at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's parties? She
+      must have ordered them in with the musicians and the chairs and the food.
+      'Universal providers,' you know. You must admit, they're rather splendid,
+      General. But can she really have the courage to hire the same 'supers'
+      every week? It isn't possible!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, but Cambremer is quite a good name; old, too," protested the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see no objection to its being old," the Princess answered dryly, "but
+      whatever else it is it's not euphonious," she went on, isolating the word
+      euphonious as though between inverted commas, a little affectation to
+      which the Guermantes set were addicted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You think not, eh! She's a regular little peach, though," said the
+      General, whose eyes never strayed from Mme. de Cambremer. "Don't you agree
+      with me, Princess?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She thrusts herself forward too much; I think, in so young a woman,
+      that's not very nice—for I don't suppose she's my generation,"
+      replied Mme. des Laumes (the last word being common, it appeared, to
+      Gallardon and Guermantes). And then, seeing that M. de Froberville was
+      still gazing at Mme. de Cambremer, she added, half out of malice towards
+      the lady, half wishing to oblige the General: "Not very nice... for her
+      husband! I am sorry that I do not know her, since she seems to attract you
+      so much; I might have introduced you to her," said the Princess, who, if
+      she had known the young woman, would most probably have done nothing of
+      the sort. "And now I must say good night, because one of my friends is
+      having a birthday party, and I must go and wish her many happy returns,"
+      she explained, modestly and with truth, reducing the fashionable gathering
+      to which she was going to the simple proportions of a ceremony which would
+      be boring in the extreme, but at which she was obliged to be present, and
+      there would be something touching about her appearance. "Besides, I must
+      pick up Basin. While I've been here, he's gone to see those friends of his—you
+      know them too, I'm sure,—who are called after a bridge—oh,
+      yes, the Iénas."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was a battle before it was a bridge, Princess; it was a victory!" said
+      the General. "I mean to say, to an old soldier like me," he went on,
+      wiping his monocle and replacing it, as though he were laying a fresh
+      dressing on the raw wound underneath, while the Princess instinctively
+      looked away, "that Empire nobility, well, of course, it's not the same
+      thing, but, after all, taking it as it is, it's very fine of its kind;
+      they were people who really did fight like heroes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I have the deepest respect for heroes," the Princess assented, though
+      with a faint trace of irony. "If I don't go with Basin to see this
+      Princesse d'Iéna, it isn't for that, at all; it's simply because I don't
+      know them. Basin knows them; he worships them. Oh, no, it's not what you
+      think; he's not in love with her. I've nothing to set my face against!
+      Besides, what good has it ever done when I have set my face against them?"
+      she queried sadly, for the whole world knew that, ever since the day upon
+      which the Prince des Laumes had married his fascinating cousin, he had
+      been consistently unfaithful to her. "Anyhow, it isn't that at all.
+      They're people he has known for ever so long, they do him very well, and
+      that suits me down to the ground. But I must tell you what he's told me
+      about their house; it's quite enough. Can you imagine it, all their
+      furniture is 'Empire'!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, my dear Princess, that's only natural; it belonged to their
+      grandparents."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't quite say it didn't, but that doesn't make it any less ugly. I
+      quite understand that people can't always have nice things, but at least
+      they needn't have things that are merely grotesque. What do you say? I can
+      think of nothing more devastating, more utterly smug than that hideous
+      style—cabinets covered all over with swans' heads, like bath-taps!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I believe, all the same, that they've got some lovely things; why,
+      they must have that famous mosaic table on which the Treaty of..."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, I don't deny, they may have things that are interesting enough from
+      the historic point of view. But things like that can't, ever, be beautiful
+      ... because they're simply horrible! I've got things like that myself,
+      that came to Basin from the Montesquious. Only, they're up in the attics
+      at Guermantes, where nobody ever sees them. But, after all, that's not the
+      point, I would fly to see them, with Basin; I would even go to see them
+      among all their sphinxes and brasses, if I knew them, but—I don't
+      know them! D'you know, I was always taught, when I was a little girl, that
+      it was not polite to call on people one didn't know." She assumed a tone
+      of childish gravity. "And so I am just doing what I was taught to do.
+      Can't you see those good people, with a totally strange woman bursting
+      into their house? Why, I might get a most hostile reception."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she coquettishly enhanced the charm of the smile which the idea had
+      brought to her lips, by giving to her blue eyes, which were fixed on the
+      General, a gentle, dreamy expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Princess, you know that they'd be simply wild with joy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, why?" she inquired, with the utmost vivacity, either so as to seem
+      unaware that it would be because she was one of the first ladies in
+      France, or so as to have the pleasure of hearing the General tell her so.
+      "Why? How can you tell? Perhaps they would think it the most unpleasant
+      thing that could possibly happen. I know nothing about them, but if
+      they're anything like me, I find it quite boring enough to see the people
+      I do know; I'm sure if I had to see people I didn't know as well, even if
+      they had 'fought like heroes,' I should go stark mad. Besides, except when
+      it's an old friend like you, whom one knows quite apart from that, I'm not
+      sure that 'heroism' takes one very far in society. It's often quite boring
+      enough to have to give a dinner-party, but if one had to offer one's arm
+      to Spartacus, to let him take one down...! Really, no; it would never be
+      Vercingetorix I should send for, to make a fourteenth. I feel sure, I
+      should keep him for really big 'crushes.' And as I never give any..."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! Princess, it's easy to see you're not a Guermantes for nothing. You
+      have your share of it, all right, the 'wit of the Guermantes'!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But people always talk about the wit of the Guermantes; I never could
+      make out why. Do you really know any others who have it?" she rallied him,
+      with a rippling flow of laughter, her features concentrated, yoked to the
+      service of her animation, her eyes sparkling, blazing with a radiant
+      sunshine of gaiety which could be kindled only by such speeches—even
+      if the Princess had to make them herself—as were in praise of her wit
+      or of her beauty. "Look, there's Swann talking to your Cambremer woman;
+      over there, beside old Saint-Euverte, don't you see him? Ask him to
+      introduce you. But hurry up, he seems to be just going!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you notice how dreadfully ill he's looking?" asked the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My precious Charles? Ah, he's coming at last; I was beginning to think he
+      didn't want to see me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann was extremely fond of the Princesse des Laumes, and the sight of her
+      recalled to him Guermantes, a property close to Combray, and all that
+      country which he so dearly loved and had ceased to visit, so as not to be
+      separated from Odette. Slipping into the manner, half-artistic,
+      half-amorous—with which he could always manage to amuse the Princess—a
+      manner which came to him quite naturally whenever he dipped for a moment
+      into the old social atmosphere, and wishing also to express in words, for
+      his own satisfaction, the longing that he felt for the country:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah!" he exclaimed, or rather intoned, in such a way as to be audible at
+      once to Mme. de Saint-Euverte, to whom he spoke, and to Mme. des Laumes,
+      for whom he was speaking, "Behold our charming Princess! See, she has come
+      up on purpose from Guermantes to hear Saint Francis preach to the birds,
+      and has only just had time, like a dear little tit-mouse, to go and pick a
+      few little hips and haws and put them in her hair; there are even some
+      drops of dew upon them still, a little of the hoar-frost which must be
+      making the Duchess, down there, shiver. It is very pretty indeed, my dear
+      Princess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! The Princess came up on purpose from Guermantes? But that's too
+      wonderful! I never knew; I'm quite bewildered," Mme. de Saint-Euverte
+      protested with quaint simplicity, being but little accustomed to Swann's
+      way of speaking. And then, examining the Princess's headdress, "Why,
+      you're quite right; it is copied from... what shall I say, not chestnuts,
+      no,—oh, it's a delightful idea, but how can the Princess have known
+      what was going to be on my programme? The musicians didn't tell me, even."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann, who was accustomed, when he was with a woman whom he had kept up
+      the habit of addressing in terms of gallantry, to pay her delicate
+      compliments which most other people would not and need not understand, did
+      not condescend to explain to Mme. de Saint-Euverte that he had been
+      speaking metaphorically. As for the Princess, she was in fits of laughter,
+      both because Swann's wit was highly appreciated by her set, and because
+      she could never hear a compliment addressed to herself without finding it
+      exquisitely subtle and irresistibly amusing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed! I'm delighted, Charles, if my little hips and haws meet with your
+      approval. But tell me, why did you bow to that Cambremer person, are you
+      also her neighbour in the country?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Saint-Euverte, seeing that the Princess seemed quite happy talking
+      to Swann, had drifted away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you are, yourself, Princess!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I! Why, they must have 'countries' everywhere, those creatures! Don't I
+      wish I had!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, not the Cambremers; her own people. She was a Legrandin, and used to
+      come to Combray. I don't know whether you are aware that you are Comtesse
+      de Combray, and that the Chapter owes you a due."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know what the Chapter owes me, but I do know that I'm 'touched'
+      for a hundred francs, every year, by the Curé, which is a due that I could
+      very well do without. But surely these Cambremers have rather a startling
+      name. It ends just in time, but it ends badly!" she said with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It begins no better." Swann took the point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; that double abbreviation!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some one very angry and very proper who didn't dare to finish the first
+      word."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But since he couldn't stop himself beginning the second, he'd have done
+      better to finish the first and be done with it. We are indulging in the
+      most refined form of humour, my dear Charles, in the very best of taste—but
+      how tiresome it is that I never see you now," she went on in a coaxing
+      tone, "I do so love talking to you. Just imagine, I could not make that
+      idiot Froberville see that there was anything funny about the name
+      Cambremer. Do agree that life is a dreadful business. It's only when I see
+      you that I stop feeling bored."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which was probably not true. But Swann and the Princess had the same way
+      of looking at the little things of life—the effect, if not the cause
+      of which was a close analogy between their modes of expression and even of
+      pronunciation. This similarity was not striking because no two things
+      could have been more unlike than their voices. But if one took the trouble
+      to imagine Swann's utterances divested of the sonority that enwrapped
+      them, of the moustache from under which they emerged, one found that they
+      were the same phrases, the same inflexions, that they had the 'tone' of
+      the Guermantes set. On important matters, Swann and the Princess had not
+      an idea in common. But since Swann had become so melancholy, and was
+      always in that trembling condition which precedes a flood of tears, he had
+      the same need to speak about his grief that a murderer has to tell some
+      one about his crime. And when he heard the Princess say that life was a
+      dreadful business, he felt as much comforted as if she had spoken to him
+      of Odette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, life is a dreadful business! We must meet more often, my dear
+      friend. What is so nice about you is that you are not cheerful. We could
+      spend a most pleasant evening together."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm sure we could; why not come down to Guermantes? My mother-in-law
+      would be wild with joy. It's supposed to be very ugly down there, but I
+      must say, I find the neighborhood not at all unattractive; I have a horror
+      of 'picturesque spots'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it well, it's delightful!" replied Swann. "It's almost too
+      beautiful, too much alive for me just at present; it's a country to be
+      happy in. It's perhaps because I have lived there, but things there speak
+      to me so. As soon as a breath of wind gets up, and the cornfields begin to
+      stir, I feel that some one is going to appear suddenly, that I am going to
+      hear some news; and those little houses by the water's edge... I should be
+      quite wretched!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! my dearest Charles, do take care; there's that appalling Rampillon
+      woman; she's seen me; hide me somewhere, do tell me again, quickly, what
+      it was that happened to her; I get so mixed up; she's just married off her
+      daughter, or her lover (I never can remember),—perhaps both—to
+      each other! Oh, no, I remember now, she's been dropped by her Prince...
+      Pretend to be talking, so that the poor old Berenice sha'n't come and
+      invite me to dinner. Anyhow, I'm going. Listen, my dearest Charles, now
+      that I have seen you, once in a blue moon, won't you let me carry you off
+      and take you to the Princesse de Parme's, who would be so pleased to see
+      you (you know), and Basin too, for that matter; he's meeting me there. If
+      one didn't get news of you, sometimes, from Mémé... Remember, I never see
+      you at all now!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann declined. Having told M. de Charlus that, on leaving Mme. de
+      Saint-Euverte's, he would go straight home, he did not care to run the
+      risk, by going on now to the Princesse de Parme's, of missing a message
+      which he had, all the time, been hoping to see brought in to him by one of
+      the footmen, during the party, and which he was perhaps going to find left
+      with his own porter, at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor Swann," said Mme. des Laumes that night to her husband; "he is
+      always charming, but he does look so dreadfully unhappy. You will see for
+      yourself, for he has promised to dine with us one of these days. I do feel
+      that it's really absurd that a man of his intelligence should let himself
+      be made to suffer by a creature of that kind, who isn't even interesting,
+      for they tell me, she's an absolute idiot!" she concluded with the wisdom
+      invariably shewn by people who, not being in love themselves, feel that a
+      clever man ought to be unhappy only about such persons as are worth his
+      while; which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend
+      to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the
+      common bacillus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann now wished to go home, but, just as he was making his escape,
+      General de Froberville caught him and asked for an introduction to Mme. de
+      Cambremer, and he was obliged to go back into the room to look for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I say, Swann, I'd rather be married to that little woman than killed by
+      savages, what do you say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words 'killed by savages' pierced Swann's aching heart; and at once he
+      felt the need of continuing the conversation. "Ah!" he began, "some fine
+      lives have been lost in that way... There was, you remember, that explorer
+      whose remains Dumont d'Urville brought back, La Pérouse..." (and he was at
+      once happy again, as though he had named Odette). "He was a fine
+      character, and interests me very much, does La Pérouse," he ended sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, yes, of course, La Pérouse," said the General. "It's quite a
+      well-known name. There's a street called that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know anyone in the Rue La Pérouse?" asked Swann excitedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only Mme. de Chanlivault, the sister of that good fellow Chaussepierre.
+      She gave a most amusing theatre-party the other evening. That's a house
+      that will be really smart some day, you'll see!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, so she lives in the Rue La Pérouse. It's attractive; I like that
+      street; it's so sombre."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed it isn't. You can't have been in it for a long time; it's not at
+      all sombre now; they're beginning to build all round there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Swann did finally introduce M. de Froberville to the young Mme. de
+      Cambremer, since it was the first time that she had heard the General's
+      name, she hastily outlined upon her lips the smile of joy and surprise
+      with which she would have greeted him if she had never, in the whole of
+      her life, heard anything else; for, as she did not yet know all the
+      friends of her new family, whenever anyone was presented to her, she
+      assumed that he must be one of them, and thinking that she would shew her
+      tact by appearing to have heard 'such a lot about him' since her marriage,
+      she would hold out her hand with an air of hesitation which was meant as a
+      proof at once of the inculcated reserve which she had to overcome and of
+      the spontaneous friendliness which successfully overcame it. And so her
+      parents-in-law, whom she still regarded as the most eminent pair in
+      France, declared that she was an angel; all the more that they preferred
+      to appear, in marrying her to their son, to have yielded to the attraction
+      rather of her natural charm than of her considerable fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's easy to see that you're a musician heart and soul, Madame," said the
+      General, alluding to the incident of the candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the concert had begun again, and Swann saw that he could not now
+      go before the end of the new number. He suffered greatly from being shut
+      up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded him all
+      the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love, incapable, had they
+      known of it, of taking any interest, or of doing more than smile at it as
+      at some childish joke, or deplore it as an act of insanity, they made it
+      appear to him in the aspect of a subjective state which existed for
+      himself alone, whose reality there was nothing external to confirm; he
+      suffered overwhelmingly, to the point at which even the sound of the
+      instruments made him want to cry, from having to prolong his exile in this
+      place to which Odette would never come, in which no one, nothing was aware
+      of her existence, from which she was entirely absent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition tore
+      him with such anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart. What
+      had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes, on
+      which it rested as though expecting something, an expectancy which it
+      prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes, in the exaltation with
+      which it already saw the expected object approaching, and with a desperate
+      effort to continue until its arrival, to welcome it before itself expired,
+      to keep the way open for a moment longer, with all its remaining strength,
+      that the stranger might enter in, as one holds a door open that would
+      otherwise automatically close. And before Swann had had time to understand
+      what was happening, to think: "It is the little phrase from Vinteuil's
+      sonata. I mustn't listen!", all his memories of the days when Odette had
+      been in love with him, which he had succeeded, up till that evening, in
+      keeping invisible in the depths of his being, deceived by this sudden
+      reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they supposed, had dawned
+      again, had awakened from their slumber, had taken wing and risen to sing
+      maddeningly in his ears, without pity for his present desolation, the
+      forgotten strains of happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In place of the abstract expressions "the time when I was happy," "the
+      time when I was loved," which he had often used until then, and without
+      much suffering, for his intelligence had not embodied in them anything of
+      the past save fictitious extracts which preserved none of the reality, he
+      now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the peculiar, volatile
+      essence of that lost happiness; he could see it all; the snowy, curled
+      petals of the chrysanthemum which she had tossed after him into his
+      carriage, which he had kept pressed to his lips, the address 'Maison
+      Dorée,' embossed on the note-paper on which he had read "My hand trembles
+      so as I write to you," the frowning contraction of her eyebrows when she
+      said pleadingly: "You won't let it be very long before you send for me?";
+      he could smell the heated iron of the barber whom he used to have in to
+      singe his hair while Loredan went to fetch the little working girl; could
+      feel the torrents of rain which fell so often that spring, the ice-cold
+      homeward drive in his victoria, by moonlight; all the network of mental
+      habits, of seasonable impressions, of sensory reactions, which had
+      extended over a series of weeks its uniform meshes, by which his body now
+      found itself inextricably held. At that time he had been satisfying a
+      sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures of those people who
+      lived for love alone. He had supposed that he could stop there, that he
+      would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also; how small a thing the
+      actual charm of Odette was now in comparison with that formidable terror
+      which extended it like a cloudy halo all around her, that enormous anguish
+      of not knowing at every hour of the day and night what she had been doing,
+      of not possessing her wholly, at all times and in all places! Alas, he
+      recalled the accents in which she had exclaimed: "But I can see you at any
+      time; I am always free!"—she, who was never free now; the interest,
+      the curiosity that she had shewn in his life, her passionate desire that
+      he should do her the favour—of which it was he who, then, had felt
+      suspicious, as of a possibly tedious waste of his time and disturbance of
+      his arrangements—of granting her access to his study; how she had
+      been obliged to beg that he would let her take him to the Verdurins'; and,
+      when he did allow her to come to him once a month, how she had first,
+      before he would let himself be swayed, had to repeat what a joy it would
+      be to her, that custom of their seeing each other daily, for which she had
+      longed at a time when to him it had seemed only a tiresome distraction,
+      for which, since that time, she had conceived a distaste and had
+      definitely broken herself of it, while it had become for him so
+      insatiable, so dolorous a need. Little had he suspected how truly he spoke
+      when, on their third meeting, as she repeated: "But why don't you let me
+      come to you oftener?" he had told her, laughing, and in a vein of
+      gallantry, that it was for fear of forming a hopeless passion. Now, alas,
+      it still happened at times that she wrote to him from a restaurant or
+      hotel, on paper which bore a printed address, but printed in letters of
+      fire that seared his heart. "Written from the Hôtel Vouillemont. What on
+      earth can she have gone there for? With whom? What happened there?" He
+      remembered the gas-jets that were being extinguished along the Boulevard
+      des Italiens when he had met her, when all hope was gone among the errant
+      shades upon that night which had seemed to him almost supernatural and
+      which now (that night of a period when he had not even to ask himself
+      whether he would be annoying her by looking for her and by finding her, so
+      certain was he that she knew no greater happiness than to see him and to
+      let him take her home) belonged indeed to a mysterious world to which one
+      never may return again once its doors are closed. And Swann could
+      distinguish, standing, motionless, before that scene of happiness in which
+      it lived again, a wretched figure which filled him with such pity, because
+      he did not at first recognise who it was, that he must lower his head,
+      lest anyone should observe that his eyes were filled with tears. It was
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had realised this, his pity ceased; he was jealous, now, of that
+      other self whom she had loved, he was jealous of those men of whom he had
+      so often said, without much suffering: "Perhaps she's in love with them,"
+      now that he had exchanged the vague idea of loving, in which there is no
+      love, for the petals of the chrysanthemum and the 'letter-heading' of the
+      Maison d'Or; for they were full of love. And then, his anguish becoming
+      too keen, he passed his hand over his forehead, let the monocle drop from
+      his eye, and wiped its glass. And doubtless, if he had caught sight of
+      himself at that moment, he would have added to the collection of the
+      monocles which he had already identified, this one which he removed, like
+      an importunate, worrying thought, from his head, while from its misty
+      surface, with his handkerchief, he sought to obliterate his cares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are in the music of the violin—if one does not see the
+      instrument itself, and so cannot relate what one hears to its form, which
+      modifies the fullness of the sound—accents which are so closely akin
+      to those of certain contralto voices, that one has the illusion that a
+      singer has taken her place amid the orchestra. One raises one's eyes; one
+      sees only the wooden case, magical as a Chinese box; but, at moments, one
+      is still tricked by the deceiving appeal of the Siren; at times, too, one
+      believes that one is listening to a captive spirit, struggling in the
+      darkness of its masterful box, a box quivering with enchantment, like a
+      devil immersed in a stoup of holy water; sometimes, again, it is in the
+      air, at large, like a pure and supernatural creature that reveals to the
+      ear, as it passes, its invisible message.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As though the musicians were not nearly so much playing the little phrase
+      as performing the rites on which it insisted before it would consent to
+      appear, as proceeding to utter the incantations necessary to procure, and
+      to prolong for a few moments, the miracle of its apparition, Swann, who
+      was no more able now to see it than if it had belonged to a world of
+      ultra-violet light, who experienced something like the refreshing sense of
+      a metamorphosis in the momentary blindness with which he had been struck
+      as he approached it, Swann felt that it was present, like a protective
+      goddess, a confidant of his love, who, so as to be able to come to him
+      through the crowd, and to draw him aside to speak to him, had disguised
+      herself in this sweeping cloak of sound. And as she passed him, light,
+      soothing, as softly murmured as the perfume of a flower, telling him what
+      she had to say, every word of which he closely scanned, sorry to see them
+      fly away so fast, he made involuntarily with his lips the motion of
+      kissing, as it went by him, the harmonious, fleeting form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt that he was no longer in exile and alone since she, who addressed
+      herself to him, spoke to him in a whisper of Odette. For he had no longer,
+      as of old, the impression that Odette and he were not known to the little
+      phrase. Had it not often been the witness of their joys? True that, as
+      often, it had warned him of their frailty. And indeed, whereas, in that
+      distant time, he had divined an element of suffering in its smile, in its
+      limpid and disillusioned intonation, to-night he found there rather the
+      charm of a resignation that was almost gay. Of those sorrows, of which the
+      little phrase had spoken to him then, which he had seen it—without
+      his being touched by them himself—carry past him, smiling, on its
+      sinuous and rapid course, of those sorrows which were now become his own,
+      without his having any hope of being, ever, delivered from them, it seemed
+      to say to him, as once it had said of his happiness: "What does all that
+      matter; it is all nothing." And Swann's thoughts were borne for the first
+      time on a wave of pity and tenderness towards that Vinteuil, towards that
+      unknown, exalted brother who also must have suffered so greatly; what
+      could his life have been? From the depths of what well of sorrow could he
+      have drawn that god-like strength, that unlimited power of creation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When it was the little phrase that spoke to him of the vanity of his
+      sufferings, Swann found a sweetness in that very wisdom which, but a
+      little while back, had seemed to him intolerable when he thought that he
+      could read it on the faces of indifferent strangers, who would regard his
+      love as a digression that was without importance. 'Twas because the little
+      phrase, unlike them, whatever opinion it might hold on the short duration
+      of these states of the soul, saw in them something not, as everyone else
+      saw, less serious than the events of everyday life, but, on the contrary,
+      so far superior to everyday life as to be alone worthy of the trouble of
+      expressing it. Those graces of an intimate sorrow, 'twas them that the
+      phrase endeavoured to imitate, to create anew; and even their essence, for
+      all that it consists in being incommunicable and in appearing trivial to
+      everyone save him who has experience of them, the little phrase had
+      captured, had rendered visible. So much so that it made their value be
+      confessed, their divine sweetness be tasted by all those same onlookers—provided
+      only that they were in any sense musical—who, the next moment, would
+      ignore, would disown them in real life, in every individual love that came
+      into being beneath their eyes. Doubtless the form in which it had codified
+      those graces could not be analysed into any logical elements. But ever
+      since, more than a year before, discovering to him many of the riches of
+      his own soul, the love of music had been born, and for a time at least had
+      dwelt in him, Swann had regarded musical <i>motifs</i> as actual ideas, of
+      another world, of another order, ideas veiled in shadows, unknown,
+      impenetrable by the human mind, which none the less were perfectly
+      distinct one from another, unequal among themselves in value and in
+      significance. When, after that first evening at the Verdurins', he had had
+      the little phrase played over to him again, and had sought to disentangle
+      from his confused impressions how it was that, like a perfume or a caress,
+      it swept over and enveloped him, he had observed that it was to the
+      closeness of the intervals between the five notes which composed it and to
+      the constant repetition of two of them that was due that impression of a
+      frigid, a contracted sweetness; but in reality he knew that he was basing
+      this conclusion not upon the phrase itself, but merely upon certain
+      equivalents, substituted (for his mind's convenience) for the mysterious
+      entity of which he had become aware, before ever he knew the Verdurins, at
+      that earlier party, when for the first time he had heard the sonata
+      played. He knew that his memory of the piano falsified still further the
+      perspective in which he saw the music, that the field open to the musician
+      is not a miserable stave of seven notes, but an immeasurable keyboard
+      (still, almost all of it, unknown), on which, here and there only,
+      separated by the gross darkness of its unexplored tracts, some few among
+      the millions of keys, keys of tenderness, of passion, of courage, of
+      serenity, which compose it, each one differing from all the rest as one
+      universe differs from another, have been discovered by certain great
+      artists who do us the service, when they awaken in us the emotion
+      corresponding to the theme which they have found, of shewing us what
+      richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to us, in that great black
+      impenetrable night, discouraging exploration, of our soul, which we have
+      been content to regard as valueless and waste and void. Vinteuil had been
+      one of those musicians. In his little phrase, albeit it presented to the
+      mind's eye a clouded surface, there was contained, one felt, a matter so
+      consistent, so explicit, to which the phrase gave so new, so original a
+      force, that those who had once heard it preserved the memory of it in the
+      treasure-chamber of their minds. Swann would repair to it as to a
+      conception of love and happiness, of which at once he knew as well in what
+      respects it was peculiar as he would know of the <i>Princesse de Clèves</i>,
+      or of <i>René</i>, should either of those titles occur to him. Even when
+      he was not thinking of the little phrase, it existed, latent, in his mind,
+      in the same way as certain other conceptions without material equivalent,
+      such as our notions of light, of sound, of perspective, of bodily desire,
+      the rich possessions wherewith our inner temple is diversified and
+      adorned. Perhaps we shall lose them, perhaps they will be obliterated, if
+      we return to nothing in the dust. But so long as we are alive, we can no
+      more bring ourselves to a state in which we shall not have known them than
+      we can with regard to any material object, than we can, for example, doubt
+      the luminosity of a lamp that has just been lighted, in view of the
+      changed aspect of everything in the room, from which has vanished even the
+      memory of the darkness. In that way Vinteuil's phrase, like some theme,
+      say, in <i>Tristan</i>, which represents to us also a certain acquisition
+      of sentiment, has espoused our mortal state, had endued a vesture of
+      humanity that was affecting enough. Its destiny was linked, for the
+      future, with that of the human soul, of which it was one of the special,
+      the most distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being that is the true
+      state, and all our dream of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel
+      that it must be that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist
+      in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have
+      for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our
+      fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less
+      inglorious, perhaps even less certain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Swann was not mistaken in believing that the phrase of the sonata did,
+      really, exist. Human as it was from this point of view, it belonged, none
+      the less, to an order of supernatural creatures whom we have never seen,
+      but whom, in spite of that, we recognise and acclaim with rapture when
+      some explorer of the unseen contrives to coax one forth, to bring it down
+      from that divine world to which he has access to shine for a brief moment
+      in the firmament of ours. This was what Vinteuil had done for the little
+      phrase. Swann felt that the composer had been content (with the musical
+      instruments at his disposal) to draw aside its veil, to make it visible,
+      following and respecting its outlines with a hand so loving, so prudent,
+      so delicate and so sure, that the sound altered at every moment, blunting
+      itself to indicate a shadow, springing back into life when it must follow
+      the curve of some more bold projection. And one proof that Swann was not
+      mistaken when he believed in the real existence of this phrase, was that
+      anyone with an ear at all delicate for music would at once have detected
+      the imposture had Vinteuil, endowed with less power to see and to render
+      its forms, sought to dissemble (by adding a line, here and there, of his
+      own invention) the dimness of his vision or the feebleness of his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The phrase had disappeared. Swann knew that it would come again at the end
+      of the last movement, after a long passage which Mme. Verdurin's pianist
+      always 'skipped.' There were in this passage some admirable ideas which
+      Swann had not distinguished on first hearing the sonata, and which he now
+      perceived, as if they had, in the cloakroom of his memory, divested
+      themselves of their uniform disguise of novelty. Swann listened to all the
+      scattered themes which entered into the composition of the phrase, as its
+      premises enter into the inevitable conclusion of a syllogism; he was
+      assisting at the mystery of its birth. "Audacity," he exclaimed to
+      himself, "as inspired, perhaps, as a Lavoisier's or an Ampere's, the
+      audacity of a Vinteuil making experiment, discovering the secret laws that
+      govern an unknown force, driving across a region unexplored towards the
+      one possible goal the invisible team in which he has placed his trust and
+      which he never may discern!" How charming the dialogue which Swann now
+      heard between piano and violin, at the beginning of the last passage. The
+      suppression of human speech, so far from letting fancy reign there
+      uncontrolled (as one might have thought), had eliminated it altogether.
+      Never was spoken language of such inflexible necessity, never had it known
+      questions so pertinent, such obvious replies. At first the piano
+      complained alone, like a bird deserted by its mate; the violin heard and
+      answered it, as from a neighbouring tree. It was as at the first beginning
+      of the world, as if there were not yet but these twain upon the earth, or
+      rather in this world closed against all the rest, so fashioned by the
+      logic of its creator that in it there should never be any but themselves;
+      the world of this sonata. Was it a bird, was it the soul, not yet made
+      perfect, of the little phrase, was it a fairy, invisibly somewhere
+      lamenting, whose plaint the piano heard and tenderly repeated? Its cries
+      were so sudden that the violinist must snatch up his bow and race to catch
+      them as they came. Marvellous bird! The violinist seemed to wish to charm,
+      to tame, to woo, to win it. Already it had passed into his soul, already
+      the little phrase which it evoked shook like a medium's the body of the
+      violinist, 'possessed' indeed. Swann knew that the phrase was going to
+      speak to him once again. And his personality was now so divided that the
+      strain of waiting for the imminent moment when he would find himself face
+      to face, once more, with the phrase, convulsed him in one of those sobs
+      which a fine line of poetry or a piece of alarming news will wring from
+      us, not when we are alone, but when we repeat one or the other to a
+      friend, in whom we see ourselves reflected, like a third person, whose
+      probable emotion softens him. It reappeared, but this time to remain
+      poised in the air, and to sport there for a moment only, as though
+      immobile, and shortly to expire. And so Swann lost nothing of the precious
+      time for which it lingered. It was still there, like an iridescent bubble
+      that floats for a while unbroken. As a rainbow, when its brightness fades,
+      seems to subside, then soars again and, before it is extinguished, is
+      glorified with greater splendour than it has ever shewn; so to the two
+      colours which the phrase had hitherto allowed to appear it added others
+      now, chords shot with every hue in the prism, and made them sing. Swann
+      dared not move, and would have liked to compel all the other people in the
+      room to remain still also, as if the slightest movement might embarrass
+      the magic presence, supernatural, delicious, frail, that would so easily
+      vanish. But no one, as it happened, dreamed of speaking. The ineffable
+      utterance of one solitary man, absent, perhaps dead (Swann did not know
+      whether Vinteuil were still alive), breathed out above the rites of those
+      two hierophants, sufficed to arrest the attention of three hundred minds,
+      and made of that stage on which a soul was thus called into being one of
+      the noblest altars on which a supernatural ceremony could be performed. It
+      followed that, when the phrase at last was finished, and only its
+      fragmentary echoes floated among the subsequent themes which had already
+      taken its place, if Swann at first was annoyed to see the Comtesse de
+      Monteriender, famed for her imbecilities, lean over towards him to confide
+      in him her impressions, before even the sonata had come to an end; he
+      could not refrain from smiling, and perhaps also found an underlying
+      sense, which she was incapable of perceiving, in the words that she used.
+      Dazzled by the virtuosity of the performers, the Comtesse exclaimed to
+      Swann: "It's astonishing! I have never seen anything to beat it..." But a
+      scrupulous regard for accuracy making her correct her first assertion, she
+      added the reservation: "anything to beat it... since the table-turning!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that evening, Swann understood that the feeling which Odette had once
+      had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would not be
+      realised now. And the days on which, by a lucky chance, she had once more
+      shewn herself kind and loving to him, or if she had paid him any
+      attention, he recorded those apparent and misleading signs of a slight
+      movement on her part towards him with the same tender and sceptical
+      solicitude, the desperate joy that people reveal who, when they are
+      nursing a friend in the last days of an incurable malady, relate, as
+      significant facts of infinite value: "Yesterday he went through his
+      accounts himself, and actually corrected a mistake that we had made in
+      adding them up; he ate an egg to-day and seemed quite to enjoy it, if he
+      digests it properly we shall try him with a cutlet to-morrow,"—although
+      they themselves know that these things are meaningless on the eve of an
+      inevitable death. No doubt Swann was assured that if he had now been
+      living at a distance from Odette he would gradually have lost all interest
+      in her, so that he would have been glad to learn that she was leaving
+      Paris for ever; he would have had the courage to remain there; but he had
+      not the courage to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had often thought of going. Now that he was once again at work upon his
+      essay on Vermeer, he wanted to return, for a few days at least, to The
+      Hague, to Dresden, to Brunswick. He was certain that a 'Toilet of Diana'
+      which had been acquired by the Mauritshuis at the Goldschmidt sale as a
+      Nicholas Maes was in reality a Vermeer. And he would have liked to be able
+      to examine the picture on the spot, so as to strengthen his conviction.
+      But to leave Paris while Odette was there, and even when she was not there—for
+      in strange places where our sensations have not been numbed by habit, we
+      refresh, we revive an old pain—was for him so cruel a project that
+      he felt himself to be capable of entertaining it incessantly in his mind
+      only because he knew himself to be resolute in his determination never to
+      put it into effect. But it would happen that, while he was asleep, the
+      intention to travel would reawaken in him (without his remembering that
+      this particular tour was impossible) and would be realised. One night he
+      dreamed that he was going away for a year; leaning from the window of the
+      train towards a young man on the platform who wept as he bade him
+      farewell, he was seeking to persuade this young man to come away also. The
+      train began to move; he awoke in alarm, and remembered that he was not
+      going away, that he would see Odette that evening, and next day and almost
+      every day. And then, being still deeply moved by his dream, he would thank
+      heaven for those special circumstances which made him independent, thanks
+      to which he could remain in Odette's vicinity, and could even succeed in
+      making her allow him to see her sometimes; and, counting over the list of
+      his advantages: his social position—his fortune, from which she
+      stood too often in need of assistance not to shrink from the prospect of a
+      definite rupture (having even, so people said, an ulterior plan of getting
+      him to marry her)—his friendship with M. de Charlus, which, it must
+      be confessed, had never won him any very great favour from Odette, but
+      which gave him the pleasant feeling that she was always hearing
+      complimentary things said about him by this common friend for whom she had
+      so great an esteem—and even his own intelligence, the whole of which
+      he employed in weaving, every day, a fresh plot which would make his
+      presence, if not agreeable, at any rate necessary to Odette—he
+      thought of what might have happened to him if all these advantages had
+      been lacking, he thought that, if he had been, like so many other men,
+      poor and humble, without resources, forced to undertake any task that
+      might be offered to him, or tied down by parents or by a wife, he might
+      have been obliged to part from Odette, that that dream, the terror of
+      which was still so recent, might well have been true; and he said to
+      himself: "People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy
+      as they think they are." But he reflected that this existence had lasted
+      already for several years, that all that he could now hope for was that it
+      should last for ever, that he would sacrifice his work, his pleasures, his
+      friends, in fact the whole of his life to the daily expectation of a
+      meeting which, when it occurred, would bring him no happiness; and he
+      asked himself whether he was not mistaken, whether the circumstances that
+      had favoured their relations and had prevented a final rupture had not
+      done a disservice to his career, whether the outcome to be desired was not
+      that as to which he rejoiced that it happened only in dreams—his own
+      departure; and he said to himself that people did not know when they were
+      unhappy, that they were never so happy as they supposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes he hoped that she would die, painlessly, in some accident, she
+      who was out of doors in the streets, crossing busy thoroughfares, from
+      morning to night. And as she always returned safe and sound, he marvelled
+      at the strength, at the suppleness of the human body, which was able
+      continually to hold in check, to outwit all the perils that environed it
+      (which to Swann seemed innumerable, since his own secret desire had strewn
+      them in her path), and so allowed its occupant, the soul, to abandon
+      itself, day after day, and almost with impunity, to its career of
+      mendacity, to the pursuit of pleasure. And Swann felt a very cordial
+      sympathy with that Mahomet II whose portrait by Bellini he admired, who,
+      on finding that he had fallen madly in love with one of his wives, stabbed
+      her, in order, as his Venetian biographer artlessly relates, to recover
+      his spiritual freedom. Then he would be ashamed of thinking thus only of
+      himself, and his own sufferings would seem to deserve no pity now that he
+      himself was disposing so cheaply of Odette's very life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since he was unable to separate himself from her without a subsequent
+      return, if at least he had seen her continuously and without separations
+      his grief would ultimately have been assuaged, and his love would,
+      perhaps, have died. And from the moment when she did not wish to leave
+      Paris for ever he had hoped that she would never go. As he knew that her
+      one prolonged absence, every year, was in August and September, he had
+      abundant opportunity, several months in advance, to dissociate from it the
+      grim picture of her absence throughout Eternity which was lodged in him by
+      anticipation, and which, consisting of days closely akin to the days
+      through which he was then passing, floated in a cold transparency in his
+      mind, which it saddened and depressed, though without causing him any
+      intolerable pain. But that conception of the future, that flowing stream,
+      colourless and unconfined, a single word from Odette sufficed to penetrate
+      through all Swann's defences, and like a block of ice immobilised it,
+      congealed its fluidity, made it freeze altogether; and Swann felt himself
+      suddenly filled with an enormous and unbreakable mass which pressed on the
+      inner walls of his consciousness until he was fain to burst asunder; for
+      Odette had said casually, watching him with a malicious smile:
+      "Forcheville is going for a fine trip at Whitsuntide. He's going to
+      Egypt!" and Swann had at once understood that this meant: "I am going to
+      Egypt at Whitsuntide with Forcheville." And, in fact, if, a few days
+      later, Swann began: "About that trip that you told me you were going to
+      take with Forcheville," she would answer carelessly: "Yes, my dear boy,
+      we're starting on the 19th; we'll send you a 'view' of the Pyramids." Then
+      he was determined to know whether she was Forcheville's mistress, to ask
+      her point-blank, to insist upon her telling him. He knew that there were
+      some perjuries which, being so superstitious, she would not commit, and
+      besides, the fear, which had hitherto restrained his curiosity, of making
+      Odette angry if he questioned her, of making himself odious, had ceased to
+      exist now that he had lost all hope of ever being loved by her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day he received an anonymous letter which told him that Odette had
+      been the mistress of countless men (several of whom it named, among them
+      Forcheville, M. de Bréauté and the painter) and women, and that she
+      frequented houses of ill-fame. He was tormented by the discovery that
+      there was to be numbered among his friends a creature capable of sending
+      him such a letter (for certain details betrayed in the writer a
+      familiarity with his private life). He wondered who it could be. But he
+      had never had any suspicion with regard to the unknown actions of other
+      people, those which had no visible connection with what they said. And
+      when he wanted to know whether it was rather beneath the apparent
+      character of M. de Charlus, or of M. des Laumes, or of M. d'Orsan that he
+      must place the untravelled region in which this ignoble action might have
+      had its birth; as none of these men had ever, in conversation with Swann,
+      suggested that he approved of anonymous letters, and as everything that
+      they had ever said to him implied that they strongly disapproved, he saw
+      no further reason for associating this infamy with the character of any
+      one of them more than with the rest. M. de Charlus was somewhat inclined
+      to eccentricity, but he was fundamentally good and kind; M. des Laumes was
+      a trifle dry, but wholesome and straight. As for M. d'Orsan, Swann had
+      never met anyone who, even in the most depressing circumstances, would
+      come to him with a more heartfelt utterance, would act more properly or
+      with more discretion. So much so that he was unable to understand the
+      rather indelicate part commonly attributed to M. d'Orsan in his relations
+      with a certain wealthy woman, and that whenever he thought of him he was
+      obliged to set that evil reputation on one side, as irreconcilable with so
+      many unmistakable proofs of his genuine sincerity and refinement. For a
+      moment Swann felt that his mind was becoming clouded, and he thought of
+      something else so as to recover a little light; until he had the courage
+      to return to those other reflections. But then, after not having been able
+      to suspect anyone, he was forced to suspect everyone that he knew. After
+      all, M. de Charlus might be most fond of him, might be most good-natured;
+      but he was a neuropath; to-morrow, perhaps, he would burst into tears on
+      hearing that Swann was ill; and to-day, from jealousy, or in anger, or
+      carried away by some sudden idea, he might have wished to do him a
+      deliberate injury. Really, that kind of man was the worst of all. The
+      Prince des Laumes was, certainly, far less devoted to Swann than was M. de
+      Charlus. But for that very reason he had not the same susceptibility with
+      regard to him; and besides, his was a nature which, though, no doubt, it
+      was cold, was as incapable of a base as of a magnanimous action. Swann
+      regretted that he had formed no attachments in his life except to such
+      people. Then he reflected that what prevents men from doing harm to their
+      neighbours is fellow-feeling, that he could not, in the last resort,
+      answer for any but men whose natures were analogous to his own, as was, so
+      far as the heart went, that of M. de Charlus. The mere thought of causing
+      Swann so much distress would have been revolting to him. But with a man
+      who was insensible, of another order of humanity, as was the Prince des
+      Laumes, how was one to foresee the actions to which he might be led by the
+      promptings of a different nature? To have a good heart was everything, and
+      M. de Charlus had one. But M. d'Orsan was not lacking in that either, and
+      his relations with Swann—cordial, but scarcely intimate, arising
+      from the pleasure which, as they held the same views about everything,
+      they found in talking together—were more quiescent than the
+      enthusiastic affection of M. de Charlus, who was apt to be led into
+      passionate activity, good or evil. If there was anyone by whom Swann felt
+      that he had always been understood, and (with delicacy) loved, it was M.
+      d'Orsan. Yes, but the life he led; it could hardly be called honourable.
+      Swann regretted that he had never taken any notice of those rumours, that
+      he himself had admitted, jestingly, that he had never felt so keen a sense
+      of sympathy, or of respect, as when he was in thoroughly 'detrimental'
+      society. "It is not for nothing," he now assured himself, "that when
+      people pass judgment upon their neighbour, their finding is based upon his
+      actions. It is those alone that are significant, and not at all what we
+      say or what we think. Charlus and des Laumes may have this or that fault,
+      but they are men of honour. Orsan, perhaps, has not the same faults, but
+      he is not a man of honour. He may have acted dishonourably once again."
+      Then he suspected Rémi, who, it was true, could only have inspired the
+      letter, but he now felt himself, for a moment, to be on the right track.
+      To begin with, Loredan had his own reasons for wishing harm to Odette. And
+      then, how were we not to suppose that our servants, living in a situation
+      inferior to our own, adding to our fortunes and to our frailties imaginary
+      riches and vices for which they at once envied and despised us, should not
+      find themselves led by fate to act in a manner abhorrent to people of our
+      own class? He also suspected my grandfather. On every occasion when Swann
+      had asked him to do him any service, had he not invariably declined?
+      Besides, with his ideas of middle-class respectability, he might have
+      thought that he was acting for Swann's good. He suspected, in turn,
+      Bergotte, the painter, the Verdurins; paused for a moment to admire once
+      again the wisdom of people in society, who refused to mix in the artistic
+      circles in which such things were possible, were, perhaps, even openly
+      avowed, as excellent jokes; but then he recalled the marks of honesty that
+      were to be observed in those Bohemians, and contrasted them with the life
+      of expedients, often bordering on fraudulence, to which the want of money,
+      the craving for luxury, the corrupting influence of their pleasures often
+      drove members of the aristocracy. In a word, this anonymous letter proved
+      that he himself knew a human being capable of the most infamous conduct,
+      but he could see no reason why that infamy should lurk in the depths—which
+      no strange eye might explore—of the warm heart rather than the cold,
+      the artist's rather than the business-man's, the noble's rather than the
+      flunkey's. What criterion ought one to adopt, in order to judge one's
+      fellows? After all, there was not a single one of the people whom he knew
+      who might not, in certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful
+      action. Must he then cease to see them all? His mind grew clouded; he
+      passed his hands two or three times across his brow, wiped his glasses
+      with his handkerchief, and remembering that, after all, men who were as
+      good as himself frequented the society of M. de Charlus, the Prince des
+      Laumes and the rest, he persuaded himself that this meant, if not that
+      they were incapable of shameful actions, at least that it was a necessity
+      in human life, to which everyone must submit, to frequent the society of
+      people who were, perhaps, not incapable of such actions. And he continued
+      to shake hands with all the friends whom he had suspected, with the purely
+      formal reservation that each one of them had, possibly, been seeking to
+      drive him to despair. As for the actual contents of the letter, they did
+      not disturb him; for in not one of the charges which it formulated against
+      Odette could he see the least vestige of fact. Like many other men, Swann
+      had a naturally lazy mind, and was slow in invention. He knew quite well
+      as a general truth, that human life is full of contrasts, but in the case
+      of any one human being he imagined all that part of his or her life with
+      which he was not familiar as being identical with the part with which he
+      was. He imagined what was kept secret from him in the light of what was
+      revealed. At such times as he spent with Odette, if their conversation
+      turned upon an indelicate act committed, or an indelicate sentiment
+      expressed by some third person, she would ruthlessly condemn the culprit
+      by virtue of the same moral principles which Swann had always heard
+      expressed by his own parents, and to which he himself had remained loyal;
+      and then, she would arrange her flowers, would sip her tea, would shew an
+      interest in his work. So Swann extended those habits to fill the rest of
+      her life, he reconstructed those actions when he wished to form a picture
+      of the moments in which he and she were apart. If anyone had portrayed her
+      to him as she was, or rather as she had been for so long with himself, but
+      had substituted some other man, he would have been distressed, for such a
+      portrait would have struck him as lifelike. But to suppose that she went
+      to bad houses, that she abandoned herself to orgies with other women, that
+      she led the crapulous existence of the most abject, the most contemptible
+      of mortals—would be an insane wandering of the mind, for the
+      realisation of which, thank heaven, the chrysanthemums that he could
+      imagine, the daily cups of tea, the virtuous indignation left neither time
+      nor place. Only, now and again, he gave Odette to understand that people
+      maliciously kept him informed of everything that she did; and making
+      opportune use of some detail—insignificant but true—which he
+      had accidentally learned, as though it were the sole fragment which he
+      would allow, in spite of himself, to pass his lips, out of the numberless
+      other fragments of that complete reconstruction of her daily life which he
+      carried secretly in his mind, he led her to suppose that he was perfectly
+      informed upon matters, which, in reality, he neither knew nor suspected,
+      for if he often adjured Odette never to swerve from or make alteration of
+      the truth, that was only, whether he realised it or no, in order that
+      Odette should tell him everything that she did. No doubt, as he used to
+      assure Odette, he loved sincerity, but only as he might love a pander who
+      could keep him in touch with the daily life of his mistress. Moreover, his
+      love of sincerity, not being disinterested, had not improved his
+      character. The truth which he cherished was that which Odette would tell
+      him; but he himself, in order to extract that truth from her, was not
+      afraid to have recourse to falsehood, that very falsehood which he never
+      ceased to depict to Odette as leading every human creature down to utter
+      degradation. In a word, he lied as much as did Odette, because, while more
+      unhappy than she, he was no less egotistical. And she, when she heard him
+      repeating thus to her the things that she had done, would stare at him
+      with a look of distrust and, at all hazards, of indignation, so as not to
+      appear to be humiliated, and to be blushing for her actions. One day,
+      after the longest period of calm through which he had yet been able to
+      exist without being overtaken by an attack of jealousy, he had accepted an
+      invitation to spend the evening at the theatre with the Princesse des
+      Laumes. Having opened his newspaper to find out what was being played, the
+      sight of the title—<i>Les Filles de Marbre</i>, by Théodore
+      Barrière,—struck him so cruel a blow that he recoiled instinctively
+      from it and turned his head away. Illuminated, as though by a row of
+      footlights, in the new surroundings in which it now appeared, that word
+      'marble,' which he had lost the power to distinguish, so often had it
+      passed, in print, beneath his eyes, had suddenly become visible once
+      again, and had at once brought back to his mind the story which Odette had
+      told him, long ago, of a visit which she had paid to the Salon at the
+      Palais d'Industrie with Mme. Verdurin, who had said to her, "Take care,
+      now! I know how to melt you, all right. You're not made of marble." Odette
+      had assured him that it was only a joke, and he had not attached any
+      importance to it at the time. But he had had more confidence in her then
+      than he had now. And the anonymous letter referred explicitly to relations
+      of that sort. Without daring to lift his eyes to the newspaper, he opened
+      it, turned the page so as not to see again the words, <i>Filles de Marbre</i>,
+      and began to read mechanically the news from the provinces. There had been
+      a storm in the Channel, and damage was reported from Dieppe, Cabourg,
+      Beuzeval.... Suddenly he recoiled again in horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The name of Beuzeval had suggested to him that of another place in the
+      same district, Beuzeville, which carried also, bound to it by a hyphen, a
+      second name, to wit Bréauté, which he had often seen on maps, but without
+      ever previously remarking that it was the same name as that borne by his
+      friend M. de Bréauté, whom the anonymous letter accused of having been
+      Odette's lover. After all, when it came to M. de Bréauté, there was
+      nothing improbable in the charge; but so far as Mme. Verdurin was
+      concerned, it was a sheer impossibility. From the fact that Odette did
+      occasionally tell a lie, it was not fair to conclude that she never, by
+      any chance, told the truth, and in these bantering conversations with Mme.
+      Verdurin which she herself had repeated to Swann, he could recognize those
+      meaningless and dangerous pleasantries which, in their inexperience of
+      life and ignorance of vice, women often utter (thereby certifying their
+      own innocence), who—as, for instance, Odette,—would be the
+      last people in the world to feel any undue affection for one another.
+      Whereas, on the other hand, the indignation with which she had scattered
+      the suspicions which she had unintentionally brought into being, for a
+      moment, in his mind by her story, fitted in with everything that he knew
+      of the tastes, the temperament of his mistress. But at that moment, by an
+      inspiration of jealousy, analogous to the inspiration which reveals to a
+      poet or a philosopher, who has nothing, so far, but an odd pair of rhymes
+      or a detached observation, the idea or the natural law which will give
+      power, mastery to his work, Swann recalled for the first time a remark
+      which Odette had made to him, at least two years before: "Oh, Mme.
+      Verdurin, she won't hear of anything just now but me. I'm a 'love,' if you
+      please, and she kisses me, and wants me to go with her everywhere, and
+      call her by her Christian name." So far from seeing in these expressions
+      any connection with the absurd insinuations, intended to create an
+      atmosphere of vice, which Odette had since repeated to him, he had
+      welcomed them as a proof of Mme. Verdurin's warm-hearted and generous
+      friendship. But now this old memory of her affection for Odette had
+      coalesced suddenly with his more recent memory of her unseemly
+      conversation. He could no longer separate them in his mind, and he saw
+      them blended in reality, the affection imparting a certain seriousness and
+      importance to the pleasantries which, in return, spoiled the affection of
+      its innocence. He went to see Odette. He sat down, keeping at a distance
+      from her. He did not dare to embrace her, not knowing whether in her, in
+      himself, it would be affection or anger that a kiss would provoke. He sat
+      there silent, watching their love expire. Suddenly he made up his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Odette, my darling," he began, "I know, I am being simply odious, but I
+      must ask you a few questions. You remember what I once thought about you
+      and Mme. Verdurin? Tell me, was it true? Have you, with her or anyone
+      else, ever?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head, pursing her lips together; a sign which people
+      commonly employ to signify that they are not going, because it would bore
+      them to go, when some one has asked, "Are you coming to watch the
+      procession go by?", or "Will you be at the review?". But this shake of the
+      head, which is thus commonly used to decline participation in an event
+      that has yet to come, imparts for that reason an element of uncertainty to
+      the denial of participation in an event that is past. Furthermore, it
+      suggests reasons of personal convenience, rather than any definite
+      repudiation, any moral impossibility. When he saw Odette thus make him a
+      sign that the insinuation was false, he realised that it was quite
+      possibly true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have told you, I never did; you know quite well," she added, seeming
+      angry and uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I know all that; but are you quite sure? Don't say to me, 'You know
+      quite well'; say, 'I have never done anything of that sort with any
+      woman.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She repeated his words like a lesson learned by rote, and as though she
+      hoped, thereby, to be rid of him: "I have never done anything of that sort
+      with any woman."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can you swear it to me on your Laghetto medal?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann knew that Odette would never perjure herself on that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, you do make me so miserable," she cried, with a jerk of her body as
+      though to shake herself free of the constraint of his question. "Have you
+      nearly done? What is the matter with you to-day? You seem to have made up
+      your mind that I am to be forced to hate you, to curse you! Look, I was
+      anxious to be friends with you again, for us to have a nice time together,
+      like the old days; and this is all the thanks I get!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, he would not let her go, but sat there like a surgeon who waits
+      for a spasm to subside that has interrupted his operation but need not
+      make him abandon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are quite wrong in supposing that I bear you the least ill-will in
+      the world, Odette," he began with a persuasive and deceitful gentleness.
+      "I never speak to you except of what I already know, and I always know a
+      great deal more than I say. But you alone can mollify by your confession
+      what makes me hate you so long as it has been reported to me only by other
+      people. My anger with you is never due to your actions—I can and do
+      forgive you everything because I love you—but to your
+      untruthfulness, the ridiculous untruthfulness which makes you persist in
+      denying things which I know to be true. How can you expect that I shall
+      continue to love you, when I see you maintain, when I hear you swear to me
+      a thing which I know to be false? Odette, do not prolong this moment which
+      is torturing us both. If you are willing to end it at once, you shall be
+      free of it for ever. Tell me, upon your medal, yes or no, whether you have
+      ever done those things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How on earth can I tell?" she was furious. "Perhaps I have, ever so long
+      ago, when I didn't know what I was doing, perhaps two or three times."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann had prepared himself for all possibilities. Reality must, therefore,
+      be something which bears no relation to possibilities, any more than the
+      stab of a knife in one's body bears to the gradual movement of the clouds
+      overhead, since those words "two or three times" carved, as it were, a
+      cross upon the living tissues of his heart. A strange thing, indeed, that
+      those words, "two or three times," nothing more than a few words, words
+      uttered in the air, at a distance, could so lacerate a man's heart, as if
+      they had actually pierced it, could sicken a man, like a poison that he
+      had drunk. Instinctively Swann thought of the remark that he had heard at
+      Mme. de Saint-Euverte's: "I have never seen anything to beat it since the
+      table-turning." The agony that he now suffered in no way resembled what he
+      had supposed. Not only because, in the hours when he most entirely
+      mistrusted her, he had rarely imagined such a culmination of evil, but
+      because, even when he did imagine that offence, it remained vague,
+      uncertain, was not clothed in the particular horror which had escaped with
+      the words "perhaps two or three times," was not armed with that specific
+      cruelty, as different from anything that he had known as a new malady by
+      which one is attacked for the first time. And yet this Odette, from whom
+      all this evil sprang, was no less dear to him, was, on the contrary, more
+      precious, as if, in proportion as his sufferings increased, there
+      increased at the same time the price of the sedative, of the antidote
+      which this woman alone possessed. He wished to pay her more attention, as
+      one attends to a disease which one discovers, suddenly, to have grown more
+      serious. He wished that the horrible thing which, she had told him, she
+      had done "two or three times" might be prevented from occurring again. To
+      ensure that, he must watch over Odette. People often say that, by pointing
+      out to a man the faults of his mistress, you succeed only in strengthening
+      his attachment to her, because he does not believe you; yet how much more
+      so if he does! But, Swann asked himself, how could he manage to protect
+      her? He might perhaps be able to preserve her from the contamination of
+      any one woman, but there were hundreds of other women; and he realised how
+      insane had been his ambition when he had begun (on the evening when he had
+      failed to find Odette at the Verdurins') to desire the possession—as
+      if that were ever possible—of another person. Happily for Swann,
+      beneath the mass of suffering which had invaded his soul like a conquering
+      horde of barbarians, there lay a natural foundation, older, more placid,
+      and silently laborious, like the cells of an injured organ which at once
+      set to work to repair the damaged tissues, or the muscles of a paralysed
+      limb which tend to recover their former movements. These older, these
+      autochthonous in-dwellers in his soul absorbed all Swann's strength, for a
+      while, in that obscure task of reparation which gives one an illusory
+      sense of repose during convalescence, or after an operation. This time it
+      was not so much—as it ordinarily was—in Swann's brain that the
+      slackening of tension due to exhaustion took effect, it was rather in his
+      heart. But all the things in life that have once existed tend to recur,
+      and, like a dying animal that is once more stirred by the throes of a
+      convulsion which was, apparently, ended, upon Swann's heart, spared for a
+      moment only, the same agony returned of its own accord to trace the same
+      cross again. He remembered those moonlit evenings, when, leaning back in
+      the victoria that was taking him to the Rue La Pérouse, he would cultivate
+      with voluptuous enjoyment the emotions of a man in love, ignorant of the
+      poisoned fruit that such emotions must inevitably bear. But all those
+      thoughts lasted for no more than a second, the time that it took him to
+      raise his hand to his heart, to draw breath again and to contrive to
+      smile, so as to dissemble his torment. Already he had begun to put further
+      questions. For his jealousy, which had taken an amount of trouble, such as
+      no enemy would have incurred, to strike him this mortal blow, to make him
+      forcibly acquainted with the most cruel pain that he had ever known, his
+      jealousy was not satisfied that he had yet suffered enough, and sought to
+      expose his bosom to an even deeper wound. Like an evil deity, his jealousy
+      was inspiring Swann, was thrusting him on towards destruction. It was not
+      his fault, but Odette's alone, if at first his punishment was not more
+      severe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My darling," he began again, "it's all over now; was it with anyone I
+      know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I swear it wasn't; besides, I think I exaggerated, I never really
+      went as far as that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled, and resumed with: "Just as you like. It doesn't really matter,
+      but it's unfortunate that you can't give me any name. If I were able to
+      form an idea of the person that would prevent my ever thinking of her
+      again. I say it for your own sake, because then I shouldn't bother you any
+      more about it. It's so soothing to be able to form a clear picture of
+      things in one's mind. What is really terrible is what one cannot imagine.
+      But you've been so sweet to me; I don't want to tire you. I do thank you,
+      with all my heart, for all the good that you have done me. I've quite
+      finished now. Only one word more: how many times?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, Charles! can't you see, you're killing me? It's all ever so long ago.
+      I've never given it a thought. Anyone would say that you were positively
+      trying to put those ideas into my head again. And then you'd be a lot
+      better off!" she concluded, with unconscious stupidity but with
+      intentional malice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I only wished to know whether it had been since I knew you. It's only
+      natural. Did it happen here, ever? You can't give me any particular
+      evening, so that I can remind myself what I was doing at the time? You
+      understand, surely, that it's not possible that you don't remember with
+      whom, Odette, my love."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I don't know; really, I don't. I think it was in the Bois, one
+      evening when you came to meet us on the Island. You had been dining with
+      the Princesse des Laumes," she added, happy to be able to furnish him with
+      an exact detail, which testified to her veracity. "At the next table there
+      was a woman whom I hadn't seen for ever so long. She said to me, 'Come
+      along round behind the rock, there, and look at the moonlight on the
+      water!' At first I just yawned, and said, 'No, I'm too tired, and I'm
+      quite happy where I am, thank you.' She swore there'd never been anything
+      like it in the way of moonlight. 'I've heard that tale before,' I said to
+      her; you see, I knew quite well what she was after." Odette narrated this
+      episode almost as if it were a joke, either because it appeared to her to
+      be quite natural, or because she thought that she was thereby minimising
+      its importance, or else so as not to appear ashamed. But, catching sight
+      of Swann's face, she changed her tone, and:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are a fiend!" she flung at him, "you enjoy tormenting me, making me
+      tell you lies, just so that you'll leave me in peace."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This second blow struck at Swann was even more excruciating than the
+      first. Never had he supposed it to have been so recent an affair, hidden
+      from his eyes that had been too innocent to discern it, not in a past
+      which he had never known, but in evenings which he so well remembered,
+      which he had lived through with Odette, of which he had supposed himself
+      to have such an intimate, such an exhaustive knowledge, and which now
+      assumed, retrospectively, an aspect of cunning and deceit and cruelty. In
+      the midst of them parted, suddenly, a gaping chasm, that moment on the
+      Island in the Bois de Boulogne. Without being intelligent, Odette had the
+      charm of being natural. She had recounted, she had acted the little scene
+      with so much simplicity that Swann, as he gasped for breath, could vividly
+      see it: Odette yawning, the "rock there,"... He could hear her answer—alas,
+      how lightheartedly—"I've heard that tale before!" He felt that she
+      would tell him nothing more that evening, that no further revelation was
+      to be expected for the present. He was silent for a time, then said to
+      her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My poor darling, you must forgive me; I know, I am hurting you
+      dreadfully, but it's all over now; I shall never think of it again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she saw that his eyes remained fixed upon the things that he did not
+      know, and on that past era of their love, monotonous and soothing in his
+      memory because it was vague, and now rent, as with a sword-wound, by the
+      news of that minute on the Island in the Bois, by moonlight, while he was
+      dining with the Princesse des Laumes. But he had so far acquired the habit
+      of finding life interesting—of marvelling at the strange discoveries
+      that there were to be made in it—that even while he was suffering so
+      acutely that he did not believe it possible to endure such agony for any
+      length of time, he was saying to himself: "Life is indeed astonishing, and
+      holds some fine surprises; it appears that vice is far more common than
+      one has been led to believe. Here is a woman in whom I had absolute
+      confidence, who looks so simple, so honest, who, in any case, even
+      allowing that her morals are not strict, seemed quite normal and healthy
+      in her tastes and inclinations. I receive a most improbable accusation, I
+      question her, and the little that she admits reveals far more than I could
+      ever have suspected." But he could not confine himself to these detached
+      observations. He sought to form an exact estimate of the importance of
+      what she had just told him, so as to know whether he might conclude that
+      she had done these things often, and was likely to do them again. He
+      repeated her words to himself: "I knew quite well what she was after."
+      "Two or three times." "I've heard that tale before." But they did not
+      reappear in his memory unarmed; each of them held a knife with which it
+      stabbed him afresh. For a long time, like a sick man who cannot restrain
+      himself from attempting, every minute, to make the movement that, he
+      knows, will hurt him, he kept on murmuring to himself: "I'm quite happy
+      where I am, thank you," "I've heard that tale before," but the pain was so
+      intense that he was obliged to stop. He was amazed to find that actions
+      which he had always, hitherto, judged so lightly, had dismissed, indeed,
+      with a laugh, should have become as serious to him as a disease which
+      might easily prove fatal. He knew any number of women whom he could ask to
+      keep an eye on Odette, but how was he to expect them to adjust themselves
+      to his new point of view, and not to remain at that which for so long had
+      been his own, which had always guided him in his voluptuous existence; not
+      to say to him with a smile: "You jealous monster, wanting to rob other
+      people of their pleasure!" By what trap-door, suddenly lowered, had he
+      (who had never found, in the old days, in his love for Odette, any but the
+      most refined of pleasures) been precipitated into this new circle of hell
+      from which he could not see how he was ever to escape. Poor Odette! He
+      wished her no harm. She was but half to blame. Had he not been told that
+      it was her own mother who had sold her, when she was still little more
+      than a child, at Nice, to a wealthy Englishman? But what an agonising
+      truth was now contained for him in those lines of Alfred de Vigny's <i>Journal
+      d'un Poète</i> which he had previously read without emotion: "When one
+      feels oneself smitten by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself,
+      'What are 'her surroundings? What has been her life?' All one's future
+      happiness lies in the answer." Swann was astonished that such simple
+      phrases, spelt over in his mind as, "I've heard that tale before," or "I
+      knew quite well what she was after," could cause him so much pain. But he
+      realised that what he had mistaken for simple phrases were indeed parts of
+      the panoply which held and could inflict on him the anguish that he had
+      felt while Odette was telling her story. For it was the same anguish that
+      he now was feeling afresh. It was no good, his knowing now,—indeed,
+      it was no good, as time went on, his having partly forgotten and
+      altogether forgiven the offence—whenever he repeated her words his
+      old anguish refashioned him as he had been before Odette began to speak:
+      ignorant, trustful; his merciless jealousy placed him once again, so that
+      he might be effectively wounded by Odette's admission, in the position of
+      a man who does not yet know the truth; and after several months this old
+      story would still dumbfounder him, like a sudden revelation. He marvelled
+      at the terrible recreative power of his memory. It was only by the
+      weakening of that generative force, whose fecundity diminishes as age
+      creeps over one, that he could hope for a relaxation of his torments. But,
+      as soon as the power that any one of Odette's sentences had to make Swann
+      suffer seemed to be nearly exhausted, lo and behold another, one of those
+      to which he had hitherto paid least attention, almost a new sentence, came
+      to relieve the first, and to strike at him with undiminished force. The
+      memory of the evening on which he had dined with the Princesse des Laumes
+      was painful to him, but it was no more than the centre, the core of his
+      pain. That radiated vaguely round about it, overflowing into all the
+      preceding and following days. And on whatever point in it he might intend
+      his memory to rest, it was the whole of that season, during which the
+      Verdurins had so often gone to dine upon the Island in the Bois, that
+      sprang back to hurt him. So violently, that by slow degrees the curiosity
+      which his jealousy was ever exciting in him was neutralised by his fear of
+      the fresh tortures which he would be inflicting upon himself were he to
+      satisfy it. He recognised that all the period of Odette's life which had
+      elapsed before she first met him, a period of which he had never sought to
+      form any picture in his mind, was not the featureless abstraction which he
+      could vaguely see, but had consisted of so many definite, dated years,
+      each crowded with concrete incidents. But were he to learn more of them,
+      he feared lest her past, now colourless, fluid and supportable, might
+      assume a tangible, an obscene form, with individual and diabolical
+      features. And he continued to refrain from seeking a conception of it, not
+      any longer now from laziness of mind, but from fear of suffering. He hoped
+      that, some day, he might be able to hear the Island in the Bois, or the
+      Princesse des Laumes mentioned without feeling any twinge of that old
+      rending pain; meanwhile he thought it imprudent to provoke Odette into
+      furnishing him with fresh sentences, with the names of more places and
+      people and of different events, which, when his malady was still scarcely
+      healed, would make it break out again in another form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, often enough, the things that he did not know, that he dreaded, now,
+      to learn, it was Odette herself who, spontaneously and without thought of
+      what she did, revealed them to him; for the gap which her vices made
+      between her actual life and the comparatively innocent life which Swann
+      had believed, and often still believed his mistress to lead, was far wider
+      than she knew. A vicious person, always affecting the same air of virtue
+      before people whom he is anxious to keep from having any suspicion of his
+      vices, has no register, no gauge at hand from which he may ascertain how
+      far those vices (their continuous growth being imperceptible by himself)
+      have gradually segregated him from the normal ways of life. In the course
+      of their cohabitation, in Odette's mind, with the memory of those of her
+      actions which she concealed from Swann, her other, her innocuous actions
+      were gradually coloured, infected by these, without her being able to
+      detect anything strange in them, without their causing any explosion in
+      the particular region of herself in which she made them live, but when she
+      related them to Swann, he was overwhelmed by the revelation of the
+      duplicity to which they pointed. One day, he was trying—without
+      hurting Odette—to discover from her whether she had ever had any
+      dealings with procuresses. He was, as a matter of fact, convinced that she
+      had not; the anonymous letter had put the idea into his mind, but in a
+      purely mechanical way; it had been received there with no credulity, but
+      it had, for all that, remained there, and Swann, wishing to be rid of the
+      burden—a dead weight, but none the less disturbing—of this
+      suspicion, hoped that Odette would now extirpate it for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh dear, no! Not that they don't simply persecute me to go to them," her
+      smile revealed a gratified vanity which she no longer saw that it was
+      impossible should appear legitimate to Swann. "There was one of them
+      waited more than two hours for me yesterday, said she would give me any
+      money I asked. It seems, there's an Ambassador who said to her, 'I'll kill
+      myself if you don't bring her to me'—meaning me! They told her I'd
+      gone out, but she waited and waited, and in the end I had to go myself and
+      speak to her, before she'd go away. I do wish you could have seen the way
+      I tackled her; my maid was in the next room, listening, and told me I
+      shouted fit to bring the house down:—'But when you hear me say that
+      I don't want to! The idea of such a thing, I don't like it at all! I
+      should hope I'm still free to do as I please and when I please and where I
+      please! If I needed the money, I could understand...' The porter has
+      orders not to let her in again; he will tell her that I am out of town.
+      Oh, I do wish I could have had you hidden somewhere in the room while I
+      was talking to her. I know, you'd have been pleased, my dear. There's some
+      good in your little Odette, you see, after all, though people do say such
+      dreadful things about her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides, her very admissions—when she made any—of faults which
+      she supposed him to have discovered, rather served Swann as a
+      starting-point for fresh doubts than they put an end to the old. For her
+      admissions never exactly coincided with his doubts. In vain might Odette
+      expurgate her confession of all its essential part, there would remain in
+      the accessories something which Swann had never yet imagined, which
+      crushed him anew, and was to enable him to alter the terms of the problem
+      of his jealousy. And these admissions he could never forget. His spirit
+      carried them along, cast them aside, then cradled them again in its bosom,
+      like corpses in a river. And they poisoned it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke to him once of a visit that Forcheville had paid her on the day
+      of the Paris-Murcie Fête. "What! you knew him as long ago as that? Oh,
+      yes, of course you did," he corrected himself, so as not to shew that he
+      had been ignorant of the fact. And suddenly he began to tremble at the
+      thought that, on the day of the Paris-Murcie Fête, when he had received
+      that letter which he had so carefully preserved, she had been having
+      luncheon, perhaps, with Forcheville at the Maison d'Or. She swore that she
+      had not. "Still, the Maison d'Or reminds me of something or other which, I
+      knew at the time, wasn't true," he pursued, hoping to frighten her. "Yes,
+      that I hadn't been there at all that evening when I told you I had just
+      come from there, and you had been looking for me at Prévost's," she
+      replied (judging by his manner that he knew) with a firmness that was
+      based not so much upon cynicism as upon timidity, a fear of crossing
+      Swann, which her own self-respect made her anxious to conceal, and a
+      desire to shew him that she could be perfectly frank if she chose. And so
+      she struck him with all the sharpness and force of a headsman wielding his
+      axe, and yet could not be charged with cruelty, since she was quite
+      unconscious of hurting him; she even began to laugh, though this may
+      perhaps, it is true, have been chiefly to keep him from thinking that she
+      was ashamed, at all, or confused. "It's quite true, I hadn't been to the
+      Maison Dorée. I was coming away from Forcheville's. I had, really, been to
+      Prévost's—that wasn't a story—and he met me there and asked me
+      to come in and look at his prints. But some one else came to see him. I
+      told you that I was coming from the Maison d'Or because I was afraid you
+      might be angry with me. It was rather nice of me, really, don't you see? I
+      admit, I did wrong, but at least I'm telling you all about it now, a'n't
+      I? What have I to gain by not telling you, straight, that I lunched with
+      him on the day of the Paris-Murcie Fête, if it were true? Especially as at
+      that time we didn't know one another quite so well as we do now, did we,
+      dear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled back at her with the sudden, craven weakness of the utterly
+      spiritless creature which these crushing words had made of him. And so,
+      even in the months of which he had never dared to think again, because
+      they had been too happy, in those months when she had loved him, she was
+      already lying to him! Besides that moment (that first evening on which
+      they had "done a cattleya") when she had told him that she was coming from
+      the Maison Dorée, how many others must there have been, each of them
+      covering a falsehood of which Swann had had no suspicion. He recalled how
+      she had said to him once: "I need only tell Mme. Verdurin that my dress
+      wasn't ready, or that my cab came late. There is always some excuse." From
+      himself too, probably, many times when she had glibly uttered such words
+      as explain a delay or justify an alteration of the hour fixed for a
+      meeting, those moments must have hidden, without his having the least
+      inkling of it at the time, an engagement that she had had with some other
+      man, some man to whom she had said: "I need only tell Swann that my dress
+      wasn't ready, or that my cab came late. There is always some excuse." And
+      beneath all his most pleasant memories, beneath the simplest words that
+      Odette had ever spoken to him in those old days, words which he had
+      believed as though they were the words of a Gospel, beneath her daily
+      actions which she had recounted to him, beneath the most ordinary places,
+      her dressmaker's flat, the Avenue du Bois, the Hippodrome, he could feel
+      (dissembled there, by virtue of that temporal superfluity which, after the
+      most detailed account of how a day has been spent, always leaves something
+      over, that may serve as a hiding place for certain unconfessed actions),
+      he could feel the insinuation of a possible undercurrent of falsehood
+      which debased for him all that had remained most precious, his happiest
+      evenings, the Rue La Pérouse itself, which Odette must constantly have
+      been leaving at other hours than those of which she told him; extending
+      the power of the dark horror that had gripped him when he had heard her
+      admission with regard to the Maison Dorée, and, like the obscene creatures
+      in the 'Desolation of Nineveh,' shattering, stone by stone, the whole
+      edifice of his past.... If, now, he turned aside whenever his memory
+      repeated the cruel name of the Maison Dorée it was because that name
+      recalled to him, no longer, as, such a little time since, at Mme. de
+      Saint-Euverte's party, the good fortune which he long had lost, but a
+      misfortune of which he was now first aware. Then it befell the Maison
+      Dorée, as it had befallen the Island in the Bois, that gradually its name
+      ceased to trouble him. For what we suppose to be our love, our jealousy
+      are, neither of them, single, continuous and individual passions. They are
+      composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each
+      of which is ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multitude they give
+      us the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity. The life of
+      Swann's love, the fidelity of his jealousy, were formed out of death, of
+      infidelity, of innumerable desires, innumerable doubts, all of which had
+      Odette for their object. If he had remained for any length of time without
+      seeing her, those that died would not have been replaced by others. But
+      the presence of Odette continued to sow in Swann's heart alternate seeds
+      of love and suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On certain evenings she would suddenly resume towards him a kindness of
+      which she would warn him sternly that he must take immediate advantage,
+      under penalty of not seeing it repeated for years to come; he must
+      instantly accompany her home, to "do a cattleya," and the desire which she
+      pretended to have for him was so sudden, so inexplicable, so imperious,
+      the kisses which she lavished on him were so demonstrative and so
+      unfamiliar, that this brutal and unnatural fondness made Swann just as
+      unhappy as any lie or unkind action. One evening when he had thus, in
+      obedience to her command, gone home with her, and while she was
+      interspersing her kisses with passionate words, in strange contrast to her
+      habitual coldness, he thought suddenly that he heard a sound; he rose,
+      searched everywhere and found nobody, but he had not the courage to return
+      to his place by her side; whereupon she, in a towering rage, broke a vase,
+      with "I never can do anything right with you, you impossible person!" And
+      he was left uncertain whether she had not actually had some man concealed
+      in the room, whose jealousy she had wished to wound, or else to inflame
+      his senses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes he repaired to 'gay' houses, hoping to learn something about
+      Odette, although he dared not mention her name. "I have a little thing
+      here, you're sure to like," the 'manageress' would greet him, and he would
+      stay for an hour or so, talking dolefully to some poor girl who sat there
+      astonished that he went no further. One of them, who was still quite young
+      and attractive, said to him once, "Of course, what I should like would be
+      to find a real friend, then he might be quite certain, I should never go
+      with any other men again." "Indeed, do you think it possible for a woman
+      really to be touched by a man's being in love with her, and never to be
+      unfaithful to him?" asked Swann anxiously. "Why, surely! It all depends on
+      their characters!" Swann could not help making the same remarks to these
+      girls as would have delighted the Princesse des Laumes. To the one who was
+      in search of a friend he said, with a smile: "But how nice of you, you've
+      put on blue eyes, to go with your sash." "And you too, you've got blue
+      cuffs on." "What a charming conversation we are having, for a place of
+      this sort! I'm not boring you, am I; or keeping you?" "No, I've nothing to
+      do, thank you. If you bored me I should say so. But I love hearing you
+      talk." "I am highly flattered.... Aren't we behaving prettily?" he asked
+      the 'manageress,' who had just looked in. "Why, yes, that's just what I
+      was saying to myself, how sensibly they're behaving! But that's how it is!
+      People come to my house now, just to talk. The Prince was telling me, only
+      the other day, that he's far more comfortable here than with his wife. It
+      seems that, nowadays, all the society ladies are like that; a perfect
+      scandal, I call it. But I'll leave you in peace now, I know when I'm not
+      wanted," she ended discreetly, and left Swann with the girl who had the
+      blue eyes. But presently he rose and said good-bye to her. She had ceased
+      to interest him. She did not know Odette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter having been ill, Dr. Cottard recommended a sea-voyage;
+      several of the 'faithful' spoke of accompanying him; the Verdurins could
+      not face the prospect of being left alone in Paris, so first of all
+      hired, and finally purchased a yacht; thus Odette was constantly going on
+      a cruise. Whenever she had been away for any length of time, Swann would
+      feel that he was beginning to detach himself from her, but, as though
+      this moral distance were proportionate to the physical distance between
+      them, whenever he heard that Odette had returned to Paris, he could not
+      rest without seeing her. Once, when they had gone away, as everyone
+      thought, for a month only, either they succumbed to a series of
+      temptations, or else M. Verdurin had cunningly arranged everything
+      beforehand, to please his wife, and disclosed his plans to the 'faithful'
+      only as time went on; anyhow, from Algiers they flitted to Tunis; then to
+      Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor. They had been absent for
+      nearly a year, and Swann felt perfectly at ease and almost happy. Albeit
+      M. Verdurin had endeavoured to persuade the pianist and Dr. Cottard that
+      their respective aunt and patients had no need of them, and that, in any
+      event, it was most rash to allow Mme. Cottard to return to Paris, where,
+      Mme. Verdurin assured him, a revolution had just broken out, he was
+      obliged to grant them their liberty at Constantinople. And the painter
+      came home with them. One day, shortly after the return of these four
+      travellers, Swann, seeing an omnibus approach him, labelled 'Luxembourg,'
+      and having some business there, had jumped on to it and had found himself
+      sitting opposite Mme. Cottard, who was paying a round of visits to people
+      whose 'day' it was, in full review order, with a plume in her hat, a silk
+      dress, a muff, an umbrella (which would do for a parasol if the rain kept
+      off), a card-case, and a pair of white gloves fresh from the cleaners.
+      Wearing these badges of rank, she would, in fine weather, go on foot from
+      one house to another in the same neighbourhood, but when she had to
+      proceed to another district, would make use of a transfer-ticket on the
+      omnibus. For the first minute or two, until the natural courtesy of the
+      woman broke through the starched surface of the doctor's-wife, not being
+      certain, either, whether she ought to mention the Verdurins before Swann,
+      she produced, quite naturally, in her slow and awkward, but not
+      unattractive voice, which, every now and then, was completely drowned by
+      the rattling of the omnibus, topics selected from those which she had
+      picked up and would repeat in each of the score of houses up the stairs
+      of which she clambered in the course of an afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I needn't ask you, M. Swann, whether a man so much in the movement as
+      yourself has been to the Mirlitons, to see the portrait by Machard that
+      the whole of Paris is running after. Well, and what do you think of it?
+      Whose camp are you in, those who bless or those who curse? It's the same
+      in every house in Paris now, no one will speak of anything else but
+      Machard's portrait; you aren't smart, you aren't really cultured, you
+      aren't up-to-date unless you give an opinion on Machard's portrait."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann having replied that he had not seen this portrait, Mme. Cottard was
+      afraid that she might have hurt his feelings by obliging him to confess
+      the omission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, that's quite all right! At least you have the courage to be quite
+      frank about it. You don't consider yourself disgraced because you haven't
+      seen Machard's portrait. I do think that so nice of you. Well now, I have
+      seen it; opinion is divided, you know, there are some people who find it
+      rather laboured, like whipped cream, they say; but I think it's just
+      ideal. Of course, she's not a bit like the blue and yellow ladies that our
+      friend Biche paints. That's quite clear. But I must tell you, perfectly
+      frankly (you'll think me dreadfully old-fashioned, but I always say just
+      what I think), that I don't understand his work. I can quite see the good
+      points there are in his portrait of my husband; oh, dear me, yes; and it's
+      certainly less odd than most of what he does, but even then he had to give
+      the poor man a blue moustache! But Machard! Just listen to this now, the
+      husband of my friend, I am on my way to see at this very moment (which has
+      given me the very great pleasure of your company), has promised her that,
+      if he is elected to the Academy (he is one of the Doctor's colleagues), he
+      will get Machard to paint her portrait. So she's got something to look
+      forward to! I have another friend who insists that she'd rather have
+      Leloir. I'm only a wretched Philistine, and I've no doubt Leloir has
+      perhaps more knowledge of painting even than Machard. But I do think that
+      the most important thing about a portrait, especially when it's going to
+      cost ten thousand francs, is that it should be like, and a pleasant
+      likeness, if you know what I mean."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having exhausted this topic, to which she had been inspired by the
+      loftiness of her plume, the monogram on her card-case, the little number
+      inked inside each of her gloves by the cleaner, and the difficulty of
+      speaking to Swann about the Verdurins, Mme. Cottard, seeing that they had
+      still a long way to go before they would reach the corner of the Rue
+      Bonaparte, where the conductor was to set her down, listened to the
+      promptings of her heart, which counselled other words than these.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your ears must have been burning," she ventured, "while we were on the
+      yacht with Mme. Verdurin. We were talking about you all the time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swann was genuinely astonished, for he supposed that his name was never
+      uttered in the Verdurins' presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You see," Mme. Cottard went on, "Mme. de Crécy was there; need I say
+      more? When Odette is anywhere it's never long before she begins talking
+      about you. And you know quite well, it isn't nasty things she says. What!
+      you don't believe me!" she went on, noticing that Svrann looked sceptical.
+      And, carried away by the sincerity of her conviction, without putting any
+      evil meaning into the word, which she used purely in the sense in which
+      one employs it to speak of the affection that unites a pair of friends:
+      "Why, she <i>adores</i> you! No, indeed; I'm sure it would never do to say
+      anything against you when she was about; one would soon be taught one's
+      place! Whatever we might be doing, if we were looking at a picture, for
+      instance, she would say, 'If only we had him here, he's the man who could
+      tell us whether it's genuine or not. There's no one like him for that.'
+      And all day long she would be saying, 'What can he be doing just now? I do
+      hope, he's doing a little work! It's too dreadful that a fellow with such
+      gifts as he has should be so lazy.' (Forgive me, won't you.) 'I can see
+      him this very moment; he's thinking of us, he's wondering where we are.'
+      Indeed, she used an expression which I thought very pretty at the time. M.
+      Verdurin asked her, 'How in the world can you see what he's doing, when
+      he's a thousand miles away?' And Odette answered, 'Nothing is impossible
+      to the eye of a friend.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I assure you, I'm not saying it just to flatter you; you have a true
+      friend in her, such as one doesn't often find. I can tell you, besides, in
+      case you don't know it, that you're the only one. Mme. Verdurin told me as
+      much herself on our last day with them (one talks more freely, don't you
+      know, before a parting), 'I don't say that Odette isn't fond of us, but
+      anything that we may say to her counts for very little beside what Swann
+      might say.' Oh, mercy, there's the conductor stopping for me; here have I
+      been chatting away to you, and would have gone right past the Rue
+      Bonaparte, and never noticed... Will you be so very kind as to tell me
+      whether my plume is straight?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mme. Cottard withdrew from her muff, to offer it to Swann, a
+      white-gloved hand from which there floated, with a transfer-ticket, an
+      atmosphere of fashionable life that pervaded the omnibus, blended with the
+      harsher fragrance of newly cleaned kid. And Swann felt himself overflowing
+      with gratitude to her, as well as to Mme. Verdurin (and almost to Odette,
+      for the feeling that he now entertained for her was no longer tinged with
+      pain, was scarcely even to be described, now, as love), while from the
+      platform of the omnibus he followed her with loving eyes, as she gallantly
+      threaded her way along the Rue Bonaparte, her plume erect, her skirt held
+      up in one hand, while in the other she clasped her umbrella and her
+      card-case, so that its monogram could be seen, her muff dancing in the air
+      before her as she went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To compete with and so to stimulate the moribund feelings that Swann had
+      for Odette, Mme. Cottard, a wiser physician, in this case, than ever her
+      husband would have been, had grafted among them others more normal,
+      feelings of gratitude, of friendship, which in Swann's mind were to make
+      Odette seem again more human (more like other women, since other women
+      could inspire the same feelings in him), were to hasten her final
+      transformation back into that Odette, loved with an undisturbed affection,
+      who had taken him home one evening after a revel at the painter's, to
+      drink orangeade with Forcheville, that Odette with whom Swann had
+      calculated that he might live in happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In former times, having often thought with terror that a day must come
+      when he would cease to be in love with Odette, he had determined to keep a
+      sharp look-out, and as soon as he felt that love was beginning to escape
+      him, to cling tightly to it and to hold it back. But now, to the faintness
+      of his love there corresponded a simultaneous faintness in his desire to
+      remain her lover. For a man cannot change, that is to say become another
+      person, while he continues to obey the dictates of the self which he has
+      ceased to be. Occasionally the name, if it caught his eye in a newspaper,
+      of one of the men whom he supposed to have been Odette's lovers,
+      reawakened his jealousy. But it was very slight, and, inasmuch as it
+      proved to him that he had not completely emerged from that period in which
+      he had so keenly suffered—though in it he had also known a way of
+      feeling so intensely happy—and that the accidents of his course
+      might still enable him to catch an occasional glimpse, stealthily and at a
+      distance, of its beauties, this jealousy gave him, if anything, an
+      agreeable thrill, as to the sad Parisian, when he has left Venice behind
+      him and must return to France, a last mosquito proves that Italy and
+      summer are still not too remote. But, as a rule, with this particular
+      period of his life from which he was emerging, when he made an effort, if
+      not to remain in it, at least to obtain, while still he might, an
+      uninterrupted view of it, he discovered that already it was too late; he
+      would have looked back to distinguish, as it might be a landscape that was
+      about to disappear, that love from which he had departed, but it is so
+      difficult to enter into a state of complete duality and to present to
+      oneself the lifelike spectacle of a feeling which one has ceased to
+      possess, that very soon, the clouds gathering in his brain, he could see
+      nothing, he would abandon the attempt, would take the glasses from his
+      nose and wipe them; and he told himself that he would do better to rest
+      for a little, that there would be time enough later on, and settled back
+      into his corner with as little curiosity, with as much torpor as the
+      drowsy traveller who pulls his cap down over his eyes so as to get some
+      sleep in the railway-carriage that is drawing him, he feels, faster and
+      faster, out of the country in which he has lived for so long, and which he
+      vowed that he would not allow to slip away from him without looking out to
+      bid it a last farewell. Indeed, like the same traveller, if he does not
+      awake until he has crossed the frontier and is again in France, when Swann
+      happened to alight, close at hand, upon something which proved that
+      Forcheville had been Odette's lover, he discovered that it caused him no
+      pain, that love was now utterly remote, and he regretted that he had had
+      no warning of the moment in which he had emerged from it for ever. And
+      just as, before kissing Odette for the first time, he had sought to
+      imprint upon his memory the face that for so long had been familiar,
+      before it was altered by the additional memory of their kiss, so he could
+      have wished—in thought at least—to have been in a position to
+      bid farewell, while she still existed, to that Odette who had inspired
+      love in him and jealousy, to that Odette who had caused him so to suffer,
+      and whom now he would never see again. He was mistaken. He was destined to
+      see her once again, a few weeks later. It was while he was asleep, in the
+      twilight of a dream. He was walking with Mme. Verdurin, Dr. Cottard, a
+      young man in a fez whom he failed to identify, the painter, Odette,
+      Napoleon III and my grandfather, along a path which followed the line of
+      the coast, and overhung the sea, now at a great height, now by a few feet
+      only, so that they were continually going up and down; those of the party
+      who had reached the downward slope were no longer visible to those who
+      were still climbing; what little daylight yet remained was failing, and it
+      seemed as though a black night was immediately to fall on them. Now and
+      then the waves dashed against the cliff, and Swann could feel on his cheek
+      a shower of freezing spray. Odette told him to wipe this off, but he could
+      not, and felt confused and helpless in her company, as well as because he
+      was in his nightshirt. He hoped that, in the darkness, this might pass
+      unnoticed; Mme. Verdurin, however, fixed her astonished gaze upon him for
+      an endless moment, in which he saw her face change its shape, her nose
+      grow longer, while beneath it there sprouted a heavy moustache. He turned
+      away to examine Odette; her cheeks were pale, with little fiery spots, her
+      features drawn and ringed with shadows; but she looked back at him with
+      eyes welling with affection, ready to detach themselves like tears and to
+      fall upon his face, and he felt that he loved her so much that he would
+      have liked to carry her off with him at once. Suddenly Odette turned her
+      wrist, glanced at a tiny watch, and said: "I must go." She took leave of
+      everyone, in the same formal manner, without taking Swann aside, without
+      telling him where they were to meet that evening, or next day. He dared
+      not ask, he would have liked to follow her, he was obliged, without
+      turning back in her direction, to answer with a smile some question by
+      Mme. Verdurin; but his heart was frantically beating, he felt that he now
+      hated Odette, he would gladly have crushed those eyes which, a moment ago,
+      he had loved so dearly, have torn the blood into those lifeless cheeks. He
+      continued to climb with Mme. Verdurin, that is to say that each step took
+      him farther from Odette, who was going downhill, and in the other
+      direction. A second passed and it was many hours since she had left him.
+      The painter remarked to Swann that Napoleon III had eclipsed himself
+      immediately after Odette. "They had obviously arranged it between them,"
+      he added; "they must have agreed to meet at the foot of the cliff, but
+      they wouldn't say good-bye together; it might have looked odd. She is his
+      mistress." The strange young man burst into tears. Swann endeavoured to
+      console him. "After all, she is quite right," he said to the young man,
+      drying his eyes for him and taking off the fez to make him feel more at
+      ease. "I've advised her to do that, myself, a dozen times. Why be so
+      distressed? He was obviously the man to understand her." So Swann reasoned
+      with himself, for the young man whom he had failed, at first, to identify,
+      was himself also; like certain novelists, he had distributed his own
+      personality between two characters, him who was the 'first person' in the
+      dream, and another whom he saw before him, capped with a fez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Napoleon III, it was to Forcheville that some vague association of
+      ideas, then a certain modification of the Baron's usual physiognomy, and
+      lastly the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honour across his breast, had
+      made Swann give that name; but actually, and in everything that the person
+      who appeared in his dream represented and recalled to him, it was indeed
+      Forcheville. For, from an incomplete and changing set of images, Swann in
+      his sleep drew false deductions, enjoying, at the same time, such creative
+      power that he was able to reproduce himself by a simple act of division,
+      like certain lower organisms; with the warmth that he felt in his own palm
+      he modelled the hollow of a strange hand which he thought that he was
+      clasping, and out of feelings and impressions of which he was not yet
+      conscious, he brought about sudden vicissitudes which, by a chain of
+      logical sequences, would produce, at definite points in his dream, the
+      person required to receive his love or to startle him awake. In an instant
+      night grew black about him; an alarum rang, the inhabitants ran past him,
+      escaping from their blazing houses; he could hear the thunder of the
+      surging waves, and also of his own heart, which, with equal violence, was
+      anxiously beating in his breast. Suddenly the speed of these palpitations
+      redoubled, he felt a pain, a nausea that were inexplicable; a peasant,
+      dreadfully burned, flung at him as he passed: "Come and ask Charlus where
+      Odette spent the night with her friend. He used to go about with her, and
+      she tells him everything. It was they that started the fire." It was his
+      valet, come to awaken him, and saying:—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sir, it is eight o'clock, and the barber is here. I have told him to call
+      again in an hour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these words, as they dived down through the waves of sleep in which
+      Swann was submerged, did not reach his consciousness without undergoing
+      that refraction which turns a ray of light, at the bottom of a bowl of
+      water, into another sun; just as, a moment earlier, the sound of the
+      door-bell, swelling in the depths of his abyss of sleep into the clangour
+      of an alarum, had engendered the episode of the fire. Meanwhile the
+      scenery of his dream-stage scattered in dust, he opened his eyes, heard
+      for the last time the boom of a wave in the sea, grown very distant. He
+      touched his cheek. It was dry. And yet he could feel the sting of the cold
+      spray, and the taste of salt on his lips. He rose, and dressed himself. He
+      had made the barber come early because he had written, the day before, to
+      my grandfather, to say that he was going, that afternoon, to Combray,
+      having learned that Mme. de Cambremer—Mlle. Legrandin that had been—was
+      spending a few days there. The association in his memory of her young and
+      charming face with a place in the country which he had not visited for so
+      long, offered him a combined attraction which had made him decide at last
+      to leave Paris for a while. As the different changes and chances that
+      bring us into the company of certain other people in this life do not
+      coincide with the periods in which we are in love with those people, but,
+      overlapping them, may occur before love has begun, and may be repeated
+      after love is ended, the earliest appearances, in our life, of a creature
+      who is destined to afford us pleasure later on, assume retrospectively in
+      our eyes a certain value as an indication, a warning, a presage. It was in
+      this fashion that Swann had often carried back his mind to the image of
+      Odette, encountered in the theatre, on that first evening when he had no
+      thought of ever seeing her again—and that he now recalled the party
+      at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's, at which he had introduced General de
+      Froberville to Mme. de Cambremer. So manifold are our interests in life
+      that it is not uncommon that, on a single occasion, the foundations of a
+      happiness which does not yet exist are laid down simultaneously with
+      aggravations of a grief from which we are still suffering. And, no doubt,
+      that might have occurred to Swann elsewhere than at Mme. de
+      Saint-Euverte's. Who, indeed, can say whether, in the event of his having
+      gone, that evening, somewhere else, other happinesses, other griefs would
+      not have come to him, which, later, would have appeared to have been
+      inevitable? But what did seem to him to have been inevitable was what had
+      indeed taken place, and he was not far short of seeing something
+      providential in the fact that he had at last decided to go to Mme. de
+      Saint-Euverte's that evening, because his mind, anxious to admire the
+      richness of invention that life shews, and incapable of facing a difficult
+      problem for any length of time, such as to discover what, actually, had
+      been most to be wished for, came to the conclusion that the sufferings
+      through which he had passed that evening, and the pleasures, at that time
+      unsuspected, which were already being brought to birth,—the exact
+      balance between which was too difficult to establish—were linked by
+      a sort of concatenation of necessity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But while, an hour after his awakening, he was giving instructions to the
+      barber, so that his stiffly brushed hair should not become disarranged on
+      the journey, he thought once again of his dream; he saw once again, as he
+      had felt them close beside him, Odette's pallid complexion, her too thin
+      cheeks, her drawn features, her tired eyes, all the things which—in
+      the course of those successive bursts of affection which had made of his
+      enduring love for Odette a long oblivion of the first impression that he
+      had formed of her—he had ceased to observe after the first few days
+      of their intimacy, days to which, doubtless, while he slept, his memory
+      had returned to seek the exact sensation of those things. And with that
+      old, intermittent fatuity, which reappeared in him now that he was no
+      longer unhappy, and lowered, at the same time, the average level of his
+      morality, he cried out in his heart: "To think that I have wasted years of
+      my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love that I have
+      ever known has been for a woman who did not please me, who was not in my
+      style!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PLACE-NAMES: THE NAME
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Among the rooms which used most commonly to take shape in my mind during
+      my long nights of sleeplessness, there was none that differed more utterly
+      from the rooms at Combray, thickly powdered with the motes of an
+      atmosphere granular, pollenous, edible and instinct with piety, than my
+      room in the Grand Hôtel de la Plage, at Balbec, the walls of which, washed
+      with ripolin, contained, like the polished sides of a basin in which the
+      water glows with a blue, lurking fire, a finer air, pure, azure-tinted,
+      saline. The Bavarian upholsterer who had been entrusted with the
+      furnishing of this hotel had varied his scheme of decoration in different
+      rooms, and in that which I found myself occupying had set against the
+      walls, on three sides of it, a series of low book-cases with glass fronts,
+      in which, according to where they stood, by a law of nature which he had,
+      perhaps, forgotten to take into account, was reflected this or that
+      section of the ever-changing view of the sea, so that the walls were lined
+      with a frieze of seascapes, interrupted only by the polished mahogany of
+      the actual shelves. And so effective was this that the whole room had the
+      appearance of one of those model bedrooms which you see nowadays in
+      Housing Exhibitions, decorated with works of art which are calculated by
+      their designer to refresh the eyes of whoever may ultimately have to sleep
+      in the rooms, the subjects being kept in some degree of harmony with the
+      locality and surroundings of the houses for which the rooms are planned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet nothing could have differed more utterly, either, from the real
+      Balbec than that other Balbec of which I had often dreamed, on stormy
+      days, when the wind was so strong that Françoise, as she took me to the
+      Champs-Elysées, would warn me not to walk too near the side of the street,
+      or I might have my head knocked off by a falling slate, and would recount
+      to me, with many lamentations, the terrible disasters and shipwrecks that
+      were reported in the newspaper. I longed for nothing more than to behold a
+      storm at sea, less as a mighty spectacle than as a momentary revelation of
+      the true life of nature; or rather there were for me no mighty spectacles
+      save those which I knew to be not artificially composed for my
+      entertainment, but necessary and unalterable,—the beauty of
+      landscapes or of great works of art. I was not curious, I did not thirst
+      to know anything save what I believed to be more genuine than myself, what
+      had for me the supreme merit of shewing me a fragment of the mind of a
+      great genius, or of the force or the grace of nature as she appeared when
+      left entirely to herself, without human interference. Just as the lovely
+      sound of her voice, reproduced, all by itself, upon the phonograph, could
+      never console a man for the loss of his mother, so a mechanical imitation
+      of a storm would have left me as cold as did the illuminated fountains at
+      the Exhibition. I required also, if the storm was to be absolutely
+      genuine, that the shore from which I watched it should be a natural shore,
+      not an embankment recently constructed by a municipality. Besides, nature,
+      by all the feelings that she aroused in me, seemed to me the most opposite
+      thing in the world to the mechanical inventions of mankind. The less she
+      bore their imprint, the more room she offered for the expansion of my
+      heart. And, as it happened, I had preserved the name of Balbec, which
+      Legrandin had cited to us, as that of a sea-side place in the very midst
+      of "that funereal coast, famed for the number of its wrecks, swathed, for
+      six months in the year, in a shroud of fog and flying foam from the waves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You feel, there, below your feet still," he had told me, "far more even
+      than at Finistère (and even though hotels are now being superimposed upon
+      it, without power, however, to modify that oldest bone in the earth's
+      skeleton) you feel there that you are actually at the land's end of
+      France, of Europe, of the Old World. And it is the ultimate encampment of
+      the fishermen, precisely like the fishermen who have lived since the
+      world's beginning, facing the everlasting kingdom of the sea-fogs and
+      shadows of the night." One day when, at Combray, I had spoken of this
+      coast, this Balbec, before M. Swann, hoping to learn from him whether it
+      was the best point to select for seeing the most violent storms, he had
+      replied: "I should think I did know Balbec! The church at Balbec, built in
+      the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and still half romanesque, is
+      perhaps the most curious example to be found of our Norman gothic, and so
+      exceptional that one is tempted to describe it as Persian in its
+      inspiration." And that region, which, until then, had seemed to me to be
+      nothing else than a part of immemorial nature, that had remained
+      contemporaneous with the great phenomena of geology—and as remote
+      from human history as the Ocean itself, or the Great Bear, with its wild
+      race of fishermen for whom, no more than for their whales, had there been
+      any Middle Ages—it had been a great joy to me to see it suddenly
+      take its place in the order of the centuries, with a stored consciousness
+      of the romanesque epoch, and to know that the gothic trefoil had come to
+      diversify those wild rocks also, at the appointed hour, like those frail
+      but hardy plants which, in the Polar regions, when the spring returns,
+      scatter their stars about the eternal snows. And if gothic art brought to
+      those places and people a classification which, otherwise, they lacked,
+      they too conferred one upon it in return. I tried to form a picture in my
+      mind of how those fishermen had lived, the timid and unsuspected essay
+      towards social intercourse which they had attempted there, clustered upon
+      a promontory of the shores of Hell, at the foot of the cliffs of death;
+      and gothic art seemed to me a more living thing now that, detaching it
+      from the towns in which, until then, I had always imagined it, I could see
+      how, in a particular instance, upon a reef of savage rocks, it had taken
+      root and grown until it flowered in a tapering spire. I was taken to see
+      reproductions of the most famous of the statues at Balbec,—shaggy,
+      blunt-faced Apostles, the Virgin from the porch,—and I could
+      scarcely breathe for joy at the thought that I might myself, one day, see
+      them take a solid form against their eternal background of salt fog.
+      Thereafter, on dear, tempestuous February nights, the wind—breathing
+      into my heart, which it shook no less violently than the chimney of my
+      bedroom, the project of a visit to Balbec—blended in me the desire
+      for gothic architecture with that for a storm upon the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I should have liked to take, the very next day, the good, the generous
+      train at one twenty-two, of which never without a palpitating heart could
+      I read, in the railway company's bills or in advertisements of circular
+      tours, the hour of departure: it seemed to me to cut, at a precise point
+      in every afternoon, a most fascinating groove, a mysterious mark, from
+      which the diverted hours still led one on, of course, towards evening,
+      towards to-morrow morning, but to an evening and morning which one would
+      behold, not in Paris but in one of those towns through which the train
+      passed and among which it allowed one to choose; for it stopped at Bayeux,
+      at Coutances, at Vitré, at Questambert, at Pontorson, at Balbec, at
+      Lannion, at Lamballe, at Benodet, at Pont-Aven, at Quimperle, and
+      progressed magnificently surcharged with names which it offered me, so
+      that, among them all, I did not know which to choose, so impossible was it
+      to sacrifice any. But even without waiting for the train next day, I
+      could, by rising and dressing myself with all speed, leave Paris that very
+      evening, should my parents permit, and arrive at Balbec as dawn spread
+      westward over the raging sea, from whose driven foam I would seek shelter
+      in that church in the Persian manner. But at the approach of the Easter
+      holidays, when my parents had promised to let me spend them, for once, in
+      the North of Italy, lo! in place of those dreams of tempests, by which I
+      had been entirely possessed, not wishing to see anything but waves dashing
+      in from all sides, mounting always higher, upon the wildest of coasts,
+      beside churches as rugged and precipitous as cliffs, in whose towers the
+      sea-birds would be wailing; suddenly, effacing them, taking away all their
+      charm, excluding them because they were its opposite and could only have
+      weakened its effect, was substituted in me the converse dream of the most
+      variegated of springs, not the spring of Combray, still pricking with all
+      the needle-points of the winter's frost, but that which already covered
+      with lilies and anemones the meadows of Fiesole, and gave Florence a
+      dazzling golden background, like those in Fra Angelico's pictures. From
+      that moment, only sunlight, perfumes, colours, seemed to me to have any
+      value; for this alternation of images had effected a change of front in my
+      desire, and—as abrupt as those that occur sometimes in music,—a
+      complete change of tone in my sensibility. Thus it came about that a mere
+      atmospheric variation would be sufficient to provoke in me that
+      modulation, without there being any need for me to await the return of a
+      season. For often we find a day, in one, that has strayed from another
+      season, and makes us live in that other, summons at once into our presence
+      and makes us long for its peculiar pleasures, and interrupts the dreams
+      that we were in process of weaving, by inserting, out of its turn, too
+      early or too late, this leaf, torn from another chapter, in the
+      interpolated calendar of Happiness. But soon it happened that, like those
+      natural phenomena from which our comfort or our health can derive but an
+      accidental and all too modest benefit, until the day when science takes
+      control of them, and, producing them at will, places in our hands the
+      power to order their appearance, withdrawn from the tutelage and
+      independent of the consent of chance; similarly the production of these
+      dreams of the Atlantic and of Italy ceased to depend entirely upon the
+      changes of the seasons and of the weather. I need only, to make them
+      reappear, pronounce the names: Balbec, Venice, Florence, within whose
+      syllables had gradually accumulated all the longing inspired in me by the
+      places for which they stood. Even in spring, to come in a book upon the
+      name of Balbec sufficed to awaken in me the desire for storms at sea and
+      for the Norman gothic; even on a stormy day the name of Florence or of
+      Venice would awaken the desire for sunshine, for lilies, for the Palace of
+      the Doges and for Santa Maria del Fiore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if their names thus permanently absorbed the image that I had formed
+      of these towns, it was only by transforming that image, by subordinating
+      its reappearance in me to their own special laws; and in consequence of
+      this they made it more beautiful, but at the same time more different from
+      anything that the towns of Normandy or Tuscany could in reality be, and,
+      by increasing the arbitrary delights of my imagination, aggravated the
+      disenchantment that was in store for me when I set out upon my travels.
+      They magnified the idea that I formed of certain points on the earth's
+      surface, making them more special, and in consequence more real. I did not
+      then represent to myself towns, landscapes, historic buildings, as
+      pictures more or less attractive, cut out here and there of a substance
+      that was common to them all, but looked on each of them as on an unknown
+      thing, different from all the rest, a thing for which my soul was athirst,
+      by the knowledge of which it would benefit. How much more individual still
+      was the character that they assumed from being designated by names, names
+      that were only for themselves, proper names such as people have. Words
+      present to us little pictures of things, lucid and normal, like the
+      pictures that are hung on the walls of schoolrooms to give children an
+      illustration of what is meant by a carpenter's bench, a bird, an ant-hill;
+      things chosen as typical of everything else of the same sort. But names
+      present to us—of persons and of towns which they accustom us to
+      regard as individual, as unique, like persons—a confused picture,
+      which draws from the names, from the brightness or darkness of their
+      sound, the colour in which it is uniformly painted, like one of those
+      posters, entirely blue or entirely red, in which, on account of the
+      limitations imposed by the process used in their reproduction, or by a
+      whim on the designer's part, are blue or red not only the sky and the sea,
+      but the ships and the church and the people in the streets. The name of
+      Parma, one of the towns that I most longed to visit, after reading the <i>Chartreuse</i>,
+      seeming to me compact and glossy, violet-tinted, soft, if anyone were to
+      speak of such or such a house in Parma, in which I should be lodged, he
+      would give me the pleasure of thinking that I was to inhabit a dwelling
+      that was compact and glossy, violet-tinted, soft, and that bore no
+      relation to the houses in any other town in Italy, since I could imagine
+      it only by the aid of that heavy syllable of the name of Parma, in which
+      no breath of air stirred, and of all that I had made it assume of
+      Stendhalian sweetness and the reflected hue of violets. And when I thought
+      of Florence, it was of a town miraculously embalmed, and flower-like,
+      since it was called the City of the Lilies, and its Cathedral, Our Lady of
+      the Flower. As for Balbec, it was one of those names in which, as on an
+      old piece of Norman pottery that still keeps the colour of the earth from
+      which it was fashioned, one sees depicted still the representation of some
+      long-abolished custom, of some feudal right, of the former condition of
+      some place, of an obsolete way of pronouncing the language, which had
+      shaped and wedded its incongruous syllables and which I never doubted that
+      I should find spoken there at once, even by the inn-keeper who would pour
+      me out coffee and milk on my arrival, taking me down to watch the
+      turbulent sea, unchained, before the church; to whom I lent the aspect,
+      disputatious, solemn and mediaeval, of some character in one of the old
+      romances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had my health definitely improved, had my parents allowed me, if not
+      actually to go down to stay at Balbec, at least to take, just once, so as
+      to become acquainted with the architecture and landscapes of Normandy or
+      of Brittany, that one twenty-two train into which I had so often clambered
+      in imagination, I should have preferred to stop, and to alight from it, at
+      the most beautiful of its towns; but in vain might I compare and contrast
+      them; how was one to choose, any more than between individual people, who
+      are not interchangeable, between Bayeux, so lofty in its noble coronet of
+      rusty lace, whose highest point caught the light of the old gold of its
+      second syllable; Vitré, whose acute accent barred its ancient glass with
+      wooden lozenges; gentle Lamballe, whose whiteness ranged from egg-shell
+      yellow to a pearly grey; Coutances, a Norman Cathedral, which its final
+      consonants, rich and yellowing, crowned with a tower of butter; Lannion
+      with the rumble and buzz, in the silence of its village street, of the fly
+      on the wheel of the coach; Questambert, Pontorson, ridiculously silly and
+      simple, white feathers and yellow beaks strewn along the road to those
+      well-watered and poetic spots; Benodet, a name scarcely moored that seemed
+      to be striving to draw the river down into the tangle of its seaweeds;
+      Pont-Aven, the snowy, rosy flight of the wing of a lightly poised coif,
+      tremulously reflected in the greenish waters of a canal; Quimperlé, more
+      firmly attached, this, and since the Middle Ages, among the rivulets with
+      which it babbled, threading their pearls upon a grey background, like the
+      pattern made, through the cobwebs upon a window, by rays of sunlight
+      changed into blunt points of tarnished silver?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These images were false for another reason also; namely, that they were
+      necessarily much simplified; doubtless the object to which my imagination
+      aspired, which my senses took in but incompletely and without any
+      immediate pleasure, I had committed to the safe custody of names;
+      doubtless because I had accumulated there a store of dreams, those names
+      now magnetised my desires; but names themselves are not very
+      comprehensive; the most that I could do was to include in each of them two
+      or three of the principal curiosities of the town, which would lie there
+      side by side, without interval or partition; in the name of Balbec, as in
+      the magnifying glasses set in those penholders which one buys at sea-side
+      places, I could distinguish waves surging round a church built in the
+      Persian manner. Perhaps, indeed, the enforced simplicity of these images
+      was one of the reasons for the hold that they had over me. When my father
+      had decided, one year, that we should go for the Easter holidays to
+      Florence and Venice, not finding room to introduce into the name of
+      Florence the elements that ordinarily constitute a town, I was obliged to
+      let a supernatural city emerge from the impregnation by certain vernal
+      scenes of what I supposed to be, in its essentials, the genius of Giotto.
+      All the more—and because one cannot make a name extend much further
+      in time than in space—like some of Giotto's paintings themselves
+      which shew us at two separate moments the same person engaged in different
+      actions, here lying on his bed, there just about to mount his horse, the
+      name of Florence was divided into two compartments. In one, beneath an
+      architectural dais, I gazed upon a fresco over which was partly drawn a
+      curtain of morning sunlight, dusty, aslant, and gradually spreading; in
+      the other (for, since I thought of names not as an inaccessible ideal but
+      as a real and enveloping substance into which I was about to plunge, the
+      life not yet lived, the life intact and pure which I enclosed in them,
+      gave to the most material pleasures, to the simplest scenes, the same
+      attraction that they have in the works of the Primitives), I moved swiftly—so
+      as to arrive, as soon as might be, at the table that was spread for me,
+      with fruit and a flask of Chianti—across a Ponte Vecchio heaped with
+      jonquils, narcissi and anemones. That (for all that I was still in Paris)
+      was what I saw, and not what was actually round about me. Even from the
+      simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries for which we
+      long occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our true life than
+      the country in which we may happen to be. Doubtless, if, at that time, I
+      had paid more attention to what was in my mind when I pronounced the words
+      "going to Florence, to Parma, to Pisa, to Venice," I should have realised
+      that what I saw was in no sense a town, but something as different from
+      anything that I knew, something as delicious as might be for a human race
+      whose whole existence had passed in a series of late winter afternoons,
+      that inconceivable marvel, a morning in spring. These images, unreal,
+      fixed, always alike, filling all my nights and days, differentiated this
+      period in my life from those which had gone before it (and might easily
+      have been confused with it by an observer who saw things only from
+      without, that is to say, who saw nothing), as in an opera a fresh melody
+      introduces a novel atmosphere which one could never have suspected if one
+      had done no more than read the libretto, still less if one had remained
+      outside the theatre, counting only the minutes as they passed. And
+      besides, even from the point of view of mere quantity, in our life the
+      days are not all equal. To reach the end of a day, natures that are
+      slightly nervous, as mine was, make use, like motor-cars, of different
+      'speeds.' There are mountainous, uncomfortable days, up which one takes an
+      infinite time to pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can go
+      at full tilt, singing as one goes. During this month—in which I went
+      laboriously over, as over a tune, though never to my satisfaction, these
+      visions of Florence, Venice, Pisa, from which the desire that they excited
+      in me drew and kept something as profoundly personal as if it had been
+      love, love for another person—I never ceased to believe that they
+      corresponded to a reality independent of myself, and they made me
+      conscious of as glorious a hope as could have been cherished by a
+      Christian in the primitive age of faith, on the eve of his entry into
+      Paradise. Moreover, without my paying any heed to the contradiction that
+      there was in my wishing to look at and to touch with my organs of sense
+      what had been elaborated by the spell of my dreams and not perceived by my
+      senses at all—though all the more tempting to them, in consequence,
+      more different from anything that they knew—it was that which
+      recalled to me the reality of these visions, which inflamed my desire all
+      the more by seeming to hint a promise that my desire should be satisfied.
+      And for all that the motive force of my exaltation was a longing for
+      aesthetic enjoyments, the guide-books ministered even more to it than
+      books on aesthetics, and, more again than the guide-books, the railway
+      time-tables. What moved me was the thought that this Florence which I
+      could see, so near and yet inaccessible, in my imagination, if the tract
+      which separated it from me, in myself, was not one that I might cross,
+      could yet be reached by a circuit, by a digression, were I to take the
+      plain, terrestrial path. When I repeated to myself, giving thus a special
+      value to what I was going to see, that Venice was the "School of
+      Giorgione, the home of Titian, the most complete museum of the domestic
+      architecture of the Middle Ages," I felt happy indeed. As I was even more
+      when, on one of my walks, as I stepped out briskly on account of the
+      weather, which, after several days of a precocious spring, had relapsed
+      into winter (like the weather that we had invariably found awaiting us at
+      Combray, in Holy Week),—seeing upon the boulevards that the
+      chestnut-trees, though plunged in a glacial atmosphere that soaked through
+      them like a stream of water, were none the less beginning, punctual
+      guests, arrayed already for the party, and admitting no discouragement, to
+      shape and chisel and curve in its frozen lumps the irrepressible verdure
+      whose steady growth the abortive power of the cold might hinder but could
+      not succeed in restraining—I reflected that already the Ponte
+      Vecchio was heaped high with an abundance of hyacinths and anemones, and
+      that the spring sunshine was already tinging the waves of the Grand Canal
+      with so dusky an azure, with emeralds so splendid that when they washed
+      and were broken against the foot of one of Titian's paintings they could
+      vie with it in the richness of their colouring. I could no longer contain
+      my joy when my father, in the intervals of tapping the barometer and
+      complaining of the cold, began to look out which were the best trains, and
+      when I understood that by making one's way, after luncheon, into the
+      coal-grimed laboratory, the wizard's cell that undertook to contrive a
+      complete transmutation of its surroundings, one could awaken, next
+      morning, in the city of marble and gold, in which "the building of the
+      wall was of jasper and the foundation of the wall an emerald." So that it
+      and the City of the Lilies were not just artificial scenes which I could
+      set up at my pleasure in front of my imagination, but did actually exist
+      at a certain distance from Paris which must inevitably be traversed if I
+      wished to see them, at their appointed place on the earth's surface, and
+      at no other; in a word they were entirely real. They became even more real
+      to me when my father, by saying: "Well, you can stay in Venice from the
+      20th to the 29th, and reach Florence on Easter morning," made them both
+      emerge, no longer only from the abstraction of Space, but from that
+      imaginary Time in which we place not one, merely, but several of our
+      travels at once, which do not greatly tax us since they are but
+      possibilities,—that Time which reconstructs itself so effectively
+      that one can spend it again in one town after one has already spent it in
+      another—and consecrated to them some of those actual, calendar days
+      which are certificates of the genuineness of what one does on them, for
+      those unique days are consumed by being used, they do not return, one
+      cannot live them again here when one has lived them elsewhere; I felt that
+      it was towards the week that would begin with the Monday on which the
+      laundress was to bring back the white waistcoat that I had stained with
+      ink, that they were hastening to busy themselves with the duty of emerging
+      from that ideal Time in which they did not, as yet, exist, those two Queen
+      Cities of which I was soon to be able, by the most absorbing kind of
+      geometry, to inscribe the domes and towers on a page of my own life. But I
+      was still on the way, only, to the supreme pinnacle of happiness; I
+      reached it finally (for not until then did the revelation burst upon me
+      that on the clattering streets, reddened by the light reflected from
+      Giorgione's frescoes, it was not, as I had, despite so many promptings,
+      continued to imagine, the men "majestic and terrible as the sea, bearing
+      armour that gleamed with bronze beneath the folds of their blood-red
+      cloaks," who would be walking in Venice next week, on the Easter vigil;
+      but that I myself might be the minute personage whom, in an enlarged
+      photograph of St. Mark's that had been lent to me, the operator had
+      portrayed, in a bowler hat, in front of the portico), when I heard my
+      father say: "It must be pretty cold, still, on the Grand Canal; whatever
+      you do, don't forget to pack your winter greatcoat and your thick suit."
+      At these words I was raised to a sort of ecstasy; a thing that I had until
+      then deemed impossible, I felt myself to be penetrating indeed between
+      those "rocks of amethyst, like a reef in the Indian Ocean"; by a supreme
+      muscular effort, a long way in excess of my real strength, stripping
+      myself, as of a shell that served no purpose, of the air in my own room
+      which surrounded me, I replaced it by an equal quantity of Venetian air,
+      that marine atmosphere, indescribable and peculiar as the atmosphere of
+      the dreams which my imagination had secreted in the name of Venice; I
+      could feel at work within me a miraculous disincarnation; it was at once
+      accompanied by that vague desire to vomit which one feels when one has a
+      very sore throat; and they had to put me to bed with a fever so persistent
+      that the doctor not only assured my parents that a visit, that spring, to
+      Florence and Venice was absolutely out of the question, but warned them
+      that, even when I should have completely recovered, I must, for at least a
+      year, give up all idea of travelling, and be kept from anything that was
+      liable to excite me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, alas, he forbade also, most categorically, my being allowed to go to
+      the theatre, to hear Berma; the sublime artist, whose genius Bergotte had
+      proclaimed, might, by introducing me to something else that was, perhaps,
+      as important and as beautiful, have consoled me for not having been to
+      Florence and Venice, for not going to Balbec. My parents had to be content
+      with sending me, every day, to the Champs-Elysées, in the custody of a
+      person who would see that I did not tire myself; this person was none
+      other than Françoise, who had entered our service after the death of my
+      aunt Léonie. Going to the Champs-Elysées I found unendurable. If only
+      Bergotte had described the place in one of his books, I should, no doubt,
+      have longed to see and to know it, like so many things else of which a
+      simulacrum had first found its way into my imagination. That kept things
+      warm, made them live, gave them personality, and I sought then to find
+      their counterpart in reality, but in this public garden there was nothing
+      that attached itself to my dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, as I was weary of our usual place, beside the wooden horses,
+      Françoise had taken me for an excursion—across the frontier guarded
+      at regular intervals by the little bastions of the barley-sugar women—into
+      those neighbouring but foreign regions, where the faces of the passers-by
+      were strange, where the goat-carriage went past; then she had gone away to
+      lay down her things on a chair that stood with its back to a shrubbery of
+      laurels; while I waited for her I was pacing the broad lawn, of meagre
+      close-cropped grass already faded by the sun, dominated, at its far end,
+      by a statue rising from a fountain, in front of which a little girl with
+      reddish hair was playing with a shuttlecock; when, from the path, another
+      little girl, who was putting on her cloak and covering up her battledore,
+      called out sharply: "Good-bye, Gilberte, I'm going home now; don't forget,
+      we're coming to you this evening, after dinner." The name Gilberte passed
+      close by me, evoking all the more forcibly her whom it labelled in that it
+      did not merely refer to her, as one speaks of a man in his absence, but
+      was directly addressed to her; it passed thus close by me, in action, so
+      to speak, with a force that increased with the curve of its trajectory and
+      as it drew near to its target;—carrying in its wake, I could feel,
+      the knowledge, the impression of her to whom it was addressed that
+      belonged not to me but to the friend who called to her, everything that,
+      while she uttered the words, she more or less vividly reviewed, possessed
+      in her memory, of their daily intimacy, of the visits that they paid to
+      each other, of that unknown existence which was all the more inaccessible,
+      all the more painful to me from being, conversely, so familiar, so
+      tractable to this happy girl who let her message brush past me without my
+      being able to penetrate its surface, who flung it on the air with a
+      light-hearted cry: letting float in the atmosphere the delicious attar
+      which that message had distilled, by touching them with precision, from
+      certain invisible points in Mlle. Swann's life, from the evening to come,
+      as it would be, after dinner, at her home,—forming, on its celestial
+      passage through the midst of the children and their nursemaids, a little
+      cloud, exquisitely coloured, like the cloud that, curling over one of
+      Poussin's gardens, reflects minutely, like a cloud in the opera, teeming
+      with chariots and horses, some apparition of the life of the gods;
+      casting, finally, on that ragged grass, at the spot on which she stood (at
+      once a scrap of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the fair
+      player, who continued to beat up and catch her shuttlecock until a
+      governess, with a blue feather in her hat, had called her away) a
+      marvellous little band of light, of the colour of heliotrope, spread over
+      the lawn like a carpet on which I could not tire of treading to and fro
+      with lingering feet, nostalgic and profane, while Françoise shouted: "Come
+      on, button up your coat, look, and let's get away!" and I remarked for the
+      first time how common her speech was, and that she had, alas, no blue
+      feather in her hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only, would <i>she</i> come again to the Champs-Elysées? Next day she was
+      not there; but I saw her on the following days; I spent all my time
+      revolving round the spot where she was at play with her friends, to such
+      effect that once, when, they found, they were not enough to make up a
+      prisoner's base, she sent one of them to ask me if I cared to complete
+      their side, and from that day I played with her whenever she came. But
+      this did not happen every day; there were days when she had been prevented
+      from coming by her lessons, by her catechism, by a luncheon-party, by the
+      whole of that life, separated from my own, which twice only, condensed
+      into the name of Gilberte, I had felt pass so painfully close to me, in
+      the hawthorn lane near Combray and on the grass of the Champs-Elysées. On
+      such days she would have told us beforehand that we should not see her; if
+      it were because of her lessons, she would say: "It is too tiresome, I
+      sha'n't be able to come to-morrow; you will all be enjoying yourselves
+      here without me," with an air of regret which to some extent consoled me;
+      if, on the other hand, she had been invited to a party, and I, not knowing
+      this, asked her whether she was coming to play with us, she would reply:
+      "Indeed I hope not! Indeed I hope Mamma will let me go to my friend's."
+      But on these days I did at least know that I should not see her, whereas
+      on others, without any warning, her mother would take her for a drive, or
+      some such thing, and next day she would say: "Oh, yes! I went out with
+      Mamma," as though it had been the most natural thing in the world, and not
+      the greatest possible misfortune for some one else. There were also the
+      days of bad weather on which her governess, afraid, on her own account, of
+      the rain, would not bring Gilberte to the Champs-Elysées.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, if the heavens were doubtful, from early morning I would not cease
+      to interrogate them, observing all the omens. If I saw the lady opposite,
+      just inside her window, putting on her hat, I would say to myself: "That
+      lady is going out; it must, therefore, be weather in which one can go out.
+      Why should not Gilberte do the same as that lady?" But the day grew dark.
+      My mother said that it might clear again, that one burst of sunshine would
+      be enough, but that more probably it would rain; and if it rained, of what
+      use would it be to go to the Champs-Elysées? And so, from breakfast-time,
+      my anxious eyes never left the uncertain, clouded sky. It remained dark.
+      Outside the window, the balcony was grey. Suddenly, on its sullen stone, I
+      did not indeed see a less negative colour, but I felt as it were an effort
+      towards a less negative colour, the pulsation of a hesitating ray that
+      struggled to discharge its light. A moment later the balcony was as pale
+      and luminous as a standing water at dawn, and a thousand shadows from the
+      iron-work of its balustrade had come to rest on it. A breath of wind
+      dispersed them; the stone grew dark again, but, like tamed creatures, they
+      returned; they began, imperceptibly, to grow lighter, and by one of those
+      continuous crescendos, such as, in music, at the end of an overture, carry
+      a single note to the extreme fortissimo, making it pass rapidly through
+      all the intermediate stages, I saw it attain to that fixed, unalterable
+      gold of fine days, on which the sharply cut shadows of the wrought iron of
+      the balustrade were outlined in black like a capricious vegetation, with a
+      fineness in the delineation of their smallest details which seemed to
+      indicate a deliberate application, an artist's satisfaction, and with so
+      much relief, so velvety a bloom in the restfulness of their sombre and
+      happy mass that in truth those large and leafy shadows which lay reflected
+      on that lake of sunshine seemed aware that they were pledges of happiness
+      and peace of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brief, fading ivy, climbing, fugitive flora, the most colourless, the most
+      depressing, to many minds, of all that creep on walls or decorate windows;
+      to me the dearest of them all, from the day when it appeared upon our
+      balcony, like the very shadow of the presence of Gilberte, who was perhaps
+      already in the Champs-Elysées, and as soon as I arrived there would greet
+      me with: "Let's begin at once. You are on my side." Frail, swept away by a
+      breath, but at the same time in harmony, not with the season, with the
+      hour; a promise of that immediate pleasure which the day will deny or
+      fulfil, and thereby of the one paramount immediate pleasure, the pleasure
+      of loving and of being loved; more soft, more warm upon the stone than
+      even moss is; alive, a ray of sunshine sufficing for its birth, and for
+      the birth of joy, even in the heart of winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And on those days when all other vegetation had disappeared, when the fine
+      jerkins of green leather which covered the trunks of the old trees were
+      hidden beneath the snow; after the snow had ceased to fall, but when the
+      sky was still too much overcast for me to hope that Gilberte would venture
+      out, then suddenly—inspiring my mother to say: "Look, it's quite
+      fine now; I think you might perhaps try going to the Champs-Elysées after
+      all."—on the mantle of snow that swathed the balcony, the sun had
+      appeared and was stitching seams of gold, with embroidered patches of dark
+      shadow. That day we found no one there, or else a solitary girl, on the
+      point of departure, who assured me that Gilberte was not coming. The
+      chairs, deserted by the imposing but uninspiring company of governesses,
+      stood empty. Only, near the grass, was sitting a lady of uncertain age who
+      came in all weathers, dressed always in an identical style, splendid and
+      sombre, to make whose acquaintance I would have, at that period,
+      sacrificed, had it lain in my power, all the greatest opportunities in my
+      life to come. For Gilberte went up every day to speak to her; she used to
+      ask Gilberte for news of her "dearest mother" and it struck me that, if I
+      had known her, I should have been for Gilberte some one wholly different,
+      some one who knew people in her parents' world. While her grandchildren
+      played together at a little distance, she would sit and read the Débats,
+      which she called "My old <i>Débats</i>!" as, with an aristocratic
+      familiarity, she would say, speaking of the police-sergeant or the woman
+      who let the chairs, "My old friend the police-sergeant," or "The
+      chair-keeper and I, who are old friends."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Françoise found it too cold to stand about, so we walked to the Pont de la
+      Concorde to see the Seine frozen over, on to which everyone, even
+      children, walked fearlessly, as though upon an enormous whale, stranded,
+      defenceless, and about to be cut up. We returned to the Champs-Elysées; I
+      was growing sick with misery between the motionless wooden horses and the
+      white lawn, caught in a net of black paths from which the snow had been
+      cleared, while the statue that surmounted it held in its hand a long
+      pendent icicle which seemed to explain its gesture. The old lady herself,
+      having folded up her <i>Débats</i>, asked a passing nursemaid the time,
+      thanking her with "How very good of you!" then begged the road-sweeper to
+      tell her grandchildren to come, as she felt cold, adding "A thousand
+      thanks. I am sorry to give you so much trouble!" Suddenly the sky was rent
+      in two: between the punch-and-judy and the horses, against the opening
+      horizon, I had just seen, like a miraculous sign, Mademoiselle's blue
+      feather. And now Gilberte was running at full speed towards me, sparkling
+      and rosy beneath a cap trimmed with fur, enlivened by the cold, by being
+      late, by her anxiety for a game; shortly before she reached me, she
+      slipped on a piece of ice and, either to regain her balance, or because it
+      appeared to her graceful, or else pretending that she was on skates, it
+      was with outstretched arms that she smilingly advanced, as though to
+      embrace me. "Bravo! bravo! that's splendid; 'topping,' I should say, like
+      you—'sporting,' I suppose I ought to say, only I'm a
+      hundred-and-one, a woman of the old school," exclaimed the lady, uttering,
+      on behalf of the voiceless Champs-Elysées, their thanks to Gilberte for
+      having come, without letting herself be frightened away by the weather.
+      "You are like me, faithful at all costs to our old Champs-Elysées; we are
+      two brave souls! You wouldn't believe me, I dare say, if I told you that I
+      love them, even like this. This snow (I know, you'll laugh at me), it
+      makes me think of ermine!" And the old lady began to laugh herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first of these days—to which the snow, a symbol of the powers
+      that were able to deprive me of the sight of Gilberte, imparted the
+      sadness of a day of separation, almost the aspect of a day of departure,
+      because it changed the outward form and almost forbade the use of the
+      customary scene of our only encounters, now altered, covered, as it were,
+      in dust-sheets—that day, none the less, marked a stage in the
+      progress of my love, for it was, in a sense, the first sorrow that she was
+      to share with me. There were only our two selves of our little company,
+      and to be thus alone with her was not merely like a beginning of intimacy,
+      but also on her part—as though she had come there solely to please
+      me, and in such weather—it seemed to me as touching as if, on one of
+      those days on which she had been invited to a party, she had given it up
+      in order to come to me in the Champs-Elysées; I acquired more confidence
+      in the vitality, in the future of a friendship which could remain so much
+      alive amid the torpor, the solitude, the decay of our surroundings; and
+      while she dropped pellets of snow down my neck, I smiled lovingly at what
+      seemed to me at once a predilection that she shewed for me in thus
+      tolerating me as her travelling companion in this new, this wintry land,
+      and a sort of loyalty to me which she preserved through evil times.
+      Presently, one after another, like shyly hopping sparrows, her friends
+      arrived, black against the snow. We got ready to play and, since this day
+      which had begun so sadly was destined to end in joy, as I went up, before
+      the game started, to the friend with the sharp voice whom I had heard,
+      that first day, calling Gilberte by name, she said to me: "No, no, I'm
+      sure you'd much rather be in Gilberte's camp; besides, look, she's
+      signalling to you." She was in fact summoning me to cross the snowy lawn
+      to her camp, to 'take the field,' which the sun, by casting over it a rosy
+      gleam, the metallic lustre of old and worn brocades, had turned into a
+      Field of the Cloth of Gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This day, which I had begun with so many misgivings, was, as it happened,
+      one of the few on which I was not unduly wretched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For, although I no longer thought, now, of anything save not to let a
+      single day pass without seeing Gilberte (so much so that once, when my
+      grandmother had not come home by dinner-time, I could not resist the
+      instinctive reflection that, if she had been run over in the street and
+      killed, I should not for some time be allowed to play in the
+      Champs-Elysées; when one is in love one has no love left for anyone), yet
+      those moments which I spent in her company, for which I had waited with so
+      much impatience all night and morning, for which I had quivered with
+      excitement, to which I would have sacrificed everything else in the world,
+      were by no means happy moments; well did I know it, for they were the only
+      moments in my life on which I concentrated a scrupulous, undistracted
+      attention, and yet I could not discover in them one atom of pleasure. All
+      the time that I was away from Gilberte, I wanted to see her, because,
+      having incessantly sought to form a mental picture of her, I was unable,
+      in the end, to do so, and did not know exactly to what my love
+      corresponded. Besides, she had never yet told me that she loved me. Far
+      from it, she had often boasted that she knew other little boys whom she
+      preferred to myself, that I was a good companion, with whom she was always
+      willing to play, although I was too absent-minded, not attentive enough to
+      the game. Moreover, she had often shewn signs of apparent coldness towards
+      me, which might have shaken my faith that I was for her a creature
+      different from the rest, had that faith been founded upon a love that
+      Gilberte had felt for me, and not, as was the case, upon the love that I
+      felt for her, which strengthened its resistance to the assaults of doubt
+      by making it depend entirely upon the manner in which I was obliged, by an
+      internal compulsion, to think of Gilberte. But my feelings with regard to
+      her I had never yet ventured to express to her in words. Of course, on
+      every page of my exercise-books, I wrote out, in endless repetition, her
+      name and address, but at the sight of those vague lines which I might
+      trace, without her having to think, on that account, of me, I felt
+      discouraged, because they spoke to me, not of Gilberte, who would never so
+      much as see them, but of my own desire, which they seemed to shew me in
+      its true colours, as something purely personal, unreal, tedious and
+      ineffective. The most important thing was that we should see each other,
+      Gilberte and I, and should have an opportunity of making a mutual
+      confession of our love which, until then, would not officially (so to
+      speak) have begun. Doubtless the various reasons which made me so
+      impatient to see her would have appeared less urgent to a grown man. As
+      life goes on, we acquire such adroitness in the culture of our pleasures,
+      that we content ourselves with that which we derive from thinking of a
+      woman, as I was thinking of Gilberte, without troubling ourselves to
+      ascertain whether the image corresponds to the reality,—and with the
+      pleasure of loving her, without needing to be sure, also, that she loves
+      us; or again that we renounce the pleasure of confessing our passion for
+      her, so as to preserve and enhance the passion that she has for us, like
+      those Japanese gardeners who, to obtain one perfect blossom, will
+      sacrifice the rest. But at the period when I was in love with Gilberte, I
+      still believed that Love did really exist, apart from ourselves; that,
+      allowing us, at the most, to surmount the obstacles in our way, it offered
+      us its blessings in an order in which we were not free to make the least
+      alteration; it seemed to me that if I had, on my own initiative,
+      substituted for the sweetness of a confession a pretence of indifference,
+      I should not only have been depriving myself of one of the joys of which I
+      had most often dreamed, I should have been fabricating, of my own free
+      will, a love that was artificial and without value, that bore no relation
+      to the truth, whose mysterious and foreordained ways I should thus have
+      been declining to follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when I arrived at the Champs-Elysées,—and, as at first sight it
+      appeared, was in a position to confront my love, so as to make it undergo
+      the necessary modifications, with its living and independent cause—as
+      soon as I was in the presence of that Gilberte Swann on the sight of whom
+      I had counted to revive the images that my tired memory had lost and could
+      not find again, of that Gilberte Swann with whom I had been playing the
+      day before, and whom I had just been prompted to greet, and then to
+      recognise, by a blind instinct like that which, when we are walking, sets
+      one foot before the other, without giving us time to think what we are
+      doing, then at once it became as though she and the little girl who had
+      inspired my dreams had been two different people. If, for instance, I had
+      retained in my memory overnight two fiery eyes above plump and rosy
+      cheeks, Gilberte's face would now offer me (and with emphasis) something
+      that I distinctly had not remembered, a certain sharpening and
+      prolongation of the nose which, instantaneously associating itself with
+      certain others of her features, assumed the importance of those
+      characteristics which, in natural history, are used to define a species,
+      and transformed her into a little girl of the kind that have sharpened
+      profiles. While I was making myself ready to take advantage of this long
+      expected moment, and to surrender myself to the impression of Gilberte
+      which I had prepared beforehand but could no longer find in my head, to an
+      extent which would enable me, during the long hours which I must spend
+      alone, to be certain that it was indeed herself whom I had in mind, that
+      it was indeed my love for her that I was gradually making grow, as a book
+      grows when one is writing it, she threw me a ball; and, like the idealist
+      philosopher whose body takes account of the external world in the reality
+      of which his intellect declines to believe, the same self which had made
+      me salute her before I had identified her now urged me to catch the ball
+      that she tossed to me (as though she had been a companion, with whom I had
+      come to play, and not a sister-soul with whom my soul had come to be
+      united), made me, out of politeness, until the time came when she had to
+      I go, address a thousand polite and trivial remarks to her, and so
+      prevented me both from keeping a silence in which I might at last have
+      laid my hand upon the indispensable, escaped idea, and from uttering the
+      words which might have made that definite progress in the course of our
+      love on which I was always obliged to count only for the following
+      afternoon. There was, however, an occasional development. One day, we had
+      gone with Gilberte to the stall of our own special vendor, who was always
+      particularly nice to us, since it was to her that M. Swann used to send
+      for his gingerbread, of which, for reasons of health (he suffered from a
+      racial eczema, and from the constipation of the prophets), he consumed a
+      great quantity,—Gilberte pointed out to me with a laugh two little
+      boys who were like the little artist and the little naturalist in the
+      children's storybooks. For one of them would not have a red stick of rock
+      because he preferred the purple, while the other, with tears in his eyes,
+      refused a plum which his nurse was buying for him, because, as he finally
+      explained in passionate tones: "I want the other plum; it's got a worm in
+      it!" I purchased two ha'penny marbles. With admiring eyes I saw, luminous
+      and imprisoned in a bowl by themselves, the agate marbles which seemed
+      precious to me because they were as fair and smiling as little girls, and
+      because they cost five-pence each. Gilberte, who was given a great deal
+      more pocket money than I ever had, asked me which I thought the prettiest.
+      They were as transparent, as liquid-seeming as life itself. I would not
+      have had her sacrifice a single one of them. I should have liked her to be
+      able to buy them, to liberate them all. Still, I pointed out one that had
+      the same colour as her eyes. Gilberte took it, turned it about until it
+      shone with a ray of gold, fondled it, paid its ransom, but at once handed
+      me her captive, saying: "Take it; it is for you, I give it to you, keep it
+      to remind yourself of me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another time, being still obsessed by the desire to hear Berma in classic
+      drama, I had asked her whether she had not a copy of a pamphlet in which
+      Bergotte spoke of Racine, and which was now out of print. She had told me
+      to let her know the exact title of it, and that evening I had sent her a
+      little telegram, writing on its envelope the name, Gilberte Swann, which I
+      had so often traced in my exercise-books. Next day she brought me in a
+      parcel tied with pink bows and sealed with white wax, the pamphlet, a copy
+      of which she had managed to find. "You see, it is what you asked me for,"
+      she said, taking from her muff the telegram that I had sent her. But in
+      the address on the pneumatic message—which, only yesterday, was
+      nothing, was merely a 'little blue' that I had written, and, after a
+      messenger had delivered it to Gilberte's porter and a servant had taken it
+      to her in her room, had become a thing without value or distinction, one
+      of the 'little blues' that she had received in the course of the day—I
+      had difficulty in recognising the futile, straggling lines of my own
+      handwriting beneath the circles stamped on it at the post-office, the
+      inscriptions added in pencil by a postman, signs of effectual realisation,
+      seals of the external world, violet bands symbolical of life itself, which
+      for the first time came to espouse, to maintain, to raise, to rejoice my
+      dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was another day on which she said to me: "You know, you may call
+      me 'Gilberte'; in any case, I'm going to call you by your first name. It's
+      too silly not to." Yet she continued for a while to address me by the more
+      formal '<i>vous</i>,' and, when I drew her attention to this, smiled, and
+      composing, constructing a phrase like those that are put into the
+      grammar-books of foreign languages with no other object than to teach us
+      to make use of a new word, ended it with my Christian name. And when I
+      recalled, later, what I had felt at the time, I could distinguish the
+      impression of having been held, for a moment, in her mouth, myself, naked,
+      without, any longer, any of the social qualifications which belonged
+      equally to her other companions and, when she used my surname, to my
+      parents, accessories of which her lips—by the effort that she made,
+      a little after her father's manner, to articulate the words to which she
+      wished to give a special value—had the air of stripping, of
+      divesting me, as one peels the skin from a fruit of which one is going to
+      put only the pulp into one's mouth, while her glance, adapting itself to
+      the same new degree of intimacy as her speech, fell on me also more
+      directly, not without testifying to the consciousness, the pleasure, even
+      the gratitude that it felt, accompanying itself with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at that actual moment, I was not able to appreciate the worth of these
+      new pleasures. They were given, not by the little girl whom I loved, to me
+      who loved her, but by the other, her with whom I used to play, to my other
+      self, who possessed neither the memory of the true Gilberte, nor the fixed
+      heart which alone could have known the value of a happiness for which it
+      alone had longed. Even after I had returned home I did not taste them,
+      since, every day, the necessity which made me hope that on the morrow I
+      should arrive at the clear, calm, happy contemplation of Gilberte, that
+      she would at last confess her love for me, explaining to me the reasons by
+      which she had been obliged, hitherto, to conceal it, that same necessity
+      forced me to regard the past as of no account, to look ahead of me only,
+      to consider the little advantages that she had given me not in themselves
+      and as if they were self-sufficient, but like fresh rungs of the ladder on
+      which I might set my feet, which were going to allow me to advance a step
+      further and finally to attain the happiness which I had not yet
+      encountered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, at times, she shewed me these marks of her affection, she troubled me
+      also by seeming not to be pleased to see me, and this happened often on
+      the very days on which I had most counted for the realisation of my hopes.
+      I was sure that Gilberte was coming to the Champs-Elysées, and I felt an
+      elation which seemed merely the anticipation of a great happiness when—going
+      into the drawing-room in the morning to kiss Mamma, who was already
+      dressed to go out, the coils of her black hair elaborately built up, and
+      her beautiful hands, plump and white, fragrant still with soap—I had
+      been apprised, by seeing a column of dust standing by itself in the air
+      above the piano, and by hearing a barrel-organ playing, beneath the
+      window, <i>En revenant de la revue</i>, that the winter had received,
+      until nightfall, an unexpected, radiant visit from a day of spring. While
+      we sat at luncheon, by opening her window, the lady opposite had sent
+      packing, in the twinkling of an eye, from beside my chair—to sweep
+      in a single stride over the whole width of our dining-room—a sunbeam
+      which had lain down there for its midday rest and returned to continue it
+      there a moment later. At school, during the one o'clock lesson, the sun
+      made me sick with impatience and boredom as it let fall a golden stream
+      that crept to the edge of my desk, like an invitation to the feast at
+      which I could not myself arrive before three o'clock, until the moment
+      when Françoise came to fetch me at the school-gate, and we made our way
+      towards the Champs-Elysées through streets decorated with sunlight, dense
+      with people, over which the balconies, detached by the sun and made
+      vaporous, seemed to float in front of the houses like clouds of gold.
+      Alas! in the Champs-Elysées I found no Gilberte; she had not yet arrived.
+      Motionless, on the lawn nurtured by the invisible sun which, here and
+      there, kindled to a flame the point of a blade of grass, while the pigeons
+      that had alighted upon it had the appearance of ancient sculptures which
+      the gardener's pick had heaved to the surface of a hallowed soil, I stood
+      with my eyes fixed on the horizon, expecting at every moment to see appear
+      the form of Gilberte following that of her governess, behind the statue
+      that seemed to be holding out the child, which it had in its arms, and
+      which glistened in the stream of light, to receive benediction from the
+      sun. The old lady who read the Débats was sitting on her chair, in her
+      invariable place, and had just accosted a park-keeper, with a friendly
+      wave of her hands towards him as she exclaimed "What a lovely day!" And
+      when the chair-woman came up to collect her penny, with an infinity of
+      smirks and affectations she folded the ticket away inside her glove, as
+      though it had been a posy of flowers, for which she had sought, in
+      gratitude to the donor, the most becoming place upon her person. When she
+      had found it, she performed a circular movement with her neck,
+      straightened her boa, and fastened upon the collector, as she shewed her
+      the end of yellow paper that stuck out over her bare wrist, the bewitching
+      smile with which a woman says to a young man, pointing to her bosom: "You
+      see, I'm wearing your roses!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I dragged Françoise, on the way towards Gilberte, as far as the Arc de
+      Triomphe; we did not meet her, and I was returning towards the lawn
+      convinced, now, that she was not coming, when, in front of the wooden
+      horses, the little girl with the sharp voice flung herself upon me:
+      "Quick, quick, Gilberte's been here a quarter of an hour. She's just
+      going. We've been waiting for you, to make up a prisoner's base."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I had been going up the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, Gilberte had
+      arrived by the Rue Boissy-d'Anglas, Mademoiselle having taken advantage of
+      the fine weather to go on some errand of her own; and M. Swann was coming
+      to fetch his daughter. And so it was my fault; I ought not to have strayed
+      from the lawn; for one never knew for certain from what direction Gilberte
+      would appear, whether she would be early or late, and this perpetual
+      tension succeeded in making more impressive not only the Champs-Elysées in
+      their entirety, and the whole span of the afternoon, like a vast expanse
+      of space and time, on every point and at every moment of which it was
+      possible that the form of Gilberte might appear, but also that form
+      itself, since behind its appearance I felt that there lay concealed the
+      reason for which it had shot its arrow into my heart at four o'clock
+      instead of at half-past two; crowned with a smart hat, for paying calls,
+      instead of the plain cap, for games; in front of the Ambassadeurs and not
+      between the two puppet-shows; I divined one of those occupations in which
+      I might not follow Gilberte, occupations that forced her to go out or to
+      stay at home, I was in contact with the mystery of her unknown life. It
+      was this mystery, too, which troubled me when, running at the sharp-voiced
+      girl's bidding, so as to begin our game without more delay, I saw
+      Gilberte, so quick and informal with us, make a ceremonious bow to the old
+      lady with the <i>Débats</i> (who acknowledged it with "What a lovely sun!
+      You'd think there was a fire burning.") speaking to her with a shy smile,
+      with an air of constraint which called to my mind the other little girl
+      that Gilberte must be when at home with her parents, or with friends of
+      her parents, paying visits, in all the rest, that escaped me, of her
+      existence. But of that existence no one gave me so strong an impression as
+      did M. Swann, who came a little later to fetch his daughter. That was
+      because he and Mme. Swann—inasmuch as their daughter lived with
+      them, as her lessons, her games, her friendships depended upon them—contained
+      for me, like Gilberte, perhaps even more than Gilberte, as befitted
+      subjects that had an all-powerful control over her in whom it must have
+      had its source, an undefined, an inaccessible quality of melancholy charm.
+      Everything that concerned them was on my part the object of so constant a
+      preoccupation that the days on which, as on this day, M. Swann (whom I had
+      seen so often, long ago, without his having aroused my curiosity, when he
+      was still on good terms with my parents) came for Gilberte to the
+      Champs-Elysées, once the pulsations to which my heart had been excited by
+      the appearance of his grey hat and hooded cape had subsided, the sight of
+      him still impressed me as might that of an historic personage, upon whom
+      one had just been studying a series of books, and the smallest details of
+      whose life one learned with enthusiasm. His relations with the Comte de
+      Paris, which, when I heard them discussed at Combray, seemed to me
+      unimportant, became now in my eyes something marvellous, as if no one else
+      had ever known the House of Orleans; they set him in vivid detachment
+      against the vulgar background of pedestrians of different classes, who
+      encumbered that particular path in the Champs-Elysées, in the midst of
+      whom I admired his condescending to figure without claiming any special
+      deference, which as it happened none of them dreamed of paying him, so
+      profound was the incognito in which he was wrapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He responded politely to the salutations of Gilberte's companions, even to
+      mine, for all that he was no longer on good terms with my family, but
+      without appearing to know who I was. (This reminded me that he had
+      constantly seen me in the country; a memory which I had retained, but kept
+      out of sight, because, since I had seen Gilberte again, Swann had become
+      to me pre-eminently her father, and no longer the Combray Swann; as the
+      ideas which, nowadays, I made his name connote were different from the
+      ideas in the system of which it was formerly comprised, which I utilised
+      not at all now when I had occasion to think of him, he had become a new,
+      another person; still I attached him by an artificial thread, secondary
+      and transversal, to our former guest; and as nothing had any longer any
+      value for me save in the extent to which my love might profit by it, it
+      was with a spasm of shame and of regret at not being able to erase them
+      from my memory that I recaptured the years in which, in the eyes of this
+      same Swann who was at this moment before me in the Champs-Elysées, and to
+      whom, fortunately, Gilberte had perhaps not mentioned my name, I had so
+      often, in the evenings, made myself ridiculous by sending to ask Mamma to
+      come upstairs to my room to say good-night to me, while she was drinking
+      coffee with him and my father and my grandparents at the table in the
+      garden.) He told Gilberte that she might play one game; he could wait for
+      a quarter of an hour; and, sitting down, just like anyone else, on an iron
+      chair, paid for his ticket with that hand which Philippe VII had so often
+      held in his own, while we began our game upon the lawn, scattering the
+      pigeons, whose beautiful, iridescent bodies (shaped like hearts and,
+      surely, the lilacs of the feathered kingdom) took refuge as in so many
+      sanctuaries, one on the great basin of stone, on which its beak, as it
+      disappeared below the rim, conferred the part, assigned the purpose of
+      offering to the bird in abundance the fruit or grain at which it appeared
+      to be pecking, another on the head of the statue, which it seemed to crown
+      with one of those enamelled objects whose polychrome varies in certain
+      classical works the monotony of the stone, and with an attribute which,
+      when the goddess bears it, entitles her to a particular epithet and makes
+      of her, as a different Christian name makes of a mortal, a fresh divinity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one of these sunny days which had not realised my hopes, I had not the
+      courage to conceal my disappointment from Gilberte.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had ever so many things to ask you," I said to her; "I thought that
+      to-day was going to mean so much in our friendship. And no sooner have you
+      come than you go away! Try to come early to-morrow, so that I can talk to
+      you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face lighted up and she jumped for joy as she answered: "Tomorrow, you
+      may make up your mind, my dear friend, I sha'n't come!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "First of all I've a big luncheon-party; then in the afternoon I am going
+      to a friend's house to see King Theodosius arrive from her windows; won't
+      that be splendid?—and then, next day, I'm going to <i>Michel
+      Strogoff</i>, and after that it will soon be Christmas, and the New Year
+      holidays! Perhaps they'll take me south, to the Riviera; won't that be
+      nice? Though I should miss the Christmas-tree here; anyhow, if I do stay
+      in Paris, I sha'n't be coming here, because I shall be out paying calls
+      with Mamma. Good-bye—there's Papa calling me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I returned home with Françoise through streets that were still gay with
+      sunshine, as on the evening of a holiday when the merriment is over. I
+      could scarcely drag my legs along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm not surprised;" said Françoise, "it's not the right weather for the
+      time of year; it's much too warm. Oh dear, oh dear, to think of all the
+      poor sick people there must be everywhere; you would think that up there,
+      too, everything's got out of order."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I repeated to myself, stifling my sobs, the words in which Gilberte had
+      given utterance to her joy at the prospect of not coming back, for a long
+      time, to the Champs-Elysées. But already the charm with which, by the mere
+      act of thinking, my mind was filled as soon as it thought of her, the
+      privileged position, unique even if it were painful, in which I was
+      inevitably placed in relation to Gilberte by the contraction of a scar in
+      my mind, had begun to add to that very mark of her indifference something
+      romantic, and in the midst of my tears my lips would shape themselves in a
+      smile which was indeed the timid outline of a kiss. And when the time came
+      for the postman I said to myself, that evening as on every other: "I am
+      going to have a letter from Gilberte, she is going to tell me, at last,
+      that she has never ceased to love me, and to explain to me the mysterious
+      reason by which she has been forced to conceal her love from me until now,
+      to put on the appearance of being able to be happy without seeing me; the
+      reason for which she has assumed the form of the other Gilberte, who is
+      simply a companion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every evening I would beguile myself into imagining this letter, believing
+      that I was actually reading it, reciting each of its sentences in turn.
+      Suddenly I would stop, in alarm. I had realised that, if I was to receive
+      a letter from Gilberte, it could not, in any case, be this letter, since
+      it was I myself who had just composed it. And from that moment I would
+      strive to keep my thoughts clear of the words which I should have liked
+      her to write to me, from fear lest, by first selecting them myself, I
+      should be excluding just those identical words,—the dearest, the
+      most desired—from the field of possible events. Even if, by an
+      almost impossible coincidence, it had been precisely the letter of my
+      invention that Gilberte had addressed to me of her own accord, recognising
+      my own work in it I should not have had the impression that I was
+      receiving something that had not originated in myself, something real,
+      something new, a happiness external to my mind, independent of my will, a
+      gift indeed from love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I waited I read over again a page which, although it had not been
+      written to me by Gilberte, came to me, none the less, from her, that page
+      by Bergotte upon the beauty of the old myths from which Racine drew his
+      inspiration, which (with the agate marble) I always kept within reach. I
+      was touched by my friend's kindness in having procured the book for me;
+      and as everyone is obliged to find some reason for his passion, so much so
+      that he is glad to find in the creature whom he loves qualities which (he
+      has learned by reading or in conversation) are worthy to excite a man's
+      love, that he assimilates them by imitation and makes out of them fresh
+      reasons for his love, even although these qualities be diametrically
+      opposed to those for which his love would have sought, so long as it was
+      spontaneous—as Swann, before my day, had sought to establish the
+      aesthetic basis of Odette's beauty—I, who had at first loved
+      Gilberte, in Combray days, on account of all the unknown element in her
+      life into which I would fain have plunged headlong, have undergone
+      reincarnation, discarding my own separate existence as a thing that no
+      longer mattered, I thought now, as of an inestimable advantage, that of
+      this, my own, my too familiar, my contemptible existence Gilberte might
+      one day become the humble servant, the kindly, the comforting
+      collaborator, who in the evenings, helping me in my work, would collate
+      for me the texts of rare pamphlets. As for Bergotte, that infinitely wise,
+      almost divine old man, because of whom I had first, before I had even seen
+      her, loved Gilberte, now it was for Gilberte's sake, chiefly, that I loved
+      him. With as much pleasure as the pages that he had written about Racine,
+      I studied the wrapper, folded under great seals of white wax and tied with
+      billows of pink ribbon, in which she had brought those pages to me. I
+      kissed the agate marble, which was the better part of my love's heart, the
+      part that was not frivolous but faithful, and, for all that it was adorned
+      with the mysterious charm of Gilberte's life, dwelt close beside me,
+      inhabited my chamber, shared my bed. But the beauty of that stone, and the
+      beauty also of those pages of Bergotte which I was glad to associate with
+      the idea of my love for Gilberte, as if, in the moments when my love
+      seemed no longer to have any existence, they gave it a kind of
+      consistency, were, I perceived, anterior to that love, which they in no
+      way resembled; their elements had been determined by the writer's talent,
+      or by geological laws, before ever Gilberte had known me, nothing in book
+      or stone would have been different if Gilberte had not loved me, and there
+      was nothing, consequently, that authorised me to read in them a message of
+      happiness. And while my love, incessantly waiting for the morrow to bring
+      a confession of Gilberte's love for me, destroyed, unravelled every
+      evening, the ill-done work of the day, in some shadowed part of my being
+      was an unknown weaver who would not leave where they lay the severed
+      threads, but collected and rearranged them, without any thought of
+      pleasing me, or of toiling for my advantage, in the different order which
+      she gave to all her handiwork. Without any special interest in my love,
+      not beginning by deciding that I was loved, she placed, side by side,
+      those of Gilberte's actions that had seemed to me inexplicable and her
+      faults which I had excused. Then, one with another, they took on a
+      meaning. It seemed to tell me, this new arrangement, that when I saw
+      Gilberte, instead of coming to me in the Champs-Elysées, going to a party,
+      or on errands with her governess, when I saw her prepared for an absence
+      that would extend over the New Year holidays, I was wrong in thinking, in
+      saying: "It is because she is frivolous," or "easily lead." For she would
+      have ceased to be either if she had loved me, and if she had been forced
+      to obey it would have been with the same despair in her heart that I felt
+      on the days when I did not see her. It shewed me further, this new
+      arrangement, that I ought, after all, to know what it was to love, since I
+      loved Gilberte; it drew my attention to the constant anxiety that I had to
+      'shew off' before her, by reason of which I tried to persuade my mother to
+      get for Françoise a waterproof coat and a hat with a blue feather, or,
+      better still, to stop sending with me to the Champs-Elysées an attendant
+      with whom I blushed to be seen (to all of which my mother replied that I
+      was not fair to Françoise, that she was an excellent woman and devoted to
+      us all) and also that sole, exclusive need to see Gilberte, the result of
+      which was that, months in advance, I could think of nothing but how to
+      find out at what date she would be leaving Paris and where she was going,
+      feeling that the most attractive country in the world would be but a place
+      of exile if she were not to be there, and asking only to be allowed to
+      stay for ever in Paris, so long as I might see her in the Champs-Elysées;
+      and it had little difficulty in making me see that neither my anxiety nor
+      my need could be justified by anything in Gilberte's conduct. She, on the
+      contrary, was genuinely fond of her governess, without troubling herself
+      over what I might choose to think about it. It seemed quite natural to her
+      not to come to the Champs-Elysées if she had to go shopping with
+      Mademoiselle, delightful if she had to go out somewhere with her mother.
+      And even supposing that she would ever have allowed me to spend my
+      holidays in the same place as herself, when it came to choosing that place
+      she considered her parents' wishes, a thousand different amusements of
+      which she had been told, and not at all that it should be the place to
+      which my family were proposing to send me. When she assured me (as
+      sometimes happened) that she liked me less than some other of her friends,
+      less than she had liked me the day before, because by my clumsiness I had
+      made her side lose a game, I would beg her pardon, I would beg her to tell
+      me what I must do in order that she should begin again to like me as much
+      as, or more than the rest; I hoped to hear her say that that was already
+      my position; I besought her; as though she had been able to modify her
+      affection for me as she or I chose, to give me pleasure, merely by the
+      words that she would utter, as my good or bad conduct should deserve. Was
+      I, then, not yet aware that what I felt, myself, for her, depended neither
+      upon her actions nor upon my desires?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It shewed me finally, the new arrangement planned by my unseen weaver,
+      that, if we find ourselves hoping that the actions of a person who has
+      hitherto caused us anxiety may prove not to have been sincere, they shed
+      in their wake a light which our hopes are powerless to extinguish, a light
+      to which, rather than to our hopes, we must put the question, what will be
+      that person's actions on the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These new counsels, my love listened and heard them; they persuaded it
+      that the morrow would not be different from all the days that had gone
+      before; that Gilberte's feeling for me, too long established now to be
+      capable of alteration, was indifference; that in my friendship with
+      Gilberte, it was I alone who loved. "That is true," my love responded,
+      "there is nothing more to be made of that friendship. It will not alter
+      now." And so the very next day (unless I were to wait for a public
+      holiday, if there was one approaching, some anniversary, the New Year,
+      perhaps, one of those days which are not like other days, on which time
+      starts afresh, casting aside the heritage of the past, declining its
+      legacy of sorrows) I would appeal to Gilberte to terminate our old and to
+      join me in laying the foundations of a new friendship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had always, within reach, a plan of Paris, which, because I could see
+      drawn on it the street in which M. and Mme. Swann lived, seemed to me to
+      contain a secret treasure. And to please myself, as well as by a sort of
+      chivalrous loyalty, in any connection or with no relevance at all, I would
+      repeat the name of that street until my father, not being, like my mother
+      and grandmother, in the secret of my love, would ask: "But why are you
+      always talking about that street? There's nothing wonderful about it. It
+      is an admirable street to live in because it's only a few minutes' walk
+      from the Bois, but there are a dozen other streets just the same."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made every effort to introduce the name of Swann into my conversation
+      with my parents; in my own mind, of course, I never ceased to murmur it;
+      but I needed also to hear its exquisite sound, and to make myself play
+      that chord, the voiceless rendering of which did not suffice me. Moreover,
+      that name of Swann, with which I had for so long been familiar, was to me
+      now (as happens at times to people suffering from aphasia, in the case of
+      the most ordinary words) the name of something new. It was for ever
+      present in my mind, which could not, however, grow accustomed to it. I
+      analysed it, I spelt it; its orthography came to me as a surprise. And
+      with its familiarity it had simultaneously lost its innocence. The
+      pleasure that I derived from the sound of it I felt to be so guilty, that
+      it seemed to me as though the others must read my thoughts, and would
+      change the conversation if I endeavoured to guide it in that direction. I
+      fell back upon subjects which still brought me into touch with Gilberte, I
+      eternally repeated the same words, and it was no use my knowing that they
+      were but words—words uttered in her absence, which she could not
+      hear, words without virtue in themselves, repeating what were, indeed,
+      facts, but powerless to modify them—for still it seemed to me that
+      by dint of handling, of stirring in this way everything that had reference
+      to Gilberte, I might perhaps make emerge from it something that would
+      bring me happiness. I told my parents again that Gilberte was very fond of
+      her governess, as if the statement, when repeated for the hundredth time,
+      would at last have the effect of making Gilberte suddenly burst into the
+      room, come to live with us for ever. I had already sung the praises of the
+      old lady who read the <i>Débats</i> (I had hinted to my parents that she
+      must at least be an Ambassador's widow, if not actually a Highness) and I
+      continued to descant on her beauty, her splendour, her nobility, until the
+      day on which I mentioned that, by what I had heard Gilberte call her, she
+      appeared to be a Mme. Blatin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, now I know whom you mean," cried my mother, while I felt myself grow
+      red all over with shame. "On guard! on guard!—as your grandfather
+      says. And so it's she that you think so wonderful? Why, she's perfectly
+      horrible, and always has been. She's the widow of a bailiff. You can't
+      remember, when you were little, all the trouble I used to have to avoid
+      her at your gymnastic lessons, where she was always trying to get hold of
+      me—I didn't know the woman, of course—to tell me that you were
+      'much too nice-looking for a boy.' She has always had an insane desire to
+      get to know people, and she must be quite insane, as I have always
+      thought, if she really does know Mme. Swann. For even if she does come of
+      very common people, I have never heard anything said against her
+      character. But she must always be forcing herself upon strangers. She is,
+      really, a horrible woman, frightfully vulgar, and besides, she is always
+      creating awkward situations."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Swann, in my attempts to resemble him, I spent the whole time, when
+      I was at table, in drawing my finger along my nose and in rubbing my eyes.
+      My father would exclaim: "The child's a perfect idiot, he's becoming quite
+      impossible." More than all else I should have liked to be as bald as
+      Swann. He appeared to me to be a creature so extraordinary that I found it
+      impossible to believe that people whom I knew and often saw knew him also,
+      and that in the course of the day anyone might run against him. And once
+      my mother, while she was telling us, as she did every evening at dinner,
+      where she had been and what she had done that afternoon, merely by the
+      words: "By the way, guess whom I saw at the Trois Quartiers—at the
+      umbrella counter—Swann!" caused to burst open in the midst of her
+      narrative (an arid desert to me) a mystic blossom. What a melancholy
+      satisfaction to learn that, that very afternoon, threading through the
+      crowd his supernatural form, Swann had gone to buy an umbrella. Among the
+      events of the day, great and small, but all equally unimportant, that one
+      alone aroused in me those peculiar vibrations by which my love for
+      Gilberte was invariably stirred. My father complained that I took no
+      interest in anything, because I did not listen while he was speaking of
+      the political developments that might follow the visit of King
+      Theodosius, at that moment in France as the nation's guest and (it was
+      hinted) ally. And yet how intensely interested I was to know whether Swann
+      had been wearing his hooded cape!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you speak to him?" I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, of course I did," answered my mother, who always seemed afraid lest,
+      were she to admit that we were not on the warmest of terms with Swann,
+      people would seek to reconcile us more than she cared for, in view of the
+      existence of Mme. Swann, whom she did not wish to know. "It was he who
+      came up and spoke to me. I hadn't seen him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you haven't quarrelled?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quarrelled? What on earth made you think that we had quarrelled?" she
+      briskly parried, as though I had cast doubt on the fiction of her friendly
+      relations with Swann, and was planning an attempt to 'bring them
+      together.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He might be cross with you for never asking him here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One isn't obliged to ask everyone to one's house, you know; has he ever
+      asked me to his? I don't know his wife."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But he used often to come, at Combray."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think he did! He used to come at Combray, and now, in Paris, he
+      has something better to do, and so have I. But I can promise you, we
+      didn't look in the least like people who had quarrelled. We were kept
+      waiting there for some time, while they brought him his parcel. He asked
+      after you; he told me you had been playing with his daughter—" my
+      mother went on, amazing me with the portentous revelation of my own
+      existence in Swann's mind; far more than that, of my existence in so
+      complete, so material a form that when I stood before him, trembling with
+      love, in the Champs-Elysées, he had known my name, and who my mother was,
+      and had been able to blend with my quality as his daughter's playmate
+      certain facts with regard to my grandparents and their connections, the
+      place in which we lived, certain details of our past life, all of which I
+      myself perhaps did not know. But my mother did not seem to have noticed
+      anything particularly attractive in that counter at the Trois Quartiers
+      where she had represented to Swann, at the moment in which he caught sight
+      of her, a definite person with whom he had sufficient memories in common
+      to impel him to come up to her and to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor did either she or my father seem to find any occasion now to mention
+      Swann's family, the grandparents of Gilberte, nor to use the title of
+      stockbroker, topics as which nothing else gave me so keen a pleasure. My
+      imagination had isolated and consecrated in the social Paris a certain
+      family, just as it had set apart in the structural Paris a certain house,
+      on whose porch it had fashioned sculptures and made its windows precious.
+      But these ornaments I alone had eyes to see. Just as my father and mother
+      looked upon the house in which Swann lived as one that closely resembled
+      the other houses built at the same period in the neighbourhood of the
+      Bois, so Swann's family seemed to them to be in the same category as many
+      other families of stockbrokers. Their judgment was more or less favourable
+      according to the extent to which the family in question shared in merits
+      that were common to the rest of the universe, and there was about it
+      nothing that they could call unique. What, on the other hand, they did
+      appreciate in the Swanns they found in equal, if not in greater measure
+      elsewhere. And so, after admitting that the house was in a good position,
+      they would go on to speak of some other house that was in a better, but
+      had nothing to do with Gilberte, or of financiers on a larger scale than
+      her grandfather had been; and if they had appeared, for a moment, to be of
+      my opinion, that was a mistake which was very soon corrected. For in order
+      to distinguish in all Gilberte's surroundings an indefinable quality
+      analogous, in the scale of emotions, to what in the scale of colours is
+      called infra-red, a supplementary sense of perception was required, with
+      which love, for the time being, had endowed me; and this my parents
+      lacked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the days when Gilberte had warned me that she would not be coming to
+      the Champs-Elysées, I would try to arrange my walks so that I should be
+      brought into some kind of contact with her. Sometimes I would lead
+      Françoise on a pilgrimage to the house in which the Swanns lived, making
+      her repeat to me unendingly all that she had learned from the governess
+      with regard to Mme. Swann. "It seems, she puts great faith in medals. She
+      would never think of starting on a journey if she had heard an owl hoot,
+      or the death-watch in the wall, or if she had seen a cat at midnight, or
+      if the furniture had creaked. Oh yes! she's a most religious lady, she
+      is!" I was so madly in love with Gilberte that if, on our way, I caught
+      sight of their old butler taking the dog out, my emotion would bring me to
+      a standstill, I would fasten on his white whiskers eyes that melted with
+      passion. And Françoise would rouse me with: "What's wrong with you now,
+      child?" and we would continue on our way until we reached their gate,
+      where a porter, different from every other porter in the world, and
+      saturated, even to the braid on his livery, with the same melancholy charm
+      that I had felt to be latent in the name of Gilberte, looked at me as
+      though he knew that I was one of those whose natural unworthiness would
+      for ever prevent them from penetrating into the mysteries of the life
+      inside, which it was his duty to guard, and over which the ground-floor
+      windows appeared conscious of being protectingly closed, with far less
+      resemblance, between the nobly sweeping arches of their muslin curtains,
+      to any other windows in the world than to Gilberte's glancing eyes. On
+      other days we would go along the boulevards, and I would post myself at
+      the corner of the Rue Duphot; I had heard that Swann was often to be seen
+      passing there, on his way to the dentist's; and my imagination so far
+      differentiated Gilberte's father from the rest of humanity, his presence
+      in the midst of a crowd of real people introduced among them so miraculous
+      an element, that even before we reached the Madeleine I would be trembling
+      with emotion at the thought that I was approaching a street from which
+      that supernatural apparition might at any moment burst upon me unawares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But most often of all, on days when I was not to see Gilberte, as I had
+      heard that Mme. Swann walked almost every day along the Allée des Acacias,
+      round the big lake, and in the Allée de la Reine Marguerite, I would guide
+      Françoise in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne. It was to me like one
+      of those zoological gardens in which one sees assembled together a variety
+      of flora, and contrasted effects in landscape; where from a hill one
+      passes to a grotto, a meadow, rocks, a stream, a trench, another hill, a
+      marsh, but knows that they are there only to enable the hippopotamus,
+      zebra, crocodile, rabbit, bear and heron to disport themselves in a
+      natural or a picturesque setting; this, the Bois, equally complex, uniting
+      a multitude of little worlds, distinct and separate—placing a stage
+      set with red trees, American oaks, like an experimental forest in
+      Virginia, next to a fir-wood by the edge of the lake, or to a forest grove
+      from which would suddenly emerge, in her lissom covering of furs, with the
+      large, appealing eyes of a dumb animal, a hastening walker—was the
+      Garden of Woman; and like the myrtle-alley in the Aeneid, planted for
+      their delight with trees of one kind only, the Allée des Acacias was
+      thronged by the famous Beauties of the day. As, from a long way off, the
+      sight of the jutting crag from which it dives into the pool thrills with
+      joy the children who know that they are going to behold the seal, long
+      before I reached the acacia-alley, their fragrance, scattered abroad,
+      would make me feel that I was approaching the incomparable presence of a
+      vegetable personality, strong and tender; then, as I drew near, the sight
+      of their topmost branches, their lightly tossing foliage, in its easy
+      grace, its coquettish outline, its delicate fabric, over which hundreds of
+      flowers were laid, like winged and throbbing colonies of precious insects;
+      and finally their name itself, feminine, indolent and seductive, made my
+      heart beat, but with a social longing, like those waltzes which remind us
+      only of the names of the fair dancers, called aloud as they entered the
+      ball-room. I had been told that I should see in the alley certain women of
+      fashion, who, in spite of their not all having husbands, were constantly
+      mentioned in conjunction with Mme. Swann, but most often by their
+      professional names;—their new names, when they had any, being but a
+      sort of incognito, a veil which those who would speak of them were careful
+      to draw aside, so as to make themselves understood. Thinking that Beauty—in
+      the order of feminine elegance—was governed by occult laws into the
+      knowledge of which they had been initiated, and that they had the power to
+      realise it, I accepted before seeing them, like the truth of a coming
+      revelation, the appearance of their clothes, of their carriages and
+      horses, of a thousand details among which I placed my faith as in an inner
+      soul which gave the cohesion of a work of art to that ephemeral and
+      changing pageant. But it was Mme. Swann whom I wished to see, and I waited
+      for her to go past, as deeply moved as though she were Gilberte, whose
+      parents, saturated, like everything in her environment, with her own
+      special charm, excited in me as keen a passion as she did herself, indeed
+      a still more painful disturbance (since their point of contact with her
+      was that intimate, that internal part of her life which was hidden from
+      me), and furthermore, for I very soon learned, as we shall see in due
+      course, that they did not like my playing with her, that feeling of
+      veneration which we always have for those who hold, and exercise without
+      restraint, the power to do us an injury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I assigned the first place, in the order of aesthetic merit and of social
+      grandeur, to simplicity, when I saw Mme. Swann on foot, in a 'polonaise'
+      of plain cloth, a little toque on her head trimmed with a pheasant's wing,
+      a bunch of violets in her bosom, hastening along the Allée des Acacias as
+      if it had been merely the shortest way back to her own house, and
+      acknowledging with a rapid glance the courtesy of the gentlemen in
+      carriages, who, recognising her figure at a distance, were raising their
+      hats to her and saying to one another that there was never anyone so well
+      turned out as she. But instead of simplicity it was to ostentation that I
+      must assign the first place if, after I had compelled Françoise, who could
+      hold out no longer, and complained that her legs were 'giving' beneath
+      her, to stroll up and down with me for another hour, I saw at length,
+      emerging from the Porte Dauphine, figuring for me a royal dignity, the
+      passage of a sovereign, an impression such as no real Queen has ever since
+      been able to give me, because my notion of their power has been less
+      vague, and more founded upon experience—borne along by the flight of
+      a pair of fiery horses, slender and shapely as one sees them in the
+      drawings of Constantin Guys, carrying on its box an enormous coachman,
+      furred like a cossack, and by his side a diminutive groom, like Toby, "the
+      late Beaudenord's tiger," I saw—or rather I felt its outlines
+      engraved upon my heart by a clean and killing stab—a matchless
+      victoria, built rather high, and hinting, through the extreme modernity of
+      its appointments, at the forms of an earlier day, deep down in which lay
+      negligently back Mme. Swann, her hair, now quite pale with one grey lock,
+      girt with a narrow band of flowers, usually violets, from which floated
+      down long veils, a lilac parasol in her hand, on her lips an ambiguous
+      smile in which I read only the benign condescension of Majesty, though it
+      was pre-eminently the enticing smile of the courtesan, which she
+      graciously bestowed upon the men who bowed to her. That smile was, in
+      reality, saying to one: "Oh yes, I do remember, quite well; it was
+      wonderful!" to another: "How I should have loved to! We were
+      unfortunate!", to a third: "Yes, if you like! I must just keep in the line
+      for a minute, then as soon as I can I will break away." When strangers
+      passed she still allowed to linger about her lips a lazy smile, as though
+      she expected or remembered some friend, which made them say: "What a
+      lovely woman!". 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 a viper, that you can't keep quiet for a moment. But do you
+      suppose that I care what you say?" Coquelin passed, talking, in a group of
+      listening friends, and with a sweeping wave of his hand bade a theatrical
+      good day to the people in the carriages. But I thought only of Mme. Swann,
+      and pretended to have not yet seen her, for I knew that, when she reached
+      the pigeon-shooting ground, she would tell her coachman to 'break away'
+      and to stop the carriage, so that she might come back on foot. And on days
+      when I felt that I had the courage to pass close by her I would drag
+      Françoise off in that direction; until the moment came when I saw Mme.
+      Swann, letting trail behind her the long train of her lilac skirt,
+      dressed, as the populace imagine queens to be dressed, in rich attire such
+      as no other woman might wear, lowering her eyes now and then to study the
+      handle of her parasol, paying scant attention to the passers-by, as though
+      the important thing for her, her one object in being there, was to take
+      exercise, without thinking that she was seen, and that every head was
+      turned towards her. Sometimes, however, when she had looked back to call
+      her dog to her, she would cast, almost imperceptibly, a sweeping glance
+      round about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those even who did not know her were warned by something exceptional,
+      something beyond the normal in her—or perhaps by a telepathic
+      suggestion such as would move an ignorant audience to a frenzy of applause
+      when Berma was 'sublime'—that she must be some one well-known. They
+      would ask one another, "Who is she?", or sometimes would interrogate a
+      passing stranger, or would make a mental note of how she was dressed so as
+      to fix her identity, later, in the mind of a friend better informed than
+      themselves, who would at once enlighten them. Another pair, half-stopping
+      in their walk, would exchange:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know who that is? Mme. Swann! That conveys nothing to you? Odette de
+      Crécy, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Odette de Crécy! Why, I thought as much. Those great, sad eyes... But I
+      say, you know, she can't be as young as she was once, eh? I remember, I
+      had her on the day that MacMahon went."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't remind her of it, if I were you. She is now Mme. Swann, the
+      wife of a gentleman in the Jockey Club, a friend of the Prince of Wales.
+      Apart from that, though, she is wonderful still."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, but you ought to have known her then; Gad, she was lovely! She lived
+      in a very odd little house with a lot of Chinese stuff. I remember, we
+      were bothered all the time by the newsboys, shouting outside; in the end
+      she made me get up and go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without listening to these memories, I could feel all about her the
+      indistinct murmur of fame. My heart leaped with impatience when I thought
+      that a few seconds must still elapse before all these people, among whom I
+      was dismayed not to find a certain mulatto banker who (or so I felt) had a
+      contempt for me, were to see the unknown youth, to whom they had not, so
+      far, been paying the slightest attention, salute (without knowing her, it
+      was true, but I thought that I had sufficient authority since my parents
+      knew her husband and I was her daughter's playmate) this woman whose
+      reputation for beauty, for misconduct, and for elegance was universal. But
+      I was now close to Mme. Swann; I pulled off my hat 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, like 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 a theatre, of her daily walks abroad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On certain days when I had missed her in the Allée des Acacias I would be
+      so fortunate as to meet her in the Allée de la Reine Marguerite, where
+      women went who wished to be alone, or to appear to be wishing to be alone;
+      she would not be alone for long, being soon overtaken by some man or
+      other, often in a grey 'tile' hat, whom I did not know, and who would talk
+      to her for some time, while their two carriages crawled behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That sense of the complexity of the Bois de Boulogne which made it an
+      artificial place and, in the zoological or mythological sense of the word,
+      a Garden, I captured again, this year, as I crossed it on my way to
+      Trianon, on one of those mornings, early in November, when in Paris, if we
+      stay indoors, being so near and yet prevented from witnessing the
+      transformation scene of autumn, which is drawing so rapidly to a close
+      without our assistance, we feel a regret for the fallen leaves that
+      becomes a fever, and may even keep us awake at night. Into my closed room
+      they had been drifting already for a month, summoned there by my desire to
+      see them, slipping between my thoughts and the object, whatever it might
+      be, upon which I was trying to concentrate them, whirling in front of me
+      like those brown spots that sometimes, whatever we may be looking at, will
+      seem to be dancing or swimming before our eyes. And on that morning, not
+      hearing the splash of the rain as on the previous days, seeing the smile
+      of fine weather at the corners of my drawn curtains, as from the corners
+      of closed lips may escape the secret of their happiness, I had felt that I
+      could actually see those yellow leaves, with the light shining through
+      them, in their supreme beauty; and being no more able to restrain myself
+      from going to look at the trees than, in my childhood's days, when the
+      wind howled in the chimney, I had been able to resist the longing to visit
+      the sea, I had risen and left the house to go to Trianon, passing through
+      the Bois de Boulogne. It was the hour and the season in which the Bois
+      seems, perhaps, most multiform, not only because it is then most divided,
+      but because it is divided in a different way. Even in the unwooded parts,
+      where the horizon is large, here and there against the background of a
+      dark and distant mass of trees, now leafless or still keeping their summer
+      foliage unchanged, a double row of orange-red chestnuts seemed, as in a
+      picture just begun, to be the only thing painted, so far, by an artist who
+      had not yet laid any colour on the rest, and to be offering their
+      cloister, in full daylight, for the casual exercise of the human figures
+      that would be added to the picture later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farther off, at a place where the trees were still all green, one alone,
+      small, stunted, lopped, but stubborn in its resistance, was tossing in the
+      breeze an ugly mane of red. Elsewhere, again, might be seen the first
+      awakening of this Maytime of the leaves, and those of an ampelopsis, a
+      smiling miracle, like a red hawthorn flowering in winter, had that very
+      morning all 'come out,' so to speak, in blossom. And the Bois had the
+      temporary, unfinished, artificial look of a nursery garden or a park in
+      which, either for some botanic purpose or in preparation for a festival,
+      there have been embedded among the trees of commoner growth, which have
+      not yet been uprooted and transplanted elsewhere, a few rare specimens,
+      with fantastic foliage, which seem to be clearing all round themselves an
+      empty space, making room, giving air, diffusing light. Thus it was the
+      time of year at which the Bois de Boulogne displays more separate
+      characteristics, assembles more distinct elements in a composite whole
+      than at any other. It was also the time of day. In places where the trees
+      still kept their leaves, they seemed to have undergone an alteration of
+      their substance from the point at which they were touched by the sun's
+      light, still, at this hour in the morning, almost horizontal, as it would
+      be again, a few hours later, at the moment when, just as dusk began, it
+      would flame up like a lamp, project afar over the leaves a warm and
+      artificial glow, and set ablaze the few topmost boughs of a tree that
+      would itself remain unchanged, a sombre incombustible candelabrum beneath
+      its flaming crest. At one spot the light grew solid as a brick wall, and
+      like a piece of yellow Persian masonry, patterned in blue, daubed coarsely
+      upon the sky the leaves of the chestnuts; at another, it cut them off from
+      the sky towards which they stretched out their curling, golden fingers.
+      Half-way up the trunk of a tree draped with wild vine, the light had
+      grafted and brought to blossom, too dazzling to be clearly distinguished,
+      an enormous posy, of red flowers apparently, perhaps of a new variety of
+      carnation. The different parts of the Bois, so easily confounded in summer
+      in the density and monotony of their universal green, were now clearly
+      divided. A patch of brightness indicated the approach to almost every one
+      of them, or else a splendid mass of foliage stood out before it like an
+      oriflamme. I could make out, as on a coloured map, Armenonville, the Pré
+      Catalan, Madrid, the Race Course and the shore of the lake. Here and there
+      would appear some meaningless erection, a sham grotto, a mill, for which
+      the trees made room by drawing away from it, or which was borne upon the
+      soft green platform of a grassy lawn. I could feel that the Bois was not
+      really a wood, that it existed for a purpose alien to the life of its
+      trees; my sense of exaltation was due not only to admiration of the autumn
+      tints but to a bodily desire. Ample source of a joy which the heart feels
+      at first without being conscious of its cause, without understanding that
+      it results from no external impulse! Thus I gazed at the trees with an
+      unsatisfied longing which went beyond them and, without my knowledge,
+      directed itself towards that masterpiece of beautiful strolling women
+      which the trees enframed for a few hours every day. I walked towards the
+      Allée des Acacias. I passed through forest groves in which the morning
+      light, breaking them into new sections, lopped and trimmed the trees,
+      united different trunks in marriage, made nosegays of their branches. It
+      would skilfully draw towards it a pair of trees; making deft use of the
+      sharp chisel of light and shade, it would cut away from each of them half
+      of its trunk and branches, and, weaving together the two halves that
+      remained, would make of them either a single pillar of shade, defined by
+      the surrounding light, or a single luminous phantom whose artificial,
+      quivering contour was encompassed in a network of inky shadows. When a ray
+      of sunshine gilded the highest branches, they seemed, soaked and still
+      dripping with a sparkling moisture, to have emerged alone from the liquid,
+      emerald-green atmosphere in which the whole grove was plunged as though
+      beneath the sea. For the trees continued to live by their own vitality,
+      and when they had no longer any leaves, that vitality gleamed more
+      brightly still from the nap of green velvet that carpeted their trunks, or
+      in the white enamel of the globes of mistletoe that were scattered all the
+      way up to the topmost branches of the poplars, rounded as are the sun and
+      moon in Michelangelo's 'Creation.' But, forced for so many years now, by a
+      sort of grafting process, to share the life of feminine humanity, they
+      called to my mind the figure of the dryad, the fair worldling, swiftly
+      walking, brightly coloured, whom they sheltered with their branches as she
+      passed beneath them, and obliged to acknowledge, as they themselves
+      acknowledged, the power of the season; they recalled to me the happy days
+      when I was young and had faith, when I would hasten eagerly to the spots
+      where masterpieces of female elegance would be incarnate for a few moments
+      beneath the unconscious, accommodating boughs. But the beauty for which
+      the firs and acacias of the Bois de Boulogne made me long, more
+      disquieting in that respect than the chestnuts and lilacs of Trianon which
+      I was going to see, was not fixed somewhere outside myself in the relics
+      of an historical period, in works of art, in a little temple of love at
+      whose door was piled an oblation of autumn leaves ribbed with gold. I
+      reached the shore of the lake; I walked on as far as the pigeon-shooting
+      ground. The idea of perfection which I had within me I had bestowed, in
+      that other time, upon the height of a victoria, upon the raking thinness
+      of those horses, frenzied and light as wasps upon the wing, with bloodshot
+      eyes like the cruel steeds of Diomed, which now, smitten by a desire to
+      see again what I had once loved, as ardent as the desire that had driven
+      me, many years before, along the same paths, I wished to see renewed
+      before my eyes at the moment when Mme. Swann's enormous coachman,
+      supervised by a groom no bigger than his fist, and as infantile as Saint
+      George in the picture, endeavoured to curb the ardour of the flying,
+      steel-tipped pinions with which they thundered along the ground. Alas!
+      there was nothing now but motor-cars driven each by a moustached mechanic,
+      with a tall footman towering by his side. I wished to hold before my
+      bodily eyes, that I might know whether they were indeed as charming as
+      they appeared to the eyes of memory, little hats, so low-crowned as to
+      seem no more than garlands about the brows of women. All the hats now were
+      immense; covered with fruits and flowers and all manner of birds. In place
+      of the lovely gowns in which Mme. Swann walked like a Queen, appeared
+      Greco-Saxon tunics, with Tanagra folds, or sometimes, in the Directoire
+      style, 'Liberty chiffons' sprinkled with flowers like sheets of wallpaper.
+      On the heads of the gentlemen who might have been eligible to stroll with
+      Mme. Swann in the Allée de la Reine Marguerite, I found not the grey
+      'tile' hats of old, nor any other kind. They walked the Bois bare-headed.
+      And seeing all these new elements of the spectacle, I had no longer the
+      faith which, applied to them, would have given them consistency, unity,
+      life; they passed in a scattered sequence before me, at random, without
+      reality, containing in themselves no beauty that my eyes might have
+      endeavoured as in the old days, to extract from them and to compose in a
+      picture. They were just women, in whose elegance I had no belief, and
+      whose clothes seemed to me unimportant. But when a belief vanishes, there
+      survives it—more and more ardently, so as to cloak the absence of
+      the power, now lost to us, of imparting reality to new phenomena—an
+      idolatrous attachment to the old things which our belief in them did once
+      animate, as if it was in that belief and not in ourselves that the divine
+      spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent cause—the
+      death of the gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, horrible!" I exclaimed to myself: "Does anyone really imagine that
+      these motor-cars are as smart as the old carriage-and-pair? I dare say. I
+      am too old now—but I was not intended for a world in which women
+      shackle themselves in garments that are not even made of cloth. To what
+      purpose shall I walk among these trees if there is nothing left now of the
+      assembly that used to meet beneath the delicate tracery of reddening
+      leaves, if vulgarity and fatuity have supplanted the exquisite thing that
+      once their branches framed? Oh, horrible! My consolation is to think of
+      the women whom I have known, in the past, now that there is no standard
+      left of elegance. But how can the people who watch these dreadful
+      creatures hobble by, beneath hats on which have been heaped the spoils of
+      aviary or garden-bed,—how can they imagine the charm that there was
+      in the sight of Mme. Swann, crowned with a close-fitting lilac bonnet, or
+      with a tiny hat from which rose stiffly above her head a single iris?"
+      Could I ever have made them understand the emotion that I used to feel on
+      winter mornings, when I met Mme. Swann on foot, in an otter-skin coat,
+      with a woollen cap from which stuck out two blade-like partridge-feathers,
+      but enveloped also in the deliberate, artificial warmth of her own house,
+      which was suggested by nothing more than the bunch of violets crushed into
+      her bosom, whose flowering, vivid and blue against the grey sky, the
+      freezing air, the naked boughs, had the same charming effect of using the
+      season and the weather merely as a setting, and of living actually in a
+      human atmosphere, in the atmosphere of this woman, as had in the vases and
+      beaupots of her drawing-room, beside the blazing fire, in front of the
+      silk-covered sofa, the flowers that looked out through closed windows at
+      the falling snow? But it would not have sufficed me that the costumes
+      alone should still have been the same as in those distant years. Because
+      of the solidarity that binds together the different parts of a general
+      impression, parts that our memory keeps in a balanced whole, of which we
+      are not permitted to subtract or to decline any fraction, I should have
+      liked to be able to pass the rest of the day with one of those women, over
+      a cup of tea, in a little house with dark-painted walls (as Mme. Swann's
+      were still in the year after that in which the first part of this story
+      ends) against which would glow the orange flame, the red combustion, the
+      pink and white flickering of her chrysanthemums in the twilight of a
+      November evening, in moments similar to those in which (as we shall see) I
+      had not managed to discover the pleasures for which I longed. But now,
+      albeit they had led to nothing, those moments struck me as having been
+      charming enough in themselves. I sought to find them again as I remembered
+      them. Alas! there was nothing now but flats decorated in the Louis XVI
+      style, all white paint, with hortensias in blue enamel. Moreover, people
+      did not return to Paris, now, until much later. Mme. Swann would have
+      written to me, from a country house, that she would not be in town before
+      February, had I asked her to reconstruct for me the elements of that
+      memory which I felt to belong to a distant era, to a date in time towards
+      which it was forbidden me to ascend again the fatal slope, the elements of
+      that longing which had become, itself, as inaccessible as the pleasure
+      that it had once vainly pursued. And I should have required also that they
+      be the same women, those whose costume interested me because, at a time
+      when I still had faith, my imagination had individualised them and had
+      provided each of them with a legend. Alas! in the acacia-avenue—the
+      myrtle-alley—I did see some of them again, grown old, no more now
+      than grim spectres of what once they had been, wandering to and fro, in
+      desperate search of heaven knew what, through the Virgilian groves. They
+      had long fled, and still I stood vainly questioning the deserted paths.
+      The sun's face was hidden. Nature began again to reign over the Bois, from
+      which had vanished all trace of the idea that it was the Elysian Garden of
+      Woman; above the gimcrack windmill the real sky was grey; the wind
+      wrinkled the surface of the Grand Lac in little wavelets, like a real
+      lake; large birds passed swiftly over the Bois, as over a real wood, and
+      with shrill cries perched, one after another, on the great oaks which,
+      beneath their Druidical crown, and with Dodonaic majesty, seemed to
+      proclaim the unpeopled vacancy of this estranged forest, and helped me to
+      understand how paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that
+      are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose the charm that
+      comes to them from memory itself and from their not being apprehended by
+      the senses. The reality that I had known no longer existed. It sufficed
+      that Mme. Swann did not appear, in the same attire and at the same moment,
+      for the whole avenue to be altered. The places that we have known belong
+      now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own
+      convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between
+      the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time;
+      remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment;
+      and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.
+    </p>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWANN’S WAY ***</div>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #7178 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7178)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
+it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Swann's Way
+       Remembrance of Things Past, Volume One
+
+Author: Marcel Proust
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2009 [EBook #7178]
+Last Updated: November 4, 2014
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWANN'S WAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SWANN'S WAY
+
+Remembrance Of Things Past, Volume One
+
+
+By Marcel Proust
+
+
+Translated From The French By C. K. Scott Moncrieff
+
+NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1922
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+OVERTURE
+
+COMBRAY
+
+SWANN IN LOVE
+
+PLACE-NAMES: THE NAME
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OVERTURE
+
+For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out
+my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to
+say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was
+time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book
+which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I
+had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just
+been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own,
+until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book:
+a church, a quartet, the rivalry between Fran�ois I and Charles V. This
+impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not
+disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them
+from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then
+it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former
+existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would
+separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form
+part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I
+would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and
+restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to
+which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark
+indeed.
+
+I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling
+of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the
+distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective
+the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying
+towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for
+ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange
+place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to
+farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his
+ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of
+being once again at home.
+
+I would lay my cheeks gently against the comfortable cheeks of my
+pillow, as plump and blooming as the cheeks of babyhood. Or I would
+strike a match to look at my watch. Nearly midnight. The hour when an
+invalid, who has been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a
+strange hotel, awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief
+a streak of daylight shewing under his bedroom door. Oh, joy of joys!
+it is morning. The servants will be about in a minute: he can ring,
+and some one will come to look after him. The thought of being made
+comfortable gives him strength to endure his pain. He is certain he
+heard footsteps: they come nearer, and then die away. The ray of light
+beneath his door is extinguished. It is midnight; some one has turned
+out the gas; the last servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night
+in agony with no one to bring him any help.
+
+I would fall asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches
+only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or
+to open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness,
+to savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay
+heavy upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I
+formed but an insignificant part and whose unconsciousness I should very
+soon return to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned
+without the least effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever
+outgrown; and had come under the thrall of one of my childish terrors,
+such as that old terror of my great-uncle's pulling my curls, which was
+effectually dispelled on the day--the dawn of a new era to me--on which
+they were finally cropped from my head. I had forgotten that event
+during my sleep; I remembered it again immediately I had succeeded in
+making myself wake up to escape my great-uncle's fingers; still, as a
+measure of precaution, I would bury the whole of my head in the pillow
+before returning to the world of dreams.
+
+Sometimes, too, just as Eve was created from a rib of Adam, so a woman
+would come into existence while I was sleeping, conceived from some
+strain in the position of my limbs. Formed by the appetite that I was
+on the point of gratifying, she it was, I imagined, who offered me that
+gratification. My body, conscious that its own warmth was permeating
+hers, would strive to become one with her, and I would awake. The rest
+of humanity seemed very remote in comparison with this woman whose
+company I had left but a moment ago: my cheek was still warm with her
+kiss, my body bent beneath the weight of hers. If, as would sometimes
+happen, she had the appearance of some woman whom I had known in waking
+hours, I would abandon myself altogether to the sole quest of her, like
+people who set out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city
+that they have always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste
+in reality what has charmed their fancy. And then, gradually, the memory
+of her would dissolve and vanish, until I had forgotten the maiden of my
+dream.
+
+When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the
+hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host.
+Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant
+reads off his own position on the earth's surface and the amount of time
+that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt
+to grow confused, and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning,
+after a night of insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading,
+in quite a different position from that in which he normally goes to
+sleep, he has only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back
+in its course, and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the
+time, but will conclude that he has just gone to bed. Or suppose that he
+gets drowsy in some even more abnormal position; sitting in an armchair,
+say, after dinner: then the world will fall topsy-turvy from its orbit,
+the magic chair will carry him at full speed through time and space,
+and when he opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to sleep
+months earlier and in some far distant country. But for me it was enough
+if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my
+consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had
+gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was,
+I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary
+sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an
+animal's consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the
+cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I
+was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very
+possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up
+out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped
+by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of
+civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps,
+followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by
+degrees the component parts of my ego.
+
+Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon
+them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else,
+and by the immobility of our conceptions of them. For it always happened
+that when I awoke like this, and my mind struggled in an unsuccessful
+attempt to discover where I was, everything would be moving round me
+through the darkness: things, places, years. My body, still too heavy
+with sleep to move, would make an effort to construe the form which its
+tiredness took as an orientation of its various members, so as to induce
+from that where the wall lay and the furniture stood, to piece together
+and to give a name to the house in which it must be living. Its memory,
+the composite memory of its ribs, knees, and shoulder-blades offered it
+a whole series of rooms in which it had at one time or another slept;
+while the unseen walls kept changing, adapting themselves to the shape
+of each successive room that it remembered, whirling madly through the
+darkness. And even before my brain, lingering in consideration of when
+things had happened and of what they had looked like, had collected
+sufficient impressions to enable it to identify the room, it, my body,
+would recall from each room in succession what the bed was like, where
+the doors were, how daylight came in at the windows, whether there was a
+passage outside, what I had had in my mind when I went to sleep, and had
+found there when I awoke. The stiffened side underneath my body would,
+for instance, in trying to fix its position, imagine itself to be lying,
+face to the wall, in a big bed with a canopy; and at once I would say to
+myself, "Why, I must have gone to sleep after all, and Mamma never came
+to say good night!" for I was in the country with my grandfather, who
+died years ago; and my body, the side upon which I was lying, loyally
+preserving from the past an impression which my mind should never have
+forgotten, brought back before my eyes the glimmering flame of the
+night-light in its bowl of Bohemian glass, shaped like an urn and hung
+by chains from the ceiling, and the chimney-piece of Siena marble in my
+bedroom at Combray, in my great-aunt's house, in those far distant days
+which, at the moment of waking, seemed present without being clearly
+penned, but would become plainer in a little while when I was properly
+awake.
+
+Then would come up the memory of a fresh position; the wall slid away in
+another direction; I was in my room in Mme. de Saint-Loup's house in the
+country; good heavens, it must be ten o'clock, they will have finished
+dinner! I must have overslept myself, in the little nap which I always
+take when I come in from my walk with Mme. de Saint-Loup, before
+dressing for the evening. For many years have now elapsed since the
+Combray days, when, coming in from the longest and latest walks, I would
+still be in time to see the reflection of the sunset glowing in the
+panes of my bedroom window. It is a very different kind of existence
+at Tansonville now with Mme. de Saint-Loup, and a different kind of
+pleasure that I now derive from taking walks only in the evenings, from
+visiting by moonlight the roads on which I used to play, as a child, in
+the sunshine; while the bedroom, in which I shall presently fall asleep
+instead of dressing for dinner, from afar off I can see it, as we return
+from our walk, with its lamp shining through the window, a solitary
+beacon in the night.
+
+These shifting and confused gusts of memory never lasted for more than
+a few seconds; it often happened that, in my spell of uncertainty as to
+where I was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of which that
+uncertainty was composed any more than, when we watch a horse running,
+we isolate the successive positions of its body as they appear upon
+a bioscope. But I had seen first one and then another of the rooms in
+which I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them
+all in the long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on
+going to bed I would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the
+most diverse materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets,
+a piece of a shawl, the edge of my bed, and a copy of an evening paper,
+all of which things I would contrive, with the infinite patience of
+birds building their nests, to cement into one whole; rooms where, in
+a keen frost, I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the
+outer world (like the sea-swallow which builds at the end of a dark
+tunnel and is kept warm by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire
+keeping in all night, I would sleep wrapped up, as it were, in a great
+cloak of snug and savoury air, shot with the glow of the logs which
+would break out again in flame: in a sort of alcove without walls, a
+cave of warmth dug out of the heart of the room itself, a zone of heat
+whose boundaries were constantly shifting and altering in temperature
+as gusts of air ran across them to strike freshly upon my face, from
+the corners of the room, or from parts near the window or far from the
+fireplace which had therefore remained cold--or rooms in summer, where
+I would delight to feel myself a part of the warm evening, where the
+moonlight striking upon the half-opened shutters would throw down to the
+foot of my bed its enchanted ladder; where I would fall asleep, as it
+might be in the open air, like a titmouse which the breeze keeps poised
+in the focus of a sunbeam--or sometimes the Louis XVI room, so cheerful
+that I could never feel really unhappy, even on my first night in it:
+that room where the slender columns which lightly supported its ceiling
+would part, ever so gracefully, to indicate where the bed was and
+to keep it separate; sometimes again that little room with the high
+ceiling, hollowed in the form of a pyramid out of two separate storeys,
+and partly walled with mahogany, in which from the first moment my mind
+was drugged by the unfamiliar scent of flowering grasses, convinced of
+the hostility of the violet curtains and of the insolent indifference of
+a clock that chattered on at the top of its voice as though I were not
+there; while a strange and pitiless mirror with square feet, which
+stood across one corner of the room, cleared for itself a site I had not
+looked to find tenanted in the quiet surroundings of my normal field of
+vision: that room in which my mind, forcing itself for hours on end
+to leave its moorings, to elongate itself upwards so as to take on the
+exact shape of the room, and to reach to the summit of that monstrous
+funnel, had passed so many anxious nights while my body lay stretched
+out in bed, my eyes staring upwards, my ears straining, my nostrils
+sniffing uneasily, and my heart beating; until custom had changed the
+colour of the curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought an expression
+of pity to the cruel, slanting face of the glass, disguised or even
+completely dispelled the scent of flowering grasses, and distinctly
+reduced the apparent loftiness of the ceiling. Custom! that skilful but
+unhurrying manager who begins by torturing the mind for weeks on end
+with her provisional arrangements; whom the mind, for all that, is
+fortunate in discovering, for without the help of custom it would never
+contrive, by its own efforts, to make any room seem habitable.
+
+Certainly I was now well awake; my body had turned about for the last
+time and the good angel of certainty had made all the surrounding
+objects stand still, had set me down under my bedclothes, in my bedroom,
+and had fixed, approximately in their right places in the uncertain
+light, my chest of drawers, my writing-table, my fireplace, the window
+overlooking the street, and both the doors. But it was no good my
+knowing that I was not in any of those houses of which, in the stupid
+moment of waking, if I had not caught sight exactly, I could still
+believe in their possible presence; for memory was now set in motion; as
+a rule I did not attempt to go to sleep again at once, but used to spend
+the greater part of the night recalling our life in the old days at
+Combray with my great-aunt, at Balbec, Paris, Donci�res, Venice, and the
+rest; remembering again all the places and people that I had known, what
+I had actually seen of them, and what others had told me.
+
+At Combray, as every afternoon ended, long before the time when I should
+have to go up to bed, and to lie there, unsleeping, far from my
+mother and grandmother, my bedroom became the fixed point on which my
+melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred. Some one had had the happy
+idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally
+wretched, a magic lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while
+we waited for dinner-time to come: in the manner of the master-builders
+and glass-painters of gothic days it substituted for the opaqueness
+of my walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many
+colours, in which legends were depicted, as on a shifting and transitory
+window. But my sorrows were only increased, because this change of
+lighting destroyed, as nothing else could have done, the customary
+impression I had formed of my room, thanks to which the room itself,
+but for the torture of having to go to bed in it, had become quite
+endurable. For now I no longer recognised it, and I became uneasy, as
+though I were in a room in some hotel or furnished lodging, in a place
+where I had just arrived, by train, for the first time.
+
+Riding at a jerky trot, Golo, his mind filled with an infamous design,
+issued from the little three-cornered forest which dyed dark-green the
+slope of a convenient hill, and advanced by leaps and bounds towards the
+castle of poor Genevi�ve de Brabant. This castle was cut off short by
+a curved line which was in fact the circumference of one of the
+transparent ovals in the slides which were pushed into position through
+a slot in the lantern. It was only the wing of a castle, and in front
+of it stretched a moor on which Genevi�ve stood, lost in contemplation,
+wearing a blue girdle. The castle and the moor were yellow, but I could
+tell their colour without waiting to see them, for before the slides
+made their appearance the old-gold sonorous name of Brabant had given
+me an unmistakable clue. Golo stopped for a moment and listened sadly to
+the little speech read aloud by my great-aunt, which he seemed perfectly
+to understand, for he modified his attitude with a docility not devoid
+of a degree of majesty, so as to conform to the indications given in the
+text; then he rode away at the same jerky trot. And nothing could arrest
+his slow progress. If the lantern were moved I could still distinguish
+Golo's horse advancing across the window-curtains, swelling out with
+their curves and diving into their folds. The body of Golo himself,
+being of the same supernatural substance as his steed's, overcame all
+material obstacles--everything that seemed to bar his way--by taking
+each as it might be a skeleton and embodying it in himself: the
+door-handle, for instance, over which, adapting itself at once, would
+float invincibly his red cloak or his pale face, never losing its
+nobility or its melancholy, never shewing any sign of trouble at such a
+transubstantiation.
+
+And, indeed, I found plenty of charm in these bright projections, which
+seemed to have come straight out of a Merovingian past, and to shed
+around me the reflections of such ancient history. But I cannot express
+the discomfort I felt at such an intrusion of mystery and beauty into
+a room which I had succeeded in filling with my own personality until
+I thought no more of the room than of myself. The anaesthetic effect
+of custom being destroyed, I would begin to think and to feel very
+melancholy things. The door-handle of my room, which was different to
+me from all the other doorhandles in the world, inasmuch as it seemed to
+open of its own accord and without my having to turn it, so unconscious
+had its manipulation become; lo and behold, it was now an astral body
+for Golo. And as soon as the dinner-bell rang I would run down to the
+dining-room, where the big hanging lamp, ignorant of Golo and Bluebeard
+but well acquainted with my family and the dish of stewed beef, shed the
+same light as on every other evening; and I would fall into the arms of
+my mother, whom the misfortunes of Genevi�ve de Brabant had made all the
+dearer to me, just as the crimes of Golo had driven me to a more than
+ordinarily scrupulous examination of my own conscience.
+
+But after dinner, alas, I was soon obliged to leave Mamma, who stayed
+talking with the others, in the garden if it was fine, or in the little
+parlour where everyone took shelter when it was wet. Everyone except my
+grandmother, who held that "It is a pity to shut oneself indoors in the
+country," and used to carry on endless discussions with my father on the
+very wettest days, because he would send me up to my room with a book
+instead of letting me stay out of doors. "That is not the way to make
+him strong and active," she would say sadly, "especially this little
+man, who needs all the strength and character that he can get." My
+father would shrug his shoulders and study the barometer, for he took an
+interest in meteorology, while my mother, keeping very quiet so as not
+to disturb him, looked at him with tender respect, but not too hard,
+not wishing to penetrate the mysteries of his superior mind. But my
+grandmother, in all weathers, even when the rain was coming down in
+torrents and Fran�oise had rushed indoors with the precious wicker
+armchairs, so that they should not get soaked--you would see my
+grandmother pacing the deserted garden, lashed by the storm, pushing
+back her grey hair in disorder so that her brows might be more free to
+imbibe the life-giving draughts of wind and rain. She would say, "At
+last one can breathe!" and would run up and down the soaking paths--too
+straight and symmetrical for her liking, owing to the want of any
+feeling for nature in the new gardener, whom my father had been asking
+all morning if the weather were going to improve--with her keen, jerky
+little step regulated by the various effects wrought upon her soul by
+the intoxication of the storm, the force of hygiene, the stupidity of
+my education and of symmetry in gardens, rather than by any anxiety (for
+that was quite unknown to her) to save her plum-coloured skirt from the
+spots of mud under which it would gradually disappear to a depth which
+always provided her maid with a fresh problem and filled her with fresh
+despair.
+
+When these walks of my grandmother's took place after dinner there was
+one thing which never failed to bring her back to the house: that was if
+(at one of those points when the revolutions of her course brought her,
+moth-like, in sight of the lamp in the little parlour where the liqueurs
+were set out on the card-table) my great-aunt called out to her:
+"Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!" For,
+simply to tease her (she had brought so foreign a type of mind into my
+father's family that everyone made a joke of it), my great-aunt used to
+make my grandfather, who was forbidden liqueurs, take just a few drops.
+My poor grandmother would come in and beg and implore her husband not to
+taste the brandy; and he would become annoyed and swallow his few drops
+all the same, and she would go out again sad and discouraged, but still
+smiling, for she was so humble and so sweet that her gentleness towards
+others, and her continual subordination of herself and of her own
+troubles, appeared on her face blended in a smile which, unlike those
+seen on the majority of human faces, had no trace in it of irony, save
+for herself, while for all of us kisses seemed to spring from her eyes,
+which could not look upon those she loved without yearning to bestow
+upon them passionate caresses. The torments inflicted on her by my
+great-aunt, the sight of my grandmother's vain entreaties, of her in
+her weakness conquered before she began, but still making the futile
+endeavour to wean my grandfather from his liqueur-glass--all these
+were things of the sort to which, in later years, one can grow so well
+accustomed as to smile at them, to take the tormentor's side with a.
+happy determination which deludes one into the belief that it is not,
+really, tormenting; but in those days they filled me with such horror
+that I longed to strike my great-aunt. And yet, as soon as I heard her
+"Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!" in my
+cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when
+face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them;
+I ran up to the top of the house to cry by myself in a little room
+beside the schoolroom and beneath the roof, which smelt of orris-root,
+and was scented also by a wild currant-bush which had climbed up between
+the stones of the outer wall and thrust a flowering branch in through
+the half-opened window. Intended for a more special and a baser use,
+this room, from which, in the daytime, I could see as far as the keep of
+Roussainville-le-Pin, was for a long time my place of refuge, doubtless
+because it was the only room whose door � was allowed to lock, whenever
+my occupation was such as required an inviolable solitude; reading or
+dreaming, secret tears or paroxysms of desire. Alas! I little knew
+that my own lack of will-power, my delicate health, and the consequent
+uncertainty as to my future weighed far more heavily on my grandmother's
+mind than any little breach of the rules by her husband, during those
+endless perambulations, afternoon and evening, in which we used to see
+passing up and down, obliquely raised towards the heavens, her handsome
+face with its brown and wrinkled cheeks, which with age had acquired
+almost the purple hue of tilled fields in autumn, covered, if she were
+walking abroad, by a half-lifted veil, while upon them either the
+cold or some sad reflection invariably left the drying traces of an
+involuntary tear.
+
+My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma
+would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted
+for so short a time: she went down again so soon that the moment in
+which I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her
+garden dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited
+straw, rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment
+of the keenest sorrow. So much did I love that good night that I reached
+the stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as
+to prolong the time of respite during which Mamma would not yet have
+appeared. Sometimes when, after kissing me, she opened the door to go, I
+longed to call her back, to say to her "Kiss me just once again," but
+I knew that then she would at once look displeased, for the concession
+which she made to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to me with
+this kiss of peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies
+absurd, and she would have liked to try to induce me to outgrow the
+need, the custom of having her there at all, which was a very different
+thing from letting the custom grow up of my asking her for an additional
+kiss when she was already crossing the threshold. And to see her look
+displeased destroyed all the sense of tranquillity she had brought me a
+moment before, when she bent her loving face down over my bed, and held
+it out to me like a Host, for an act of Communion in which my lips might
+drink deeply the sense of her real presence, and with it the power to
+sleep. But those evenings on which Mamma stayed so short a time in
+my room were sweet indeed compared to those on which we had guests
+to dinner, and therefore she did not come at all. Our 'guests'
+were practically limited to M. Swann, who, apart from a few passing
+strangers, was almost the only person who ever came to the house at
+Combray, sometimes to a neighbourly dinner (but less frequently since
+his unfortunate marriage, as my family did not care to receive his wife)
+and sometimes after dinner, uninvited. On those evenings when, as we sat
+in front of the house beneath the big chestnut-tree and round the iron
+table, we heard, from the far end of the garden, not the large and
+noisy rattle which heralded and deafened as he approached with its
+ferruginous, interminable, frozen sound any member of the household who
+had put it out of action by coming in 'without ringing,' but the double
+peal--timid, oval, gilded--of the visitors' bell, everyone would at once
+exclaim "A visitor! Who in the world can it be?" but they knew quite
+well that it could only be M. Swann. My great-aunt, speaking in a loud
+voice, to set an example, in a tone which she endeavoured to make sound
+natural, would tell the others not to whisper so; that nothing could be
+more unpleasant for a stranger coming in, who would be led to think that
+people were saying things about him which he was not meant to hear; and
+then my grandmother would be sent out as a scout, always happy to find
+an excuse for an additional turn in the garden, which she would utilise
+to remove surreptitiously, as she passed, the stakes of a rose-tree or
+two, so as to make the roses look a little more natural, as a mother
+might run her hand through her boy's hair, after the barber had smoothed
+it down, to make it stick out properly round his head.
+
+And there we would all stay, hanging on the words which would fall from
+my grandmother's lips when she brought us back her report of the
+enemy, as though there had been some uncertainty among a vast number of
+possible invaders, and then, soon after, my grandfather would say: "I
+can hear Swann's voice." And, indeed, one could tell him only by his
+voice, for it was difficult to make out his face with its arched nose
+and green eyes, under a high forehead fringed with fair, almost red
+hair, dressed in the Bressant style, because in the garden we used as
+little light as possible, so as not to attract mosquitoes: and I would
+slip away as though not going for anything in particular, to tell them
+to bring out the syrups; for my grandmother made a great point, thinking
+it 'nicer' of their not being allowed to seem anything out of the
+ordinary, which we kept for visitors only. Although a far younger man,
+M. Swann was very much attached to my grandfather, who had been an
+intimate friend, in his time, of Swann's father, an excellent but an
+eccentric man in whom the least little thing would, it seemed, often
+check the flow of his spirits and divert the current of his thoughts.
+Several times in the course of a year I would hear my grandfather tell
+at table the story, which never varied, of the behaviour of M. Swann the
+elder upon the death of his wife, by whose bedside he had watched
+day and night. My grandfather, who had not seen him for a long time,
+hastened to join him at the Swanns' family property on the outskirts of
+Combray, and managed to entice him for a moment, weeping profusely, out
+of the death-chamber, so that he should not be present when the body was
+laid in its coffin. They took a turn or two in the park, where there was
+a little sunshine. Suddenly M. Swann seized my grandfather by the arm
+and cried, "Oh, my dear old friend, how fortunate we are to be walking
+here together on such a charming day! Don't you see how pretty they are,
+all these trees--my hawthorns, and my new pond, on which you have never
+congratulated me? You look as glum as a night-cap. Don't you feel this
+little breeze? Ah! whatever you may say, it's good to be alive all the
+same, my dear Am�d�e!" And then, abruptly, the memory of his dead wife
+returned to him, and probably thinking it too complicated to inquire
+into how, at such a time, he could have allowed himself to be carried
+away by an impulse of happiness, he confined himself to a gesture which
+he habitually employed whenever any perplexing question came into his
+mind: that is, he passed his hand across his forehead, dried his eyes,
+and wiped his glasses. And he could never be consoled for the loss of
+his wife, but used to say to my grandfather, during the two years for
+which he survived her, "It's a funny thing, now; I very often think
+of my poor wife, but I cannot think of her very much at any one time."
+"Often, but a little at a time, like poor old Swann," became one of my
+grandfather's favourite phrases, which he would apply to all kinds of
+things. And I should have assumed that this father of Swann's had been
+a monster if my grandfather, whom I regarded as a better judge than
+myself, and whose word was my law and often led me in the long run to
+pardon offences which I should have been inclined to condemn, had not
+gone on to exclaim, "But, after all, he had a heart of gold."
+
+For many years, albeit--and especially before his marriage--M. Swann
+the younger came often to see them at Combray, my great-aunt and
+grandparents never suspected that he had entirely ceased to live in the
+kind of society which his family had frequented, or that, under the
+sort of incognito which the name of Swann gave him among us, they were
+harbouring--with the complete innocence of a family of honest innkeepers
+who have in their midst some distinguished highwayman and never know
+it--one of the smartest members of the Jockey Club, a particular friend
+of the Comte de Paris and of the Prince of Wales, and one of the
+men most sought after in the aristocratic world of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain.
+
+Our utter ignorance of the brilliant part which Swann was playing in
+the world of fashion was, of course, due in part to his own reserve and
+discretion, but also to the fact that middle-class people in those days
+took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist
+of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself
+called to that station in life which his parents already occupied,
+and nothing, except the chance of a brilliant career or of a 'good'
+marriage, could extract you from that station or admit you to a superior
+caste. M. Swann, the father, had been a stockbroker; and so 'young
+Swann' found himself immured for life in a caste where one's fortune, as
+in a list of taxpayers, varied between such and such limits of income.
+We knew the people with whom his father had associated, and so we knew
+his own associates, the people with whom he was 'in a position to mix.'
+If he knew other people besides, those were youthful acquaintances on
+whom the old friends of the family, like my relatives, shut their eyes
+all the more good-naturedly that Swann himself, after he was left an
+orphan, still came most faithfully to see us; but we would have been
+ready to wager that the people outside our acquaintance whom Swann knew
+were of the sort to whom he would not have dared to raise his hat, had
+he met them while he was walking with ourselves. Had there been such a
+thing as a determination to apply to Swann a social coefficient peculiar
+to himself, as distinct from all the other sons of other stockbrokers in
+his father's position, his coefficient would have been rather lower than
+theirs, because, leading a very simple life, and having always had
+a craze for 'antiques' and pictures, he now lived and piled up his
+collections in an old house which my grandmother longed to visit,
+but which stood on the Quai d'Orl�ans, a neighbourhood in which my
+great-aunt thought it most degrading to be quartered. "Are you really
+a connoisseur, now?" she would say to him; "I ask for your own sake, as
+you are likely to have 'fakes' palmed off on you by the dealers," for
+she did not, in fact, endow him with any critical faculty, and had no
+great opinion of the intelligence of a man who, in conversation, would
+avoid serious topics and shewed a very dull preciseness, not only when
+he gave us kitchen recipes, going into the most minute details, but
+even when my grandmother's sisters were talking to him about art. When
+challenged by them to give an opinion, or to express his admiration for
+some picture, he would remain almost impolitely silent, and would then
+make amends by furnishing (if he could) some fact or other about the
+gallery in which the picture was hung, or the date at which it had been
+painted. But as a rule he would content himself with trying to amuse
+us by telling us the story of his latest adventure--and he would have
+a fresh story for us on every occasion--with some one whom we ourselves
+knew, such as the Combray chemist, or our cook, or our coachman. These
+stories certainly used to make my great-aunt laugh, but she could
+never tell whether that was on account of the absurd parts which Swann
+invariably made himself play in the adventures, or of the wit that he
+shewed in telling us of them. "It is easy to see that you are a regular
+'character,' M. Swann!"
+
+As she was the only member of our family who could be described as a
+trifle 'common,' she would always take care to remark to strangers, when
+Swann was mentioned, that he could easily, if he had wished to, have
+lived in the Boulevard Haussmann or the Avenue de l'Op�ra, and that
+he was the son of old M. Swann who must have left four or five million
+francs, but that it was a fad of his. A fad which, moreover, she thought
+was bound to amuse other people so much that in Paris, when M. Swann
+called on New Year's Day bringing her a little packet of _marrons
+glac�s_, she never failed, if there were strangers in the room, to say
+to him: "Well, M. Swann, and do you still live next door to the Bonded
+Vaults, so as to be sure of not missing your train when you go to
+Lyons?" and she would peep out of the corner of her eye, over her
+glasses, at the other visitors.
+
+But if anyone had suggested to my aunt that this Swann, who, in his
+capacity as the son of old M. Swann, was 'fully qualified' to be
+received by any of the 'upper middle class,' the most respected
+barristers and solicitors of Paris (though he was perhaps a trifle
+inclined to let this hereditary privilege go into abeyance), had another
+almost secret existence of a wholly different kind: that when he left
+our house in Paris, saying that he must go home to bed, he would no
+sooner have turned the corner than he would stop, retrace his steps, and
+be off to some drawing-room on whose like no stockbroker or associate
+of stockbrokers had ever set eyes--that would have seemed to my aunt
+as extraordinary as, to a woman of wider reading, the thought of being
+herself on terms of intimacy with Aristaeus, of knowing that he would,
+when he had finished his conversation with her, plunge deep into the
+realms of Thetis, into an empire veiled from mortal eyes, in which
+Virgil depicts him as being received with open arms; or--to be content
+with an image more likely to have occurred to her, for she had seen it
+painted on the plates we used for biscuits at Combray--as the thought
+of having had to dinner Ali Baba, who, as soon as he found himself alone
+and unobserved, would make his way into the cave, resplendent with its
+unsuspected treasures.
+
+One day when he had come to see us after dinner in Paris, and had begged
+pardon for being in evening clothes, Fran�oise, when he had gone, told
+us that she had got it from his coachman that he had been dining "with a
+princess." "A pretty sort of princess," drawled my aunt; "I know
+them," and she shrugged her shoulders without raising her eyes from her
+knitting, serenely ironical.
+
+Altogether, my aunt used to treat him with scant ceremony. Since she was
+of the opinion that he ought to feel flattered by our invitations, she
+thought it only right and proper that he should never come to see us in
+summer without a basket of peaches or raspberries from his garden,
+and that from each of his visits to Italy he should bring back some
+photographs of old masters for me.
+
+It seemed quite natural, therefore, to send to him whenever we wanted
+a recipe for some special sauce or for a pineapple salad for one of
+our big dinner-parties, to which he himself would not be invited, not
+seeming of sufficient importance to be served up to new friends who
+might be in our house for the first time. If the conversation turned
+upon the Princes of the House of France, "Gentlemen, you and I will
+never know, will we, and don't want to, do we?" my great-aunt would
+say tartly to Swann, who had, perhaps, a letter from Twickenham in his
+pocket; she would make him play accompaniments and turn over music on
+evenings when my grandmother's sister sang; manipulating this creature,
+so rare and refined at other times and in other places, with the rough
+simplicity of a child who will play with some curio from the cabinet no
+more carefully than if it were a penny toy. Certainly the Swann who was
+a familiar figure in all the clubs of those days differed hugely from,
+the Swann created in my great-aunt's mind when, of an evening, in our
+little garden at Combray, after the two shy peals had sounded from the
+gate, she would vitalise, by injecting into it everything she had ever
+heard about the Swann family, the vague and unrecognisable shape which
+began to appear, with my grandmother in its wake, against a background
+of shadows, and could at last be identified by the sound of its voice.
+But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none
+of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for
+everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or
+the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts
+of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as "seeing some
+one we know" is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the
+physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have
+already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we
+compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In
+the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to
+follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in
+the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent
+envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our
+own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen. And so, no
+doubt, from the Swann they had built up for their own purposes my family
+had left out, in their ignorance, a whole crowd of the details of his
+daily life in the world of fashion, details by means of which other
+people, when they met him, saw all the Graces enthroned in his face and
+stopping at the line of his arched nose as at a natural frontier; but
+they contrived also to put into a face from which its distinction had
+been evicted, a face vacant and roomy as an untenanted house, to plant
+in the depths of its unvalued eyes a lingering sense, uncertain but not
+unpleasing, half-memory and half-oblivion, of idle hours spent together
+after our weekly dinners, round the card-table or in the garden, during
+our companionable country life. Our friend's bodily frame had been so
+well lined with this sense, and with various earlier memories of his
+family, that their own special Swann had become to my people a complete
+and living creature; so that even now I have the feeling of leaving
+some one I know for another quite different person when, going back in
+memory, I pass from the Swann whom I knew later and more intimately
+to this early Swann--this early Swann in whom I can distinguish the
+charming mistakes of my childhood, and who, incidentally, is less like
+his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as
+though one's life were a series of galleries in which all the portraits
+of any one period had a marked family likeness, the same (so to speak)
+tonality--this early Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent
+of the great chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and of a sprig of
+tarragon.
+
+And yet one day, when my grandmother had gone to ask some favour of a
+lady whom she had known at the Sacr� Coeur (and with whom, because of
+our caste theory, she had not cared to keep up any degree of intimacy in
+spite of several common interests), the Marquise de Villeparisis, of the
+famous house of Bouillon, this lady had said to her:
+
+"I think you know M. Swann very well; he is a great friend of my
+nephews, the des Laumes."
+
+My grandmother had returned from the call full of praise for the house,
+which overlooked some gardens, and in which Mme. de Villeparisis had
+advised her to rent a flat; and also for a repairing tailor and his
+daughter, who kept a little shop in the courtyard, into which she had
+gone to ask them to put a stitch in her skirt, which she had torn on the
+staircase. My grandmother had found these people perfectly charming: the
+girl, she said, was a jewel, and the tailor a most distinguished man,
+the finest she had ever seen. For in her eyes distinction was a thing
+wholly independent of social position. She was in ecstasies over some
+answer the tailor had made, saying to Mamma:
+
+"S�vign� would not have said it better!" and, by way of contrast, of a
+nephew of Mme. de Villeparisis whom she had met at the house:
+
+"My dear, he is so common!"
+
+Now, the effect of that remark about Swann had been, not to raise him
+in my great-aunt's estimation, but to lower Mme. de Villeparisis. It
+appeared that the deference which, on my grandmother's authority, we
+owed to Mme. de Villeparisis imposed on her the reciprocal obligation to
+do nothing that would render her less worthy of our regard, and that
+she had failed in her duty in becoming aware of Swann's existence and
+in allowing members of her family to associate with him. "How should
+she know Swann? A lady who, you always made out, was related to Marshal
+MacMahon!" This view of Swann's social atmosphere which prevailed in my
+family seemed to be confirmed later on by his marriage with a woman of
+the worst class, you might almost say a 'fast' woman, whom, to do him
+justice, he never attempted to introduce to us, for he continued to come
+to us alone, though he came more and more seldom; but from whom they
+thought they could establish, on the assumption that he had found her
+there, the circle, unknown to them, in which he ordinarily moved.
+
+But on one occasion my grandfather read in a newspaper that M. Swann was
+one of the most faithful attendants at the Sunday luncheons given by the
+Duc de X----, whose father and uncle had been among our most prominent
+statesmen in the reign of Louis Philippe. Now my grandfather was curious
+to learn all the little details which might help him to take a mental
+share in the private lives of men like Mole, the Duc Pasquier, or the
+Duc de Broglie. He was delighted to find that Swann associated with
+people who had known them. My great-aunt, however, interpreted this
+piece of news in a sense discreditable to Swann; for anyone who chose
+his associates outside the caste in which he had been born and bred,
+outside his 'proper station,' was condemned to utter degradation in her
+eyes. It seemed to her that such a one abdicated all claim to enjoy the
+fruits of those friendly relations with people of good position which
+prudent parents cultivate and store up for their children's benefit, for
+my great-aunt had actually ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer we
+had known because he had married a 'Highness' and had thereby stepped
+down--in her eyes--from the respectable position of a lawyer's son to
+that of those adventurers, upstart footmen or stable-boys mostly,
+to whom we read that queens have sometimes shewn their favours. She
+objected, therefore, to my grandfather's plan of questioning Swann, when
+next he came to dine with us, about these people whose friendship with
+him we had discovered. On the other hand, my grandmother's two sisters,
+elderly spinsters who shared her nobility of character but lacked her
+intelligence, declared that they could not conceive what pleasure their
+brother-in-law could find in talking about such trifles. They were
+ladies of lofty ambition, who for that reason were incapable of taking
+the least interest in what might be called the 'pinchbeck' things of
+life, even when they had an historic value, or, generally speaking, in
+anything that was not directly associated with some object aesthetically
+precious. So complete was their negation of interest in anything which
+seemed directly or indirectly a part of our everyday life that their
+sense of hearing--which had gradually come to understand its own
+futility when the tone of the conversation, at the dinner-table, became
+frivolous or merely mundane, without the two old ladies' being able to
+guide it back to the topic dear to themselves--would leave its receptive
+channels unemployed, so effectively that they were actually becoming
+atrophied. So that if my grandfather wished to attract the attention of
+the two sisters, he would have to make use of some such alarm signals
+as mad-doctors adopt in dealing with their distracted patients; as by
+beating several times on a glass with the blade of a knife, fixing them
+at the same time with a sharp word and a compelling glance, violent
+methods which the said doctors are apt to bring with them into their
+everyday life among the sane, either from force of professional habit or
+because they think the whole world a trifle mad.
+
+Their interest grew, however, when, the day before Swann was to dine
+with us, and when he had made them a special present of a case of Asti,
+my great-aunt, who had in her hand a copy of the _Figaro_ in which to
+the name of a picture then on view in a Corot exhibition were added the
+words, "from the collection of M. Charles Swann," asked: "Did you see
+that Swann is 'mentioned' in the _Figaro_?"
+
+"But I have always told you," said my grandmother, "that he had plenty
+of taste."
+
+"You would, of course," retorted my great-aunt, "say anything just to
+seem different from _us_." For, knowing that my grandmother never agreed
+with her, and not being quite confident that it was her own opinion
+which the rest of us invariably endorsed, she wished to extort from us
+a wholesale condemnation of my grandmother's views, against which she
+hoped to force us into solidarity with her own.
+
+But we sat silent. My grandmother's sisters having expressed a desire
+to mention to Swann this reference to him in the _Figaro_, my great-aunt
+dissuaded them. Whenever she saw in others an advantage, however
+trivial, which she herself lacked, she would persuade herself that it
+was no advantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to
+have to envy them.
+
+"I don't think that would please him at all; I know very well, I should
+hate to see my name printed like that, as large as life, in the paper,
+and I shouldn't feel at all flattered if anyone spoke to me about it."
+
+She did not, however, put any very great pressure upon my grandmother's
+sisters, for they, in their horror of vulgarity, had brought to such a
+fine art the concealment of a personal allusion in a wealth of ingenious
+circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person
+to whom it was addressed. As for my mother, her only thought was of
+managing to induce my father to consent to speak to Swann, not of his
+wife, but of his daughter, whom he worshipped, and for whose sake it was
+understood that he had ultimately made his unfortunate marriage.
+
+"You need only say a word; just ask him how she is. It must be so very
+hard for him."
+
+My father, however, was annoyed: "No, no; you have the most absurd
+ideas. It would be utterly ridiculous."
+
+But the only one of us in whom the prospect of Swann's arrival gave
+rise to an unhappy foreboding was myself. And that was because on the
+evenings when there were visitors, or just M. Swann in the house, Mamma
+did not come up to my room. I did not, at that time, have dinner with
+the family: I came out to the garden after dinner, and at nine I said
+good night and went to bed. But on these evenings I used to dine earlier
+than the others, and to come in afterwards and sit at table until eight
+o'clock, when it was understood that I must go upstairs; that frail and
+precious kiss which Mamma used always to leave upon my lips when I
+was in bed and just going to sleep I had to take with me from the
+dining-room to my own, and to keep inviolate all the time that it
+took me to undress, without letting its sweet charm be broken, without
+letting its volatile essence diffuse itself and evaporate; and just on
+those very evenings when I must needs take most pains to receive it with
+due formality, I had to snatch it, to seize it instantly and in public,
+without even having the time or being properly free to apply to what I
+was doing the punctiliousness which madmen use who compel themselves to
+exclude all other thoughts from their minds while they are shutting a
+door, so that when the sickness of uncertainty sweeps over them again
+they can triumphantly face and overcome it with the recollection of the
+precise moment in which the door was shut.
+
+We were all in the garden when the double peal of the gate-bell sounded
+shyly. Everyone knew that it must be Swann, and yet they looked at one
+another inquiringly and sent my grandmother scouting.
+
+"See that you thank him intelligibly for the wine," my grandfather
+warned his two sisters-in-law; "you know how good it is, and it is a
+huge case."
+
+"Now, don't start whispering!" said my great-aunt. "How would you like
+to come into a house and find everyone muttering to themselves?"
+
+"Ah! There's M. Swann," cried my father. "Let's ask him if he thinks it
+will be fine to-morrow."
+
+My mother fancied that a word from her would wipe out all the
+unpleasantness which my family had contrived to make Swann feel since
+his marriage. She found an opportunity to draw him aside for a moment.
+But I followed her: I could not bring myself to let her go out of reach
+of me while I felt that in a few minutes I should have to leave her in
+the dining-room and go up to my bed without the consoling thought, as on
+ordinary evenings, that she would come up, later, to kiss me.
+
+"Now, M. Swann," she said, "do tell me about your daughter; I am sure
+she shews a taste already for nice things, like her papa."
+
+"Come along and sit down here with us all on the verandah," said my
+grandfather, coming up to him. My mother had to abandon the quest, but
+managed to extract from the restriction itself a further refinement of
+thought, as great poets do when the tyranny of rhyme forces them into
+the discovery of their finest lines.
+
+"We can talk about her again when we are by ourselves," she said, or
+rather whispered to Swann. "It is only a mother who can understand. I am
+sure that hers would agree with me."
+
+And so we all sat down round the iron table. I should have liked not
+to think of the hours of anguish which I should have to spend, that
+evening, alone in my room, without the possibility of going to sleep: I
+tried to convince myself that they were of no importance, really,
+since I should have forgotten them next morning, and to fix my mind on
+thoughts of the future which would carry me, as on a bridge, across the
+terrifying abyss that yawned at my feet. But my mind, strained by this
+foreboding, distended like the look which I shot at my mother, would not
+allow any other impression to enter. Thoughts did, indeed, enter it,
+but only on the condition that they left behind them every element of
+beauty, or even of quaintness, by which I might have been distracted or
+beguiled. As a surgical patient, by means of a local anaesthetic, can
+look on with a clear consciousness while an operation is being performed
+upon him and yet feel nothing, I could repeat to myself some favourite
+lines, or watch my grandfather attempting to talk to Swann about the Duc
+d'Audriffet-Pasquier, without being able to kindle any emotion from one
+or amusement from the other. Hardly had my grandfather begun to question
+Swann about that orator when one of my grandmother's sisters, in whose
+ears the question echoed like a solemn but untimely silence which her
+natural politeness bade her interrupt, addressed the other with:
+
+"Just fancy, Flora, I met a young Swedish governess to-day who told
+me some most interesting things about the co-operative movement in
+Scandinavia. We really must have her to dine here one evening."
+
+"To be sure!" said her sister Flora, "but I haven't wasted my time
+either. I met such a clever old gentleman at M. Vinteuil's who knows
+Maubant quite well, and Maubant has told him every little thing about
+how he gets up his parts. It is the most interesting thing I ever heard.
+He is a neighbour of M. Vinteuil's, and I never knew; and he is so nice
+besides."
+
+"M. Vinteuil is not the only one who has nice neighbours," cried my aunt
+C�line in a voice which seemed loud because she was so timid, and seemed
+forced because she had been planning the little speech for so long;
+darting, as she spoke, what she called a 'significant glance' at Swann.
+And my aunt Flora, who realised that this veiled utterance was C�line's
+way of thanking Swann intelligibly for the Asti, looked at him with a
+blend of congratulation and irony, either just, because she wished to
+underline her sister's little epigram, or because she envied Swann
+his having inspired it, or merely because she imagined that he was
+embarrassed, and could not help having a little fun at his expense.
+
+"I think it would be worth while," Flora went on, "to have this old
+gentleman to dinner. When you get him upon Maubant or Mme. Materna he
+will talk for hours on end."
+
+"That must be delightful," sighed my grandfather, in whose mind nature
+had unfortunately forgotten to include any capacity whatsoever for
+becoming passionately interested in the co-operative movement among the
+ladies of Sweden or in the methods employed by Maubant to get up his
+parts, just as it had forgotten to endow my grandmother's two sisters
+with a grain of that precious salt which one has oneself to 'add to
+taste' in order to extract any savour from a narrative of the private
+life of Mole or of the Comte de Paris.
+
+"I say!" exclaimed Swann to my grandfather, "what I was going to tell
+you has more to do than you might think with what you were asking me
+just now, for in some respects there has been very little change. I came
+across a passage in Saint-Simon this morning which would have amused
+you. It is in the volume which covers his mission to Spain; not one
+of the best, little more in fact than a journal, but at least it is a
+journal wonderfully well written, which fairly distinguishes it from
+the devastating journalism that we feel bound to read in these days,
+morning, noon and night."
+
+"I do not agree with you: there are some days when I find reading the
+papers very pleasant indeed!" my aunt Flora broke in, to show Swann that
+she had read the note about his Corot in the _Figaro_.
+
+"Yes," aunt C�line went one better. "When they write about things or
+people in whom we are interested."
+
+"I don't deny it," answered Swann in some bewilderment. "The fault I
+find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in
+some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four
+books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance. Suppose
+that, every morning, when we tore the wrapper off our paper with fevered
+hands, a transmutation were to take place, and we were to find inside
+it--oh! I don't know; shall we say Pascal's _Pens�es_?" He articulated
+the title with an ironic emphasis so as not to appear pedantic. "And
+then, in the gilt and tooled volumes which we open once in ten years,"
+he went on, shewing that contempt for the things of this world which
+some men of the world like to affect, "we should read that the Queen of
+the Hellenes had arrived at Cannes, or that the Princesse de L�on had
+given a fancy dress ball. In that way we should arrive at the right
+proportion between 'information' and 'publicity.'" But at once
+regretting that he had allowed himself to speak, even in jest, of
+serious matters, he added ironically: "We are having a most entertaining
+conversation; I cannot think why we climb to these lofty summits," and
+then, turning to my grandfather: "Well, Saint-Simon tells how Maulevrier
+had had the audacity to offer his hand to his sons. You remember how he
+says of Maulevrier, 'Never did I find in that coarse bottle anything but
+ill-humour, boorishness, and folly.'"
+
+"Coarse or not, I know bottles in which there is something very
+different!" said Flora briskly, feeling bound to thank Swann as well as
+her sister, since the present of Asti had been addressed to them both.
+C�line began to laugh.
+
+Swann was puzzled, but went on: "'I cannot say whether it was his
+ignorance or a trap,' writes Saint-Simon; 'he wished to give his hand to
+my children. I noticed it in time to prevent him.'"
+
+My grandfather was already in ecstasies over "ignorance or a trap,"
+but Miss C�line--the name of Saint-Simon, a 'man of letters,' having
+arrested the complete paralysis of her sense of hearing--had grown
+angry.
+
+"What! You admire that, do you? Well, it is clever enough! But what is
+the point of it? Does he mean that one man isn't as good as another?
+What difference can it make whether he is a duke or a groom so long
+as he is intelligent and good? He had a fine way of bringing up his
+children, your Saint-Simon, if he didn't teach them to shake hands with
+all honest men. Really and truly, it's abominable. And you dare to quote
+it!"
+
+And my grandfather, utterly depressed, realising how futile it would be
+for him, against this opposition, to attempt to get Swann to tell him
+the stories which would have amused him, murmured to my mother: "Just
+tell me again that line of yours which always comforts me so much on
+these occasions. Oh, yes:
+
+
+  What virtues, Lord, Thou makest us abhor!
+
+Good, that is, very good."
+
+I never took my eyes off my mother. I knew that when they were at table
+I should not be permitted to stay there for the whole of dinner-time,
+and that Mamma, for fear of annoying my father, would not allow me to
+give her in public the series of kisses that she would have had in my
+room. And so I promised myself that in the dining-room, as they began
+to eat and drink and as I felt the hour approach, I would put beforehand
+into this kiss, which was bound to be so brief and stealthy in
+execution, everything that my own efforts could put into it: would
+look out very carefully first the exact spot on her cheek where I would
+imprint it, and would so prepare my thoughts that I might be able,
+thanks to these mental preliminaries, to consecrate the whole of the
+minute Mamma would allow me to the sensation of her cheek against my
+lips, as a painter who can have his subject for short sittings only
+prepares his palette, and from what he remembers and from rough notes
+does in advance everything which he possibly can do in the sitter's
+absence. But to-night, before the dinner-bell had sounded, my
+grandfather said with unconscious cruelty: "The little man looks tired;
+he'd better go up to bed. Besides, we are dining late to-night."
+
+And my father, who was less scrupulous than my grandmother or mother in
+observing the letter of a treaty, went on: "Yes, run along; to bed with
+you."
+
+I would have kissed Mamma then and there, but at that moment the
+dinner-bell rang.
+
+"No, no, leave your mother alone. You've said good night quite enough.
+These exhibitions are absurd. Go on upstairs."
+
+And so I must set forth without viaticum; must climb each step of the
+staircase 'against my heart,' as the saying is, climbing in opposition
+to my heart's desire, which was to return to my mother, since she had
+not, by her kiss, given my heart leave to accompany me forth. That
+hateful staircase, up which I always passed with such dismay, gave out
+a smell of varnish which had to some extent absorbed, made definite and
+fixed the special quality of sorrow that I felt each evening, and made
+it perhaps even more cruel to my sensibility because, when it assumed
+this olfactory guise, my intellect was powerless to resist it. When we
+have gone to sleep with a maddening toothache and are conscious of it
+only as a little girl whom we attempt, time after time, to pull out
+of the water, or as a line of Moli�re which we repeat incessantly to
+ourselves, it is a great relief to wake up, so that our intelligence
+can disentangle the idea of toothache from any artificial semblance of
+heroism or rhythmic cadence. It was the precise converse of this relief
+which I felt when my anguish at having to go up to my room invaded my
+consciousness in a manner infinitely more rapid, instantaneous almost,
+a manner at once insidious and brutal as I breathed in--a far more
+poisonous thing than any moral penetration--the peculiar smell of the
+varnish upon that staircase.
+
+Once in my room I had to stop every loophole, to close the shutters, to
+dig my own grave as I turned down the bed-clothes, to wrap myself in the
+shroud of my nightshirt. But before burying myself in the iron bed which
+had been placed there because, on summer nights, I was too hot among the
+red curtains of the four-poster, I was stirred to revolt, and attempted
+the desperate stratagem of a condemned prisoner. I wrote to my mother
+begging her to come upstairs for an important reason which I could not
+put in writing. My fear was that Fran�oise, my aunt's cook who used to
+be put in charge of me when I was at Combray, might refuse to take my
+note. I had a suspicion that, in her eyes, to carry a message to
+my mother when there was a stranger in the room would appear flatly
+inconceivable, just as it would be for the door-keeper of a theatre
+to hand a letter to an actor upon the stage. For things which might
+or might not be done she possessed a code at once imperious, abundant,
+subtle, and uncompromising on points themselves imperceptible or
+irrelevant, which gave it a resemblance to those ancient laws which
+combine such cruel ordinances as the massacre of infants at the breast
+with prohibitions, of exaggerated refinement, against "seething the kid
+in his mother's milk," or "eating of the sinew which is upon the hollow
+of the thigh." This code, if one could judge it by the sudden obstinacy
+which she would put into her refusal to carry out certain of our
+instructions, seemed to have foreseen such social complications and
+refinements of fashion as nothing in Fran�oise's surroundings or in her
+career as a servant in a village household could have put into her head;
+and we were obliged to assume that there was latent in her some past
+existence in the ancient history of France, noble and little understood,
+just as there is in those manufacturing towns where old mansions still
+testify to their former courtly days, and chemical workers toil among
+delicately sculptured scenes of the Miracle of Theophilus or the Quatre
+Fils Aymon.
+
+In this particular instance, the article of her code which made it
+highly improbable that--barring an outbreak of fire--Fran�oise would
+go down and disturb Mamma when M. Swann was there for so unimportant a
+person as myself was one embodying the respect she shewed not only for
+the family (as for the dead, for the clergy, or for royalty), but also
+for the stranger within our gates; a respect which I should perhaps have
+found touching in a book, but which never failed to irritate me on her
+lips, because of the solemn and gentle tones in which she would utter
+it, and which irritated me more than usual this evening when the sacred
+character in which she invested the dinner-party might have the effect
+of making her decline to disturb its ceremonial. But to give myself one
+chance of success I lied without hesitation, telling her that it was not
+in the least myself who had wanted to write to Mamma, but Mamma who,
+on saying good night to me, had begged me not to forget to send her
+an answer about something she had asked me to find, and that she would
+certainly be very angry if this note were not taken to her. I think that
+Fran�oise disbelieved me, for, like those primitive men whose senses
+were so much keener than our own, she could immediately detect, by signs
+imperceptible by the rest of us, the truth or falsehood of anything that
+we might wish to conceal from her. She studied the envelope for five
+minutes as though an examination of the paper itself and the look of
+my handwriting could enlighten her as to the nature of the contents,
+or tell her to which article of her code she ought to refer the matter.
+Then she went out with an air of resignation which seemed to imply:
+"What a dreadful thing for parents to have a child like this!"
+
+A moment later she returned to say that they were still at the ice stage
+and that it was impossible for the butler to deliver the note at once,
+in front of everybody; but that when the finger-bowls were put round he
+would find a way of slipping it into Mamma's hand. At once my anxiety
+subsided; it was now no longer (as it had been a moment ago) until
+to-morrow that I had lost my mother, for my little line was going--to
+annoy her, no doubt, and doubly so because this contrivance would make
+me ridiculous in Swann's eyes--but was going all the same to admit me,
+invisibly and by stealth, into the same room as herself, was going
+to whisper from me into her ear; for that forbidden and unfriendly
+dining-room, where but a moment ago the ice itself--with burned nuts in
+it--and the finger-bowls seemed to me to be concealing pleasures that
+were mischievous and of a mortal sadness because Mamma was tasting of
+them and I was far away, had opened its doors to me and, like a ripe
+fruit which bursts through its skin, was going to pour out into my
+intoxicated heart the gushing sweetness of Mamma's attention while she
+was reading what I had written. Now I was no longer separated from her;
+the barriers were down; an exquisite thread was binding us. Besides,
+that was not all, for surely Mamma would come.
+
+As for the agony through which I had just passed, I imagined that Swann
+would have laughed heartily at it if he had read my letter and had
+guessed its purpose; whereas, on the contrary, as I was to learn in due
+course, a similar anguish had been the bane of his life for many years,
+and no one perhaps could have understood my feelings at that moment so
+well as himself; to him, that anguish which lies in knowing that the
+creature one adores is in some place of enjoyment where oneself is not
+and cannot follow--to him that anguish came through Love, to which it
+is in a sense predestined, by which it must be equipped and adapted; but
+when, as had befallen me, such an anguish possesses one's soul before
+Love has yet entered into one's life, then it must drift, awaiting
+Love's coming, vague and free, without precise attachment, at the
+disposal of one sentiment to-day, of another to-morrow, of filial piety
+or affection for a comrade. And the joy with which I first bound myself
+apprentice, when Fran�oise returned to tell me that my letter would be
+delivered; Swann, too, had known well that false joy which a friend can
+give us, or some relative of the woman we love, when on his arrival at
+the house or theatre where she is to be found, for some ball or party or
+'first-night' at which he is to meet her, he sees us wandering outside,
+desperately awaiting some opportunity of communicating with her. He
+recognises us, greets us familiarly, and asks what we are doing there.
+And when we invent a story of having some urgent message to give to his
+relative or friend, he assures us that nothing could be more simple,
+takes us in at the door, and promises to send her down to us in five
+minutes. How much we love him--as at that moment I loved Fran�oise--the
+good-natured intermediary who by a single word has made supportable,
+human, almost propitious the inconceivable, infernal scene of gaiety in
+the thick of which we had been imagining swarms of enemies, perverse and
+seductive, beguiling away from us, even making laugh at us, the woman
+whom we love. If we are to judge of them by him, this relative who has
+accosted us and who is himself an initiate in those cruel mysteries,
+then the other guests cannot be so very demoniacal. Those inaccessible
+and torturing hours into which she had gone to taste of unknown
+pleasures--behold, a breach in the wall, and we are through it. Behold,
+one of the moments whose series will go to make up their sum, a moment
+as genuine as the rest, if not actually more important to ourself
+because our mistress is more intensely a part of it; we picture it to
+ourselves, we possess it, we intervene upon it, almost we have created
+it: namely, the moment in which he goes to tell her that we are waiting
+there below. And very probably the other moments of the party will not
+be essentially different, will contain nothing else so exquisite or so
+well able to make us suffer, since this kind friend has assured us that
+"Of course, she will be delighted to come down! It will be far more
+amusing for her to talk to you than to be bored up there." Alas! Swann
+had learned by experience that the good intentions of a third party are
+powerless to control a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even
+into a ball-room by a man whom she does not love. Too often, the kind
+friend comes down again alone.
+
+My mother did not appear, but with no attempt to safeguard my
+self-respect (which depended upon her keeping up the fiction that she
+had asked me to let her know the result of my search for something
+or other) made Fran�oise tell me, in so many words "There is no
+answer"--words I have so often, since then, heard the hall-porters in
+'mansions' and the flunkeys in gambling-clubs and the like, repeat to
+some poor girl, who replies in bewilderment: "What! he's said nothing?
+It's not possible. You did give him my letter, didn't you? Very well,
+I shall wait a little longer." And just as she invariably protests that
+she does not need the extra gas which the porter offers to light for
+her, and sits on there, hearing nothing further, except an occasional
+remark on the weather which the porter exchanges with a messenger
+whom he will send off suddenly, when he notices the time, to put some
+customer's wine on the ice; so, having declined Fran�oise's offer to
+make me some tea or to stay beside me, I let her go off again to the
+servants' hall, and lay down and shut my eyes, and tried not to hear the
+voices of my family who were drinking their coffee in the garden.
+
+But after a few seconds I realised that, by writing that line to Mamma,
+by approaching--at the risk of making her angry--so near to her that I
+felt I could reach out and grasp the moment in which I should see her
+again, I had cut myself off from the possibility of going to sleep
+until I actually had seen her, and my heart began to beat more and more
+painfully as I increased my agitation by ordering myself to keep calm
+and to acquiesce in my ill-fortune. Then, suddenly, my anxiety subsided,
+a feeling of intense happiness coursed through me, as when a strong
+medicine begins to take effect and one's pain vanishes: I had formed a
+resolution to abandon all attempts to go to sleep without seeing Mamma,
+and had decided to kiss her at all costs, even with the certainty of
+being in disgrace with her for long afterwards, when she herself came
+up to bed. The tranquillity which followed my anguish made me extremely
+alert, no less than my sense of expectation, my thirst for and my fear
+of danger.
+
+Noiselessly I opened the window and sat down on the foot of my bed;
+hardly daring to move in case they should hear me from below. Things
+outside seemed also fixed in mute expectation, so as not to disturb the
+moonlight which, duplicating each of them and throwing it back by the
+extension, forwards, of a shadow denser and more concrete than its
+substance, had made the whole landscape seem at once thinner and longer,
+like a map which, after being folded up, is spread out upon the ground.
+What had to move--a leaf of the chestnut-tree, for instance--moved. But
+its minute shuddering, complete, finished to the least detail and with
+utmost delicacy of gesture, made no discord with the rest of the scene,
+and yet was not merged in it, remaining clearly outlined. Exposed upon
+this surface of silence, which absorbed nothing from them, the most
+distant sounds, those which must have come from gardens at the far end
+of the town, could be distinguished with such exact 'finish' that the
+impression they gave of coming from a distance seemed due only to their
+'pianissimo' execution, like those movements on muted strings so well
+performed by the orchestra of the Conservatoire that, although one does
+not lose a single note, one thinks all the same that they are being
+played somewhere outside, a long way from the concert hall, so that all
+the old subscribers, and my grandmother's sisters too, when Swann had
+given them his seats, used to strain their ears as if they had caught
+the distant approach of an army on the march, which had not yet rounded
+the corner of the Rue de Tr�vise.
+
+I was well aware that I had placed myself in a position than which
+none could be counted upon to involve me in graver consequences at my
+parents' hands; consequences far graver, indeed, than a stranger would
+have imagined, and such as (he would have thought) could follow only
+some really shameful fault. But in the system of education which they
+had given me faults were not classified in the same order as in that of
+other children, and I had been taught to place at the head of the list
+(doubtless because there was no other class of faults from which
+I needed to be more carefully protected) those in which I can now
+distinguish the common feature that one succumbs to them by yielding to
+a nervous impulse. But such words as these last had never been uttered
+in my hearing; no one had yet accounted for my temptations in a way
+which might have led me to believe that there was some excuse for my
+giving in to them, or that I was actually incapable of holding out
+against them. Yet I could easily recognise this class of transgressions
+by the anguish of mind which preceded, as well as by the rigour of the
+punishment which followed them; and I knew that what I had just done was
+in the same category as certain other sins for which I had been severely
+chastised, though infinitely more serious than they. When I went out to
+meet my mother as she herself came up to bed, and when she saw that I
+had remained up so as to say good night to her again in the passage,
+I should not be allowed to stay in the house a day longer, I should be
+packed off to school next morning; so much was certain. Very good: had
+I been obliged, the next moment, to hurl myself out of the window,
+I should still have preferred such a fate. For what I wanted now was
+Mamma, and to say good night to her. I had gone too far along the road
+which led to the realisation of this desire to be able to retrace my
+steps.
+
+I could hear my parents' footsteps as they went with Swann; and, when
+the rattle of the gate assured me that he had really gone, I crept to
+the window. Mamma was asking my father if he had thought the lobster
+good, and whether M. Swann had had some of the coffee-and-pistachio ice.
+"I thought it rather so-so," she was saying; "next time we shall have to
+try another flavour."
+
+"I can't tell you," said my great-aunt, "what a change I find in Swann.
+He is quite antiquated!" She had grown so accustomed to seeing Swann
+always in the same stage of adolescence that it was a shock to her to
+find him suddenly less young than the age she still attributed to him.
+And the others too were beginning to remark in Swann that abnormal,
+excessive, scandalous senescence, meet only in a celibate, in one of
+that class for whom it seems that the great day which knows no morrow
+must be longer than for other men, since for such a one it is void of
+promise, and from its dawn the moments steadily accumulate without any
+subsequent partition among his offspring.
+
+"I fancy he has a lot of trouble with that wretched wife of his, who
+'lives' with a certain Monsieur de Charlus, as all Combray knows. It's
+the talk of the town."
+
+My mother observed that, in spite of this, he had looked much less
+unhappy of late. "And he doesn't nearly so often do that trick of his,
+so like his father, of wiping his eyes and passing his hand across his
+forehead. I think myself that in his heart of hearts he doesn't love his
+wife any more."
+
+"Why, of course he doesn't," answered my grandfather. "He wrote me a
+letter about it, ages ago, to which I took care to pay no attention, but
+it left no doubt as to his feelings, let alone his love for his wife.
+Hullo! you two; you never thanked him for the Asti!" he went on, turning
+to his sisters-in-law.
+
+"What! we never thanked him? I think, between you and me, that I put it
+to him quite neatly," replied my aunt Flora.
+
+"Yes, you managed it very well; I admired you for it," said my aunt
+C�line.
+
+"But you did it very prettily, too."
+
+"Yes; I liked my expression about 'nice neighbours.'"
+
+"What! Do you call that thanking him?" shouted my grandfather. "I heard
+that all right, but devil take me if I guessed it was meant for Swann.
+You may be quite sure he never noticed it."
+
+"Come, come; Swann is not a fool. I am positive he appreciated the
+compliment. You didn't expect me to tell him the number of bottles, or
+to guess what he paid for them."
+
+My father and mother were left alone and sat down for a moment; then my
+father said: "Well, shall we go up to bed?"
+
+"As you wish, dear, though I don't feel in the least like sleeping. I
+don't know why; it can't be the coffee-ice--it wasn't strong enough to
+keep me awake like this. But I see a light in the servants' hall: poor
+Fran�oise has been sitting up for me, so I will get her to unhook me
+while you go and undress."
+
+My mother opened the latticed door which led from the hall to the
+staircase. Presently I heard her coming upstairs to close her window. I
+went quietly into the passage; my heart was beating so violently that I
+could hardly move, but at least it was throbbing no longer with anxiety,
+but with terror and with joy. I saw in the well of the stair a light
+coming upwards, from Mamma's candle. Then I saw Mamma herself: I threw
+myself upon her. For an instant she looked at me in astonishment, not
+realising what could have happened. Then her face assumed an expression
+of anger. She said not a single word to me; and, for that matter, I used
+to go for days on end without being spoken to, for far less offences
+than this. A single word from Mamma would have been an admission that
+further intercourse with me was within the bounds of possibility,
+and that might perhaps have appeared to me more terrible still, as
+indicating that, with such a punishment as was in store for me, mere
+silence, and even anger, were relatively puerile.
+
+A word from her then would have implied the false calm in which one
+converses with a servant to whom one has just decided to give notice;
+the kiss one bestows on a son who is being packed off to enlist, which
+would have been denied him if it had merely been a matter of being
+angry with him for a few days. But she heard my father coming from the
+dressing-room, where he had gone to take off his clothes, and, to avoid
+the 'scene' which he would make if he saw me, she said, in a voice
+half-stifled by her anger: "Run away at once. Don't let your father see
+you standing there like a crazy jane!"
+
+But I begged her again to "Come and say good night to me!" terrified as
+I saw the light from my father's candle already creeping up the wall,
+but also making use of his approach as a means of blackmail, in the hope
+that my mother, not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must
+if she continued to hold out, would give in to me, and say: "Go back to
+your room. I will come."
+
+Too late: my father was upon us. Instinctively I murmured, though no one
+heard me, "I am done for!"
+
+I was not, however. My father used constantly to refuse to let me do
+things which were quite clearly allowed by the more liberal charters
+granted me by my mother and grandmother, because he paid no heed to
+'Principles,' and because in his sight there were no such things as
+'Rights of Man.' For some quite irrelevant reason, or for no reason at
+all, he would at the last moment prevent me from taking some particular
+walk, one so regular and so consecrated to my use that to deprive me of
+it was a clear breach of faith; or again, as he had done this evening,
+long before the appointed hour he would snap out: "Run along up to
+bed now; no excuses!" But then again, simply because he was devoid
+of principles (in my grandmother's sense), so he could not, properly
+speaking, be called inexorable. He looked at me for a moment with an air
+of annoyance and surprise, and then when Mamma had told him, not without
+some embarrassment, what had happened, said to her: "Go along with him,
+then; you said just now that you didn't feel like sleep, so stay in his
+room for a little. I don't need anything."
+
+"But dear," my mother answered timidly, "whether or not I feel like
+sleep is not the point; we must not make the child accustomed..."
+
+"There's no question of making him accustomed," said my father, with
+a shrug of the shoulders; "you can see quite well that the child is
+unhappy. After all, we aren't gaolers. You'll end by making him ill,
+and a lot of good that will do. There are two beds in his room; tell
+Fran�oise to make up the big one for you, and stay beside him for the
+rest of the night. I'm off to bed, anyhow; I'm not nervous like you.
+Good night."
+
+It was impossible for me to thank my father; what he called my
+sentimentality would have exasperated him. I stood there, not daring
+to move; he was still confronting us, an immense figure in his white
+nightshirt, crowned with the pink and violet scarf of Indian cashmere
+in which, since he had begun to suffer from neuralgia, he used to tie up
+his head, standing like Abraham in the engraving after Benozzo Gozzoli
+which M. Swann had given me, telling Sarah that she must tear herself
+away from Isaac. Many years have passed since that night. The wall of
+the staircase, up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually
+climb, was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have
+perished which, I imagined, would last for ever, and new structures have
+arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days
+I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are difficult of
+comprehension. It is a long time, too, since my father has been able
+to tell Mamma to "Go with the child." Never again will such hours be
+possible for me. But of late I have been increasingly able to catch, if
+I listen attentively, the sound of the sobs which I had the strength to
+control in my father's presence, and which broke out only when I found
+myself alone with Mamma. Actually, their echo has never ceased: it is
+only because life is now growing more and more quiet round about me that
+I hear them afresh, like those convent bells which are so effectively
+drowned during the day by the noises of the streets that one would
+suppose them to have been stopped for ever, until they sound out again
+through the silent evening air.
+
+Mamma spent that night in my room: when I had just committed a sin so
+deadly that I was waiting to be banished from the household, my parents
+gave me a far greater concession than I should ever have won as the
+reward of a good action. Even at the moment when it manifested itself in
+this crowning mercy, my father's conduct towards me was still somewhat
+arbitrary, and regardless of my deserts, as was characteristic of him
+and due to the fact that his actions were generally dictated by chance
+expediencies rather than based on any formal plan. And perhaps even what
+I called his strictness, when he sent me off to bed, deserved that
+title less, really, than my mother's or grandmother's attitude, for his
+nature, which in some respects differed more than theirs from my own,
+had probably prevented him from guessing, until then, how wretched I was
+every evening, a thing which my mother and grandmother knew well; but
+they loved me enough to be unwilling to spare me that suffering,
+which they hoped to teach me to overcome, so as to reduce my nervous
+sensibility and to strengthen my will. As for my father, whose affection
+for me was of another kind, I doubt if he would have shewn so much
+courage, for as soon as he had grasped the fact that I was unhappy he
+had said to my mother: "Go and comfort him." Mamma stayed all night in
+my room, and it seemed that she did not wish to mar by recrimination
+those hours, so different from anything that I had had a right to
+expect; for when Fran�oise (who guessed that something extraordinary
+must have happened when she saw Mamma sitting by my side, holding my
+hand and letting me cry unchecked) said to her: "But, Madame, what is
+little Master crying for?" she replied: "Why, Fran�oise, he doesn't know
+himself: it is his nerves. Make up the big bed for me quickly and then
+go off to your own." And thus for the first time my unhappiness was
+regarded no longer as a fault for which I must be punished, but as
+an involuntary evil which had been officially recognised a nervous
+condition for which I was in no way responsible: I had the consolation
+that I need no longer mingle apprehensive scruples with the bitterness
+of my tears; I could weep henceforward without sin. I felt no small
+degree of pride, either, in Fran�oise presence at this return to humane
+conditions which, not an hour after Mamma had refused to come up to my
+room and had sent the snubbing message that I was to go to sleep, raised
+me to the dignity of a grown-up person, brought me of a sudden to a sort
+of puberty of sorrow, to emancipation from tears. I ought then to have
+been happy; I was not. It struck me that my mother had just made a first
+concession which must have been painful to her, that it was a first step
+down from the ideal she had formed for me, and that for the first time
+she, with all her courage, had to confess herself beaten. It struck
+me that if I had just scored a victory it was over her; that I had
+succeeded, as sickness or sorrow or age might have succeeded, in
+relaxing her will, in altering her judgment; that this evening opened
+a new era, must remain a black date in the calendar. And if I had dared
+now, I should have said to Mamma: "No, I don't want you; you mustn't
+sleep here." But I was conscious of the practical wisdom, of what
+would be called nowadays the realism with which she tempered the ardent
+idealism of my grandmother's nature, and I knew that now the mischief
+was done she would prefer to let me enjoy the soothing pleasure of
+her company, and not to disturb my father again. Certainly my mother's
+beautiful features seemed to shine again with youth that evening, as she
+sat gently holding my hands and trying to check my tears; but, just for
+that reason, it seemed to me that this should not have happened; her
+anger would have been less difficult to endure than this new kindness
+which my childhood had not known; I felt that I had with an impious and
+secret finger traced a first wrinkle upon her soul and made the first
+white hair shew upon her head. This thought redoubled my sobs, and then
+I saw that Mamma, who had never allowed herself to go to any length
+of tenderness with me, was suddenly overcome by my tears and had to
+struggle to keep back her own. Then, as she saw that I had noticed
+this, she said to me, with a smile: "Why, my little buttercup, my little
+canary-boy, he's going to make Mamma as silly as himself if this goes
+on. Look, since you can't sleep, and Mamma can't either, we mustn't
+go on in this stupid way; we must do something; I'll get one of your
+books." But I had none there. "Would you like me to get out the books
+now that your grandmother is going to give you for your birthday? Just
+think it over first, and don't be disappointed if there is nothing new
+for you then."
+
+I was only too delighted, and Mamma went to find a parcel of books
+in which I could not distinguish, through the paper in which it was
+wrapped, any more than its squareness and size, but which, even at this
+first glimpse, brief and obscure as it was, bade fair to eclipse already
+the paint-box of last New Year's Day and the silkworms of the year
+before. It contained _La Mare au Diable_, _Fran�ois le Champi_, _La
+Petite Fadette_, and _Les Ma�tres Sonneurs_. My grandmother, as I
+learned afterwards, had at first chosen Mussel's poems, a volume of
+Rousseau, and _Indiana_; for while she considered light reading as
+unwholesome as sweets and cakes, she did not reflect that the strong
+breath of genius must have upon the very soul of a child an influence
+at once more dangerous and less quickening than those of fresh air and
+country breezes upon his body. But when my father had seemed almost to
+regard her as insane on learning the names of the books she proposed
+to give me, she had journeyed back by herself to Jouy-le-Vicomte to
+the bookseller's, so that there should be no fear of my not having my
+present in time (it was a burning hot day, and she had come home so
+unwell that the doctor had warned my mother not to allow her again
+to tire herself in that way), and had there fallen back upon the four
+pastoral novels of George Sand.
+
+"My dear," she had said to Mamma, "I could not allow myself to give the
+child anything that was not well written."
+
+The truth was that she could never make up her mind to purchase anything
+from which no intellectual profit was to be derived, and, above all,
+that profit which good things bestowed on us by teaching us to seek our
+pleasures elsewhere than in the barren satisfaction of worldly wealth.
+Even when she had to make some one a present of the kind called
+'useful,' when she had to give an armchair or some table-silver or
+a walking-stick, she would choose 'antiques,' as though their long
+desuetude had effaced from them any semblance of utility and fitted
+them rather to instruct us in the lives of the men of other days than
+to serve the common requirements of our own. She would have liked me to
+have in my room photographs of ancient buildings or of beautiful places.
+But at the moment of buying them, and for all that the subject of the
+picture had an aesthetic value of its own, she would find that vulgarity
+and utility had too prominent a part in them, through the mechanical
+nature of their reproduction by photography. She attempted by a
+subterfuge, if not to eliminate altogether their commercial banality,
+at least to minimise it, to substitute for the bulk of it what was
+art still, to introduce, as it might be, several 'thicknesses' of
+art; instead of photographs of Chartres Cathedral, of the Fountains
+of Saint-Cloud, or of Vesuvius she would inquire of Swann whether some
+great painter had not made pictures of them, and preferred to give me
+photographs of 'Chartres Cathedral' after Corot, of the 'Fountains of
+Saint-Cloud' after Hubert Robert, and of 'Vesuvius' after Turner, which
+were a stage higher in the scale of art. But although the photographer
+had been prevented from reproducing directly the masterpieces or the
+beauties of nature, and had there been replaced by a great artist, he
+resumed his odious position when it came to reproducing the artist's
+interpretation. Accordingly, having to reckon again with vulgarity,
+my grandmother would endeavour to postpone the moment of contact still
+further. She would ask Swann if the picture had not been engraved,
+preferring, when possible, old engravings with some interest of
+association apart from themselves, such, for example, as shew us a
+masterpiece in a state in which we can no longer see it to-day, as
+Morghen's print of the 'Cenacolo' of Leonardo before it was spoiled
+by restoration. It must be admitted that the results of this method of
+interpreting the art of making presents were not always happy. The idea
+which I formed of Venice, from a drawing by Titian which is supposed to
+have the lagoon in the background, was certainly far less accurate than
+what I have since derived from ordinary photographs. We could no
+longer keep count in the family (when my great-aunt tried to frame an
+indictment of my grandmother) of all the armchairs she had presented
+to married couples, young and old, which on a first attempt to sit down
+upon them had at once collapsed beneath the weight of their recipient.
+But my grandmother would have thought it sordid to concern herself too
+closely with the solidity of any piece of furniture in which could still
+be discerned a flourish, a smile, a brave conceit of the past. And
+even what in such pieces supplied a material need, since it did so in a
+manner to which we are no longer accustomed, was as charming to her as
+one of those old forms of speech in which we can still see traces of a
+metaphor whose fine point has been worn away by the rough usage of our
+modern tongue. In precisely the same way the pastoral novels of George
+Sand, which she was giving me for my birthday, were regular lumber-rooms
+of antique furniture, full of expressions that have fallen out of use
+and returned as imagery, such as one finds now only in country dialects.
+And my grandmother had bought them in preference to other books, just as
+she would have preferred to take a house that had a gothic dovecot, or
+some other such piece of antiquity as would have a pleasant effect on
+the mind, filling it with a nostalgic longing for impossible journeys
+through the realms of time.
+
+Mamma sat down by my bed; she had chosen _Fran�ois le Champi_, whose
+reddish cover and incomprehensible title gave it a distinct personality
+in my eyes and a mysterious attraction. I had not then read any real
+novels. I had heard it said that George Sand was a typical novelist.
+That prepared me in advance to imagine that _Fran�ois le Champi_
+contained something inexpressibly delicious. The course of the
+narrative, where it tended to arouse curiosity or melt to pity, certain
+modes of expression which disturb or sadden the reader, and which, with
+a little experience, he may recognise as 'common form' in novels, seemed
+to me then distinctive--for to me a new book was not one of a number of
+similar objects, but was like an individual man, unmatched, and with no
+cause of existence beyond himself--an intoxicating whiff of the peculiar
+essence of _Fran�ois le Champi_. Beneath the everyday incidents, the
+commonplace thoughts and hackneyed words, I could hear, or overhear, an
+intonation, a rhythmic utterance fine and strange. The 'action' began:
+to me it seemed all the more obscure because in those days, when I read
+to myself, I used often, while I turned the pages, to dream of something
+quite different. And to the gaps which this habit made in my knowledge
+of the story more were added by the fact that when it was Mamma who was
+reading to me aloud she left all the love-scenes out. And so all the odd
+changes which take place in the relations between the miller's wife and
+the boy, changes which only the birth and growth of love can explain,
+seemed to me plunged and steeped in a mystery, the key to which (as I
+could readily believe) lay in that strange and pleasant-sounding name of
+_Champi_, which draped the boy who bore it, I knew not why, in its own
+bright colour, purpurate and charming. If my mother was not a faithful
+reader, she was, none the less, admirable when reading a work in which
+she found the note of true feeling by the respectful simplicity of her
+interpretation and by the sound of her sweet and gentle voice. It was
+the same in her daily life, when it was not works of art but men and
+women whom she was moved to pity or admire: it was touching to observe
+with what deference she would banish from her voice, her gestures, from
+her whole conversation, now the note of joy which might have distressed
+some mother who had long ago lost a child, now the recollection of an
+event or anniversary which might have reminded some old gentleman of the
+burden of his years, now the household topic which might have bored some
+young man of letters. And so, when she read aloud the prose of George
+Sand, prose which is everywhere redolent of that generosity and moral
+distinction which Mamma had learned from my grandmother to place above
+all other qualities in life, and which I was not to teach her until
+much later to refrain from placing, in the same way, above all other
+qualities in literature; taking pains to banish from her voice any
+weakness or affectation which might have blocked its channel for that
+powerful stream of language, she supplied all the natural tenderness,
+all the lavish sweetness which they demanded to phrases which seemed
+to have been composed for her voice, and which were all, so to speak,
+within her compass. She came to them with the tone that they required,
+with the cordial accent which existed before they were, which dictated
+them, but which is not to be found in the words themselves, and by these
+means she smoothed away, as she read on, any harshness there might be
+or discordance in the tenses of verbs, endowing the imperfect and the
+preterite with all the sweetness which there is in generosity, all the
+melancholy which there is in love; guided the sentence that was drawing
+to an end towards that which was waiting to begin, now hastening, now
+slackening the pace of the syllables so as to bring them, despite their
+difference of quantity, into a uniform rhythm, and breathed into this
+quite ordinary prose a kind of life, continuous and full of feeling.
+
+My agony was soothed; I let myself be borne upon the current of this
+gentle night on which I had my mother by my side. I knew that such a
+night could not be repeated; that the strongest desire I had in the
+world, namely, to keep my mother in my room through the sad hours of
+darkness, ran too much counter to general requirements and to the wishes
+of others for such a concession as had been granted me this evening to
+be anything but a rare and casual exception. To-morrow night I should
+again be the victim of anguish and Mamma would not stay by my side. But
+when these storms of anguish grew calm I could no longer realise
+their existence; besides, tomorrow evening was still a long way off;
+I reminded myself that I should still have time to think about things,
+albeit that remission of time could bring me no access of power, albeit
+the coming event was in no way dependent upon the exercise of my will,
+and seemed not quite inevitable only because it was still separated from
+me by this short interval.
+
+* * *
+
+And so it was that, for a long time afterwards, when I lay awake at
+night and revived old memories of Combray, I saw no more of it than
+this sort of luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy
+background, like the panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign
+will illuminate and dissect from the front of a building the other
+parts of which remain plunged in darkness: broad enough at its base, the
+little parlour, the dining-room, the alluring shadows of the path along
+which would come M. Swann, the unconscious author of my sufferings, the
+hall through which I would journey to the first step of that staircase,
+so hard to climb, which constituted, all by itself, the tapering
+'elevation' of an irregular pyramid; and, at the summit, my bedroom,
+with the little passage through whose glazed door Mamma would enter;
+in a word, seen always at the same evening hour, isolated from all
+its possible surroundings, detached and solitary against its shadowy
+background, the bare minimum of scenery necessary (like the setting
+one sees printed at the head of an old play, for its performance in
+the provinces) to the drama of my undressing, as though all Combray had
+consisted of but two floors joined by a slender staircase, and as though
+there had been no time there but seven o'clock at night. I must own
+that I could have assured any questioner that Combray did include other
+scenes and did exist at other hours than these. But since the facts
+which I should then have recalled would have been prompted only by an
+exercise of the will, by my intellectual memory, and since the pictures
+which that kind of memory shews us of the past preserve nothing of
+the past itself, I should never have had any wish to ponder over this
+residue of Combray. To me it was in reality all dead.
+
+Permanently dead? Very possibly.
+
+There is a large element of hazard in these matters, and a second
+hazard, that of our own death, often prevents us from awaiting for any
+length of time the favours of the first.
+
+I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the
+souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior
+being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so
+effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we
+happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which
+forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our
+name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken.
+We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our
+life.
+
+And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to
+recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile.
+The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of
+intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material
+object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object,
+it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves
+must die.
+
+Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was
+comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had
+any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my
+mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did
+not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular
+reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump
+little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they
+had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon,
+mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing
+morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked
+a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with
+it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I
+stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.
+An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached,
+with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life
+had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity
+illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has
+of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not
+in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental,
+mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was
+conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that
+it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the
+same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How
+could I seize upon and define it?
+
+I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the
+first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time
+to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object
+of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has
+called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat
+indefinitely with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which
+I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon
+the tea for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my
+disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my
+own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss
+of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed
+beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region
+through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it
+nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something
+which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and
+substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.
+
+And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this
+unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its
+existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a
+real state in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and
+vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts
+to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I find again
+the same state, illumined by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make
+one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting
+sensation. And that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out
+every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all
+attention to the sounds which come from the next room. And then, feeling
+that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report,
+I compel it for a change to enjoy that distraction which I have just
+denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before
+the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear an empty
+space in front of it. I place in position before my mind's eye the still
+recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within
+me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise,
+something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I
+do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can
+measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.
+
+Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must
+be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has
+tried to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too
+far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless
+reflection in which are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of
+radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as
+the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its
+contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea;
+cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of
+what period in my past life.
+
+Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this
+memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment
+has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the
+very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has
+stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who
+can say whether it will ever rise? Ten times over I must essay the task,
+must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which
+deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has
+urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely
+of the worries of to-day and of my hopes for to-morrow, which let
+themselves be pondered over without effort or distress of mind.
+
+And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb
+of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those
+mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good
+day to her in her bedroom, my aunt L�onie used to give me, dipping it
+first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the
+little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it;
+perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without
+tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image
+had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among
+others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned
+and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the
+forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry,
+so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either
+obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of
+expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my
+consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after
+the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still,
+alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more
+persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a
+long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their
+moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the
+tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of
+recollection.
+
+And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in
+her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I
+did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory
+made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where
+her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to
+the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out
+behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had
+been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to
+night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon,
+the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took
+when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling
+a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper
+which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they
+become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive
+shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable,
+so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park,
+and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and
+their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray
+and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid,
+sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+COMBRAY
+
+Combray at a distance, from a twenty-mile radius, as we used to see it
+from the railway when we arrived there every year in Holy Week, was no
+more than a church epitomising the town, representing it, speaking of it
+and for it to the horizon, and as one drew near, gathering close about
+its long, dark cloak, sheltering from the wind, on the open plain, as
+a shepherd gathers his sheep, the woolly grey backs of its flocking
+houses, which a fragment of its mediaeval ramparts enclosed, here and
+there, in an outline as scrupulously circular as that of a little town
+in a primitive painting. To live in, Combray was a trifle depressing,
+like its streets, whose houses, built of the blackened stone of the
+country, fronted with outside steps, capped with gables which projected
+long shadows downwards, were so dark that one had, as soon as the sun
+began to go down, to draw back the curtains in the sitting-room windows;
+streets with the solemn names of Saints, not a few of whom figured
+in the history of the early lords of Combray, such as the Rue
+Saint-Hilaire, the Rue Saint-Jacques, in which my aunt's house stood,
+the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde, which ran past her railings, and the Rue
+du Saint-Esprit, on to which the little garden gate opened; and these
+Combray streets exist in so remote a quarter of my memory, painted in
+colours so different from those in which the world is decked for me
+to-day, that in fact one and all of them, and the church which towered
+above them in the Square, seem to me now more unsubstantial than the
+projections of my magic-lantern; while at times I feel that to be able
+to cross the Rue Saint-Hilaire again, to engage a room in the Rue de
+l'Oiseau, in the old hostelry of the Oiseau Flesch�, from whose windows
+in the pavement used to rise a smell of cooking which rises still in
+my mind, now and then, in the same warm gusts of comfort, would be to
+secure a contact with the unseen world more marvellously supernatural
+than it would be to make Golo's acquaintance and to chat with Genevi�ve
+de Brabant.
+
+My grandfather's cousin--by courtesy my great-aunt--with whom we used
+to stay, was the mother of that aunt L�onie who, since her husband's (my
+uncle Octave's) death, had gradually declined to leave, first Combray,
+then her house in Combray, then her bedroom, and finally her bed;
+and who now never 'came down,' but lay perpetually in an indefinite
+condition of grief, physical exhaustion, illness, obsessions,
+and religious observances. Her own room looked out over the Rue
+Saint-Jacques, which ran a long way further to end in the Grand-Pr� (as
+distinct from the Petit-Pr�, a green space in the centre of the town
+where three streets met) and which, monotonous and grey, with the three
+high steps of stone before almost every one of its doors, seemed like a
+deep furrow cut by some sculptor of gothic images in the very block of
+stone out of which he had fashioned a Calvary or a Crib. My aunt's life
+was now practically confined to two adjoining rooms, in one of which she
+would rest in the afternoon while they, aired the other. They were rooms
+of that country order which (just as in certain climes whole tracts of
+air or ocean are illuminated or scented by myriads of protozoa which
+we cannot see) fascinate our sense of smell with the countless odours
+springing from their own special virtues, wisdom, habits, a whole secret
+system of life, invisible, superabundant and profoundly moral, which
+their atmosphere holds in solution; smells natural enough indeed, and
+coloured by circumstances as are those of the neighbouring countryside,
+but already humanised, domesticated, confined, an exquisite, skilful,
+limpid jelly, blending all the fruits of the season which have left
+the orchard for the store-room, smells changing with the year, but
+plenishing, domestic smells, which compensate for the sharpness of hoar
+frost with the sweet savour of warm bread, smells lazy and punctual as
+a village clock, roving smells, pious smells; rejoicing in a peace which
+brings only an increase of anxiety, and in a prosiness which serves as
+a deep source of poetry to the stranger who passes through their midst
+without having lived amongst them. The air of those rooms was saturated
+with the fine bouquet of a silence so nourishing, so succulent that I
+could not enter them without a sort of greedy enjoyment, particularly on
+those first mornings, chilly still, of the Easter holidays, when I could
+taste it more fully, because I had just arrived then at Combray: before
+I went in to wish my aunt good day I would be kept waiting a little time
+in the outer room, where the sun, a wintry sun still, had crept in to
+warm itself before the fire, lighted already between its two brick sides
+and plastering all the room and everything in it with a smell of soot,
+making the room like one of those great open hearths which one finds in
+the country, or one of the canopied mantelpieces in old castles under
+which one sits hoping that in the world outside it is raining or
+snowing, hoping almost for a catastrophic deluge to add the romance of
+shelter and security to the comfort of a snug retreat; I would turn to
+and fro between the prayer-desk and the stamped velvet armchairs, each
+one always draped in its crocheted antimacassar, while the fire, baking
+like a pie the appetising smells with which the air of the room, was
+thickly clotted, which the dewy and sunny freshness of the morning had
+already 'raised' and started to 'set,' puffed them and glazed them and
+fluted them and swelled them into an invisible though not impalpable
+country cake, an immense puff-pastry, in which, barely waiting to savour
+the crustier, more delicate, more respectable, but also drier smells
+of the cupboard, the chest-of-drawers, and the patterned wall-paper
+I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to bury myself in the
+nondescript, resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity smell of the
+flowered quilt.
+
+In the next room I could hear my aunt talking quietly to herself. She
+never spoke save in low tones, because she believed that there was
+something broken in her head and floating loose there, which she might
+displace by talking too loud; but she never remained for long, even when
+alone, without saying something, because she believed that it was good
+for her throat, and that by keeping the blood there in circulation it
+would make less frequent the chokings and other pains to which she
+was liable; besides, in the life of complete inertia which she led she
+attached to the least of her sensations an extraordinary importance,
+endowed them with a Protean ubiquity which made it difficult for her to
+keep them secret, and, failing a confidant to whom she might communicate
+them, she used to promulgate them to herself in an unceasing monologue
+which was her sole form of activity. Unfortunately, having formed the
+habit of thinking aloud, she did not always take care to see that there
+was no one in the adjoining room, and I would often hear her saying
+to herself: "I must not forget that I never slept a wink"--for "never
+sleeping a wink" was her great claim to distinction, and one admitted
+and respected in our household vocabulary; in the morning Fran�oise
+would not 'call' her, but would simply 'come to' her; during the day,
+when my aunt wished to take a nap, we used to say just that she wished
+to 'be quiet' or to 'rest'; and when in conversation she so far forgot
+herself as to say "what made me wake up," or "I dreamed that," she would
+flush and at once correct herself.
+
+After waiting a minute, I would go in and kiss her; Fran�oise would
+be making her tea; or, if my aunt were feeling 'upset,' she would ask
+instead for her 'tisane,' and it would be my duty to shake out of
+the chemist's little package on to a plate the amount of lime-blossom
+required for infusion in boiling water. The drying of the stems had
+twisted them into a fantastic trellis, in whose intervals the pale
+flowers opened, as though a painter had arranged them there, grouping
+them in the most decorative poses. The leaves, which had lost or altered
+their own appearance, assumed those instead of the most incongruous
+things imaginable, as though the transparent wings of flies or the blank
+sides of labels or the petals of roses had been collected and pounded,
+or interwoven as birds weave the material for their nests. A
+thousand trifling little details--the charming prodigality of the
+chemist--details which would have been eliminated from an artificial
+preparation, gave me, like a book in which one is astonished to read the
+name of a person whom one knows, the pleasure of finding that these were
+indeed real lime-blossoms, like those I had seen, when coming from the
+train, in the Avenue de la Gare, altered, but only because they were not
+imitations but the very same blossoms, which had grown old. And as each
+new character is merely a metamorphosis from something older, in these
+little grey balls I recognised green buds plucked before their time; but
+beyond all else the rosy, moony, tender glow which lit up the blossoms
+among the frail forest of stems from which they hung like little golden
+roses--marking, as the radiance upon an old wall still marks the place
+of a vanished fresco, the difference between those parts of the tree
+which had and those which had not been 'in bloom'--shewed me that these
+were petals which, before their flowering-time, the chemist's package
+had embalmed on warm evenings of spring. That rosy candlelight was still
+their colour, but half-extinguished and deadened in the diminished life
+which was now theirs, and which may be called the twilight of a flower.
+Presently my aunt was able to dip in the boiling infusion, in which she
+would relish the savour of dead or faded blossom, a little madeleine, of
+which she would hold out a piece to me when it was sufficiently soft.
+
+At one side of her bed stood a big yellow chest-of-drawers of
+lemon-wood, and a table which served at once as pharmacy and as
+high altar, on which, beneath a statue of Our Lady and a bottle of
+Vichy-C�lestins, might be found her service-books and her medical
+prescriptions, everything that she needed for the performance, in bed,
+of her duties to soul and body, to keep the proper times for pepsin and
+for vespers. On the other side her bed was bounded by the window: she
+had the street beneath her eyes, and would read in it from morning to
+night to divert the tedium of her life, like a Persian prince, the daily
+but immemorial chronicles of Combray, which she would discuss in detail
+afterwards with Fran�oise.
+
+I would not have been five minutes with my aunt before she would send me
+away in case I made her tired. She would hold out for me to kiss her sad
+brow, pale and lifeless, on which at this early hour she would not yet
+have arranged the false hair and through which the bones shone like the
+points of a crown of thorns--or the beads of a rosary, and she would say
+to me: "Now, my poor child, you must go away; go and get ready for
+mass; and if you see Fran�oise downstairs, tell her not to stay too
+long amusing herself with you; she must come up soon to see if I want
+anything."
+
+Fran�oise, who had been for many years in my aunt's service and did not
+at that time suspect that she would one day be transferred entirely to
+ours, was a little inclined to desert my aunt during the months which we
+spent in her house. There had been in my infancy, before we first went
+to Combray, and when my aunt L�onie used still to spend the winter in
+Paris with her mother, a time when I knew Fran�oise so little that on
+New Year's Day, before going into my great-aunt's house, my mother put
+a five-franc piece in my hand and said: "Now, be careful. Don't make
+any mistake. Wait until you hear me say 'Good morning, Fran�oise,' and
+I touch your arm before you give it to her." No sooner had we arrived
+in my aunt's dark hall than we saw in the gloom, beneath the frills of a
+snowy cap as stiff and fragile as if it had been made of spun sugar, the
+concentric waves of a smile of anticipatory gratitude. It was Fran�oise,
+motionless and erect, framed in the small doorway of the corridor like
+the statue of a saint in its niche. When we had grown more accustomed to
+this religious darkness we could discern in her features a disinterested
+love of all humanity, blended with a tender respect for the 'upper
+classes' which raised to the most honourable quarter of her heart the
+hope of receiving her due reward. Mamma pinched my arm sharply and said
+in a loud voice: "Good morning, Fran�oise." At this signal my fingers
+parted and I let fall the coin, which found a receptacle in a confused
+but outstretched hand. But since we had begun to go to Combray there was
+no one I knew better than Fran�oise. We were her favourites, and in the
+first years at least, while she shewed the same consideration for us
+as for my aunt, she enjoyed us with a keener relish, because we had, in
+addition to our dignity as part of 'the family' (for she had for those
+invisible bonds by which community of blood unites the members of a
+family as much respect as any Greek tragedian), the fresh charm of not
+being her customary employers. And so with what joy would she welcome
+us, with what sorrow complain that the weather was still so bad for us,
+on the day of our arrival, just before Easter, when there was often an
+icy wind; while Mamma inquired after her daughter and her nephews, and
+if her grandson was good-looking, and what they were going to make of
+him, and whether he took after his granny.
+
+Later, when no one else was in the room, Mamma, who knew that Fran�oise
+was still mourning for her parents, who had been dead for years, would
+speak of them kindly, asking her endless little questions about them and
+their lives.
+
+She had guessed that Fran�oise was not over-fond of her son-in-law, and
+that he spoiled the pleasure she found in visiting her daughter, as the
+two could not talk so freely when he was there. And so one day, when
+Fran�oise was going to their house, some miles from Combray, Mamma said
+to her, with a smile: "Tell me, Fran�oise, if Julien has had to go away,
+and you have Marguerite to yourself all day, you will be very sorry, but
+will make the best of it, won't you?"
+
+And Fran�oise answered, laughing: "Madame knows everything; Madame
+is worse than the X-rays" (she pronounced 'x' with an affectation
+of difficulty and with a smile in deprecation of her, an unlettered
+woman's, daring to employ a scientific term) "they brought here for Mme.
+Octave, which see what is in your heart"--and she went off, disturbed
+that anyone should be caring about her, perhaps anxious that we should
+not see her in tears: Mamma was the first person who had given her the
+pleasure of feeling that her peasant existence, with its simple joys
+and sorrows, might offer some interest, might be a source of grief or
+pleasure to some one other than herself.
+
+My aunt resigned herself to doing without Fran�oise to some extent
+during our visits, knowing how much my mother appreciated the services
+of so active and intelligent a maid, one who looked as smart at five
+o'clock in the morning in her kitchen, under a cap whose stiff and
+dazzling frills seemed to be made of porcelain, as when dressed for
+churchgoing; who did everything in the right way, who toiled like a
+horse, whether she was well or ill, but without noise, without the
+appearance of doing anything; the only one of my aunt's maids who when
+Mamma asked for hot water or black coffee would bring them actually
+boiling; she was one of those servants who in a household seem least
+satisfactory, at first, to a stranger, doubtless because they take
+no pains to make a conquest of him and shew him no special attention,
+knowing very well that they have no real need of him, that he will cease
+to be invited to the house sooner than they will be dismissed from it;
+who, on the other hand, cling with most fidelity to those masters and
+mistresses who have tested and proved their real capacity, and do not
+look for that superficial responsiveness, that slavish affability,
+which may impress a stranger favourably, but often conceals an utter
+barrenness of spirit in which no amount of training can produce the
+least trace of individuality.
+
+When Fran�oise, having seen that my parents had everything they
+required, first went upstairs again to give my aunt her pepsin and to
+find out from her what she would take for luncheon, very few mornings
+pased but she was called upon to give an opinion, or to furnish an
+explanation, in regard to some important event.
+
+"Just fancy, Fran�oise, Mme. Goupil went by more than a quarter of an
+hour late to fetch her sister: if she loses any more time on the way I
+should not be at all surprised if she got in after the Elevation."
+
+"Well, there'd be nothing wonderful in that," would be the answer. Or:
+
+"Fran�oise, if you had come in five minutes ago, you would have seen
+Mme. Imbert go past with some asparagus twice the size of what mother
+Callot has: do try to find out from her cook where she got them. You
+know you've been putting asparagus in all your sauces this spring; you
+might be able to get some like these for our visitors."
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised if they came from the Cur�'s," Fran�oise would
+say, and:
+
+"I'm sure you wouldn't, my poor Fran�oise," my aunt would reply, raising
+her shoulders. "From the Cur�'s, indeed! You know quite well that he
+can never grow anything but wretched little twigs of asparagus, not
+asparagus at all. I tell you these ones were as thick as my arm. Not
+your arm, of course, but my-poor arm, which has grown so much thinner
+again this year." Or:
+
+"Fran�oise, didn't you hear that bell just now! It split my head."
+
+"No, Mme. Octave."
+
+"Ah, poor girl, your skull must be very thick; you may thank God for
+that. It was Maguelone come to fetch Dr. Piperaud. He came out with her
+at once and they went off along the Rue de l'Oiseau. There must be some
+child ill."
+
+"Oh dear, dear; the poor little creature!" would come with a sigh from
+Fran�oise, who could not hear of any calamity befalling a person unknown
+to her, even in some distant part of the world, without beginning to
+lament. Or:
+
+"Fran�oise, for whom did they toll the passing-bell just now? Oh dear,
+of course, it would be for Mme. Rousseau. And to think that I had
+forgotten that she passed away the other night. Indeed, it is time the
+Lord called me home too; I don't know what has become of my head since I
+lost my poor Octave. But I am wasting your time, my good girl."
+
+"Indeed no, Mme. Octave, my time is not so precious; whoever made our
+time didn't sell it to us. I am just going to see that my fire hasn't
+gone out."
+
+In this way Fran�oise and my aunt made a critical valuation between
+them, in the course of these morning sessions, of the earliest
+happenings of the day. But sometimes these happenings assumed so
+mysterious or so alarming an air that my aunt felt she could not wait
+until it was time for Fran�oise to come upstairs, and then a formidable
+and quadruple peal would resound through the house.
+
+"But, Mme. Octave, it is not time for your pepsin," Fran�oise would
+begin. "Are you feeling faint?"
+
+"No, thank you, Fran�oise," my aunt would reply, "that is to say, yes;
+for you know well that there is very seldom a time when I don't feel
+faint; one day I shall pass away like Mme. Rousseau, before I know where
+I am; but that is not why I rang. Would you believe that I have just
+seen, as plainly as I see you, Mme. Goupil with a little girl I didn't
+know at all. Run and get a pennyworth of salt from Camus. It's not often
+that Th�odore can't tell you who a person is."
+
+"But that must be M. Pupin's daughter," Fran�oise would say, preferring
+to stick to an immediate explanation, since she had been perhaps twice
+already into Camus's shop that morning.
+
+"M. Pupin's daughter! Oh, that's a likely story, my poor Fran�oise. Do
+you think I should not have recognised M. Pupin's daughter!"
+
+"But I don't mean the big one, Mme. Octave; I mean the little girl, he
+one who goes to school at Jouy. I seem to have seen her once already his
+morning."
+
+"Oh, if that's what it is!" my aunt would say, "she must have come over
+for the holidays. Yes, that is it. No need to ask, she will have come
+over for the holidays. But then we shall soon see Mme. Sazerat come
+along and ring her sister's door-bell, for her luncheon. That will be
+it! I saw the boy from Galopin's go by with a tart. You will see that
+the tart was for Mme. Goupil."
+
+"Once Mme. Goupil has anyone in the house, Mme. Octave, you won't be
+long in seeing all her folk going in to their luncheon there, for it's
+not so early as it was," would be the answer, for Fran�oise, who was
+anxious to retire downstairs to look after our own meal, was not sorry
+to leave my aunt with the prospect of such a distraction.
+
+"Oh! not before midday!" my aunt would reply in a tone of resignation,
+darting an uneasy glance at the clock, but stealthily, so as not to let
+it be seen that she, who had renounced all earthly joys, yet found a
+keen satisfaction in learning that Mme. Goupil was expecting company to
+luncheon, though, alas, she must wait a little more than an hour still
+before enjoying the spectacle. "And it will come in the middle of
+my luncheon!" she would murmur to herself. Her luncheon was such a
+distraction in itself that she did not like any other to come at the
+same time. "At least, you will not forget to give me my creamed eggs on
+one of the flat plates?" These were the only plates which had pictures
+on them and my aunt used to amuse herself at every meal by reading the
+description on whichever might have been sent up to her. She would
+put on her spectacles and spell out: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,"
+"Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp," and smile, and say "Very good indeed."
+
+"I may as well go across to Camus..." Fran�oise would hazard, seeing
+that my aunt had no longer any intention of sending her there.
+
+"No, no; it's not worth while now; it's certain to be the Pupin girl. My
+poor Fran�oise, I am sorry to have made you come upstairs for nothing."
+
+But it was not for nothing, as my aunt well knew, that she had rung for
+Fran�oise, since at Combray a person whom one 'didn't know at all' was
+as incredible a being as any mythological deity, and it was apt to be
+forgotten that after each occasion on which there had appeared in the
+Rue du Saint-Esprit or in the Square one of these bewildering phenomena,
+careful and exhaustive researches had invariably reduced the fabulous
+monster to the proportions of a person whom one 'did know,' either
+personally or in the abstract, in his or her civil status as being more
+or less closely related to some family in Combray. It would turn out to
+be Mme. Sauton's son discharged from the army, or the Abb� Perdreau's
+niece come home from her convent, or the Cur�'s brother, a tax-collector
+at Ch�teaudun, who had just retired on a pension or had come over to
+Combray for the holidays. On first noticing them you have been impressed
+by the thought that there might be in Combray people whom you 'didn't
+know at all,' simply because, you had failed to recognise or identify
+them at once. And yet long beforehand Mme. Sauton and the Cur� had given
+warning that they expected their 'strangers.' In the evening, when I
+came in and went upstairs to tell my aunt the incidents of our walk, if
+I was rash enough to say to her that we had passed, near the Pont-Vieux,
+a man whom my grandfather didn't know:
+
+"A man grandfather didn't know at all!" she would exclaim. "That's a
+likely story." None the less, she would be a little disturbed by
+the news, she would wish to have the details correctly, and so my
+grandfather would be summoned. "Who can it have been that you passed
+near the Pont-Vieux, uncle? A man you didn't know at all?"
+
+"Why, of course I did," my grandfather would answer; "it was Prosper,
+Mme. Bouilleboeuf's gardener's brother."
+
+"Ah, well!" my aunt would say, calm again but slightly flushed still;
+"and the boy told me that you had passed a man you didn't know at all!"
+After which I would be warned to be more careful of what I said, and not
+to upset my aunt so by thoughtless remarks. Everyone was so well known
+in Combray, animals as well as people, that if my aunt had happened to
+see a dog go by which she 'didn't know at all' she would think about it
+incessantly, devoting to the solution of the incomprehensible problem
+all her inductive talent and her leisure hours.
+
+"That will be Mme. Sazerat's dog," Fran�oise would suggest, without any
+real conviction, but in the hope of peace, and so that my aunt should
+not 'split her head.'
+
+"As if I didn't know Mme. Sazerat's dog!"--for my aunt's critical mind
+would not so easily admit any fresh fact.
+
+"Ah, but that will be the new dog M. Galopin has brought her from
+Lisieux."
+
+"Oh, if that's what it is!"
+
+"It seems, it's a most engaging animal," Fran�oise would go on, having
+got the story from Th�odore, "as clever as a Christian, always in a good
+temper, always friendly, always everything that's nice. It's not often
+you see an animal so well-behaved at that age. Mme. Octave, it's high
+time I left you; I can't afford to stay here amusing myself; look, it's
+nearly ten o'clock and my fire not lighted yet, and I've still to dress
+the asparagus."
+
+"What, Fran�oise, more asparagus! It's a regular disease of asparagus
+you have got this year: you will make our Parisians sick of it."
+
+"No, no, Madame Octave, they like it well enough. They'll be coming back
+from church soon as hungry as hunters, and they won't eat it out of the
+back of their spoons, you'll see."
+
+"Church! why, they must be there now; you'd better not lose any time. Go
+and look after your luncheon."
+
+While my aunt gossiped on in this way with Fran�oise I would have
+accompanied my parents to mass. How I loved it: how clearly I can see it
+still, our church at Combray! The old porch by which we went in, black,
+and full of holes as a cullender, was worn out of shape and deeply
+furrowed at the sides (as also was the holy water stoup to which it led
+us) just as if the gentle grazing touch of the cloaks of peasant-women
+going into the church, and of their fingers dipping into the water, had
+managed by agelong repetition to acquire a destructive force, to impress
+itself on the stone, to carve ruts in it like those made by cart-wheels
+upon stone gate-posts against which they are driven every day. Its
+memorial stones, beneath which the noble dust of the Abbots of Combray,
+who were buried there, furnished the choir with a sort of spiritual
+pavement, were themselves no longer hard and lifeless matter, for time
+had softened and sweetened them, and had made them melt like honey
+and flow beyond their proper margins, either surging out in a milky,
+frothing wave, washing from its place a florid gothic capital, drowning
+the white violets of the marble floor; or else reabsorbed into their
+limits, contracting still further a crabbed Latin inscription,
+bringing a fresh touch of fantasy into the arrangement of its curtailed
+characters, closing together two letters of some word of which the rest
+were disproportionately scattered. Its windows were never so brilliant
+as on days when the sun scarcely shone, so that if it was dull outside
+you might be certain of fine weather in church. One of them was
+filled from top to bottom by a solitary figure, like the king on a
+playing-card, who lived up there beneath his canopy of stone, between
+earth and heaven; and in the blue light of its slanting shadow, on
+weekdays sometimes, at noon, when there was no service (at one of those
+rare moments when the airy, empty church, more human somehow and more
+luxurious with the sun shewing off all its rich furnishings, seemed to
+have almost a habitable air, like the hall--all sculptured stone and
+painted glass--of some mediaeval mansion), you might see Mme. Sazerat
+kneel for an instant, laying down on the chair beside her own a neatly
+corded parcel of little cakes which she had just bought at the baker's
+and was taking home for her luncheon. In another, a mountain of rosy
+snow, at whose foot a battle was being fought, seemed to have frozen the
+window also, which it swelled and distorted with its cloudy sleet, like
+a pane to which snowflakes have drifted and clung, but flakes illumined
+by a sunrise--the same, doubtless, which purpled the reredos of the
+altar with tints so fresh that they seemed rather to be thrown on it for
+a moment by a light shining from outside and shortly to be extinguished
+than painted and permanently fastened on the stone. And all of them
+were so old that you could see, here and there, their silvery antiquity
+sparkling with the dust of centuries and shewing in its threadbare
+brilliance the very cords of their lovely tapestry of glass. There
+was one among them which was a tall panel composed of a hundred little
+rectangular windows, of blue principally, like a great game of patience
+of the kind planned to beguile King Charles VI; but, either because a
+ray of sunlight had gleamed through it or because my own shifting vision
+had drawn across the window, whose colours died away and were rekindled
+by turns, a rare and transient fire--the next instant it had taken on
+all the iridescence of a peacock's tail, then shook and wavered in a
+flaming and fantastic shower, distilled and dropping from the groin of
+the dark and rocky vault down the moist walls, as though it were
+along the bed of some rainbow grotto of sinuous stalactites that I was
+following my parents, who marched before me, their prayer-books clasped
+in their hands; a moment later the little lozenge windows had put on the
+deep transparence, the unbreakable hardness of sapphires clustered on
+some enormous breastplate; but beyond which could be distinguished,
+dearer than all such treasures, a fleeting smile from the sun, which
+could be seen and felt as well here, in the blue and gentle flood in
+which it washed the masonry, as on the pavement of the Square or the
+straw of the market-place; and even on our first Sundays, when we came
+down before Easter, it would console me for the blackness and bareness
+of the earth outside by making burst into blossom, as in some springtime
+in old history among the heirs of Saint Louis, this dazzling and gilded
+carpet of forget-me-nots in glass.
+
+Two tapestries of high warp represented the coronation of Esther (in
+which tradition would have it that the weaver had given to Ahasuerus the
+features of one of the kings of France and to Esther those of a lady of
+Guermantes whose lover he had been); their colours had melted into one
+another, so as to add expression, relief, light to the pictures. A touch
+of red over the lips of Esther had strayed beyond their outline; the
+yellow on her dress was spread with such unctuous plumpness as to have
+acquired a kind of solidity, and stood boldly out from the receding
+atmosphere; while the green of the trees, which was still bright in Silk
+and wool among the lower parts of the panel, but had quite 'gone' at the
+top, separated in a paler scheme, above the dark trunks, the yellowing
+upper branches, tanned and half-obliterated by the sharp though sidelong
+rays of an invisible sun. All these things and, still more than these,
+the treasures which had come to the church from personages who to me
+were almost legendary figures (such as the golden cross wrought, it was
+said, by Saint Eloi and presented by Dagobert, and the tomb of the sons
+of Louis the Germanic in porphyry and enamelled copper), because of
+which I used to go forward into the church when we were making our way
+to our chairs as into a fairy-haunted valley, where the rustic sees with
+amazement on a rock, a tree, a marsh, the tangible proofs of the little
+people's supernatural passage--all these things made of the church for
+me something entirely different from the rest of the town; a building
+which occupied, so to speak, four dimensions of space--the name of the
+fourth being Time--which had sailed the centuries with that old nave,
+where bay after bay, chapel after chapel, seemed to stretch across
+and hold down and conquer not merely a few yards of soil, but each
+successive epoch from which the whole building had emerged triumphant,
+hiding the rugged barbarities of the eleventh century in the thickness
+of its walls, through which nothing could be seen of the heavy arches,
+long stopped and blinded with coarse blocks of ashlar, except where,
+near the porch, a deep groove was furrowed into one wall by the
+tower-stair; and even there the barbarity was veiled by the graceful
+gothic arcade which pressed coquettishly upon it, like a row of grown-up
+sisters who, to hide him from the eyes of strangers, arrange themselves
+smilingly in front of a countrified, unmannerly and ill-dressed younger
+brother; rearing into the sky above the Square a tower which had looked
+down upon Saint Louis, and seemed to behold him still; and thrusting
+down with its crypt into the blackness of a Merovingian night, through
+which, guiding us with groping finger-tips beneath the shadowy vault,
+ribbed strongly as an immense bat's wing of stone, Th�odore or his
+sister would light up for us with a candle the tomb of Sigebert's little
+daughter, in which a deep hole, like the bed of a fossil, had been
+bored, or so it was said, "by a crystal lamp which, on the night when
+the Frankish princess was murdered, had left, of its own accord, the
+golden chains by which it was suspended where the apse is to-day and
+with neither the crystal broken nor the light extinguished had buried
+itself in the stone, through which it had gently forced its way."
+
+And then the apse of Combray: what am I to say of that? It was so
+coarse, so devoid of artistic beauty, even of the religious spirit. From
+outside, since the street crossing which it commanded was on a lower
+level, its great wall was thrust upwards from a basement of unfaced
+ashlar, jagged with flints, in all of which there was nothing
+particularly ecclesiastical; the windows seemed to have been pierced at
+an abnormal height, and its whole appearance was that of a prison wall
+rather than of a church. And certainly in later years, were I to recall
+all the glorious apses that I had seen, it would never enter my mind to
+compare with any one of them the apse of Combray. Only, one day,
+turning out of a little street in some country town, I came upon three
+alley-ways that converged, and facing them an old wall, rubbed, worn,
+crumbling, and unusually high; with windows pierced in it far overhead
+and the same asymmetrical appearance as the apse of Combray. And at that
+moment I did not say to myself, as at Chartres I might have done or at
+Rheims, with what strength the religious feeling had been expressed in
+its construction, but instinctively I exclaimed "The Church!"
+
+The church! A dear, familiar friend; close pressed in the Rue
+Saint-Hilaire, upon which its north door opened, by its two neighbours,
+Mme. Loiseau's house and the pharmacy of M. Rapin, against which its
+walls rested without interspace; a simple citizen of Combray, who might
+have had her number in the street had the streets of Combray borne
+numbers, and at whose door one felt that the postman ought to stop on
+his morning rounds, before going into Mme. Loiseau's and after leaving
+M. Rapin's, there existed, for all that, between the church and
+everything in Combray that was not the church a clear line of
+demarcation which I have never succeeded in eliminating from my mind.
+In vain might Mme. Loiseau deck her window-sills with fuchsias, which
+developed the bad habit of letting their branches trail at all times
+and in all directions, head downwards, and whose flowers had no more
+important business, when they were big enough to taste the joys of life,
+than to go and cool their purple, congested cheeks against the dark
+front of the church; to me such conduct sanctified the fuchsias not at
+all; between the flowers and the blackened stones towards which they
+leaned, if my eyes could discern no interval, my mind preserved the
+impression of an abyss.
+
+From a long way off one could distinguish and identify the steeple of
+Saint-Hilaire inscribing its unforgettable form upon a horizon beneath
+which Combray had not yet appeared; when from the train which brought
+us down from Paris at Easter-time my father caught sight of it, as it
+slipped into every fold of the sky in turn, its little iron cock veering
+continually in all directions, he would say: "Come, get your wraps
+together, we are there." And on one of the longest walks we ever took
+from Combray there was a spot where the narrow road emerged suddenly
+on to an immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over
+which rose and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple,
+but so sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched
+on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a
+landscape, to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this
+single indication of human existence. As one drew near it and could make
+out the remains of the square tower, half in ruins, which still stood by
+its side, though without rivalling it in height, one was struck, first
+of all, by the tone, reddish and sombre, of its stones; and on a misty
+morning in autumn one would have called it, to see it rising above the
+violet thunder-cloud of the vineyards, a ruin of purple, almost the
+colour of the wild vine.
+
+Often in the Square, as we came home, my grandmother would make me stop
+to look up at it. From the tower windows, placed two and two, one pair
+above another, with that right and original proportion in their spacing
+to which not only human faces owe their beauty and dignity, it released,
+it let fall at regular intervals flights of jackdaws which for a little
+while would wheel and caw, as though the ancient stones which allowed
+them to sport thus and never seemed to see them, becoming of a sudden
+uninhabitable and discharging some infinitely disturbing element, had
+struck them and driven them forth. Then after patterning everywhere the
+violet velvet of the evening air, abruptly soothed, they would return
+and be absorbed in the tower, deadly no longer but benignant, some
+perching here and there (not seeming to move, but snapping, perhaps, and
+swallowing some passing insect) on the points of turrets, as a seagull
+perches, with an angler's immobility, on the crest of a wave. Without
+quite knowing why, my grandmother found in the steeple of Saint-Hilaire
+that absence of vulgarity, pretension, and meanness which made her
+love--and deem rich in beneficent influences--nature itself, when the
+hand of man had not, as did my great-aunt's gardener, trimmed it, and
+the works of genius. And certainly every part one saw of the church
+served to distinguish the whole from any other building by a kind of
+general feeling which pervaded it, but it was in the steeple that
+the church seemed to display a consciousness of itself, to affirm its
+individual and responsible existence. It was the steeple which spoke for
+the church. I think, too, that in a confused way my grandmother found in
+the steeple of Combray what she prized above anything else in the
+world, namely, a natural air and an air of distinction. Ignorant of
+architecture, she would say:
+
+"My dears, laugh at me if you like; it is not conventionally beautiful,
+but there is something in its quaint old face which pleases me. If it
+could play the piano, I am sure it would really _play_." And when she
+gazed on it, when her eyes followed the gentle tension, the fervent
+inclination of its stony slopes which drew together as they rose, like
+hands joined in prayer, she would absorb herself so utterly in the
+outpouring of the spire that her gaze seemed to leap upwards with it;
+her lips at the same time curving in a friendly smile for the worn old
+stones of which the setting sun now illumined no more than the topmost
+pinnacles, which, at the point where they entered that zone of sunlight
+and were softened and sweetened by it, seemed to have mounted suddenly
+far higher, to have become truly remote, like a song whose singer breaks
+into falsetto, an octave above the accompanying air.
+
+It was the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which shaped and crowned and
+consecrated every occupation, every hour of the day, every point of view
+in the town. From my bedroom window I could discern no more than its
+base, which had been freshly covered with slates; but when on Sundays I
+saw these, in the hot light of a summer morning, blaze like a black sun
+I would say to myself: "Good heavens! nine o'clock! I must get ready for
+mass at once if I am to have time to go in and kiss aunt L�onie first,"
+and I would know exactly what was the colour of the sunlight upon the
+Square, I could feel the heat and dust of the market, the shade behind
+the blinds of the shop into which Mamma would perhaps go on her way
+to mass, penetrating its odour of unbleached calico, to purchase a
+handkerchief or something, of which the draper himself would let her see
+what he had, bowing from the waist: who, having made everything ready
+for shutting up, had just gone into the back shop to put on his Sunday
+coat and to wash his hands, which it was his habit, every few minutes
+and even on the saddest occasions, to rub one against the other with an
+air of enterprise, cunning, and success.
+
+And again, after mass, when we looked in to tell Th�odore to bring a
+larger loaf than usual because our cousins had taken advantage of the
+fine weather to come over from Thiberzy for luncheon, we had in front of
+us the steeple, which, baked and brown itself like a larger loaf still
+of 'holy bread,' with flakes and sticky drops on it of sunlight, pricked
+its sharp point into the blue sky. And in the evening, as I came in from
+my walk and thought of the approaching moment when I must say good night
+to my mother and see her no more, the steeple was by contrast so kindly,
+there at the close of day, that I would imagine it as being laid, like a
+brown velvet cushion, against--as being thrust into the pallid sky which
+had yielded beneath its pressure, had sunk slightly so as to make room
+for it, and had correspondingly risen on either side; while the cries of
+the birds wheeling to and fro about it seemed to intensify its silence,
+to elongate its spire still further, and to invest it with some quality
+beyond the power of words.
+
+Even when our errands lay in places behind the church, from which it
+could not be seen, the view seemed always to have been composed with
+reference to the steeple, which would stand up, now here, now there,
+among the houses, and was perhaps even more affecting when it appeared
+thus without the church. And, indeed, there are many others which
+look best when seen in this way, and I can call to mind vignettes of
+housetops with surmounting steeples in quite another category of art
+than those formed by the dreary streets of Combray. I shall never
+forget, in a quaint Norman town not far from Balbec, two charming
+eighteenth-century houses, dear to me and venerable for many reasons,
+between which, when one looks up at them from a fine garden which
+descends in terraces to the river, the gothic spire of a church (itself
+hidden by the houses) soars into the sky with the effect of crowning and
+completing their fronts, but in a material so different, so precious, so
+beringed, so rosy, so polished, that it is at once seen to be no more
+a part of them than would be a part of two pretty pebbles lying side
+by side, between which it had been washed on the beach, the purple,
+crinkled spire of some sea-shell spun out into a turret and gay with
+glossy colour. Even in Paris, in one of the ugliest parts of the town, I
+know a window from which one can see across a first, a second, and even
+a third layer of jumbled roofs, street beyond street, a violet bell,
+sometimes ruddy, sometimes too, in the finest 'prints' which the
+atmosphere makes of it, of an ashy solution of black; which is, in fact,
+nothing else than the dome of Saint-Augustin, and which imparts to this
+view of Paris the character of some of the Piranesi views of Rome. But
+since into none of these little etchings, whatever the taste my
+memory may have been able to bring to their execution, was it able to
+contribute an element I have long lost, the feeling which makes us not
+merely regard a thing as a spectacle, but believe in it as in a creature
+without parallel, so none of them keeps in dependence on it a whole
+section of my inmost life as does the memory of those aspects of the
+steeple of Combray from the streets behind the church. Whether one saw
+it at five o'clock when going to call for letters at the post-office,
+some doors away from one, on the left, raising abruptly with its
+isolated peak the ridge of housetops; or again, when one had to go in
+and ask for news of Mme. Sazerat, one's eyes followed the line where it
+ran low again beyond the farther, descending slope, and one knew that it
+would be the second turning after the steeple; or yet again, if pressing
+further afield one went to the station, one saw it obliquely, shewing in
+profile fresh angles and surfaces, like a solid body surprised at some
+unknown point in its revolution; or, from the banks of the Vivonne, the
+apse, drawn muscularly together and heightened in perspective, seemed
+to spring upwards with the effort which the steeple made to hurl its
+spire-point into the heart of heaven: it was always to the steeple that
+one must return, always it which dominated everything else, summing up
+the houses with an unexpected pinnacle, raised before me like the Finger
+of God, Whose Body might have been concealed below among the crowd of
+human bodies without fear of my confounding It, for that reason, with
+them. And so even to-day in any large provincial town, or in a quarter
+of Paris which I do not know well, if a passer-by who is 'putting me on
+the right road' shews me from afar, as a point to aim at, some belfry of
+a hospital, or a convent steeple lifting the peak of its ecclesiastical
+cap at the corner of the street which I am to take, my memory need only
+find in it some dim resemblance to that dear and vanished outline, and
+the passer-by, should he turn round to make sure that I have not gone
+astray, would see me, to his astonishment, oblivious of the walk that I
+had planned to take or the place where I was obliged to call, standing
+still on the spot, before that steeple, for hours on end, motionless,
+trying to remember, feeling deep within myself a tract of soil reclaimed
+from the waters of Lethe slowly drying until the buildings rise on it
+again; and then no doubt, and then more uneasily than when, just now,
+I asked him for a direction, I will seek my way again, I will turn a
+corner... but... the goal is in my heart...
+
+On our way home from mass we would often meet M. Legrandin, who,
+detained in Paris by his professional duties as an engineer, could
+only (except in the regular holiday seasons) visit his home at Combray
+between Saturday evenings and Monday mornings. He was one of that class
+of men who, apart from a scientific career in which they may well have
+proved brilliantly successful, have acquired an entirely different
+kind of culture, literary or artistic, of which they make no use in the
+specialised work of their profession, but by which their conversation
+profits. More 'literary' than many 'men of letters' (we were not aware
+at this period that M. Legrandin had a distinct reputation as a writer,
+and so were greatly astonished to find that a well-known composer
+had set some verses of his to music), endowed with a greater ease
+in execution than many painters, they imagine that the life they are
+obliged to lead is not that for which they are really fitted, and they
+bring to their regular occupations either a fantastic indifference or
+a sustained and lofty application, scornful, bitter, and conscientious.
+Tall, with a good figure, a fine, thoughtful face, drooping fair
+moustaches, a look of disillusionment in his blue eyes, an almost
+exaggerated refinement of courtesy; a talker such as we had never heard;
+he was in the sight of my family, who never ceased to quote him as an
+example, the very pattern of a gentleman, who took life in the noblest
+and most delicate manner. My grandmother alone found fault with him for
+speaking a little too well, a little too much like a book, for not using
+a vocabulary as natural as his loosely knotted Lavalli�re neckties, his
+short, straight, almost schoolboyish coat. She was astonished, too, at
+the furious invective which he was always launching at the aristocracy,
+at fashionable life, and 'snobbishness'--"undoubtedly," he would say,
+"the sin of which Saint Paul is thinking when he speaks of the sin for
+which there is no forgiveness."
+
+Worldly ambition was a thing which my grandmother was so little capable
+of feeling, or indeed of understanding, that it seemed to her futile to
+apply so much heat to its condemnation. Besides, she thought it in not
+very good taste that M. Legrandin, whose sister was married to a country
+gentleman of Lower Normandy near Balbec, should deliver himself of such
+violent attacks upon the nobles, going so far as to blame the Revolution
+for not having guillotined them all.
+
+"Well met, my friends!" he would say as he came towards us. "You are
+lucky to spend so much time here; to-morrow I have to go back to Paris,
+to squeeze back into my niche.
+
+"Oh, I admit," he went on, with his own peculiar smile, gently ironical,
+disillusioned and vague, "I have every useless thing in the world in
+my house there. The only thing wanting is the necessary thing, a great
+patch of open sky like this. Always try to keep a patch of sky above
+your life, little boy," he added, turning to me. "You have a soul in
+you of rare quality, an artist's nature; never let it starve for lack of
+what it needs."
+
+When, on our reaching the house, my aunt would send to ask us whether
+Mme. Goupil had indeed arrived late for mass, not one of us could inform
+her. Instead, we increased her anxiety by telling her that there was
+a painter at work in the church copying the window of Gilbert the
+Bad. Fran�oise was at once dispatched to the grocer's, but returned
+empty-handed owing to the absence of Th�odore, whose dual profession of
+choirman, with a part in the maintenance of the fabric, and of grocer's
+assistant gave him not only relations with all sections of society, but
+an encyclopaedic knowledge of their affairs.
+
+"Ah!" my aunt would sigh, "I wish it were time for Eulalie to come. She
+is really the only person who will be able to tell me."
+
+Eulalie was a limping, energetic, deaf spinster who had 'retired' after
+the death of Mme. de la Bretonnerie, with whom she had been in service
+from her childhood, and had then taken a room beside the church, from
+which she would incessantly emerge, either to attend some service,
+or, when there was no service, to say a prayer by herself or to give
+Th�odore a hand; the rest of her time she spent in visiting sick persons
+like my aunt L�onie, to whom she would relate everything that had
+occurred at mass or vespers. She was not above adding occasional
+pocket-money to the little income which was found for her by the family
+of her old employers by going from time to time to look after the Cur�'s
+linen, or that of some other person of note in the clerical world of
+Combray. Above a mantle of black cloth she wore a little white coif that
+seemed almost to attach her to some Order, and an infirmity of the
+skin had stained part of her cheeks and her crooked nose the bright red
+colour of balsam. Her visits were the one great distraction in the life
+of my aunt L�onie, who now saw hardly anyone else, except the reverend
+Cur�. My aunt had by degrees erased every other visitor's name from
+her list, because they all committed the fatal error, in her eyes,
+of falling into one or other of the two categories of people she most
+detested. One group, the worse of the two, and the one of which she rid
+herself first, consisted of those who advised her not to take so much
+care of herself, and preached (even if only negatively and with no
+outward signs beyond an occasional disapproving silence or doubting
+smile) the subversive doctrine that a sharp walk in the sun and a good
+red beefsteak would do her more good (her, who had had two dreadful sips
+of Vichy water on her stomach for fourteen hours!) than all her medicine
+bottles and her bed. The other category was composed of people who
+appeared to believe that she was more seriously ill than she thought,
+in fact that she was as seriously ill as she said. And so none of those
+whom she had allowed upstairs to her room, after considerable hesitation
+and at Fran�oise urgent request, and who in the course of their visit
+had shewn how unworthy they were of the honour which had been done them
+by venturing a timid: "Don't you think that if you were just to stir out
+a little on really fine days...?" or who, on the other hand, when she
+said to them: "I am very low, very low; nearing the end, dear friends!"
+had replied: "Ah, yes, when one has no strength left! Still, you may
+last a while yet"; each party alike might be certain that her doors
+would never open to them again. And if Fran�oise was amused by the look
+of consternation on my aunt's face whenever she saw, from her bed, any
+of these people in the Rue du Saint-Esprit, who looked as if they were
+coming to see her, or heard her own door-bell ring, she would laugh far
+more heartily, as at a clever trick, at my aunt's devices (which never
+failed) for having them sent away, and at their look of discomfiture
+when they had to turn back without having seen her; and would be filled
+with secret admiration for her mistress, whom she felt to be superior
+to all these other people, inasmuch as she could and did contrive not to
+see them. In short, my aunt stipulated, at one and the same time, that
+whoever came to see her must approve of her way of life, commiserate
+with her in her sufferings, and assure her of an ultimate recovery.
+
+In all this Eulalie excelled. My aunt might say to her twenty times in
+a minute: "The end is come at last, my poor Eulalie!", twenty times
+Eulalie would retort with: "Knowing your illness as you do, Mme.
+Octave, you will live to be a hundred, as Mme. Sazerin said to me only
+yesterday." For one of Eulalie's most rooted beliefs, and one that the
+formidable list of corrections which her experience must have compiled
+was powerless to eradicate, was that Mme. Sazerat's name was really Mme.
+Sazerin.
+
+"I do not ask to live to a hundred," my aunt would say, for she
+preferred to have no definite limit fixed to the number of her days.
+
+And since, besides this, Eulalie knew, as no one else knew, how to
+distract my aunt without tiring her, her visits, which took place
+regularly every Sunday, unless something unforeseen occurred to prevent
+them, were for my aunt a pleasure the prospect of which kept her on
+those days in a state of expectation, appetising enough to begin with,
+but at once changing to the agony of a hunger too long unsatisfied if
+Eulalie were a minute late in coming. For, if unduly prolonged, the
+rapture of waiting for Eulalie became a torture, and my aunt would never
+cease from looking at the time, and yawning, and complaining of each of
+her symptoms in turn. Eulalie's ring, if it sounded from the front door
+at the very end of the day, when she was no longer expecting it, would
+almost make her ill. For the fact was that on Sundays she thought of
+nothing else than this visit, and the moment that our luncheon was ended
+Fran�oise would become impatient for us to leave the dining-room so that
+she might go upstairs to 'occupy' my aunt. But--and this more than ever
+from the day on which fine weather definitely set in at Combray--the
+proud hour �f noon, descending from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which
+it blazoned for a moment with the twelve points of its sonorous crown,
+would long have echoed about our table, beside the 'holy bread,' which
+too had come in, after church, in its familiar way; and we would still
+be found seated in front of our Arabian Nights plates, weighed down
+by the heat of the day, and even more by our heavy meal. For upon
+the permanent foundation of eggs, cutlets, potatoes, preserves, and
+biscuits, whose appearance on the table she no longer announced to us,
+Fran�oise would add--as the labour of fields and orchards, the harvest
+of the tides, the luck of the markets, the kindness of neighbours, and
+her own genius might provide; and so effectively that our bill of fare,
+like the quatrefoils that were carved on the porches of cathedrals
+in the thirteenth century, reflected to some extent the march of the
+seasons and the incidents of human life--a brill, because the fish-woman
+had guaranteed its freshness; a turkey, because she had seen a beauty
+in the market at Roussainville-le-Pin; cardoons with marrow, because she
+had never done them for us in that way before; a roast leg of mutton,
+because the fresh air made one hungry and there would be plenty of time
+for it to 'settle down' in the seven hours before dinner; spinach,
+by way of a change; apricots, because they were still hard to get;
+gooseberries, because in another fortnight there would be none left;
+raspberries, which M. Swann had brought specially; cherries, the first
+to come from the cherry-tree, which had yielded none for the last two
+years; a cream cheese, of which in those days I was extremely fond; an
+almond cake, because she had ordered one the evening before; a fancy
+loaf, because it was our turn to 'offer' the holy bread. And when all
+these had been eaten, a work composed expressly for ourselves, but
+dedicated more particularly to my father, who had a fondness for such
+things, a cream of chocolate, inspired in the mind, created by the
+hand of Fran�oise, would be laid before us, light and fleeting as an
+'occasional piece' of music, into which she had poured the whole of her
+talent. Anyone who refused to partake of it, saying: "No, thank you, I
+have finished; I am not hungry," would at once have been lowered to the
+level of the Philistines who, when an artist makes them a present of one
+of his works, examine its weight and material, whereas what is of value
+is the creator's intention and his signature. To have left even the
+tiniest morsel in the dish would have shewn as much discourtesy as to
+rise and leave a concert hall while the 'piece' was still being played,
+and under the composer's-very eyes.
+
+At length my mother would say to me: "Now, don't stay here all day;
+you can go up to your room if you are too hot outside, but get a little
+fresh air first; don't start reading immediately after your food."
+
+And I would go and sit down beside the pump and its trough, ornamented
+here and there, like a gothic font, with a salamander, which modelled
+upon a background of crumbling stone the quick relief of its slender,
+allegorical body; on the bench without a back, in the shade of a
+lilac-tree, in that little corner of the garden which communicated, by
+a service door, with the Rue du Saint-Esprit, and from whose neglected
+soil rose, in two stages, an outcrop from the house itself and
+apparently a separate building, my aunt's back-kitchen. One could see
+its red-tiled floor gleaming like porphyry. It seemed not so much the
+cave of Fran�oise as a little temple of Venus. It would be overflowing
+with the offerings of the milkman, the fruiterer, the greengrocer, come
+sometimes from distant villages to dedicate here the first-fruits of
+their fields. And its roof was always surmounted by the cooing of a
+dove.
+
+In earlier days I would not have lingered in the sacred grove which
+surrounded this temple, for, before going upstairs to read, I would
+steal into the little sitting-room which my uncle Adolphe, a brother of
+my grandfather and an old soldier who had retired from the service as a
+major, used to occupy on the ground floor, a room which, even when its
+opened windows let in the heat, if not actually the rays of the sun
+which seldom penetrated so far, would never fail to emit that vague and
+yet fresh odour, suggesting at once an open-air and an old-fashioned
+kind of existence, which sets and keeps the nostrils dreaming when one
+goes into a disused gun-room. But for some years now I had not gone into
+my uncle Adolphe's room, since he no longer came to Combray on account
+of a quarrel which had arisen between him and my family, by my fault,
+and in the following circumstances: Once or twice every month, in Paris,
+I used to be sent to pay him a. visit, as he was finishing his luncheon,
+wearing a plain alpaca coat, and waited upon by his servant in a
+working-jacket of striped linen, purple and white. He would complain
+that I had not been to see him for a long time; that he was being
+neglected; he would offer me a marchpane or a tangerine, and we would
+cross a room in which no one ever sat, whose fire was never lighted,
+whose walls were picked out with gilded mouldings, its ceiling painted
+blue in imitation of the sky, and its furniture upholstered in satin, as
+at my grandparents', only yellow; then we would enter what he called his
+'study,' a room whose walls were hung with prints which shewed, against
+a dark background, a plump and rosy goddess driving a car, or standing
+upon a globe, or wearing a star on her brow; pictures which were popular
+under the Second Empire because there was thought to be something about
+them that suggested Pompeii, which were then generally despised, and
+which now people are beginning to collect again for one single and
+consistent reason (despite any others which they may advance), namely,
+that they suggest the Second Empire. And there I would stay with my
+uncle until his man came, with a message from the coachman, to ask him
+at what time he would like the carriage. My uncle would then be lost
+in meditation, while his astonished servant stood there, not daring to
+disturb him by the least movement, wondering and waiting for his
+answer, which never varied. For in the end, after a supreme crisis of
+hesitation, my uncle would utter, infallibly, the words: "A quarter past
+two," which the servant would echo with amazement, but without disputing
+them: "A quarter past two! Very good, sir... I will go and tell him...."
+
+At this date I was a lover of the theatre: a Platonic lover, of
+necessity, since my parents had not yet allowed me to enter one, and
+so incorrect was the picture I drew for myself of the pleasures to be
+enjoyed there that I almost believed that each of the spectators looked,
+as into a stereoscope, upon a stage and scenery which existed for
+himself alone, though closely resembling the thousand other spectacles
+presented to the rest of the audience individually.
+
+Every morning I would hasten to the Moriss column to see what new plays
+it announced. Nothing could be more disinterested or happier than the
+dreams with which these announcements filled my mind, dreams which took
+their form from the inevitable associations of the words forming the
+title of the play, and also from the colour of the bills, still damp and
+wrinkled with paste, on which those words stood out. Nothing, unless
+it were such strange titles as the _Testament de C�sar Girodot, or
+Oedipe-Roi_, inscribed not on the green bills of the Op�ra-Comique, but
+on the wine-coloured bills of the Com�die-Fran�aise, nothing seemed
+to me to differ more profoundly from the sparkling white plume of
+the _Diamants de la Couronne_ than the sleek, mysterious satin of the
+_Domino Noir_; and since my parents had told me that, for my first visit
+to the theatre, I should have to choose between these two pieces, I
+would study exhaustively and in turn the title of one and the title
+of the other (for those were all that I knew of either), attempting to
+snatch from each a foretaste of the pleasure which it offered me, and to
+compare this pleasure with that latent in the other title, until in the
+end I had shewn myself such vivid, such compelling pictures of, on
+the one hand, a play of dazzling arrogance, and on the other a gentle,
+velvety play, that I was as little capable of deciding which play I
+should prefer to see as if, at the dinner-table, they had obliged me to
+choose between _rice � l'Imp�ratrice_ and the famous cream of chocolate.
+
+All my conversations with my playfellows bore upon actors, whose art,
+although as yet I had no experience of it, was the first of all its
+numberless forms in which Art itself allowed me to anticipate its
+enjoyment. Between one actor's tricks of intonation and inflection and
+another's, the most trifling differences would strike me as being of an
+incalculable importance. And from what I had been told of them I would
+arrange them in the order of their talent in lists which I used to
+murmur to myself all day long: lists which in the end became petrified
+in my brain and were a source of annoyance to it, being irremovable.
+
+And later, in my schooldays, whenever I ventured in class, when the
+master's head was turned, to communicate with some new friend, I would
+always begin by asking him whether he had begun yet to go to theatres,
+and if he agreed that our greatest actor was undoubtedly Got, our second
+Delaunay, and so on. And if, in his judgment, Febvre came below Thiron,
+or Delaunay below Coquelin, the sudden volatility which the name of
+Coquelin, forsaking its stony rigidity, would engender in my mind, in
+which it moved upwards to the second place, the rich vitality with which
+the name of Delaunay would suddenly be furnished, to enable it to slip
+down to fourth, would stimulate and fertilise my brain with a sense of
+bradding and blossoming life.
+
+But if the thought of actors weighed so upon me, if the sight of
+Maubant, coming out one afternoon from the Th��tre-Fran�ais, had plunged
+me in the throes and sufferings of hopeless love, how much more did the
+name of a 'star,' blazing outside the doors of a theatre, how much more,
+seen through the window of a brougham which passed me in the street, the
+hair over her forehead abloom with roses, did the face of a woman who,
+I would think, was perhaps an actress, leave with me a lasting
+disturbance, a futile and painful effort to form a picture of her
+private life.
+
+I classified, in order of talent, the most distinguished: Sarah
+Bernhardt, Berma, Bartet, Madeleine Brohan, Jeanne Samary; but I was
+interested in them all. Now my uncle knew many of them personally, and
+also ladies of another class, not clearly distinguished from actresses
+in my mind. He used to entertain them at his house. And if we went to
+see him on certain days only, that was because on the other days ladies
+might come whom his family could not very well have met. So we at least
+thought; as for my uncle, his fatal readiness to pay pretty widows (who
+had perhaps never been married) and countesses (whose high-sounding
+titles were probably no more than _noms de guerre_) the compliment of
+presenting them to my grandmother or even of presenting to them some
+of our family jewels, had already embroiled him more than once with
+my grandfather. Often, if the name of some actress were mentioned in
+conversation, I would hear my father say, with a smile, to my mother:
+"One of your uncle's friends," and I would think of the weary novitiate
+through which, perhaps for years on end, a grown man, even a man of real
+importance, might have to pass, waiting on the doorstep of some such
+lady, while she refused to answer his letters and made her hall-porter
+drive him away; and imagine that my uncle was able to dispense a little
+jackanapes like myself from all these sufferings by introducing me in
+his own home to the actress, unapproachable by all the world, but for
+him an intimate friend.
+
+And so--on the pretext that some lesson, the hour of which had been
+altered, now came at such an awkward time that it had already more than
+once prevented me, and would continue to prevent me, from seeing my
+uncle--one day, not one of the days which he set apart for our visits, I
+took advantage of the fact that my parents had had luncheon earlier
+than usual; I slipped out and, instead of going to read the playbills on
+their column, for which purpose I was allowed to go out unaccompanied,
+I ran all the way to his house. I noticed before his door a carriage and
+pair, with red carnations on the horses' blinkers and in the coachman's
+buttonhole. As I climbed the staircase I could hear laughter and a
+woman's voice, and, as soon as I had rung, silence and the sound of
+shutting doors. The man-servant who let me in appeared embarrassed, and
+said that my uncle was extremely busy and probably could not see me; he
+went in, however, to announce my arrival, and the same voice I had heard
+before said: "Oh, yes! Do let him come in; just for a moment; it will be
+so amusing. Is that his photograph there, on your desk? And his mother
+(your niece, isn't she?) beside it? The image of her, isn't he? I should
+so like to see the little chap, just for a second."
+
+I could hear my uncle grumbling and growing angry; finally the
+manservant told me to come in.
+
+On the table was the same plate of marchpanes that was always there; my
+uncle wore the same alpaca coat as on other days; but opposite to him,
+in a pink silk dress with a great necklace of pearls about her throat,
+sat a young woman who was just finishing a tangerine. My uncertainty
+whether I ought to address her as Madame or Mademoiselle made me blush,
+and not daring to look too much in her direction, in case I should be
+obliged to speak to her, I hurried across to kiss my uncle. She looked
+at me and smiled; my uncle said "My nephew!" without telling her my name
+or telling me hers, doubtless because, since his difficulties with
+my grandfather, he had endeavoured as far as possible to avoid any
+association of his family with this other class of acquaintance.
+
+"How like his mother he is," said the lady.
+
+"But you have never seen my niece, except in photographs," my uncle
+broke in quickly, with a note of anger.
+
+"I beg your pardon, dear friend, I passed her on the staircase last year
+when you were so ill. It is true I only saw her for a moment, and your
+staircase is rather dark; but I saw well enough to see how lovely she
+was. This young gentleman has her beautiful eyes, and also this," she
+went on, tracing a line with one finger across the lower part of her
+forehead. "Tell me," she asked my uncle, "is your niece Mme.----; is her
+name the same as yours?"
+
+"He takes most after his father," muttered my uncle, who was no more
+anxious to effect an introduction by proxy, in repeating Mamma's name
+aloud, than to bring the two together in the flesh. "He's his father all
+over, and also like my poor mother."
+
+"I have not met his father, dear," said the lady in pink, bowing her
+head slightly, "and I never saw your poor mother. You will remember it
+was just after your great sorrow that we got to know one another."
+
+I felt somewhat disillusioned, for this young lady was in no way
+different from other pretty women whom I had seen from time to time at
+home, especially the daughter of one of our cousins, to whose house I
+went every New Year's Day. Only better dressed; otherwise my uncle's
+friend had the same quick and kindly glance, the same frank and friendly
+manner. I could find no trace in her of the theatrical appearance
+which I admired in photographs of actresses, nothing of the diabolical
+expression which would have been in keeping with the life she must lead.
+I had difficulty in believing that this was one of 'those women,' and
+certainly I should never have believed her one of the 'smart ones' had I
+not seen the carriage and pair, the pink dress, the pearly necklace, had
+I not been aware, too, that my uncle knew only the very best of them.
+But I asked myself how the millionaire who gave her her carriage and her
+flat and her jewels could find any pleasure in flinging his money away
+upon a woman who had so simple and respectable an appearance. And yet,
+when I thought of what her life must be like, its immorality disturbed
+me more, perhaps, than if it had stood before me in some concrete and
+recognisable form, by its secrecy and invisibility, like the plot of a
+novel, the hidden truth of a scandal which had driven out of the home
+of her middle-class parents and dedicated to the service of all mankind
+which had brought to the flowering-point of her beauty, had raised
+to fame or notoriety this woman, the play of whose features, the
+intonations of whose voice, like so many others I already knew, made me
+regard her, in spite of myself, as a young lady of good family, her who
+was no longer of a family at all.
+
+We had gone by this time into the 'study,' and my uncle, who seemed a
+trifle embarrassed by my presence, offered her a cigarette.
+
+"No, thank you, dear friend," she said. "You know I only smoke the ones
+the Grand Duke sends me. I tell him that they make you jealous." And
+she drew from a case cigarettes covered with inscriptions in gold, in
+a foreign language. "Why, yes," she began again suddenly. "Of course I
+have met this young man's father with you. Isn't he your nephew? How on
+earth could I have forgotten? He was so nice, so charming to me," she
+went on, modestly and with feeling. But when I thought to myself what
+must actually have been the rude greeting (which, she made out, had been
+so charming), I, who knew my father's coldness and reserve, was shocked,
+as though at some indelicacy on his part, at the contrast between the
+excessive recognition bestowed on it and his never adequate geniality.
+It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part
+played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote
+all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of
+sentimental beauty (for, like all artists, they never seek to realise
+the value of those dreams, or to enclose them in the four-square frame
+of everyday life), and their gold, which counts for little, to the
+fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rubbed and scratched
+and ill-polished lives of men. And just as this one filled the
+smoking-room, where my uncle was entertaining her in his alpaca coat,
+with her charming person, her dress of pink silk, her pearls, and the
+refinement suggested by intimacy with a Grand Duke, so, in the same
+way, she had taken some casual remark by my father, had worked it up
+delicately, given it a 'turn,' a precious title, set in it the gem of a
+glance from her own eyes, a gem of the first water, blended of humility
+and gratitude; and so had given it back transformed into a jewel, a work
+of art, into something altogether charming.
+
+"Look here, my boy, it is time you went away," said my uncle.
+
+I rose; I could scarcely resist a desire to kiss the hand of the lady
+in pink, but I felt that to do so would require as much audacity as a
+forcible abduction of her. My heart beat loud while I counted out to
+myself "Shall I do it, shall I not?" and then I ceased to ask myself
+what I ought to do so as at least to do something. Blindly, hotly,
+madly, flinging aside all the reasons I had just found to support such
+action, I seized and raised to my lips the hand she held out to me.
+
+"Isn't he delicious! Quite a ladies' man already; he takes after his
+uncle. He'll be a perfect 'gentleman,'" she went on, setting her teeth
+so as to give the word a kind of English accentuation. "Couldn't he come
+to me some day for 'a cup of tea,' as our friends across the channel
+say; he need only send me a 'blue' in the morning?"
+
+I had not the least idea of what a 'blue' might be. I did not understand
+half the words which the lady used, but my fear lest there should be
+concealed in them some question which it would be impolite in me not to
+answer kept me from withdrawing my close attention from them, and I was
+beginning to feel extremely tired.
+
+"No, no; it is impossible," said my uncle, shrugging his shoulders. "He
+is kept busy at home all day; he has plenty of work to do. He brings
+back all the prizes from his school," he added in a lower tone, so that
+I should not hear this falsehood and interrupt with a contradiction.
+"You can't tell; he may turn out a little Victor Hugo, a kind of
+Vaulabelle, don't you know."
+
+"Oh, I love artistic people," replied the lady in pink; "there is no
+one like them for understanding women. Them, and really nice men like
+yourself. But please forgive my ignorance. Who, what is Vaulabelle? Is
+it those gilt books in the little glass case in your drawing-room? You
+know you promised to lend them to me; I will take great care of them."
+
+My uncle, who hated lending people books, said nothing, and ushered me
+out into the hall. Madly in love with the lady in pink, I covered my
+old uncle's tobacco-stained cheeks with passionate kisses, and while he,
+awkwardly enough, gave me to understand (without actually saying) that
+he would rather I did not tell my parents about this visit, I assured
+him, with tears in my eyes, that his kindness had made so strong an
+impression upon me that some day I would most certainly find a way of
+expressing my gratitude. So strong an impression had it made upon me
+that two hours later, after a string of mysterious utterances which did
+not strike me as giving my parents a sufficiently clear idea of the new
+importance with which I had been invested, I found it simpler to let
+them have a full account, omitting no detail, of the visit I had paid
+that afternoon. In doing this I had no thought of causing my uncle any
+unpleasantness. How could I have thought such a thing, since I did not
+wish it? And I could not suppose that my parents would see any harm in
+a visit in which I myself saw none. Every day of our lives does not
+some friend or other ask us to make his apologies, without fail, to some
+woman to whom he has been prevented from writing; and do not we forget
+to do so, feeling that this woman cannot attach much importance to a
+silence which has none for ourselves? I imagined, like everyone else,
+that the brains of other people were lifeless and submissive receptacles
+with no power of specific reaction to any stimulus which might be
+applied to them; and I had not the least doubt that when I deposited in
+the minds of my parents the news of the acquaintance I had made at my
+uncle's I should at the same time transmit to them the kindly judgment
+I myself had based on the introduction. Unfortunately my parents had
+recourse to principles entirely different from those which I suggested
+they should adopt when they came to form their estimate of my uncle's
+conduct. My father and grandfather had 'words' with him of a violent
+order; as I learned indirectly. A few days later, passing my uncle in
+the street as he drove by in an open carriage, � felt at once all the
+grief, the gratitude, the remorse which I should have liked to convey to
+him. Beside the immensity of these emotions I considered that merely to
+raise my hat to him would be incongruous and petty, and might make
+him think that I regarded myself as bound to shew him no more than the
+commonest form of courtesy. I decided to abstain from so inadequate a
+gesture, and turned my head away. My uncle thought that, in doing so I
+was obeying my parents' orders; he never forgave them; and though he
+did not die until many years later, not one of us ever set eyes on him
+again.
+
+And so I no longer used to go into the little sitting-room (now kept
+shut) of my uncle Adolphe; instead, after hanging about on the outskirts
+of the back-kitchen until Fran�oise appeared on its threshold and
+announced: "I am going to let the kitchen-maid serve the coffee and take
+up the hot water; it is time I went off to Mme. Octave," I would then
+decide to go indoors, and would go straight upstairs to my room to read.
+The kitchen-maid was an abstract personality, a permanent institution
+to which an invariable set of attributes assured a sort of fixity and
+continuity and identity throughout the long series of transitory human
+shapes in which that personality was incarnate; for we never found the
+same girl there two years running. In the year in which we ate such
+quantities of asparagus, the kitchen-maid whose duty it was to dress
+them was a poor sickly creature, some way 'gone' in pregnancy when
+we arrived at Combray for Easter, and it was indeed surprising that
+Fran�oise allowed her to run so many errands in the town and to do so
+much work in the house, for she was beginning to find a difficulty in
+bearing before her the mysterious casket, fuller and larger every day,
+whose splendid outline could be detected through the folds of her ample
+smocks. These last recalled the cloaks in which Giotto shrouds some of
+the allegorical figures in his paintings, of which M. Swann had given
+me photographs. He it was who pointed out the resemblance, and when he
+inquired after the kitchen-maid he would say: "Well, how goes it with
+Giotto's Charity?" And indeed the poor girl, whose pregnancy had swelled
+and stoutened every part of her, even to her face, and the vertical,
+squared outlines of her cheeks, did distinctly suggest those virgins,
+so strong and mannish as to seem matrons rather, in whom the Virtues are
+personified in the Arena Chapel. And I can see now that those Virtues
+and Vices of Padua resembled her in another respect as well. For just as
+the figure of this girl had been enlarged by the additional symbol which
+she carried in her body, without appearing to understand what it meant,
+without any rendering in her facial expression of all its beauty and
+spiritual significance, but carried as if it were an ordinary and rather
+heavy burden, so it is without any apparent suspicion of what she is
+about that the powerfully built housewife who is portrayed in the Arena
+beneath the label 'Caritas,' and a reproduction of whose portrait hung
+upon the wall of my schoolroom at Combray, incarnates that virtue, for
+it seems impossible, that any thought of charity can ever have found
+expression in her vulgar and energetic face. By a fine stroke of the
+painter's invention she is tumbling all the treasures of the earth at
+her feet, but exactly as if she were treading grapes in a wine-press to
+extract their juice, or, still more, as if she had climbed on a heap of
+sacks to raise herself higher; and she is holding out her flaming heart
+to God, or shall we say 'handing' it to Him, exactly as a cook might
+hand up a corkscrew through the skylight of her underground kitchen to
+some one who had called down to ask her for it from the ground-level
+above. The 'Invidia,' again, should have had some look on her face of
+envy. But in this fresco, too, the symbol occupies so large a place and
+is represented with such realism; the serpent hissing between the lips
+of Envy is so huge, and so completely fills her wide-opened mouth that
+the muscles of her face are strained and contorted, like a child's who
+is filling a balloon with his breath, and that Envy, and we ourselves
+for that matter, when we look at her, since all her attention and ours
+are concentrated on the action of her lips, have no time, almost, to
+spare for envious thoughts.
+
+Despite all the admiration that M. Swann might profess for these figures
+of Giotto, it was a long time before I could find any pleasure in seeing
+in our schoolroom (where the copies he had brought me were hung) that
+Charity devoid of charity, that Envy who looked like nothing so much
+as a plate in some medical book, illustrating the compression of the
+glottis or uvula by a tumour in the tongue, or by the introduction of
+the operator's instrument, a Justice whose greyish and meanly regular
+features were the very same as those which adorned the faces of certain
+good and pious and slightly withered ladies of Combray whom I used to
+see at mass, many of whom had long been enrolled in the reserve forces
+of Injustice. But in later years I understood that the arresting
+strangeness, the special beauty of these frescoes lay in the great part
+played in each of them by its symbols, while the fact that these
+were depicted, not as symbols (for the thought symbolised was nowhere
+expressed), but as real things, actually felt or materially handled,
+added something more precise and more literal to their meaning,
+something more concrete and more striking to the lesson they imparted.
+And even in the case of the poor kitchen-maid, was not our attention
+incessantly drawn to her belly by the load which filled it; and in the
+same way, again, are not the thoughts of men and women in the agony of
+death often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, internal,
+intestinal aspect, towards that 'seamy side' of death which is, as it
+happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them
+to feel, a side which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a
+difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to
+which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?
+
+There must have been a strong element of reality in those Virtues and
+Vices of Padua, since they appeared to me to be as much alive as
+the pregnant servant-girl, while she herself appeared scarcely less
+allegorical than they. And, quite possibly, this lack (or seeming lack)
+of participation by a person's soul in the significant marks of its own
+special virtue has, apart from its aesthetic meaning, a reality which,
+if not strictly psychological, may at least be called physiognomical.
+Later on, when, in the course of my life, I have had occasion to meet
+with, in convents for instance, literally saintly examples of practical
+charity, they have generally had the brisk, decided, undisturbed, and
+slightly brutal air of a busy surgeon, the face in which one can discern
+no commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suffering humanity, and
+no fear of hurting it, the face devoid of gentleness or sympathy, the
+sublime face of true goodness.
+
+Then while the kitchen-maid--who, all unawares, made the superior
+qualities of Fran�oise shine with added lustre, just as Error, by
+force of contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth--took in coffee which
+(according to Mamma) was nothing more than hot water, and then carried
+up to our rooms hot water which was barely tepid, I would be lying
+stretched out on my bed, a book in my hand, in my room which trembled
+with the effort to defend its frail, transparent coolness against the
+afternoon sun, behind its almost closed shutters through which, however,
+a reflection of the sunlight had contrived to slip in on its golden
+wings, remaining motionless, between glass and woodwork, in a corner,
+like a butterfly poised upon a flower. It was hardly light enough for
+me to read, and my feeling of the day's brightness and splendour was
+derived solely from the blows struck down below, in the Rue de la Cure,
+by Camus (whom Fran�oise had assured that my aunt was not 'resting' and
+that he might therefore make a noise), upon some old packing-cases from
+which nothing would really be sent flying but the dust, though the din
+of them, in the resonant atmosphere that accompanies hot weather, seemed
+to scatter broadcast a rain of blood-red stars; and from the flies who
+performed for my benefit, in their small concert, as it might be the
+chamber music of summer; evoking heat and light quite differently from
+an air of human music which, if you happen to have heard it during a
+fine summer, will always bring that summer back to your mind, the flies'
+music is bound to the season by a closer, a more vital tie--born of
+sunny days, and not to be reborn but with them, containing something
+of their essential nature, it not merely calls up their image in our
+memory, but gives us a guarantee that they do really exist, that they
+are close around us, immediately accessible.
+
+This dim freshness of my room was to the broad daylight of the street
+what the shadow is to the sunbeam, that is to say, equally luminous,
+and presented to my imagination the entire panorama of summer, which
+my senses, if I had been out walking, could have tasted and enjoyed in
+fragments only; and so was quite in harmony with my state of repose,
+which (thanks to the adventures related in my books, which had just
+excited it) bore, like a hand reposing motionless in a stream of running
+water, the shock and animation of a torrent of activity and life.
+
+But my grandmother, even if the weather, after growing too hot, had
+broken, and a storm, or just a shower, had burst over us, would come up
+and beg me to go outside. And as I did not wish to leave off my book, I
+would go on with it in the garden, under the chestnut-tree, in a little
+sentry-box of canvas and matting, in the farthest recesses of which I
+used to sit and feel that I was hidden from the eyes of anyone who might
+be coming to call upon the family.
+
+And then my thoughts, did not they form a similar sort of hiding-hole,
+in the depths of which I felt that I could bury myself and remain
+invisible even when I was looking at what went on outside? When I saw
+any external object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain
+between me and it, enclosing it in a slender, incorporeal outline which
+prevented me from ever coming directly in contact with the material
+form; for it would volatilise itself in some way before I could touch
+it, just as an incandescent body which is moved towards something wet
+never actually touches moisture, since it is always preceded, itself, by
+a zone of evaporation. Upon the sort of screen, patterned with different
+states and impressions, which my consciousness would quietly unfold
+while I was reading, and which ranged from the most deeply hidden
+aspirations of my heart to the wholly external view of the horizon
+spread out before my eyes at the foot of the garden, what was from the
+first the most permanent and the most intimate part of me, the lever
+whose incessant movements controlled all the rest, was my belief in the
+philosophic richness and beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire
+to appropriate these to myself, whatever the book might be. For even if
+I had purchased it at Combray, having seen it outside Borange's, whose
+grocery lay too far from our house for Fran�oise to be able to deal
+there, as she did with Camus, but who enjoyed better custom as a
+stationer and bookseller; even if I had seen it, tied with string to
+keep it in its place in the mosaic of monthly parts and pamphlets which
+adorned either side of his doorway, a doorway more mysterious, more
+teeming with suggestion than that of a cathedral, I should have noticed
+and bought it there simply because I had recognised it as a book which
+had been well spoken of, in my hearing, by the school-master or the
+school-friend who, at that particular time, seemed to me to be
+entrusted with the secret of Truth and Beauty, things half-felt by me,
+half-incomprehensible, the full understanding of which was the vague but
+permanent object of my thoughts.
+
+Next to this central belief, which, while I was reading, would be
+constantly a motion from my inner self to the outer world, towards the
+discovery of Truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in
+which I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with
+more dramatic and sensational events than occur, often, in a whole
+lifetime. These were the events which took place in the book I was
+reading. It is true that the people concerned in them were not what
+Fran�oise would have called 'real people.' But none of the feelings
+which the joys or misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be
+awakened except through a mental picture of those joys or misfortunes;
+and the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding
+that, as the picture was the one essential element in the complicated
+structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted
+in the suppression, pure and simple, of 'real' people would be a decided
+improvement. A 'real' person, profoundly as we may sympathise with him,
+is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to
+say, he remains opaque, offers a dead weight which our sensibilities
+have not the strength to lift. If some misfortune comes to him, it is
+only in one small section of the complete idea we have of him that
+we are capable of feeling any emotion; indeed it is only in one small
+section of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of
+feeling any emotion either. The novelist's happy discovery was to think
+of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human
+spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which
+the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the
+actions, the feelings of this new order of creatures appear to us in
+the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in
+ourselves that they are happening, that they are holding in thrall,
+while we turn over, feverishly, the pages of the book, our quickened
+breath and staring eyes. And once the novelist has brought us to that
+state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is
+multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes to disturb us as might
+a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression than
+those which come to us in sleep; why, then, for the space of an hour
+he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of
+which, only, we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting
+to know, and the keenest, the most intense of which would never have
+been revealed to us because the slow course of their development stops
+our perception of them. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and
+that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by
+imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural
+phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish,
+successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the
+actual sensation of change.
+
+Next to, but distinctly less intimate a part of myself than this human
+element, would come the view, more or less projected before my eyes,
+of the country in which the action of the story was taking place, which
+made a far stronger impression on my mind than the other, the actual
+landscape which would meet my eyes when I raised them from my book. In
+this way, for two consecutive summers I used to sit in the heat of our
+Combray garden, sick with a longing inspired by the book I was then
+reading for a land of mountains and rivers, where I could see an endless
+vista of sawmills, where beneath the limpid currents fragments of
+wood lay mouldering in beds of watercress; and nearby, rambling and
+clustering along low walls, purple flowers and red. And since there was
+always lurking in my mind the dream of a woman who would enrich me with
+her love, that dream in those two summers used to be quickened with the
+freshness and coolness of running water; and whoever she might be, the
+woman whose image I called to mind, purple flowers and red would at once
+spring up on either side of her like complementary colours.
+
+This was not only because an image of which we dream remains for ever
+distinguished, is adorned and enriched by the association of colours not
+its own which may happen to surround it in our mental picture; for the
+scenes in the books I read were to me not merely scenery more vividly
+portrayed by my imagination than any which Combray could spread before
+my eyes but otherwise of the same kind. Because of the selection that
+the author had made of them, because of the spirit of faith in which
+my mind would exceed and anticipate his printed word, as it might
+be interpreting a revelation, these scenes used to give me the
+impression--one which I hardly ever derived from any place in which
+I might happen to be, and never from our garden, that undistinguished
+product of the strictly conventional fantasy of the gardener whom my
+grandmother so despised--of their being actually part of Nature herself,
+and worthy to be studied and explored.
+
+Had my parents allowed me, when I read a book, to pay a visit to the
+country it described, I should have felt that I was making an enormous
+advance towards the ultimate conquest of truth. For even if we have
+the sensation of being always enveloped in, surrounded by our own soul,
+still it does not seem a fixed and immovable prison; rather do we seem
+to be borne away with it, and perpetually struggling to pass beyond it,
+to break out into the world, with a perpetual discouragement as we hear
+endlessly, all around us, that unvarying sound which is no echo from
+without, but the resonance of a vibration from within. We try to
+discover in things, endeared to us on that account, the spiritual
+glamour which we ourselves have cast upon them; we are disillusioned,
+and learn that they are in themselves barren and devoid of the charm
+which they owed, in our minds, to the association of certain ideas;
+sometimes we mobilise all our spiritual forces in a glittering array so
+as to influence and subjugate other human beings who, as we very well
+know, are situated outside ourselves, where we can never reach them. And
+so, if I always imagined the woman I loved as in a setting of whatever
+places I most longed, at the time, to visit; if in my secret longings
+it was she who attracted me to them, who opened to me the gate of an
+unknown world, that was not by the mere hazard of a simple association
+of thoughts; no, it was because my dreams of travel and of love were
+only moments--which I isolate artificially to-day as though I
+were cutting sections, at different heights, in a jet of water,
+rainbow-flashing but seemingly without flow or motion--were only drops
+in a single, undeviating, irresistible outrush of all the forces of my
+life.
+
+And then, as I continue to trace the outward course of these impressions
+from their close-packed intimate source in my consciousness, and
+before I come to the horizon of reality which envelops them, I discover
+pleasures of another kind, those of being comfortably seated, of tasting
+the good scent on the air, of not being disturbed by any visitor; and,
+when an hour chimed from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire, of watching what
+was already spent of the afternoon fall drop by drop until I heard the
+last stroke which enabled me to add up the total sum, after which the
+silence that followed seemed to herald the beginning, in the blue sky
+above me, of that long part of the day still allowed me for reading,
+until the good dinner which Fran�oise was even now preparing should come
+to strengthen and refresh me after the strenuous pursuit of its hero
+through the pages of my book. And, as each hour struck, it would seem to
+me that a few seconds only had passed since the hour before; the latest
+would inscribe itself, close to its predecessor, on the sky's surface,
+and I would be unable to believe that sixty minutes could be squeezed
+into the tiny arc of blue which was comprised between their two golden
+figures. Sometimes it would even happen that this precocious hour would
+sound two strokes more than the last; there must then have been an hour
+which I had not heard strike; something which had taken place had not
+taken place for me; the fascination of my book, a magic as potent as the
+deepest slumber, had stopped my enchanted ears and had obliterated
+the sound of that golden bell from the azure surface of the enveloping
+silence. Sweet Sunday afternoons beneath the chestnut-tree in our
+Combray garden, from which I was careful to eliminate every commonplace
+incident of my actual life, replacing them by a career of strange
+adventures and ambitions in a land watered by living streams, you still
+recall those adventures and ambitions to my mind when I think of you,
+and you embody and preserve them by virtue of having little by little
+drawn round and enclosed them (while I went on with my book and the heat
+of the day declined) in the gradual crystallisation, slowly altering
+in form and dappled with a pattern of chestnut-leaves, of your silent,
+sonorous, fragrant, limpid hours.
+
+Sometimes I would be torn from my book, in the middle of the afternoon,
+by the gardener's daughter, who came running like a mad thing,
+overturning an orange-tree in its tub, cutting a finger, breaking a
+tooth, and screaming out "They're coming, they're coming!" so that
+Fran�oise and I should run too and not miss anything of the show. That
+was on days when the cavalry stationed in Combray went out for some
+military exercise, going as a rule by the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde. While
+our servants, sitting in a row on their chairs outside the garden
+railings, stared at the people of Combray taking their Sunday walks and
+were stared at in return, the gardener's daughter, through the gap which
+there was between two houses far away in the Avenue de la Gare, would
+have spied the glitter of helmets. The servants then hurried in
+with their chairs, for when the troopers filed through the Rue
+Sainte-Hildegarde they filled it from side to side, and their jostling
+horses scraped against the walls of the houses, covering and drowning
+the pavements like banks which present too narrow a channel to a river
+in flood.
+
+"Poor children," Fran�oise would exclaim, in tears almost before she
+had reached the railings; "poor boys, to be mown down like grass in a
+meadow. It's just shocking to think of," she would go on, laying a hand
+over her heart, where presumably she had felt the shock.
+
+"A fine sight, isn't it, Mme. Fran�oise, all these young fellows not
+caring two straws for their lives?" the gardener would ask, just to
+'draw' her. And he would not have spoken in vain.
+
+"Not caring for their lives, is it? Why, what in the world is there that
+we should care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never
+offers us a second time? Oh dear, oh dear; you're right all the same;
+it's quite true, they don't care! I can remember them in '70; in those
+wretched wars they've no fear of death left in them; they're nothing
+more nor less than madmen; and then they aren't worth the price of a
+rope to hang them with; they're not men any more, they're lions." For
+by her way of thinking, to compare a man with a lion, which she used to
+pronounce 'lie-on,' was not at all complimentary to the man.
+
+The Rue Sainte-Hildegarde turned too sharply for us to be able to see
+people approaching at any distance, and it was only through the gap
+between those two houses in the Avenue de la Gare that we could still
+make out fresh helmets racing along towards us, and flashing in the
+sunlight. The gardener wanted to know whether there were still many to
+come, and he was thirsty besides, with the sun beating down upon his
+head. So then, suddenly, his daughter would leap out, as though from
+a beleaguered city, would make a sortie, turn the street corner, and,
+having risked her life a hundred times over, reappear and bring us,
+with a jug of liquorice-water, the news that there were still at least
+a thousand of them, pouring along without a break from the direction
+of Thiberzy and M�s�glise. Fran�oise and the gardener, having 'made up'
+their difference, would discuss the line to be followed in case of war.
+
+"Don't you see, Fran�oise," he would say. "Revolution would be better,
+because then no one would need to join in unless he liked."
+
+"Oh, yes, I can see that, certainly; it's more straightforward."
+
+The gardener believed that, as soon as war was declared, they would stop
+all the railways.
+
+"Yes, to be sure; so that we sha'n't get away," said Fran�oise.
+
+And the gardener would assent, with "Ay, they're the cunning ones," for
+he would not allow that war was anything but a kind of trick which the
+state attempted to play on the people, or that there was a man in the
+world who would not run away from it if he had the chance to do so.
+
+But Fran�oise would hasten back to my aunt, and I would return to my
+book, and the servants would take their places again outside the gate to
+watch the dust settle on the pavement, and the excitement caused by the
+passage of the soldiers subside. Long after order had been restored,
+an abnormal tide of humanity would continue to darken the streets of
+Cormbray. And in front of every house, even of those where it was not,
+as a rule, 'done,' the servants, and sometimes even the masters would
+sit and stare, festooning their doorsteps with a dark, irregular fringe,
+like the border of shells and sea-weed which a stronger tide than usual
+leaves on the beach, as though trimming it with embroidered crape, when
+the sea itself has retreated.
+
+Except on such days as these, however, I would as a rule be left to read
+in peace. But the interruption which a visit from Swann once made, and
+the commentary which he then supplied to the course of my reading,
+which had brought me to the work of an author quite new to me, called
+Bergotte, had this definite result that for a long time afterwards
+it was not against a wall gay with spikes of purple blossom, but on a
+wholly different background, the porch of a gothic cathedral, that I
+would see outlined the figure of one of the women of whom I dreamed.
+
+I had heard Bergotte spoken of, for the first time, by a friend older
+than myself, for whom I had a strong admiration, a precious youth of the
+name of Bloch. Hearing me confess my love of the _Nuit d'Octobre_, he
+had burst out in a bray of laughter, like a bugle-call, and told me,
+by way of warning: "You must conquer your vile taste for A. de Musset,
+Esquire. He is a bad egg, one of the very worst, a pretty detestable
+specimen. I am bound to admit, natheless," he added graciously, "that
+he, and even the man Racine, did, each of them, once in his life,
+compose a line which is not only fairly rhythmical, but has also what is
+in my eyes the supreme merit of meaning absolutely nothing. One is
+
+
+  _La blanche Oloossone et la blanche Camire_,
+
+and the other
+
+
+  _La fille de Minos et de Pasipha�_."
+
+They were submitted to my judgment, as evidence for the defence of the
+two runagates, in an article by my very dear master Father Lecomte, who
+is found pleasing in the sight of the immortal gods. By which token,
+here is a book which I have not the time, just now, to read, a book
+recommended, it would seem, by that colossal fellow. He regards, or so
+they tell me, its author, one Bergotte, Esquire, as a subtle scribe,
+more subtle, indeed, than any beast of the field; and, albeit he
+exhibits on occasion a critical pacifism, a tenderness in suffering
+fools, for which it is impossible to account, and hard to make
+allowance, still his word has weight with me as it were the Delphic
+Oracle. Read you then this lyrical prose, and, if the Titanic
+master-builder of rhythm who composed _Bhagavat_ and the _L�vrier de
+Magnus_ speaks not falsely, then, by Apollo, you may taste, even you, my
+master, the ambrosial joys of Olympus." It was in an ostensible vein of
+sarcasm that he had asked me to call him, and that he himself called me,
+"my master." But, as a matter of fact, we each derived a certain amount
+of satisfaction from the mannerism, being still at the age in which one
+believes that one gives a thing real existence by giving it a name.
+
+Unfortunately I was not able to set at rest, by further talks with
+Bloch, in which I might have insisted upon an explanation, the doubts
+he had engendered in me when he told me that fine lines of poetry (from
+which I, if you please, expected nothing less than the revelation of
+truth itself) were all the finer if they meant absolutely nothing. For,
+as it happened, Bloch was not invited to the house again. At first, he
+had been well received there. It is true that my grandfather made out
+that, whenever I formed a strong attachment to any one of my friends and
+brought him home with me, that friend was invariably a Jew; to which he
+would not have objected on principle--indeed his own friend Swann was
+of Jewish extraction--had he not found that the Jews whom I chose as
+friends were not usually of the best type. And so I was hardly ever able
+to bring a new friend home without my grandfather's humming the "O,
+God of our fathers" from _La Juive_, or else "Israel, break thy chain,"
+singing the tune alone, of course, to an "um-ti-tum-ti-tum, tra-la"; but
+I used to be afraid of my friend's recognising the sound, and so being
+able to reconstruct the words.
+
+Before seeing them, merely on hearing their names, about which, as often
+as not, there was nothing particularly Hebraic, he would divine not only
+the Jewish origin of such of my friends as might indeed be of the chosen
+people, but even some dark secret which was hidden in their family.
+
+"And what do they call your friend who is coming this evening?"
+
+"Dumont, grandpapa."
+
+"Dumont! Oh, I'm frightened of Dumont."
+
+And he would sing:
+
+
+  Archers, be on your guard!
+  Watch without rest, without sound,
+
+and then, after a few adroit questions on points of detail, he would
+call out "On guard! on guard," or, if it were the victim himself who
+had already arrived, and had been obliged, unconsciously, by my
+grandfather's subtle examination, to admit his origin, then my
+grandfather, to shew us that he had no longer any doubts, would merely
+look at us, humming almost inaudibly the air of
+
+
+  What! do you hither guide the feet
+  Of this timid Israelite?
+
+or of
+
+
+  Sweet vale of Hebron, dear paternal fields,
+
+or, perhaps, of
+
+
+  Yes, I am of the chosen race.
+
+These little eccentricities on my grandfather's part implied no ill-will
+whatsoever towards my friends. But Bloch had displeased my family for
+other reasons. He had begun by annoying my father, who, seeing him come
+in with wet clothes, had asked him with keen interest:
+
+"Why, M. Bloch, is there a change in the weather; has it been raining? I
+can't understand it; the barometer has been 'set fair.'"
+
+Which drew from Bloch nothing more instructive than "Sir, I am
+absolutely incapable of telling you whether it has rained. I live so
+resolutely apart from physical contingencies that my senses no longer
+trouble to inform me of them."
+
+"My poor boy," said my father after Bloch had gone, "your friend is out
+of his mind. Why, he couldn't even tell me what the weather was like. As
+if there could be anything more interesting! He is an imbecile."
+
+Next, Bloch had displeased my grandmother because, after luncheon, when
+she complained of not feeling very well, he had stifled a sob and wiped
+the tears from his eyes.
+
+"You cannot imagine that he is sincere," she observed to me. "Why he
+doesn't know me. Unless he's mad, of course."
+
+And finally he had upset the whole household when he arrived an hour
+and a half late for luncheon and covered with mud from head to foot, and
+made not the least apology, saying merely: "I never allow myself to be
+influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or
+by the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time. I would willingly
+reintroduce to society the opium pipe of China or the Malayan kriss, but
+I am wholly and entirely without instruction in those infinitely more
+pernicious (besides being quite bleakly bourgeois) implements, the
+umbrella and the watch."
+
+In spite of all this he would still have been received at Combray. He
+was, of course, hardly the friend my parents would have chosen for
+me; they had, in the end, decided that the tears which he had shed on
+hearing of my grandmother's illness were genuine enough; but they
+knew, either instinctively or from their own experience, that our early
+impulsive emotions have but little influence over our later actions and
+the conduct of our lives; and that regard for moral obligations, loyalty
+to our friends, patience in finishing our work, obedience to a rule
+of life, have a surer foundation in habits solidly formed and blindly
+followed than in these momentary transports, ardent but sterile. They
+would have preferred to Bloch, as companions for myself, boys who would
+have given me no more than it is proper, by all the laws of middle-class
+morality, for boys to give one another, who would not unexpectedly
+send me a basket of fruit because they happened, that morning, to have
+thought of me with affection, but who, since they were incapable of
+inclining in my favour, by any single impulse of their imagination and
+emotions, the exact balance of the duties and claims of friendship, were
+as incapable of loading the scales to my prejudice. Even the injuries
+we do them will not easily divert from the path of their duty towards us
+those conventional natures of which my great-aunt furnished a type: who,
+after quarrelling for years with a niece, to whom she never spoke again,
+yet made no change in the will in which she had left that niece the
+whole of her fortune, because she was her next-of-kin, and it was the
+'proper thing' to do.
+
+But I was fond of Bloch; my parents wished me to be happy; and the
+insoluble problems which I set myself on such texts as the 'absolutely
+meaningless' beauty of _La fille de Minos et de Pasipha�_ tired me more
+and made me more unwell than I should have been after further talks with
+him, unwholesome as those talks might seem to my mother's mind. And he
+would still have been received at Combray but for one thing. That same
+night, after dinner, having informed me (a piece of news which had a
+great influence on my later life, making it happier at one time and then
+more unhappy) that no woman ever thought of anything but love, and that
+there was not one of them whose resistance a man could not overcome,
+he had gone on to assure me that he had heard it said on unimpeachable
+authority that my great-aunt herself had led a 'gay' life in her younger
+days, and had been notoriously 'kept.' I could not refrain from passing
+on so important a piece of information to my parents; the next time
+Bloch called he was not admitted, and afterwards, when I met him in the
+street, he greeted me with extreme coldness.
+
+But in the matter of Bergotte he had spoken truly.
+
+For the first few days, like a tune which will be running in one's head
+and maddening one soon enough, but of which one has not for the moment
+'got hold,' the things I was to love so passionately in Bergotte's style
+had not yet caught my eye. I could not, it is true, lay down the novel
+of his which I was reading, but I fancied that I was interested in the
+story alone, as in the first dawn of love, when we go every day to meet
+a woman at some party or entertainment by the charm of which we imagine
+it is that we are attracted. Then I observed the rare, almost archaic
+phrases which he liked to employ at certain points, where a hidden flow
+of harmony, a prelude contained and concealed in the work itself would
+animate and elevate his style; and it was at such points as these,
+too, that he would begin to speak of the "vain dream of life," of the
+"inexhaustible torrent of fair forms," of the "sterile, splendid torture
+of understanding and loving," of the "moving effigies which ennoble for
+all time the charming and venerable fronts of our cathedrals"; that he
+would express a whole system of philosophy, new to me, by the use of
+marvellous imagery, to the inspiration of which I would naturally have
+ascribed that sound of harping which began to chime and echo in my ears,
+an accompaniment to which that imagery added something ethereal and
+sublime. One of these passages of Bergotte, the third or fourth which I
+had detached from the rest, filled me with a joy to which the meagre joy
+I had tasted in the first passage bore no comparison, a joy which I felt
+myself to have experienced in some innermost chamber of my soul, deep,
+undivided, vast, from which all obstructions and partitions seemed to
+have been swept away. For what had happened was that, while I recognised
+in this passage the same taste for uncommon phrases, the same bursts
+of music, the same idealist philosophy which had been present in the
+earlier passages without my having taken them into account as the source
+of my pleasure, I now no longer had the impression of being confronted
+by a particular passage in one of Bergotte's works, which traced a
+purely bi-dimensional figure in outline upon the surface of my mind, but
+rather of the 'ideal passage' of Bergotte, common to every one of his
+books, and to which all the earlier, similar passages, now becoming
+merged in it, had added a kind of density and volume, by which my own
+understanding seemed to be enlarged.
+
+I was by no means Bergotte's sole admirer; he was the favourite writer
+also of a friend of my mother's, a highly literary lady; while Dr. du
+Boulbon had kept all his patients waiting until he finished Bergotte's
+latest volume; and it was from his consulting room, and from a house in
+a park near Combray that some of the first seeds were scattered of that
+taste for Bergotte, a rare-growth in those days, but now so universally
+acclimatised that one finds it flowering everywhere throughout Europe
+and America, and even in the tiniest villages, rare still in its
+refinement, but in that alone. What my mother's friend, and, it would
+seem, what Dr. du Boulbon liked above all in the writings of Bergotte
+was just what I liked, the same flow of melody, the same old-fashioned
+phrases, and certain others, quite simple and familiar, but so placed by
+him, in such prominence, as to hint at a particular quality of taste on
+his part; and also, in the sad parts of his books, a sort of roughness,
+a tone that was almost harsh. And he himself, no doubt, realised that
+these were his principal attractions. For in his later books, if he had
+hit upon some great truth, or upon the name of an historic cathedral,
+he would break off his narrative, and in an invocation, an apostrophe, a
+lengthy prayer, would give a free outlet to that effluence which, in
+the earlier volumes, remained buried beneath the form of his prose,
+discernible only in a rippling of its surface, and perhaps even more
+delightful, more harmonious when it was thus veiled from the eye, when
+the reader could give no precise indication of where the murmur of the
+current began, or of where it died away. These passages in which he
+delighted were our favourites also. For my own part I knew all of them
+by heart. I felt even disappointed when he resumed the thread of his
+narrative. Whenever he spoke of something whose beauty had until
+then remained hidden from me, of pine-forests or of hailstorms, of
+_Notre-Dame de Paris_, of _Athalie_, or of _Ph�dre_, by some piece
+of imagery he would make their beauty explode and drench me with its
+essence. And so, dimly realising that the universe contained innumerable
+elements which my feeble senses would be powerless to discern, did he
+not bring them within my reach, I wished that I might have his opinion,
+some metaphor of his, upon everything in the world, and especially upon
+such things as I might have an opportunity, some day, of seeing for
+myself; and among such things, more particularly still upon some of the
+historic buildings of France, upon certain views of the sea, because the
+emphasis with which, in his books, he referred to these shewed that he
+regarded them as rich in significance and beauty. But, alas, upon almost
+everything in the world his opinion was unknown to me. I had no doubt
+that it would differ entirely from my own, since his came down from an
+unknown sphere towards which I was striving to raise myself; convinced
+that my thoughts would have seemed pure foolishness to that perfected
+spirit, I had so completely obliterated them all that, if I happened to
+find in one of his books something which had already occurred to my own
+mind, my heart would swell with gratitude and pride as though some deity
+had, in his infinite bounty, restored it to me, had pronounced it to be
+beautiful and right. It happened now and then that a page of Bergotte
+would express precisely those ideas which I used often at night, when
+I was unable to sleep, to write to my grandmother and mother, and so
+concisely and well that his page had the appearance of a collection of
+mottoes for me to set at the head of my letters. And so too, in later
+years, when I began to compose a book of my own, and the quality of some
+of my sentences seemed so inadequate that I could not make up my mind to
+go on with the undertaking, I would find the equivalent of my sentences
+in Bergotte's. But it was only then, when I read them in his pages,
+that I could enjoy them; when it was I myself who composed them, in
+my anxiety that they should exactly reproduce what I seemed to have
+detected in my mind, and in my fear of their not turning out 'true to
+life,' I had no time to ask myself whether what I was writing would be
+pleasant to read! But indeed there was no kind of language, no kind of
+ideas which I really liked, except these. My feverish and unsatisfactory
+attempts were themselves a token of my love, a love which brought me no
+pleasure, but was, for all that, intense and deep. And so, when I came
+suddenly upon similar phrases in the writings of another, that is to say
+stripped of their familiar accompaniment of scruples and repressions and
+self-tormentings, I was free to indulge to the full my own appetite
+for such things, just as a cook who, once in a while, has no dinner to
+prepare for other people, can then find time to gormandise himself. And
+so, when I had found, one day, in a book by Bergotte, some joke about
+an old family servant, to which his solemn and magnificent style added a
+great deal of irony, but which was in principle what I had often said to
+my grandmother about Fran�oise, and when, another time, I had discovered
+that he thought not unworthy of reflection in one of those mirrors of
+absolute Truth which were his writings, a remark similar to one which I
+had had occasion to make on our friend M. Legrandin (and, moreover, my
+remarks on Fran�oise and M. Legrandin were among those which I would
+most resolutely have sacrificed for Bergotte's sake, in the belief
+that he would find them quite without interest); then it was suddenly
+revealed to me that my own humble existence and the Realms of Truth were
+less widely separated than I had supposed, that at certain points they
+were actually in contact; and in my new-found confidence and joy I wept
+upon his printed page, as in the arms of a long-lost father.
+
+From his books I had formed an impression of Bergotte as a frail and
+disappointed old man, who had lost his children, and had never found
+any consolation. And so I would read, or rather sing his sentences in
+my brain, with rather more _dolce_, rather more _lento_ than he himself
+had, perhaps, intended, and his simplest phrase would strike my ears
+with something peculiarly gentle and loving in its intonation. More than
+anything else in the world I cherished his philosophy, and had pledged
+myself to it in lifelong devotion. It made me impatient to reach the
+age when I should be eligible to attend the class at school called
+'Philosophy.' I did not wish to learn or do anything else there, but
+simply to exist and be guided entirely by the mind of Bergotte, and,
+if I had been told then that the metaphysicians whom I was actually to
+follow there resembled him in nothing, I should have been struck down by
+the despair a young lover feels who has sworn lifelong fidelity, when
+a friend speaks to him of the other mistresses he will have in time to
+come.
+
+One Sunday, while I was reading in the garden, I was interrupted by
+Swann, who had come to call upon my parents.
+
+"What are you reading? May I look? Why, it's Bergotte! Who has been
+telling you about him?"
+
+I replied that Bloch was responsible.
+
+"Oh, yes, that boy I saw here once, who looks so like the Bellini
+portrait of Mahomet II. It's an astonishing likeness; he has the same
+arched eyebrows and hooked nose and prominent cheekbones. When his beard
+comes he'll be Mahomet himself. Anyhow he has good taste, for Bergotte
+is a charming creature." And seeing how much I seemed to admire
+Bergotte, Swann, who never spoke at all about the people he knew, made
+an exception in my favour and said: "I know him well; if you would like
+him to write a few words on the title-page of your book I could ask him
+for you."
+
+I dared not accept such an offer, but bombarded Swann with questions
+about his friend. "Can you tell me, please, who is his favourite actor?"
+
+"Actor? No, I can't say. But I do know this: there's not a man on the
+stage whom he thinks equal to Berma; he puts her above everyone. Have
+you seen her?"
+
+"No, sir, my parents do not allow me to go to the theatre."
+
+"That is a pity. You should insist. Berma in _Ph�dre_, in the _Cid_;
+well, she's only an actress, if you like, but you know that I don't
+believe very much in the 'hierarchy' of the arts." As he spoke I
+noticed, what had often struck me before in his conversations with
+my grandmother's sisters, that whenever he spoke of serious matters,
+whenever he used an expression which seemed to imply a definite opinion
+upon some important subject, he would take care to isolate, to sterilise
+it by using a special intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he
+had put the phrase or word between inverted commas, and was anxious
+to disclaim any personal responsibility for it; as who should say "the
+'hierarchy,' don't you know, as silly people call it." But then, if it
+was so absurd, why did he say the 'hierarchy'? A moment later he went
+on: "Her acting will give you as noble an inspiration as any masterpiece
+of art in the world, as--oh, I don't know--" and he began to laugh,
+"shall we say the Queens of Chartres?" Until then I had supposed that
+his horror of having to give a serious opinion was something Parisian
+and refined, in contrast to the provincial dogmatism of my grandmother's
+sisters; and I had imagined also that it was characteristic of the
+mental attitude towards life of the circle in which Swann moved,
+where, by a natural reaction from the 'lyrical' enthusiasms of earlier
+generations, an excessive importance was given to small and precise
+facts, formerly regarded as vulgar, and anything in the nature of
+'phrase-making' was banned. But now I found myself slightly shocked
+by this attitude which Swann invariably adopted when face to face with
+generalities. He appeared unwilling to risk even having an opinion, and
+to be at his ease only when he could furnish, with meticulous accuracy,
+some precise but unimportant detail. But in so doing he did not take
+into account that even here he was giving an opinion, holding a brief
+(as they say) for something, that the accuracy of his details had an
+importance of its own. I thought again of the dinner that night, when I
+had been so unhappy because Mamma would not be coming up to my room, and
+when he had dismissed the balls given by the Princesse de L�on as being
+of no importance. And yet it was to just that sort of amusement that he
+was devoting his life. For what other kind of existence did he reserve
+the duties of saying in all seriousness what he thought about things,
+of formulating judgments which he would not put between inverted commas;
+and when would he cease to give himself up to occupations of which at
+the same, time he made out that they were absurd? I noticed, too, in the
+manner in which Swann spoke to me of Bergotte, something which, to do
+him justice, was not peculiar to himself, but was shared by all that
+writer's admirers at that time, at least by my mother's friend and
+by Dr. du Boulbon. Like Swann, they would say of Bergotte: "He has a
+charming mind, so individual, he has a way of his own of saying things,
+which is a little far-fetched, but so pleasant. You never need to look
+for his name on the title-page, you can tell his work at once." But
+none of them had yet gone so far as to say "He is a great writer, he has
+great talent." They did not even credit him with talent at all. They
+did not speak, because they were not aware of it. We are very slow in
+recognising in the peculiar physiognomy of a new writer the type which
+is labelled 'great talent' in our museum of general ideas. Simply
+because that physiognomy is new and strange, we can find in it no
+resemblance to what we are accustomed to call talent. We say rather
+originality, charm, delicacy, strength; and then one day we add up the
+sum of these, and find that it amounts simply to talent.
+
+"Are there any books in which Bergotte has written about Berma?" I asked
+M. Swann.
+
+"I think he has, in that little essay on Racine, but it must be out of
+print. Still, there has perhaps been a second impression. I will find
+out. Anyhow, I can ask Bergotte himself all that you want to know next
+time he comes to dine with us. He never misses a week, from one year's
+end to another. He is my daughter's greatest friend. They go about
+together, and look at old towns and cathedrals and castles."
+
+As I was still completely ignorant of the different grades in the social
+hierarchy, the fact that my father found it impossible for us to see
+anything of Swann's wife and daughter had, for a long time, had the
+contrary effect of making me imagine them as separated from us by an
+enormous gulf, which greatly enhanced their dignity and importance in
+my eyes. I was sorry that my mother did not dye her hair and redden her
+lips, as I had heard our neighbour, Mme. Sazerat, say that Mme. Swann
+did, to gratify not her husband but M. de Charlus; and I felt that, to
+her, we must be an object of scorn, which distressed me particularly on
+account of the daughter, such a pretty little girl, as I had heard, and
+one of whom I used often to dream, always imagining her with the same
+features and appearance, which I bestowed upon her quite arbitrarily,
+but with a charming effect. But from this afternoon, when I had learned
+that Mlle. Swann was a creature living in such rare and fortunate
+circumstances, bathed, as in her natural element, in such a sea of
+privilege that, if she should ask her parents whether anyone were coming
+to dinner, she would be answered in those two syllables, radiant with
+celestial light, would hear the name of that golden guest who was to
+her no more than an old friend of her family, Bergotte; that for her the
+intimate conversation at table, corresponding to what my great-aunt's
+conversation was for me, would be the words of Bergotte upon all those
+subjects which he had not been able to take up in his writings, and on
+which I would fain have heard him utter oracles; and that, above all,
+when she went to visit other towns, he would be walking by her side,
+unrecognised and glorious, like the gods who came down, of old, from
+heaven to dwell among mortal men: then I realised both the rare worth
+of a creature such as Mlle. Swann, and, at the same time, how coarse and
+ignorant I should appear to her; and I felt so keenly how pleasant and
+yet how impossible it would be for me to become her friend that I was
+filled at once with longing and with despair. And usually, from this
+time forth, when I thought of her, I would see her standing before the
+porch of a cathedral, explaining to me what each of the statues meant,
+and, with a smile which was my highest commendation, presenting me, as
+her friend, to Bergotte. And invariably the charm of all the fancies
+which the thought of cathedrals used to inspire in me, the charm of the
+hills and valleys of the He de France and of the plains of Normandy,
+would radiate brightness and beauty over the picture I had formed in my
+mind of Mlle. Swann; nothing more remained but to know and to love
+her. Once we believe that a fellow-creature has a share in some unknown
+existence to which that creature's love for ourselves can win us
+admission, that is, of all the preliminary conditions which Love exacts,
+the one to which he attaches most importance, the one which makes him
+generous or indifferent as to the rest. Even those women who pretend
+that they judge a man by his exterior only, see in that exterior an
+emanation from some special way of life. And that is why they fall
+in love with a soldier or a fireman, whose uniform makes them less
+particular about his face; they kiss and believe that beneath the
+crushing breastplate there beats a heart different from the rest, more
+gallant, more adventurous, more tender; and so it is that a young king
+or a crown prince may travel in foreign countries and make the most
+gratifying conquests, and yet lack entirely that regular and classic
+profile which would be indispensable, I dare say, in an outside-broker.
+
+While I was reading in the garden, a thing my great-aunt would never
+have understood my doing save on a Sunday, that being the day on which
+it was unlawful to indulge in any serious occupation, and on which she
+herself would lay aside her sewing (on a week-day she would have said,
+"How you can go on amusing yourself with a book; it isn't Sunday, you
+know!" putting into the word 'amusing' an implication of childishness
+and waste of time), my aunt L�onie would be gossiping with Fran�oise
+until it was time for Eulalie to arrive. She would tell her that she had
+just seen Mme. Goupil go by "without an umbrella, in the silk dress
+she had made for her the other day at Ch�teaudun. If she has far to go
+before vespers, she may get it properly soaked."
+
+"Very likely" (which meant also "very likely not") was the answer,
+for Fran�oise did not wish definitely to exclude the possibility of a
+happier alternative.
+
+"There, now," went on my aunt, beating her brow, "that reminds me that
+I never heard if she got to church this morning before the Elevation. I
+must remember to ask Eulalie... Fran�oise, just look at that black cloud
+behind the steeple, and how poor the light is on the slates, you may be
+certain it will rain before the day is out. It couldn't possibly keep on
+like this, it's been too hot. And the sooner the better, for until the
+storm breaks my Vichy water won't 'go down,'" she concluded, since, in
+her mind, the desire to accelerate the digestion of her Vichy water was
+of infinitely greater importance than her fear of seeing Mme. Goupil's
+new dress ruined.
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"And you know that when it rains in the Square there's none too much
+shelter." Suddenly my aunt turned pale. "What, three o'clock!" she
+exclaimed. "But vespers will have begun already, and I've forgotten my
+pepsin! Now I know why that Vichy water has been lying on my stomach."
+And falling precipitately upon a prayer-book bound in purple velvet,
+with gilt clasps, out of which in her haste she let fall a shower of
+the little pictures, each in a lace fringe of yellowish paper, which she
+used to mark the places of the greater feasts of the church, my aunt,
+while she swallowed her drops, began at full speed to mutter the words
+of the sacred text, its meaning being slightly clouded in her brain by
+the uncertainty whether the pepsin, when taken so long after the
+Vichy, would still be able to overtake it and to 'send it down.' "Three
+o'clock! It's unbelievable how time flies."
+
+A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it,
+followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower
+of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall
+spread, took on an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming,
+musical, innumerable, universal. It was the rain.
+
+"There, Fran�oise, what did I tell you? How it's coming down! But I
+think I heard the bell at the garden gate: go along and see who can be
+outside in this weather."
+
+Fran�oise went and returned. "It's Mme. Am�d�e" (my grandmother). "She
+said she was going for a walk. It's raining hard, all the same."
+
+"I'm not at all surprised," said my aunt, looking up towards the sky.
+"I've always said that she was not in the least like other people. Well,
+I'm glad it's she and not myself who's outside in all this."
+
+"Mme. Am�d�e is always the exact opposite of the rest," said Fran�oise,
+not unkindly, refraining until she should be alone with the other
+servants from stating her belief that my grandmother was 'a bit off her
+head.'
+
+"There's Benediction over! Eulalie will never come now," sighed my aunt.
+"It will be the weather that's frightened her away."
+
+"But it's not five o'clock yet, Mme. Octave, it's only half-past four."
+
+"Only half-past four! And here am I, obliged to draw back the small
+curtains, just to get a tiny streak of daylight. At half-past four! Only
+a week before the Rogation-days. Ah, my poor Fran�oise, the dear Lord
+must be sorely vexed with us. The world is going too far in these days.
+As my poor Octave used to say, we have forgotten God too often, and He
+is taking vengeance upon us."
+
+A bright flush animated my aunt's cheeks; it was Eulalie. As ill luck
+would have it, scarcely had she been admitted to the presence when
+Fran�oise reappeared and, with a smile which was meant to indicate her
+full participation in the pleasure which, she had no doubt, her tidings
+would give my aunt, articulating each syllable so as to shew that, in
+spite of her having to translate them into indirect speech, she was
+repeating, as a good servant should, the very words which the new
+visitor had condescended to use, said: "His reverence the Cur� would be
+delighted, enchanted, if Mme. Octave is not resting just now, and
+could see him. His reverence does not wish to disturb Mme. Octave. His
+reverence is downstairs; I told him to go into the parlour."
+
+Had the truth been known, the Cur�'s visits gave my aunt no such
+ecstatic pleasure as Fran�oise supposed, and the air of jubilation with
+which she felt bound to illuminate her face whenever she had to announce
+his arrival, did not altogether correspond to what was felt by her
+invalid. The Cur� (an excellent man, with whom I am sorry now that I did
+not converse more often, for, even if he cared nothing for the arts,
+he knew a great many etymologies), being in the habit of shewing
+distinguished visitors over his church (he had even planned to compile
+a history of the Parish of Combray), used to weary her with his endless
+explanations, which, incidentally, never varied in the least degree.
+But when his visit synchronized exactly with Eulalie's it became frankly
+distasteful to my aunt. She would have preferred to make the most of
+Eulalie, and not to have had the whole of her circle about her at one
+time. But she dared not send the Cur� away, and had to content herself
+with making a sign to Eulalie not to leave when he did, so that she
+might have her to herself for a little after he had gone.
+
+"What is this I have been hearing, Father, that a painter has set up his
+easel in your church, and is copying one of the windows? Old as I am,
+I can safely say that I have never even heard of such a thing in all my
+life! What is the world coming to next, I wonder! And the ugliest thing
+in the whole church, too."
+
+"I will not go so far as to say that it is quite the ugliest, for,
+although there are certain things in Saint-Hilaire which are well worth
+a visit, there are others that are very old now, in my poor basilica,
+the only one in all the diocese that has never even been restored.
+The Lord knows, our porch is dirty and out of date; still, it is of a
+majestic character; take, for instance, the Esther tapestries, though
+personally I would not give a brass farthing for the pair of them, but
+experts put them next after the ones at Sens. I can quite see, too, that
+apart from certain details which are--well, a trifle realistic, they
+shew features which testify to a genuine power of observation. But don't
+talk to me about the windows. Is it common sense, I ask you, to leave
+up windows which shut out all the daylight, and even confuse the eyes by
+throwing patches of colour, to which I should be hard put to it to give
+a name, on a floor in which there are not two slabs on the same level?
+And yet they refuse to renew the floor for me because, if you please,
+those are the tombstones of the Abbots of Combray and the Lords of
+Guermantes, the old Counts, you know, of Brabant, direct ancestors of
+the present Duc de Guermantes, and of his Duchesse also, since she was a
+lady of the Guermantes family, and married her cousin." (My grandmother,
+whose steady refusal to take any interest in 'persons' had ended in
+her confusing all their names and titles, whenever anyone mentioned the
+Duchesse de Guermantes used to make out that she must be related to Mme.
+de Villeparisis. The whole family would then burst out laughing; and she
+would attempt to justify herself by harking back to some invitation to
+a christening or funeral: "I feel sure that there was a Guermantes in it
+somewhere." And for once I would side with the others, and against
+her, refusing to admit that there could be any connection between her
+school-friend and the descendant of Genevi�ve de Brabant.)
+
+"Look at Roussainville," the Cur� went on. "It is nothing more nowadays
+than a parish of farmers, though in olden times the place must have had
+a considerable importance from its trade in felt hats and clocks. (I
+am not certain, by the way, of the etymology of Roussainville. I
+should dearly like to think that the name was originally Rouville, from
+_Radulfi villa_, analogous, don't you see, to Ch�teauroux, _Castrum
+Radulfi_, but we will talk about that some other time.) Very well; the
+church there has superb windows, almost all quite modern, including that
+most imposing 'Entry of Louis-Philippe into Combray' which would be more
+in keeping, surely, at Combray itself, and which is every bit as good, I
+understand, as the famous windows at Chartres. Only yesterday I met Dr.
+Percepied's brother, who goes in for these things, and he told me that
+he looked upon it as a most beautiful piece of work. But, as I said to
+this artist, who, by the way, seems to be a most civil fellow, and is a
+regular virtuoso, it appears, with his brush; what on earth, I said to
+him, do you find so extraordinary in this window, which is, if anything,
+a little dingier than the rest?"
+
+"I am sure that if you were to ask his Lordship," said my aunt in
+a resigned tone, for she had begun to feel that she was going to be
+'tired,' "he would never refuse you a new window."
+
+"You may depend upon it, Mme. Octave," replied the Cur�. "Why, it was
+just his Lordship himself who started the outcry about the window, by
+proving that it represented Gilbert the Bad, a Lord of Guermantes and
+a direct descendant of Genevi�ve de Brabant, who was a daughter of the
+House of Guermantes, receiving absolution from Saint Hilaire."
+
+"But I don't see where Saint Hilaire comes in."
+
+"Why yes, have you never noticed, in the corner of the window, a lady in
+a yellow robe? Very well, that is Saint Hilaire, who is also known, you
+will remember, in certain parts of the country as Saint Illiers, Saint
+H�lier, and even, in the Jura, Saint Ylie. But these various corruptions
+of _Sanctus Hilarius_ are by no means the most curious that have
+occurred in the names of the blessed Saints. Take, for example, my good
+Eulalie, the case of your own patron, _Sancta Eulalia_; do you know what
+she has become in Burgundy? Saint Eloi, nothing more nor less! The lady
+has become a gentleman. Do you hear that, Eulalie, after you are dead
+they will make a man of you!"
+
+"Father will always have his joke."
+
+"Gilbert's brother, Charles the Stammerer, was a pious prince, but,
+having early in life lost his father, Pepin the Mad, who died as a
+result of his mental infirmity, he wielded the supreme power with all
+the arrogance of a man who has not been subjected to discipline in his
+youth, so much so that, whenever he saw a man in a town whose face
+he did not remember, he would massacre the whole place, to the last
+inhabitant. Gilbert, wishing to be avenged on Charles, caused the church
+at Combray to be burned down, the original church, that was, which
+Th�odebert, when he and his court left the country residence he had near
+here, at Thiberzy (which is, of course, _Theodeberiacus_), to go out
+and fight the Burgundians, had promised to build over the tomb of Saint
+Hilaire if the Saint brought him; victory. Nothing remains of it now
+but the crypt, into which Th�odore has probably taken you, for Gilbert
+burned all the rest. Finally, he defeated the unlucky Charles with the
+aid of William" which the Cur� pronounced "Will'am" "the Conqueror,
+which is why so many English still come to visit the place. But he
+does not appear to have managed to win the affection of the people of
+Combray, for they fell upon him as he was coming out from mass, and cut
+off his head. Th�odore has a little book, that he lends people, which
+tells you the whole story.
+
+"But what is unquestionably the most remarkable thing about our church
+is the view from the belfry, which is full of grandeur. Certainly in
+your case, since you are not very strong, I should never recommend you:
+to climb our seven and ninety steps, just half the number they have in
+the famous cathedral at Milan. It is quite tiring enough for the most
+active person, especially as you have to go on your hands and knees, if
+you don't wish to crack your skull, and you collect all the cobwebs off
+the staircase upon your clothes. In any case you should be well wrapped
+up," he went on, without noticing my aunt's fury at the mere suggestion
+that she could ever, possibly, be capable of climbing into his belfry,
+"for there's a strong breeze there, once you get to the top. Some people
+even assure me that they have felt the chill of death up there. No
+matter, on Sundays there are always clubs and societies, who come,
+some of them, long distances to admire our beautiful panorama, and they
+always go home charmed. Wait now, next Sunday, if the weather holds, you
+will be sure to find a lot of people there, for Rogation-tide. You must
+admit, certainly, that the view from up there is like a fairy-tale, with
+what you might call vistas along the plain, which have quite a special
+charm of their own. On a clear day you can see as far as Verneuil. And
+then another thing; you can see at the same time places which you are in
+the habit of seeing one without the other, as, for instance, the course
+of the Vivonne and the ditches at Saint-Assise-l�s-Combray, which
+are separated, really, by a screen of tall trees; or, to take another
+example, there are all the canals at Jouy-le-Vicomte, which is
+_Gaudiacus vicecomitis_, as of course you know. Each time that I have
+been to Jouy I have seen a bit of a canal in one place, and then I have
+turned a corner and seen another, but when I saw the second I could no
+longer see the first. I tried in vain to imagine how they lay by one
+another; it was no good. But, from the top of Saint-Hilaire, it's quite
+another matter; the whole countryside is spread out before you like a
+map. Only, you cannot make out the water; you would say that there were
+great rifts in the town, slicing it up so neatly that it looks like a
+loaf of bread which still holds together after it has been cut up. To
+get it all quite perfect you would have to be in both places at once; up
+here on the top of Saint-Hilaire and down there at Jouy-le-Vicomte."
+
+The Cur� had so much exhausted my aunt that no sooner had he gone than
+she was obliged to send away Eulalie also.
+
+"Here, my poor Eulalie," she said in a feeble voice, drawing a coin from
+a small purse which lay ready to her hand. "This is just something so
+that you shall not forget me in your prayers."
+
+"Oh, but, Mme. Octave, I don't think I ought to; you know very well
+that I don't come here for that!" So Eulalie would answer, with the
+same hesitation and the same embarrassment, every Sunday, as though
+each temptation were the first, and with a look of displeasure which
+enlivened my aunt and never offended her, for if it so happened that
+Eulalie, when she took the money, looked a little less sulky than usual,
+my aunt would remark afterwards, "I cannot think what has come over
+Eulalie; I gave her just the trifle I always give, and she did not look
+at all pleased."
+
+"I don't think she has very much to complain of, all the same,"
+Fran�oise would sigh grimly, for she had a tendency to regard as petty
+cash all that my aunt might give her for herself or her children, and as
+treasure riotously squandered on a pampered and ungrateful darling the
+little coins slipped, Sunday by Sunday, into Eulalie's hand, but so
+discreetly passed that Fran�oise never managed to see them. It was
+not that she wanted to have for herself the money my aunt bestowed
+on Eulalie. She already enjoyed a sufficiency of all that my
+aunt possessed, in the knowledge that the wealth of the mistress
+automatically ennobled and glorified the maid in the eyes of the world;
+and that she herself was conspicuous and worthy to be praised throughout
+Combray, Jouy-le-Vicomte, and other cities of men, on account of my
+aunt's many farms, her frequent and prolonged visits from the Cur�, and
+the astonishing number of bottles of Vichy water which she consumed.
+Fran�oise was avaricious only for my aunt; had she had control over
+my aunt's fortune (which would have more than satisfied her highest
+ambition) she would have guarded it from the assaults of strangers with
+a maternal ferocity. She would, however, have seen no great harm in what
+my aunt, whom she knew to be incurably generous, allowed herself to give
+away, had she given only to those who were already rich. Perhaps
+she felt that such persons, not being actually in need of my aunt's
+presents, could not be suspected of simulating affection for her on
+that account. Besides, presents offered to persons of great wealth and
+position, such as Mme. Sazerat, M. Swann, M. Legrandin and Mme. Goupil,
+to persons of the 'same class' as my aunt, and who would naturally
+'mix with her,' seemed to Fran�oise to be included among the ornamental
+customs of that strange and brilliant life led by rich people, who
+hunted and shot, gave balls and paid visits, a life which she would
+contemplate with an admiring smile. But it was by no means the same
+thing if, for this princely exchange of courtesies, my aunt substituted
+mere charity, if her beneficiaries were of the class which Fran�oise
+would label "people like myself," or "people no better than myself,"
+people whom she despised even more if they did not address her always
+as "Mme. Fran�oise," just to shew that they considered themselves to be
+'not as good.' And when she saw that, despite all her warnings, my aunt
+continued to do exactly as she pleased, and to fling money away with
+both hands (or so, at least, Fran�oise believed) on undeserving objects,
+she began to find that the presents she herself received from my aunt
+were very tiny compared to the imaginary riches squandered upon
+Eulalie, There was not, in the neighbourhood of Combray, a farm of such
+prosperity and importance that Fran�oise doubted Eulalie's ability to
+buy it, without thinking twice, out of the capital which her visits to
+my aunt had 'brought in.' It must be added that Eulalie had formed an
+exactly similar estimate of the vast and secret hoards of Fran�oise.
+So, every Sunday, after Eulalie had gone, Fran�oise would mercilessly
+prophesy her coming downfall. She hated Eulalie, but was at the same
+time afraid of her, and so felt bound, when Eulalie was there, to 'look
+pleasant.' But she would make up for that after the other's departure;
+never, it is true, alluding to her by name, but hinting at her in
+Sibylline oracles, or in utterances of a comprehensive character, like
+those of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher, but so worded that their special
+application could not escape my aunt. After peering out at the side of
+the curtain to see whether Eulalie had shut the front-door behind her;
+"Flatterers know how to make themselves welcome, and to gather up the
+crumbs; but have patience, have patience; our God is a jealous God, and
+one fine day He will be avenged upon them!" she would declaim, with the
+sidelong, insinuating glance of Joash, thinking of Athaliah alone when
+he says that the
+
+            ....prosperity
+  Of wicked men runs like a torrent past,
+  And soon is spent.
+
+But on this memorable afternoon, when the Cur� had come as well, and
+by his interminable visit had drained my aunt's strength, Fran�oise
+followed Eulalie from the room, saying: "Mme. Octave, I will leave you
+to rest; you look utterly tired out."
+
+And my aunt answered her not a word, breathing a sigh so faint that
+it seemed it must prove her last, and lying there with closed eyes, as
+though already dead. But hardly had Fran�oise arrived downstairs, when
+four peals of a bell, pulled with the utmost violence, reverberated
+through the house, and my aunt, sitting erect upon her bed, called out:
+"Has Eulalie gone yet? Would you believe it; I forgot to ask her whether
+Mme. Goupil arrived in church before the Elevation. Run after her,
+quick!"
+
+But Fran�oise returned alone, having failed to overtake Eulalie. "It
+is most provoking," said my aunt, shaking her head. "The one important
+thing that I had to ask her."
+
+In this way life went by for my aunt L�onie, always the same, in the
+gentle uniformity of what she called, with a pretence of deprecation
+but with a deep tenderness, her 'little jog-trot.' Respected by all
+and sundry, not merely in her own house, where every one of us, having
+learned the futility of recommending any healthier mode of life, had
+become gradually resigned to its observance, but in the village as well,
+where, three streets away, a tradesman who had to hammer nails into a
+packing-case would send first to Fran�oise to make sure that my aunt
+was not 'resting'--her 'little jog-trot' was, none the less, brutally
+disturbed on one occasion in this same year. Like a fruit hidden among
+its leaves, which has grown and ripened unobserved by man, until it
+falls of its own accord, there came upon us one night the kitchen-maid's
+confinement. Her pains were unbearable, and, as there was no midwife
+in Combray, Fran�oise had to set off before dawn to fetch one from
+Thiberzy. My aunt was unable to 'rest,' owing to the cries of the girl,
+and as Fran�oise, though the distance was nothing, was very late in
+returning, her services were greatly missed. And so, in the course of
+the morning, my mother said to me: "Run upstairs, and see if your aunt
+wants anything."
+
+I went into the first of her two rooms, and through the open door of the
+other saw my aunt lying on her side, asleep. I could hear her breathing,
+in what was almost distinguishable as a snore. I was just going to slip
+away when something, probably the sound of my entry, interrupted her
+sleep, and made it 'change speed,' as they say of motorcars nowadays,
+for the music of her snore broke off for a second and began again on a
+lower note; then she awoke, and half turned her face, which I could see
+for the first time; a kind of horror was imprinted on it; plainly she
+had just escaped from some terrifying dream. She could not see me from
+where she was lying, and I stood there not knowing whether I ought to go
+forward or to retire; but all at once she seemed to return to a sense
+of reality, and to grasp the falsehood of the visions that had terrified
+her; a smile of joy, a pious act of thanksgiving to God, Who is pleased
+to grant that life shall be less cruel than our dreams, feebly illumined
+her face, and, with the habit she had formed of speaking to herself,
+half-aloud, when she thought herself alone, she murmured: "The Lord be
+praised! We have nothing to disturb us here but the kitchen-maid's baby.
+And I've been dreaming that my poor Octave had come back to life, and
+was trying to make me take a walk every day!" She stretched out a hand
+towards her rosary, which was lying on the small table, but sleep was
+once again getting the mastery, and did not leave her the strength to
+reach it; she fell asleep, calm and contented, and I crept out of the
+room on tiptoe, without either her or anyone's else ever knowing, from
+that day to this, what I had seen and heard.
+
+When I say that, apart from such rare happenings as this confinement, my
+aunt's 'little jog-trot' never underwent any variation, I do not include
+those variations which, repeated at regular intervals and in identical
+form, did no more, really, than print a sort of uniform pattern upon
+the greater uniformity of her life. So, for instance, every Saturday, as
+Fran�oise had to go in the afternoon to market at Roussainville-le-Pin,
+the whole household would have to have luncheon an hour earlier. And my
+aunt had so thoroughly acquired the habit of this weekly exception to
+her general habits, that she clung to it as much as to the rest. She
+was so well 'routined' to it, as Fran�oise would say, that if, on a
+Saturday, she had had to wait for her luncheon until the regular hour,
+it would have 'upset' her as much as if she had had, on an ordinary
+day, to put her luncheon forward to its Saturday time. Incidentally this
+acceleration of luncheon gave Saturday, for all of us, an individual
+character, kindly and rather attractive. At the moment when, ordinarily,
+there was still an hour to be lived through before meal-time sounded,
+we would all know that in a few seconds we should see the endives
+make their precocious appearance, followed by the special favour of an
+omelette, an unmerited steak. The return of this asymmetrical Saturday
+was one of those petty occurrences, intra-mural, localised, almost
+civic, which, in uneventful lives and stable orders of society, create a
+kind of national unity, and become the favourite theme for conversation,
+for pleasantries, for anecdotes which can be embroidered as the narrator
+pleases; it would have provided a nucleus, ready-made, for a legendary
+cycle, if any of us had had the epic mind. At daybreak, before we were
+dressed, without rhyme or reason, save for the pleasure of proving the
+strength of our solidarity, we would call to one another good-humoredly,
+cordially, patriotically, "Hurry up; there's no time to be lost; don't
+forget, it's Saturday!" while my aunt, gossiping with Fran�oise, and
+reflecting that the day would be even longer than usual, would say, "You
+might cook them a nice bit of veal, seeing that it's Saturday." If, at
+half-past ten, some one absent-mindedly pulled out a watch and said, "I
+say, an hour-and-a-half still before luncheon," everyone else would
+be in ecstasies over being able to retort at once: "Why, what are you
+thinking about? Have you for-gotten that it's Saturday?" And a quarter
+of an hour later we would still be laughing, and reminding ourselves to
+go up and tell aunt L�onie about this absurd mistake, to amuse her. The
+very face of the sky appeared to undergo a change. After luncheon the
+sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the
+zenith, and when some one, thinking that we were late in starting for
+our walk, said, "What, only two o'clock!" feeling the heavy throb go by
+him of the twin strokes from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire (which as
+a rule passed no one at that hour upon the highways, deserted for the
+midday meal or for the nap which follows it, or on the banks of the
+bright and ever-flowing stream, which even the angler had abandoned, and
+so slipped unaccompanied into the vacant sky, where only a few loitering
+clouds remained to greet them) the whole family would respond in chorus:
+"Why, you're forgetting; we had luncheon an hour earlier; you know very
+well it's Saturday."
+
+The surprise of a 'barbarian' (for so we termed everyone who was not
+acquainted with Saturday's special customs) who had called at eleven
+o'clock to speak to my father, and had found us at table, was an event
+which used to cause Fran�oise as much merriment as, perhaps, anything
+that had ever happened in her life. And if she found it amusing that the
+nonplussed visitor should not have known, beforehand, that we had our
+luncheon an hour earlier on Saturday, it was still more irresistibly
+funny that my father himself (fully as she sympathised, from the bottom
+of her heart, with the rigid chauvinism which prompted him) should never
+have dreamed that the barbarian could fail to be aware of so simple a
+matter, and so had replied, with no further enlightenment of the
+other's surprise at seeing us already in the dining-room: "You see, it's
+Saturday." On reaching this point in the story, Fran�oise would pause to
+wipe the tears of merriment from her eyes, and then, to add to her own
+enjoyment, would prolong the dialogue, inventing a further reply for
+the visitor to whom the word 'Saturday' had conveyed nothing. And so far
+from our objecting to these interpolations, we would feel that the story
+was not yet long enough, and would rally her with: "Oh, but surely he
+said something else as well. There was more than that, the first time
+you told it."
+
+My great-aunt herself would lay aside her work, and raise her head and
+look on at us over her glasses.
+
+The day had yet another characteristic feature, namely, that during May
+we used to go out on Saturday evenings after dinner to the 'Month of
+Mary' devotions.
+
+As we were liable, there, to meet M. Vinteuil, who held very strict
+views on "the deplorable untidiness of young people, which seems to
+be encouraged in these days," my mother would first see that there was
+nothing out of order in my appearance, and then we would set out for
+the church. It was in these 'Month of Mary' services that I can remember
+having first fallen in love with hawthorn-blossom. The hawthorn was not
+merely in the church, for there, holy ground as it was, we had all of us
+a right of entry; but, arranged upon the altar itself, inseparable from
+the mysteries in whose celebration it was playing a part, it thrust in
+among the tapers and the sacred vessels its rows of branches, tied to
+one another horizontally in a stiff, festal scheme of decoration; and
+they were made more lovely still by the scalloped outline of the dark
+leaves, over which were scattered in profusion, as over a bridal train,
+little clusters of buds of a dazzling whiteness. Though I dared not look
+at them save through my fingers, I could feel that the formal scheme
+was composed of living things, and that it was Nature herself who, by
+trimming the shape of the foliage, and by adding the crowning ornament
+of those snowy buds, had made the decorations worthy of what was at
+once a public rejoicing and a solemn mystery. Higher up on the altar,
+a flower had opened here and there with a careless grace, holding so
+unconcernedly, like a final, almost vaporous bedizening, its bunch of
+stamens, slender as gossamer, which clouded the flower itself in a
+white mist, that in following these with my eyes, in trying to imitate,
+somewhere inside myself, the action of their blossoming, I imagined it
+as a swift and thoughtless movement of the head with an enticing glance
+from her contracted pupils, by a young girl in white, careless and
+alive.
+
+M. Vinteuil had come in with his daughter and had sat down beside us.
+He belonged to a good family, and had once been music-master to
+my grandmother's sisters; so that when, after losing his wife and
+inheriting some property, he had retired to the neighbourhood of
+Combray, we used often to invite him to our house. But with his intense
+prudishness he had given up coming, so as not to be obliged to meet
+Swann, who had made what he called "a most unsuitable marriage, as
+seems to be the fashion in these days." My mother, on hearing that he
+'composed,' told him by way of a compliment that, when she came to see
+him, he must play her something of his own. M. Vinteuil would have liked
+nothing better, but he carried politeness and consideration for others
+to so fine a point, always putting himself in their place, that he was
+afraid of boring them, or of appearing egotistical, if he carried out,
+or even allowed them to suspect what were his own desires. On the day
+when my parents had gone to pay him a visit, I had accompanied them,
+but they had allowed me to remain outside, and as M. Vinteuil's house,
+Montjouvain, stood on a site actually hollowed out from a steep hill
+covered with shrubs, among which I took cover, I had found myself on a
+level with his drawing-room, upstairs, and only a few feet away from its
+window. When a servant came in to tell him that my parents had arrived,
+I had seen M. Vinteuil run to the piano and lay out a sheet of music
+so as to catch the eye. But as soon as they entered the room he had
+snatched it away and hidden it in a corner. He was afraid, no doubt, of
+letting them suppose that he was glad to see them only because it gave
+him a chance of playing them some of his compositions. And every time
+that my mother, in the course of her visit, had returned to the subject
+of his playing, he had hurriedly protested: "I cannot think who put that
+on the piano; it is not the proper place for it at all," and had turned
+the conversation aside to other topics, simply because those were of
+less interest to himself.
+
+His one and only passion was for his daughter, and she, with her
+somewhat boyish appearance, looked so robust that it was hard to
+restrain a smile when one saw the precautions her father used to take
+for her health, with spare shawls always in readiness to wrap around
+her shoulders. My grandmother had drawn our attention to the gentle,
+delicate, almost timid expression which might often be caught flitting
+across the face, dusted all over with freckles, of this otherwise stolid
+child. When she had spoken, she would at once take her own words in the
+sense in which her audience must have heard them, she would be alarmed
+at the possibility of a misunderstanding, and one would see, in clear
+outline, as though in a transparency, beneath the mannish face of the
+'good sort' that she was, the finer features of a young woman in tears.
+
+When, before turning to leave the church, I made a genuflection before
+the altar, I felt suddenly, as I rose again, a bitter-sweet fragrance of
+almonds steal towards me from the hawthorn-blossom, and I then noticed
+that on the flowers themselves were little spots of a creamier colour,
+in which I imagined that this fragrance must lie concealed, as the taste
+of an almond cake lay in the burned parts, or the sweetness of Mlle.
+Vinteuil's cheeks beneath their freckles. Despite the heavy, motionless
+silence of the hawthorns, these gusts of fragrance came to me like
+the murmuring of an intense vitality, with which the whole altar was
+quivering like a roadside hedge explored by living antennae, of which I
+was reminded by seeing some stamens, almost red in colour, which seemed
+to have kept the springtime virulence, the irritant power of stinging
+insects now transmuted into flowers.
+
+Outside the church we would stand talking for a moment with M. Vinteuil,
+in the porch. Boys would be chevying one another in the Square, and he
+would interfere, taking the side of the little ones and lecturing the
+big. If his daughter said, in her thick, comfortable voice, how glad she
+had been to see us, immediately it would seem as though some elder and
+more sensitive sister, latent in her, had blushed at this thoughtless,
+schoolboyish utterance, which had, perhaps, made us think that she was
+angling for an invitation to the house. Her father would then arrange
+a cloak over her shoulders, they would clamber into a little dog-cart
+which she herself drove, and home they would both go to Montjouvain.
+As for ourselves, the next day being Sunday, with no need to be up and
+stirring before high mass, if it was a moonlight night and warm, then,
+instead of taking us home at once, my father, in his thirst for personal
+distinction, would lead us on a long walk round by the Calvary, which my
+mother's utter incapacity for taking her bearings, or even for knowing
+which road she might be on, made her regard as a triumph of his
+strategic genius. Sometimes we would go as far as the viaduct, which
+began to stride on its long legs of stone at the railway station, and
+to me typified all the wretchedness of exile beyond the last outposts of
+civilisation, because every year, as we came down from Paris, we would
+be warned to take special care, when we got to Combray, not to miss
+the station, to be ready before the train stopped, since it would start
+again in two minutes and proceed across the viaduct, out of the lands of
+Christendom, of which Combray, to me, represented the farthest limit.
+We would return by the Boulevard de la Gare, which contained the most
+attractive villas in the town. In each of their gardens the moonlight,
+copying the art of Hubert Robert, had scattered its broken staircases
+of white marble, its fountains of water and gates temptingly ajar. Its
+beams had swept away the telegraph office. All that was left of it was
+a column, half shattered, but preserving the beauty of a ruin which
+endures for all time. I would by now be dragging my weary limbs, and
+ready to drop with sleep; the balmy scent of the lime-trees seemed a
+consolation which I could obtain only at the price of great suffering
+and exhaustion, and not worthy of the effort. From gates far apart
+the watchdogs, awakened by our steps in the silence, would set up
+an antiphonal barking, as I still hear them bark, at times, in the
+evenings, and it is in their custody (when the public gardens of Combray
+were constructed on its site) that the Boulevard de la Gare must
+have taken refuge, for wherever I may be, as soon as they begin their
+alternate challenge and acceptance, I can see it again with all its
+lime-trees, and its pavement glistening beneath the moon.
+
+Suddenly my father would bring us to a standstill and ask my
+mother--"Where are we?" Utterly worn out by the walk but still proud of
+her husband, she would lovingly confess that she had not the least
+idea. He would shrug his shoulders and laugh. And then, as though it had
+slipped, with his latchkey, from his waistcoat pocket, he would point
+out to us, when it stood before our eyes, the back-gate of our own
+garden, which had come hand-in-hand with the familiar corner of the Rue
+du Saint-Esprit, to await us, to greet us at the end of our wanderings
+over paths unknown. My mother would murmur admiringly "You really are
+wonderful!" And from that instant I had not to take another step; the
+ground moved forward under my feet in that garden where, for so long,
+my actions had ceased to require any control, or even attention, from my
+will. Custom came to take me in her arms, carried me all the way up to
+my bed, and laid me down there like a little child.
+
+Although Saturday, by beginning an hour earlier, and by depriving her
+of the services of Fran�oise, passed more slowly than other days for my
+aunt, yet, the moment it was past, and a new week begun, she would look
+forward with impatience to its return, as something that embodied all
+the novelty and distraction which her frail and disordered body was
+still able to endure. This was not to say, however, that she did not
+long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not
+pass through those abnormal hours in which one thirsts for something
+different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of
+energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in
+themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, in
+their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion
+(even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which prosperity has
+silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again
+by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when
+the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue its
+impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled
+desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its guiding reins
+into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be, cruel. Of
+course, since my aunt's strength, which was completely drained by the
+slightest exertion, returned but drop by drop into the pool of her
+repose, the reservoir was very slow in filling, and months would go by
+before she reached that surplus which other people use up in their daily
+activities, but which she had no idea--and could never decide how to
+employ. And I have no doubt that then--just as a desire to have her
+potatoes served with b�chamel sauce, for a change, would be formed,
+ultimately, from the pleasure she found in the daily reappearance of
+those mashed potatoes of which she was never 'tired'--she would extract
+from the accumulation of those monotonous days (on which she so much
+depended) a keen expectation of some domestic cataclysm, instantaneous
+in its happening, but violent enough to compel her to put into effect,
+once for all, one of those changes which she knew would be beneficial to
+her health, but to which she could never make up her mind without some
+such stimulus. She was genuinely fond of us; she would have enjoyed the
+long luxury of weeping for our untimely decease; coming at a moment when
+she felt 'well' and was not in a perspiration, the news that the house
+was being destroyed by a fire, in which all the rest of us had already
+perished, a fire which, in a little while, would not leave one stone
+standing upon another, but from which she herself would still have
+plenty of time to escape without undue haste, provided that she rose
+at once from her bed, must often have haunted her dreams, as a prospect
+which combined with the two minor advantages of letting her taste the
+full savour of her affection for us in long years of mourning, and of
+causing universal stupefaction in the village when she should sally
+forth to conduct our obsequies, crushed but courageous, moribund but
+erect, the paramount and priceless boon of forcing her at the right
+moment, with no time to be lost, no room for weakening hesitations, to
+go off and spend the summer at her charming farm of Mirougrain, where
+there was a waterfall. Inasmuch as nothing of this sort had ever
+occurred, though indeed she must often have pondered the success of
+such a manoeuvre as she lay alone absorbed in her interminable games of
+patience (and though it must have plunged her in despair from the first
+moment of its realisation, from the first of those little unforeseen
+facts, the first word of calamitous news, whose accents can never
+afterwards be expunged from the memory, everything that bears upon it
+the imprint of actual, physical death, so terribly different from the
+logical abstraction of its possibility) she would fall back from time
+to time, to add an interest to her life, upon imagining other, minor
+catastrophes, which she would follow up with passion. She would beguile
+herself with a sudden suspicion that Fran�oise had been robbing her,
+that she had set a trap to make certain, and had caught her betrayer
+red-handed; and being in the habit, when she made up a game of cards by
+herself, of playing her own and her adversary's hands at once, she would
+first stammer out Fran�oise's awkward apologies, and then reply to them
+with such a fiery indignation that any of us who happened to intrude
+upon her at one of these moments would find her bathed in perspiration,
+her eyes blazing, her false hair pushed awry and exposing the baldness
+of her brows. Fran�oise must often, from the next room, have heard these
+mordant sarcasms levelled at herself, the mere framing of which in words
+would not have relieved my aunt's feelings sufficiently, had they been
+allowed to remain in a purely immaterial form, without the degree
+of substance and reality which she added to them by murmuring them
+half-aloud. Sometimes, however, even these counterpane dramas would not
+satisfy my aunt; she must see her work staged. And so, on a Sunday,
+with all the doors mysteriously closed, she would confide in Eulalie her
+doubts of Fran�oise's integrity and her determination to be rid of her,
+and on another day she would confide in Fran�oise her suspicions of the
+disloyalty of Eulalie, to whom the front-door would very soon be closed
+for good. A few days more, and, disgusted with her latest confidant, she
+would again be 'as thick as thieves' with the traitor, while, before the
+next performance, the two would once more have changed their parts. But
+the suspicions which Eulalie might occasionally breed in her were no
+more than a fire of straw, which must soon subside for lack of fuel,
+since Eulalie was not living with her in the house. It was a very
+different matter when the suspect was Fran�oise, of whose presence under
+the same roof as herself my aunt was perpetually conscious, while for
+fear of catching cold, were she to leave her bed, she would never dare
+go downstairs to the kitchen to see for herself whether there was,
+indeed, any foundation for her suspicions. And so on by degrees, until
+her mind had no other occupation than to attempt, at every hour of the
+day, to discover what was being done, what was being concealed from her
+by Fran�oise. She would detect the most furtive movement of Fran�oise's
+features, something contradictory in what she was saying, some desire
+which she appeared to be screening. And she would shew her that she was
+unmasked, by, a single word, which made Fran�oise turn pale, and which
+my aunt seemed to find a cruel satisfaction in driving into her unhappy
+servant's heart. And the very next Sunday a disclosure by Eulalie--like
+one of those discoveries which suddenly open up an unsuspected field
+for exploration to some new science which has hitherto followed only
+the beaten paths--proved to my aunt that her own worst suspicions fell
+a long way short of the appalling truth. "But Fran�oise ought to know
+that," said Eulalie, "now that you have given her a carriage."
+
+"Now that I have given her a carriage!" gasped my aunt.
+
+"Oh, but I didn't know; I only thought so; I saw her go by yesterday in
+her open coach, as proud as Artaban, on her way to Roussainville market.
+I supposed that it must be Mme. Octave who had given it to her."
+
+So on by degrees, until Fran�oise and my aunt, the quarry and the
+hunter, could never cease from trying to forestall each other's devices.
+My mother was afraid lest Fran�oise should develop a genuine hatred of
+my aunt, who was doing everything in her power to annoy her. However
+that might be, Fran�oise had come, more and more, to pay an infinitely
+scrupulous attention to my aunt's least word and gesture. When she had
+to ask her for anything she would hesitate, first, for a long time,
+making up her mind how best to begin. And when she had uttered her
+request, she would watch my aunt covertly, trying to guess from the
+expression on her face what she thought of it, and how she would reply.
+And in this way--whereas an artist who had been reading memoirs of the
+seventeenth century, and wished to bring himself nearer to the great
+Louis, would consider that he was making progress in that direction when
+he constructed a pedigree that traced his own descent from some historic
+family, or when he engaged in correspondence with one of the reigning
+Sovereigns of Europe, and so would shut his eyes to the mistake he was
+making in seeking to establish a similarity by an exact and therefore
+lifeless copy of mere outward forms--a middle-aged lady in a small
+country town, by doing no more than yield whole-hearted obedience to her
+own irresistible eccentricities, and to a spirit of mischief engendered
+by the utter idleness of her existence, could see, without ever having
+given a thought to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily
+life, her morning toilet, her luncheon, her afternoon nap, assume, by
+virtue of their despotic singularity, something of the interest that was
+to be found in what Saint-Simon used to call the 'machinery' of life at
+Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence,
+a shade of good humour or of arrogance on her features, would provide
+Fran�oise with matter for a mental commentary as tense with passion and
+terror, as did the silence, the good humour or the arrogance of the King
+when a courtier, or even his greatest nobles, had presented a petition
+to him, at the turning of an avenue, at Versailles.
+
+One Sunday, when my aunt had received simultaneous visits from the Cur�
+and from Eulalie, and had been left alone, afterwards, to rest, the
+whole family went upstairs to bid her good night, and Mamma ventured
+to condole with her on the unlucky coincidence that always brought both
+visitors to her door at the same time.
+
+"I hear that things went wrong again to-day, L�onie," she said kindly,
+"you have had all your friends here at once."
+
+And my great-aunt interrupted with: "Too many good things..." for, since
+her daughter's illness, she felt herself in duty bound to revive her as
+far as possible by always drawing her attention to the brighter side of
+things. But my father had begun to speak.
+
+"I should like to take advantage," he said, "of the whole family's being
+here together, to tell you a story, so as not to have to begin all over
+again to each of you separately. I am afraid we are in M. Legrandin's
+bad books; he would hardly say 'How d'ye do' to me this morning."
+
+I did not wait to hear the end of my father's story, for I had been with
+him myself after mass when we had passed M. Legrandin; instead, I went
+downstairs to the kitchen to ask for the bill of fare for our dinner,
+which was of fresh interest to me daily, like the news in a paper, and
+excited me as might the programme of a coming festivity.
+
+As M. Legrandin had passed close by us on our way from church,
+walking by the side of a lady, the owner of a country house in the
+neighbourhood, whom we knew only by sight, my father had saluted him in
+a manner at once friendly and reserved, without stopping in his walk; M.
+Legrandin had barely acknowledged the courtesy, and then with an air of
+surprise, as though he had not recognised us, and with that distant look
+characteristic of people who do not wish to be agreeable, and who from
+the suddenly receding depths of their eyes seem to have caught sight of
+you at the far end of an interminably straight road, and at so great
+a distance that they content themselves with directing towards you
+an almost imperceptible movement of the head, in proportion to your
+doll-like dimensions.
+
+Now, the lady who was walking with Legrandin was a model of virtue,
+known and highly respected; there could be no question of his being
+out for amorous adventure, and annoyed at being detected; and my father
+asked himself how he could possibly have displeased our friend.
+
+"I should be all the more sorry to feel that he was angry with us," he
+said, "because among all those people in their Sunday clothes there
+is something about him, with his little cut-away coat and his soft
+neckties, so little 'dressed-up,' so genuinely simple; an air of
+innocence, almost, which is really attractive."
+
+But the vote of the family council was unanimous, that my father had
+imagined the whole thing, or that Legrandin, at the moment in question,
+had been preoccupied in thinking about something else. Anyhow, my
+father's fears were dissipated no later than the following evening.
+As we returned from a long walk we saw, near the Pont-Vieux, Legrandin
+himself, who, on account of the holidays, was spending a few days more
+in Combray. He came up to us with outstretched hand: "Do you know,
+master book-lover," he asked me, "this line of Paul Desjardins?
+
+
+  Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.
+
+Is not that a fine rendering of a moment like this? Perhaps you have
+never read Paul Desjardins. Read him, my boy, read him; in these days he
+is converted, they tell me, into a preaching friar, but he used to have
+the most charming water-colour touch--
+
+
+  Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.
+
+May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even
+when the time comes, which is coming now for me, when the woods are all
+black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself,
+as I am doing, by looking up to the sky." He took a cigarette from
+his pocket and stood for a long time, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
+"Goodbye, friends!" he suddenly exclaimed, and left us.
+
+At the hour when I usually went downstairs to find out what there was
+for dinner, its preparation would already have begun, and Fran�oise,
+a colonel with all the forces of nature for her subalterns, as in the
+fairy-tales where giants hire themselves out as scullions, would be
+stirring the coals, putting the potatoes to steam, and, at the right
+moment, finishing over the fire those culinary masterpieces which had
+been first got ready in some of the great array of vessels, triumphs of
+the potter's craft, which ranged from tubs and boilers and cauldrons
+and fish kettles down to jars for game, moulds for pastry, and tiny
+pannikins for cream, and included an entire collection of pots and
+pans of every shape and size. I would stop by the table, where the
+kitchen-maid had shelled them, to inspect the platoons of peas, drawn up
+in ranks and numbered, like little green marbles, ready for a game; but
+what fascinated me would be the asparagus, tinged with ultramarine
+and rosy pink which ran from their heads, finely stippled in mauve and
+azure, through a series of imperceptible changes to their white
+feet, still stained a little by the soil of their garden-bed: a
+rainbow-loveliness that was not of this world. I felt that these
+celestial hues indicated the presence of exquisite creatures who had
+been pleased to assume vegetable form, who, through the disguise which
+covered their firm and edible flesh, allowed me to discern in this
+radiance of earliest dawn, these hinted rainbows, these blue evening
+shades, that precious quality which I should recognise again when, all
+night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played
+(lyrical and coarse in their jesting as the fairies in Shakespeare's
+_Dream_) at transforming my humble chamber into a bower of aromatic
+perfume.
+
+Poor Giotto's Charity, as Swann had named her, charged by Fran�oise with
+the task of preparing them for the table, would have them lying beside
+her in a basket; sitting with a mournful air, as though all the sorrows
+of the world were heaped upon her; and the light crowns of azure which
+capped the asparagus shoots above their pink jackets would be finely and
+separately outlined, star by star, as in Giotto's fresco are the flowers
+banded about the brows, or patterning the basket of his Virtue at Padua.
+And, meanwhile, Fran�oise would be turning on the spit one of those
+chickens, such as she alone knew how to roast, chickens which had wafted
+far abroad from Combray the sweet savour of her merits, and which, while
+she was serving them to us at table, would make the quality of kindness
+predominate for the moment in my private conception of her character;
+the aroma of that cooked flesh, which she knew how to make so unctuous
+and so tender, seeming to me no more than the proper perfume of one of
+her many virtues.
+
+But the day on which, while my father took counsel with his family upon
+our strange meeting with Legrandin, I went down to the kitchen, was one
+of those days when Giotto's Charity, still very weak and ill after her
+recent confinement, had been unable to rise from her bed; Fran�oise,
+being without assistance, had fallen into arrears. When I went in, I saw
+her in the back-kitchen which opened on to the courtyard, in process of
+killing a chicken; by its desperate and quite natural resistance, which
+Fran�oise, beside herself with rage as she attempted to slit its throat
+beneath the ear, accompanied with shrill cries of "Filthy creature!
+Filthy creature!" it made the saintly kindness and unction of our
+servant rather less prominent than it would do, next day at dinner, when
+it made its appearance in a skin gold-embroidered like a chasuble, and
+its precious juice was poured out drop by drop as from a pyx. When it
+was dead Fran�oise mopped up its streaming blood, in which, however,
+she did not let her rancour drown, for she gave vent to another burst
+of rage, and, gazing down at the carcass of her enemy, uttered a final
+"Filthy creature!"
+
+I crept out of the kitchen and upstairs, trembling all over; I could
+have prayed, then, for the instant dismissal of Fran�oise. But who
+would have baked me such hot rolls, boiled me such fragrant coffee, and
+even--roasted me such chickens? And, as it happened, everyone else had
+already had to make the same cowardly reckoning. For my aunt L�onie knew
+(though I was still in ignorance of this) that Fran�oise, who, for her
+own daughter or for her nephews, would have given her life without a
+murmur, shewed a singular implacability in her dealings with the rest
+of the world. In spite of which my aunt still retained her, for, while
+conscious of her cruelty, she could appreciate her services. I began
+gradually to realise that Fran�oise's kindness, her compunction, the
+sum total of her virtues concealed many of these back-kitchen tragedies,
+just as history reveals to us that the reigns of the kings and queens
+who are portrayed as kneeling with clasped hands in the windows of
+churches, were stained by oppression and bloodshed. I had taken note of
+the fact that, apart from her own kinsfolk, the sufferings of humanity
+inspired in her a pity which increased in direct ratio to the distance
+separating the sufferers from herself. The tears which flowed from her
+in torrents when she read of the misfortunes of persons unknown to her,
+in a newspaper, were quickly stemmed once she had been able to form a
+more accurate mental picture of the victims. One night, shortly after
+her confinement, the kitchen-maid was seized with the most appalling
+pains; Mamma heard her groans, and rose and awakened Fran�oise, who,
+quite unmoved, declared that all the outcry was mere malingering, that
+the girl wanted to 'play the mistress' in the house. The doctor, who
+had been afraid of some such attack, had left a marker in a medical
+dictionary which we had, at the page on which the symptoms were
+described, and had told us to turn up this passage, where we would find
+the measures of 'first aid' to be adopted. My mother sent Fran�oise
+to fetch the book, warning her not to let the marker drop out. An hour
+elapsed, and Fran�oise had not returned; my mother, supposing that
+she had gone back to bed, grew vexed, and told me to go myself to the
+bookcase and fetch the volume. I did so, and there found Fran�oise who,
+in her curiosity to know what the marker indicated, had begun to read
+the clinical account of these after-pains, and was violently sobbing,
+now that it was a question of a type of illness with which she was not
+familiar. At each painful symptom mentioned by the writer she would
+exclaim: "Oh, oh, Holy Virgin, is it possible that God wishes any
+wretched human creature to suffer so? Oh, the poor girl!"
+
+But when I had called her, and she had returned to the bedside of
+Giotto's Charity, her tears at once ceased to flow; she could find no
+stimulus for that pleasant sensation of tenderness and pity which she
+very well knew, having been moved to it often enough by the perusal
+of newspapers; nor any other pleasure of the same kind in her sense of
+weariness and irritation at being pulled out of bed in the middle of
+the night for the kitchen-maid; so that at the sight of those very
+sufferings, the printed account of which had moved her to tears, she
+had nothing to offer but ill-tempered mutterings, mingled with bitter
+sarcasm, saying, when she thought that we had gone out of earshot:
+"Well, she need never have done what she must have done to bring all
+this about! She found that pleasant enough, I dare say! She had better
+not put on any airs now. All the same, he must have been a god-forsaken
+young man to go after _that_. Dear, dear, it's just as they used to say
+in my poor mother's country:
+
+
+  Snaps and snails and puppy-dogs' tails,
+    And dirty sluts in plenty,
+  Smell sweeter than roses in young men's noses
+    When the heart is one-and-twenty."
+
+Although, when her grandson had a slight cold in his head, she would set
+off at night, even if she were ill also, instead of going to bed, to
+see whether he had everything that he wanted, covering ten miles on foot
+before daybreak so as to be in time to begin her work, this same love
+for her own people, and her desire to establish the future greatness of
+her house on a solid foundation reacted, in her policy with regard to
+the other servants, in one unvarying maxim, which was never to let any
+of them set foot in my aunt's room; indeed she shewed a sort of pride
+in not allowing anyone else to come near my aunt, preferring, when she
+herself was ill, to get out of bed and to administer the Vichy water in
+person, rather than to concede to the kitchen-maid the right of entry
+into her mistress's presence. There is a species of hymenoptera,
+observed by Fabre, the burrowing wasp, which in order to provide a
+supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls
+in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive
+cruelty, and, having made a collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds
+with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which
+their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions)
+depends, so that the paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid,
+will furnish the larva, when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive
+quarry, incapable either of flight or of resistance, but perfectly fresh
+for the larder: in the same way Fran�oise had adopted, to minister
+to her permanent and unfaltering resolution to render the house
+uninhabitable to any other servant, a series of crafty and pitiless
+stratagems. Many years later we discovered that, if we had been fed on
+asparagus day after day throughout that whole season, it was because the
+smell of the plants gave the poor kitchen-maid, who had to prepare them,
+such violent attacks of asthma that she was finally obliged to leave my
+aunt's service.
+
+Alas! we had definitely to alter our opinion of M. Legrandin. On one
+of the Sundays following our meeting with him on the Pont-Vieux, after
+which my father had been forced to confess himself mistaken, as mass
+drew to an end, and, with the sunshine and the noise of the outer world,
+something else invaded the church, an atmosphere so far from sacred that
+Mme. Goupil, Mme. Percepied (all those, in fact, who a moment ago, when
+I arrived a little late, had been sitting motionless, their eyes fixed
+on their prayer-books; who, I might even have thought, had not seen
+me come in, had not their feet moved slightly to push away the little
+kneeling-desk which was preventing me from getting to my chair) began in
+loud voices to discuss with us all manner of utterly mundane topics, as
+though we were already outside in the Square, we saw, standing on the
+sun-baked steps of the porch, dominating the many-coloured tumult of the
+market, Legrandin himself, whom the husband of the lady we had seen with
+him, on the previous occasion, was just going to introduce to the wife
+of another large landed proprietor of the district. Legrandin's face
+shewed an extraordinary zeal and animation; he made a profound bow, with
+a subsidiary backward movement which brought his spine sharply up into a
+position behind its starting-point, a gesture in which he must have
+been trained by the husband of his sister, Mme. de Cambremer. This rapid
+recovery caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin's
+hips, which I had not supposed to be so fleshy; I cannot say why, but
+this undulation of pure matter, this wholly carnal fluency, with not the
+least hint in it of spiritual significance, this wave lashed to a fury
+by the wind of an assiduity, an obsequiousness of the basest sort, awoke
+my mind suddenly to the possibility of a Legrandin altogether different
+from the one whom we knew. The lady gave him some message for her
+coachman, and while he was stepping down to her carriage the impression
+of joy, timid and devout, which the introduction had stamped there,
+still lingered on his face. Carried away in a sort of dream, he smiled,
+then he began to hurry back towards the lady; he was walking faster than
+usual, and his shoulders swayed backwards and forwards, right and left,
+in the most absurd fashion; altogether he looked, so utterly had he
+abandoned himself to it, ignoring all other considerations, as though he
+were the lifeless and wire-pulled puppet of his own happiness. Meanwhile
+we were coming out through the porch; we were passing close beside him;
+he was too well bred to turn his head away; but he fixed his eyes, which
+had suddenly changed to those of a seer, lost in the profundity of his
+vision, on so distant a point of the horizon that he could not see us,
+and so had not to acknowledge our presence. His face emerged, still with
+an air of innocence, from his straight and pliant coat, which looked
+as though conscious of having been led astray, in spite of itself,
+and plunged into surroundings of a detested splendour. And a spotted
+necktie, stirred by the breezes of the Square, continued to float in
+front of Legrandin, like the standard of his proud isolation, of his
+noble independence. Just as we reached the house my mother discovered
+that we had forgotten the 'Saint-Honor�,' and asked my father to go
+back with me and tell them to send it up at once. Near the church we met
+Legrandin, coming towards us with the same lady, whom he was escorting
+to her carriage. He brushed past us, and did not interrupt what he was
+saying to her, but gave us, out of the corner of his blue eye, a little
+sign, which began and ended, so to speak, inside his eyelids, and as
+it did not involve the least movement of his facial muscles, managed to
+pass quite unperceived by the lady; but, striving to compensate by the
+intensity of his feelings for the somewhat restricted field in which
+they had to find expression, he made that blue chink, which was set
+apart for us, sparkle with all the animation of cordiality, which went
+far beyond mere playfulness, and almost touched the border-line of
+roguery; he subtilised the refinements of good-fellowship into a wink
+of connivance, a hint, a hidden meaning, a secret understanding, all the
+mysteries of complicity in a plot, and finally exalted his assurances
+of friendship to the level of protestations of affection, even of a
+declaration of love, lighting up for us, and for us alone, with a secret
+and languid flame invisible by the great lady upon his other side, an
+enamoured pupil in a countenance of ice.
+
+Only the day before he had asked my parents to send me to dine with him
+on this same Sunday evening. "Come and bear your aged friend company,"
+he had said to me. "Like the nosegay which a traveller sends us from
+some land to which we shall never go again, come and let me breathe from
+the far country of your adolescence the scent of those flowers of
+spring among which I also used to wander, many years ago. Come with
+the primrose, with the canon's beard, with the gold-cup; come with the
+stone-crop, whereof are posies made, pledges of love, in the Balzacian
+flora, come with that flower of the Resurrection morning, the Easter
+daisy, come with the snowballs of the guelder-rose, which begin to
+embalm with their fragrance the alleys of your great-aunt's garden ere
+the last snows of Lent are melted from its soil. Come with the glorious
+silken raiment of the lily, apparel fit for Solomon, and with the
+many-coloured enamel of the pansies, but come, above all, with the
+spring breeze, still cooled by the last frosts of winter, wafting apart,
+for the two butterflies' sake, that have waited outside all morning, the
+closed portals of the first Jerusalem rose."
+
+The question was raised at home whether, all things considered, I ought
+still to be sent to dine with M. Legrandin. But my grandmother refused
+to believe that he could have been impolite.
+
+"You admit yourself that he appears at church there, quite simply
+dressed, and all that; he hardly looks like a man of fashion." She added
+that; in any event, even if, at the worst, he had been intentionally
+rude, it was far better for us to pretend that we had noticed nothing.
+And indeed my father himself, though more annoyed than any of us by the
+attitude which Legrandin had adopted, may still have held in reserve a
+final uncertainty as to its true meaning. It was like every attitude
+or action which reveals a man's deep and hidden character; they bear
+no relation to what he has previously said, and we cannot confirm our
+suspicions by the culprit's evidence, for he will admit nothing; we are
+reduced to the evidence of our own senses, and we ask ourselves, in the
+face of this detached and incoherent fragment of recollection, whether
+indeed our senses have not been the victims of a hallucination; with
+the result that such attitudes, and these alone are of importance in
+indicating character, are the most apt to leave us in perplexity.
+
+I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house, by moonlight. "There
+is a charming quality, is there not," he said to me, "in this silence;
+for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist, whom you will read
+in time to come, claims that there is no remedy but silence and shadow.
+And see you this, my boy, there comes in all lives a time, towards which
+you still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of
+light, the light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the
+stillroom of darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what
+the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence."
+
+I could hear what M. Legrandin was saying; like everything that he said,
+it sounded attractive; but I was disturbed by the memory of a lady whom
+I had seen recently for the first time; and thinking, now that I
+knew that Legrandin was on friendly terms with several of the local
+aristocracy, that perhaps she also was among his acquaintance, I
+summoned up all my courage and said to him: "Tell me, sir, do you, by
+any chance, know the lady--the ladies of Guermantes?" and I felt glad
+because, in pronouncing the name, I had secured a sort of power over
+it, by the mere act of drawing it up out of my dreams and giving it an
+objective existence in the world of spoken things.
+
+But, at the sound of the word Guermantes, I saw in the middle of each of
+our friend's blue eyes a little brown dimple appear, as though they had
+been stabbed by some invisible pin-point, while the rest of his pupils,
+reacting from the shock, received and secreted the azure overflow.
+His fringed eyelids darkened, and drooped. His mouth, which had been
+stiffened and seared with bitter lines, was the first to recover, and
+smiled, while his eyes still seemed full of pain, like the eyes of a
+good-looking martyr whose body bristles with arrows.
+
+"No, I do not know them," he said, but instead of uttering so simple a
+piece of information, a reply in which there was so little that could
+astonish me, in the natural and conversational tone which would have
+befitted it, he recited it with a separate stress upon each word,
+leaning forward, bowing his head, with at once the vehemence which a man
+gives, so as to be believed, to a highly improbable statement (as though
+the fact that he did not know the Guermantes could be due only to some
+strange accident of fortune) and with the emphasis of a man who, finding
+himself unable to keep silence about what is to him a painful situation,
+chooses to proclaim it aloud, so as to convince his hearers that the
+confession he is making is one that causes him no embarrassment, but is
+easy, agreeable, spontaneous, that the situation in question, in this
+case the absence of relations with the Guermantes family, might very
+well have been not forced upon, but actually designed by Legrandin
+himself, might arise from some family tradition, some moral principle or
+mystical vow which expressly forbade his seeking their society.
+
+"No," he resumed, explaining by his words the tone in which they were
+uttered. "No, I do not know them; I have never wished to know them; I
+have always made a point of preserving complete independence; at heart,
+as you know, I am a bit of a Radical. People are always coming to me
+about it, telling me I am mistaken in not going to Guermantes, that I
+make myself seem ill-bred, uncivilised, an old bear. But that's not the
+sort of reputation that can frighten me; it's too true! In my heart
+of hearts I care for nothing in the world now but a few churches,
+books--two or three, pictures--rather more, perhaps, and the light of
+the moon when the fresh breeze of youth (such as yours) wafts to my
+nostrils the scent of gardens whose flowers my old eyes are not sharp
+enough, now, to distinguish."
+
+I did not understand very clearly why, in order to refrain from going
+to the houses of people whom one did not know, it should be necessary to
+cling to one's independence, nor how that could give one the appearance
+of a savage or a bear. But what I did understand was this, that
+Legrandin was not altogether truthful when he said that he cared only
+for churches, moonlight, and youth; he cared also, he cared a very
+great deal, for people who lived in country houses, and would be so much
+afraid, when in their company, of incurring their displeasure that he
+would never dare to let them see that he numbered, as well, among
+his friends middle-class people, the families of solicitors and
+stockbrokers, preferring, if the truth must be known, that it should
+be revealed in his absence, when he was out of earshot, that judgment
+should go against him (if so it must) by default: in a word, he was a
+snob. Of course he would never have admitted all or any of this in the
+poetical language which my family and I so much admired. And if I asked
+him, "Do you know the Guermantes family?" Legrandin the talker would
+reply, "No, I have never cared to know them." But unfortunately the
+talker was now subordinated to another Legrandin, whom he kept carefully
+hidden in his breast, whom he would never consciously exhibit, because
+this other could tell stories about our own Legrandin and about his
+snobbishness which would have ruined his reputation for ever; and this
+other Legrandin had replied to me already in that wounded look, that
+stiffened smile, the undue gravity of his tone in uttering those
+few words, in the thousand arrows by which our own Legrandin had
+instantaneously been stabbed and sickened, like a Saint Sebastian of
+snobbery:
+
+"Oh, how you hurt me! No, I do not know the Guermantes family. Do not
+remind me of the great sorrow of my life." And since this other,
+this irrepressible, dominant, despotic Legrandin, if he lacked our
+Legrandin's charming vocabulary, shewed an infinitely greater promptness
+in expressing himself, by means of what are called 'reflexes,' it
+followed that, when Legrandin the talker attempted to silence him, he
+would already have spoken, and it would be useless for our friend to
+deplore the bad impression which the revelations of his _alter ego_ must
+have caused, since he could do no more now than endeavour to mitigate
+them.
+
+This was not to say that M. Legrandin was anything but sincere when he
+inveighed against snobs. He could not (from his own knowledge, at least)
+be aware that he was one also, since it is only with the passions of
+others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to find out
+about our own can be no more than what other people have shewn us. Upon
+ourselves they react but indirectly, through our imagination, which
+substitutes for our actual, primary motives other, secondary motives,
+less stark and therefore more decent. Never had Legrandin's snobbishness
+impelled him to make a habit of visiting a duchess as such. Instead, it
+would set his imagination to make that duchess appear, in Legrandin's
+eyes, endowed with all the graces. He would be drawn towards the
+duchess, assuring himself the while that he was yielding to the
+attractions of her mind, and her other virtues, which the vile race of
+snobs could never understand. Only his fellow-snobs knew that he was
+of their number, for, owing to their inability to appreciate the
+intervening efforts of his imagination, they saw in close juxtaposition
+the social activities of Legrandin and their primary cause.
+
+At home, meanwhile, we had no longer any illusions as to M. Legrandin,
+and our relations with him had become much more distant. Mamma would be
+greatly delighted whenever she caught him red-handed in the sin, which
+he continued to call the unpardonable sin, of snobbery. As for my
+father, he found it difficult to take Legrandin's airs in so light, in
+so detached a spirit; and when there was some talk, one year, of sending
+me to spend the long summer holidays at Balbec with my grandmother,
+he said: "I must, most certainly, tell Legrandin that you are going to
+Balbec, to see whether he will offer you an introduction to his sister.
+He probably doesn't remember telling us that she lived within a mile of
+the place."
+
+My grandmother, who held that, when one went to the seaside, one ought
+to be on the beach from morning to night, to taste the salt breezes, and
+that one should not know anyone in the place, because calls and parties
+and excursions were so much time stolen from what belonged, by rights,
+to the sea-air, begged him on no account to speak to Legrandin of our
+plans; for already, in her mind's eye, she could see his sister, Mme. de
+Cambremer, alighting from her carriage at the door of our hotel just
+as we were on the point of going out fishing, and obliging us to remain
+indoors all afternoon to entertain her. But Mamma laughed her fears to
+scorn, for she herself felt that the danger was not so threatening, and
+that Legrandin would shew no undue anxiety to make us acquainted with
+his sister. And, as it happened, there was no need for any of us to
+introduce the subject of Balbec, for it was Legrandin himself who,
+without the least suspicion that we had ever had any intention of
+visiting those parts, walked into the trap uninvited one evening, when
+we met him strolling on the banks of the Vivonne.
+
+"There are tints in the clouds this evening, violets and blues, which
+are very beautiful, are they not, my friend?" he said to my father.
+"Especially a blue which is far more floral than atmospheric, a
+cineraria blue, which it is surprising to see in the sky. And that
+little pink cloud there, has it not just the tint of some flower, a
+carnation or hydrangea? Nowhere, perhaps, except on the shores of the
+English Channel, where Normandy merges into Brittany, have I been able
+to find such copious examples of what you might call a vegetable kingdom
+in the clouds. Down there, close to Balbec, among all those places which
+are still so uncivilised, there is a little bay, charmingly quiet, where
+the sunsets of the Auge Valley, those red-and-gold sunsets (which,
+all the same, I am very far from despising) seem commonplace and
+insignificant; for in that moist and gentle atmosphere these heavenly
+flower-beds will break into blossom, in a few moments, in the evenings,
+incomparably lovely, and often lasting for hours before they fade.
+Others shed their leaves at once, and then it is more beautiful still
+to see the sky strewn with the scattering of their innumerable petals,
+sulphurous yellow and rosy red. In that bay, which they call the Opal
+Bay, the golden sands appear more charming still from being fastened,
+like fair Andromeda, to those terrible rocks of the surrounding coast,
+to that funereal shore, famed for the number of its wrecks, where every
+winter many a brave vessel falls a victim to the perils of the sea.
+Balbec! the oldest bone in the geological skeleton that underlies our
+soil, the true Armor, the sea, the land's end, the accursed region
+which Anatole France--an enchanter whose works our young friend ought to
+read--has so well depicted, beneath its eternal fogs, as though it were
+indeed the land of the Cimmerians in the Odyssey. Balbec; yes, they
+are building hotels there now, superimposing them upon its ancient and
+charming soil, which they are powerless to alter; how delightful it is,
+down there, to be able to step out at once into regions so primitive and
+so entrancing."
+
+"Indeed! And do you know anyone at Balbec?" inquired my father. "This
+young man is just going to spend a couple of months there with his
+grandmother, and my wife too, perhaps."
+
+Legrandin, taken unawares by the question at a moment when he was
+looking directly at my father, was unable to turn aside his gaze, and so
+concentrated it with steadily increasing intensity--smiling mournfully
+the while--upon the eyes of his questioner, with an air of friendliness
+and frankness and of not being afraid to look him in the face, until he
+seemed to have penetrated my father's skull, as it had been a ball of
+glass, and to be seeing, at the moment, a long way beyond and behind it,
+a brightly coloured cloud, which provided him with a mental alibi, and
+would enable him to establish the theory that, just when he was
+being asked whether he knew anyone at Balbec, he had been thinking
+of something else, and so had not heard the question. As a rule these
+tactics make the questioner proceed to ask, "Why, what are you thinking
+about?" But my father, inquisitive, annoyed, and cruel, repeated: "Have
+you friends, then, in that neighbourhood, that you know Balbec so well?"
+
+In a final and desperate effort the smiling gaze of Legrandin struggled
+to the extreme limits of its tenderness, vagueness, candour, and
+distraction; then feeling, no doubt, that there was nothing left for it
+now but to answer, he said to us: "I have friends all the world over,
+wherever there are companies of trees, stricken but not defeated,
+which have come together to offer a common supplication, with pathetic
+obstinacy, to an inclement sky which has no mercy upon them."
+
+"That is not quite what I meant," interrupted my father, obstinate as
+a tree and merciless as the sky. "I asked you, in case anything should
+happen to my mother-in-law and she wanted to feel that she was not all
+alone down there, at the ends of the earth, whether you knew any of the
+people."
+
+"There as elsewhere, I know everyone and I know no one," replied
+Legrandin, who was by no means ready yet to surrender; "places I know
+well, people very slightly. But, down there, the places themselves seem
+to me just like people, rare and wonderful people, of a delicate quality
+which would have been corrupted and ruined by the gift of life. Perhaps
+it is a castle which you encounter upon the cliff's edge; standing there
+by the roadside, where it has halted to contemplate its sorrows before
+an evening sky, still rosy, through which a golden moon is climbing;
+while the fishing-boats, homeward bound, creasing the watered silk of
+the Channel, hoist its pennant at their mastheads and carry its colours.
+Or perhaps it is a simple dwelling-house that stands alone, ugly, if
+anything, timid-seeming but full of romance, hiding from every eye some
+imperishable secret of happiness and disenchantment. That land which
+knows not truth," he continued with Machiavellian subtlety, "that land
+of infinite fiction makes bad reading for any boy; and is certainly
+not what I should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is
+already so much inclined to melancholy, for a heart already predisposed
+to receive its impressions. Climates that breathe amorous secrets and
+futile regrets may agree with an old and disillusioned man like myself;
+but they must always prove fatal to a temperament which is still
+unformed. Believe me," he went on with emphasis, "the waters of that
+bay--more Breton than Norman--may exert a sedative influence, though
+even that is of questionable value, upon a heart which, like mine, is no
+longer unbroken, a heart for whose wounds there is no longer anything
+to compensate. But at your age, my boy, those waters are
+contra-indicated.... Good night to you, neighbours," he added, moving
+away from us with that evasive abruptness to which we were accustomed;
+and then, turning towards us, with a physicianly finger raised in
+warning, he resumed the consultation: "No Balbec before you are fifty!"
+he called out to me, "and even then it must depend on the state of the
+heart."
+
+My father spoke to him of it again, as often as we met him, and tortured
+him with questions, but it was labour in vain: like that scholarly
+swindler who devoted to the fabrication of forged palimpsests a wealth
+of skill and knowledge and industry the hundredth part of which would
+have sufficed to establish him in a more lucrative--but an honourable
+occupation, M. Legrandin, had we insisted further, would in the end have
+constructed a whole system of ethics, and a celestial geography of Lower
+Normandy, sooner than admit to us that, within a mile of Balbec, his own
+sister was living in her own house; sooner than find himself obliged
+to offer us a letter of introduction, the prospect of which would never
+have inspired him with such terror had he been absolutely certain--as,
+from his knowledge of my grandmother's character, he really ought to
+have been certain--that in no circumstances whatsoever would we have
+dreamed of making use of it.
+
+* * *
+
+We used always to return from our walks in good time to pay aunt L�onie
+a visit before dinner. In the first weeks of our Combray holidays, when
+the days ended early, we would still be able to see, as we turned
+into the Rue du Saint-Esprit, a reflection of the western sky from the
+windows of the house and a band of purple at the foot of the Calvary,
+which was mirrored further on in the pond; a fiery glow which,
+accompanied often by a cold that burned and stung, would associate
+itself in my mind with the glow of the fire over which, at that very
+moment, was roasting the chicken that was to furnish me, in place of the
+poetic pleasure I had found in my walk, with the sensual pleasures of
+good feeding, warmth and rest. But in summer, when we came back to the
+house, the sun would not have set; and while we were upstairs paying our
+visit to aunt L�onie its rays, sinking until they touched and lay along
+her window-sill, would there be caught and held by the large inner
+curtains and the bands which tied them back to the wall, and split and
+scattered and filtered; and then, at last, would fall upon and inlay
+with tiny flakes of gold the lemonwood of her chest-of-drawers,
+illuminating the room in their passage with the same delicate, slanting,
+shadowed beams that fall among the boles of forest trees. But on some
+days, though very rarely, the chest-of-drawers would long since have
+shed its momentary adornments, there would no longer, as we turned into
+the Rue du Saint-Esprit, be any reflection from the western sky burning
+along the line of window-panes; the pond beneath the Calvary would
+have lost its fiery glow, sometimes indeed had changed already to an
+opalescent pallor, while a long ribbon of moonlight, bent and broken
+and broadened by every ripple upon the water's surface, would be lying
+across it, from end to end. Then, as we drew near the house, we would
+make out a figure standing upon the doorstep, and Mamma would say to me:
+"Good heavens! There is Fran�oise looking out for us; your aunt must be
+anxious; that means we are late."
+
+And without wasting time by stopping to take off our 'things' we would
+fly upstairs to my aunt L�onie's room to reassure her, to prove to her
+by our bodily presence that all her gloomy imaginings were false, that,
+on the contrary, nothing had happened to us, but that we had gone the
+'Guermantes way,' and, good lord, when one took that walk, my aunt knew
+well enough that one could never say at what time one would be home.
+
+"There, Fran�oise," my aunt would say, "didn't I tell you that they must
+have gone the Guermantes way? Good gracious! They must be hungry! And
+your nice leg of mutton will be quite dried up now, after all the hours
+it's been waiting. What a time to come in! Well, and so you went the
+Guermantes way?"
+
+"But, Leonie, I supposed you knew," Mamma would answer. "I thought
+that Fran�oise had seen us go out by the little gate, through the
+kitchen-garden."
+
+For there were, in the environs of Combray, two 'ways' which we used to
+take for our walks, and so diametrically opposed that we would actually
+leave the house by a different door, according to the way we had chosen:
+the way towards M�s�glise-la-Vineuse, which we called also 'Swann's
+way,' because, to get there, one had to pass along the boundary of M.
+Swann's estate, and the 'Guermantes way.' Of M�s�glise-la-Vineuse, to
+tell the truth, I never knew anything more than the way there, and
+the strange people who would come over on Sundays to take the air in
+Combray, people whom, this time, neither my aunt nor any of us would
+'know at all,' and whom we would therefore assume to be 'people who must
+have come over from M�s�glise.' As for Guermantes, I was to know it well
+enough one day, but that day had still to come; and, during the whole
+of my boyhood, if M�s�glise was to me something as inaccessible as the
+horizon, which remained hidden from sight, however far one went, by the
+folds of a country which no longer bore the least resemblance to the
+country round Combray; Guermantes, on the other hand, meant no more than
+the ultimate goal, ideal rather than real, of the 'Guermantes way,' a
+sort of abstract geographical term like the North Pole or the Equator.
+And so to 'take the Guermantes way' in order to get to M�s�glise, or
+vice versa, would have seemed to me as nonsensical a proceeding as to
+turn to the east in order to reach the west. Since my father used always
+to speak of the 'M�s�glise way' as comprising the finest view of a plain
+that he knew anywhere, and of the 'Guermantes way' as typical of river
+scenery, I had invested each of them, by conceiving them in this way as
+two distinct entities, with that cohesion, that unity which belongs
+only to the figments of the mind; the smallest detail of either of
+them appeared to me as a precious thing, which exhibited the special
+excellence of the whole, while, immediately beside them, in the first
+stages of our walk, before we had reached the sacred soil of one or the
+other, the purely material roads, at definite points on which they
+were set down as the ideal view over a plain and the ideal scenery of a
+river, were no more worth the trouble of looking at them than, to a keen
+playgoer and lover of dramatic art, are the little streets which may
+happen to run past the walls of a theatre. But, above all, I set between
+them, far more distinctly than the mere distance in miles and yards and
+inches which separated one from the other, the distance that there was
+between the two parts of my brain in which I used to think of them, one
+of those distances of the mind which time serves only to lengthen, which
+separate things irremediably from one another, keeping them for ever
+upon different planes. And this distinction was rendered still more
+absolute because the habit we had of never going both ways on the same
+day, or in the course of the same walk, but the 'M�s�glise way' one time
+and the 'Guermantes way' another, shut them up, so to speak, far apart
+and unaware of each other's existence, in the sealed vessels--between
+which there could be no communication--of separate afternoons.
+
+When we had decided to go the 'M�s�glise way' we would start (without
+undue haste, and even if the sky were clouded over, since the walk was
+not very long, and did not take us too far from home), as though we were
+not going anywhere in particular, by the front-door of my aunt's house,
+which opened on to the Rue du Saint-Esprit. We would be greeted by
+the gunsmith, we would drop our letters into the box, we would tell
+Th�odore, from Fran�oise, as we passed, that she had run out of oil
+or coffee, and we would leave the town by the road which ran along the
+white fence of M. Swann's park. Before reaching it we would be met on
+our way by the scent of his lilac-trees, come out to welcome strangers.
+Out of the fresh little green hearts of their foliage the lilacs raised
+inquisitively over the fence of the park their plumes of white or purple
+blossom, which glowed, even in the shade, with the sunlight in which
+they had been bathed. Some of them, half-concealed by the little
+tiled house, called the Archers' Lodge, in which Swann's keeper lived,
+overtopped its gothic gable with their rosy minaret. The nymphs of
+spring would have seemed coarse and vulgar in comparison with these
+young houris, who retained, in this French garden, the pure and vivid
+colouring of a Persian miniature. Despite my desire to throw my arms
+about their pliant forms and to draw down towards me the starry locks
+that crowned their fragrant heads, we would pass them by without
+stopping, for my parents had ceased to visit Tansonville since Swann's
+marriage, and, so as not to appear to be looking into his park, we
+would, instead of taking the road which ran beside its boundary and then
+climbed straight up to the open fields, choose another way, which led in
+the same direction, but circuitously, and brought us out rather too far
+from home.
+
+One day my grandfather said to my 'father: "Don't you remember Swann's
+telling us yesterday that his wife and daughter had gone off to Rheims
+and that he was taking the opportunity of spending a day or two in
+Paris? We might go along by the park, since the ladies are not at home;
+that will make it a little shorter."
+
+We stopped for a moment by the fence. Lilac-time was nearly over; some
+of the trees still thrust aloft, in tall purple chandeliers, their tiny
+balls of blossom, but in many places among their foliage where, only
+a week before, they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam,
+these were now spent and shrivelled and discoloured, a hollow scum, dry
+and scentless. My grandfather pointed out to my father in what respects
+the appearance of the place was still the same, and how far it had
+altered since the walk that he had taken with old M. Swann, on the day
+of his wife's death; and he seized the opportunity to tell us, once
+again, the story of that walk.
+
+In front of us a path bordered with nasturtiums rose in the full glare
+of the sun towards the house. But to our right the park stretched away
+into the distance, on level ground. Overshadowed by the tall trees which
+stood close around it, an 'ornamental water' had been constructed by
+Swann's parents but, even in his most artificial creations, nature is
+the material upon which man has to work; certain spots will persist in
+remaining surrounded by the vassals of their own especial sovereignty,
+and will raise their immemorial standards among all the 'laid-out'
+scenery of a park, just as they would have done far from any human
+interference, in a solitude which must everywhere return to engulf
+them, springing up out of the necessities of their exposed position, and
+superimposing itself upon the work of man's hands. And so it was that,
+at the foot of the path which led down to this artificial lake, there
+might be seen, in its two tiers woven of trailing forget-me-nots below
+and of periwinkle flowers above, the natural, delicate, blue garland
+which binds the luminous, shadowed brows of water-nymphs; while the
+iris, its swords sweeping every way in regal profusion, stretched out
+over agrimony and water-growing king-cups the lilied sceptres, tattered
+glories of yellow and purple, of the kingdom of the lake.
+
+The absence of Mlle. Swann, which--since it preserved me from the
+terrible risk of seeing her appear on one of the paths, and of being
+identified and scorned by this so privileged little girl who had
+Bergotte for a friend and used to go with him to visit cathedrals--made
+the exploration of Tansonville, now for the first time permitted me, a
+matter of indifference to myself, seemed however to invest the property,
+in my grandfather's and father's eyes, with a fresh and transient charm,
+and (like an entirely cloudless sky when one is going mountaineering) to
+make the day extraordinarily propitious for a walk in this direction;
+I should have liked to see their reckoning proved false, to see, by a
+miracle, Mlle. Swann appear, with her father, so close to us that we
+should not have time to escape, and should therefore be obliged to make
+her acquaintance. And so, when I suddenly noticed a straw basket lying
+forgotten on the grass by the side of a line whose float was bobbing
+in the water, I made a great effort to keep my father and grandfather
+looking in another direction, away from this sign that she might, after
+all, be in residence. Still, as Swann had told us that he ought not,
+really, to go away just then, as he had some people staying in the
+house, the line might equally belong to one of these guests. Not a
+footstep was to be heard on any of the paths. Somewhere in one of the
+tall trees, making a stage in its height, an invisible bird, desperately
+attempting to make the day seem shorter, was exploring with a long,
+continuous note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it
+received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of
+silence and of immobility that, one would have said, it had arrested
+for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more
+quickly. The sunlight fell so implacably from a fixed sky that one was
+naturally inclined to slip away out of the reach of its attentions, and
+even the slumbering water, whose repose was perpetually being invaded by
+the insects that swarmed above its surface, while it dreamed, no doubt,
+of some imaginary maelstrom, intensified the uneasiness which the sight
+of that floating cork had wrought in me, by appearing to draw it at
+full speed across the silent reaches of a mirrored firmament; now almost
+vertical, it seemed on the point of plunging down out of sight, and
+I had begun to ask myself whether, setting aside the longing and the
+terror that I had of making her acquaintance, it was not actually my
+duty to warn Mlle. Swann that the fish was biting--when I was obliged
+to run after my father and grandfather, who were calling me, and were
+surprised that I had not followed them along the little path, climbing
+up hill towards the open fields, into which they had already turned. I
+found the whole path throbbing with the fragrance of hawthorn-blossom.
+The hedge resembled a series of chapels, whose walls were no longer
+visible under the mountains of flowers that were heaped upon their
+altars; while underneath, the sun cast a square of light upon the
+ground, as though it had shone in upon them through a window; the scent
+that swept out over me from them was as rich, and as circumscribed in
+its range, as though I had been standing before the Lady-altar, and
+the flowers, themselves adorned also, held out each its little bunch of
+glittering stamens with an air of inattention, fine, radiating 'nerves'
+in the flamboyant style of architecture, like those which, in church,
+framed the stair to the rood-loft or closed the perpendicular tracery
+of the windows, but here spread out into pools of fleshy white, like
+strawberry-beds in spring. How simple and rustic, in comparison with
+these, would seem the dog-roses which, in a few weeks' time, would be
+climbing the same hillside path in the heat of the sun, dressed in the
+smooth silk of their blushing pink bodices, which would be undone and
+scattered by the first breath of wind.
+
+But it was in vain that I lingered before the hawthorns, to breathe in,
+to marshal before my mind (which knew not what to make of it), to lose
+in order to rediscover their invisible and unchanging odour, to absorb
+myself in the rhythm which disposed their flowers here and there with
+the light-heartedness of youth, and at intervals as unexpected as
+certain intervals of music; they offered me an indefinite continuation
+of the same charm, in an inexhaustible profusion, but without letting
+me delve into it any more deeply, like those melodies which one can play
+over a hundred times in succession without coming any nearer to their
+secret. I turned away from them for a moment so as to be able to return
+to them with renewed strength. My eyes followed up the slope which,
+outside the hedge, rose steeply to the fields, a poppy that had strayed
+and been lost by its fellows, or a few cornflowers that had fallen
+lazily behind, and decorated the ground here and there with their
+flowers like the border of a tapestry, in which may be seen at intervals
+hints of the rustic theme which appears triumphant in the panel itself;
+infrequent still, spaced apart as the scattered houses which warn us
+that we are approaching a village, they betokened to me the vast expanse
+of waving corn beneath the fleecy clouds, and the sight of a single
+poppy hoisting upon its slender rigging and holding against the breeze
+its scarlet ensign, over the buoy of rich black earth from which it
+sprang, made my heart beat as does a wayfarer's when he perceives, upon
+some low-lying ground, an old and broken boat which is being caulked and
+made seaworthy, and cries out, although he has not yet caught sight of
+it, "The Sea!"
+
+And then I returned to my hawthorns, and stood before them as one stands
+before those masterpieces of painting which, one imagines, one will
+be better able to 'take in' when one has looked away, for a moment, at
+something else; but in vain did I shape my fingers into a frame, so as
+to have nothing but the hawthorns before my eyes; the sentiment which
+they aroused in me remained obscure and vague, struggling and failing
+to free itself, to float across and become one with the flowers. They
+themselves offered me no enlightenment, and I could not call upon any
+other flowers to satisfy this mysterious longing. And then, inspiring
+me with that rapture which we feel on seeing a work by our favourite
+painter quite different from any of those that we already know, or,
+better still, when some one has taken us and set us down in front of a
+picture of which we have hitherto seen no more than a pencilled sketch,
+or when a piece of music which we have heard played over on the piano
+bursts out again in our ears with all the splendour and fullness of an
+orchestra, my grandfather called me to him, and, pointing to the hedge
+of Tansonville, said: "You are fond of hawthorns; just look at this pink
+one; isn't it pretty?"
+
+And it was indeed a hawthorn, but one whose flowers were pink, and
+lovelier even than the white. It, too, was in holiday attire, for one of
+those days which are the only true holidays, the holy days of religion,
+because they are not appointed by any capricious accident, as secular
+holidays are appointed, upon days which are not specially ordained for
+such observances, which have nothing about them that is essentially
+festal--but it was attired even more richly than the rest, for the
+flowers which clung to its branches, one above another, so thickly as to
+leave no part of the tree undecorated, like the tassels wreathed about
+the crook of a rococo shepherdess, were every one of them 'in colour,'
+and consequently of a superior quality, by the aesthetic standards of
+Combray, to the 'plain,' if one was to judge by the scale of prices
+at the 'stores' in the Square, or at Camus's, where the most expensive
+biscuits were those whose sugar was pink. And for my own part I set a
+higher value on cream cheese when it was pink, when I had been allowed
+to tinge it with crushed strawberries. And these flowers had chosen
+precisely the colour of some edible and delicious thing, or of some
+exquisite addition to one's costume for a great festival, which colours,
+inasmuch as they make plain the reason for their superiority, are those
+whose beauty is most evident to the eyes of children, and for that
+reason must always seem more vivid and more natural than any other
+tints, even after the child's mind has realised that they offer no
+gratification to the appetite, and have not been selected by the
+dressmaker. And, indeed, I had felt at once, as I had felt before
+the white blossom, but now still more marvelling, that it was in no
+artificial manner, by no device of human construction, that the festal
+intention of these flowers was revealed, but that it was Nature herself
+who had spontaneously expressed it (with the simplicity of a woman from
+a village shop, labouring at the decoration of a street altar for some
+procession) by burying the bush in these little rosettes, almost too
+ravishing in colour, this rustic 'pompadour.' High up on the branches,
+like so many of those tiny rose-trees, their pots concealed in jackets
+of paper lace, whose slender stems rise in a forest from the altar on
+the greater festivals, a thousand buds were swelling and opening, paler
+in colour, but each disclosing as it burst, as at the bottom of a cup of
+pink marble, its blood-red stain, and suggesting even more strongly
+than the full-blown flowers the special, irresistible quality of the
+hawthorn-tree, which, wherever it budded, wherever it was about to
+blossom, could bud and blossom in pink flowers alone. Taking its place
+in the hedge, but as different from the rest as a young girl in holiday
+attire among a crowd of dowdy women in everyday clothes, who are staying
+at home, equipped and ready for the 'Month of Mary,' of which it seemed
+already to form a part, it shone and smiled in its cool, rosy garments,
+a Catholic bush indeed, and altogether delightful.
+
+The hedge allowed us a glimpse, inside the park, of an alley bordered
+with jasmine, pansies, and verbenas, among which the stocks held open
+their fresh plump purses, of a pink as fragrant and as faded as old
+Spanish leather, while on the gravel-path a long watering-pipe, painted
+green, coiling across the ground, poured, where its holes were, over the
+flowers whose perfume those holes inhaled, a vertical and prismatic fan
+of infinitesimal, rainbow-coloured drops. Suddenly I stood still, unable
+to move, as happens when something appears that requires not only our
+eyes to take it in, but involves a deeper kind of perception and takes
+possession of the whole of our being. A little girl, with fair, reddish
+hair, who appeared to be returning from a walk, and held a trowel in her
+hand, was looking at us, raising towards us a face powdered with pinkish
+freckles. Her black eyes gleamed, and as I did not at that time know,
+and indeed have never since learned how to reduce to its objective
+elements any strong impression, since I had not, as they say, enough
+'power of observation' to isolate the sense of their colour, for a long
+time afterwards, whenever I thought of her, the memory of those bright
+eyes would at once present itself to me as a vivid azure, since her
+complexion was fair; so much so that, perhaps, if her eyes had not been
+quite so black--which was what struck one most forcibly on first meeting
+her--I should not have been, as I was, especially enamoured of their
+imagined blue.
+
+I gazed at her, at first with that gaze which is not merely a messenger
+from the eyes, but in whose window all the senses assemble and lean out,
+petrified and anxious, that gaze which would fain reach, touch, capture,
+bear off in triumph the body at which it is aimed, and the soul with the
+body; then (so frightened was I lest at any moment my grandfather and
+father, catching sight of the girl, might tear me away from her, by
+making me run on in front of them) with another, an unconsciously
+appealing look, whose object was to force her to pay attention to me, to
+see, to know me. She cast a glance forwards and sideways, so as to take
+stock of my grandfather and father, and doubtless the impression she
+formed of them was that we were all absurd people, for she turned away
+with an indifferent and contemptuous air, withdrew herself so as to
+spare her face the indignity of remaining within their field of
+vision; and while they, continuing to walk on without noticing her, had
+overtaken and passed me, she allowed her eyes to wander, over the space
+that lay between us, in my direction, without any particular expression,
+without appearing to have seen me, but with an intensity, a half-hidden
+smile which I was unable to interpret, according to the instruction I
+had received in the ways of good breeding, save as a mark of infinite
+disgust; and her hand, at the same time, sketched in the air an
+indelicate gesture, for which, when it was addressed in public to a
+person whom one did not know, the little dictionary of manners which
+I carried in my mind supplied only one meaning, namely, a deliberate
+insult.
+
+"Gilberte, come along; what are you doing?" called out in a piercing
+tone of authority a lady in white, whom I had not seen until that
+moment, while, a little way beyond her, a gentleman in a suit of linen
+'ducks,' whom I did not know either, stared at me with eyes which seemed
+to be starting from his head; the little girl's smile abruptly faded,
+and, seizing her trowel, she made off without turning to look again in
+my direction, with an air of obedience, inscrutable and sly.
+
+And so was wafted to my ears the name of Gilberte, bestowed on me like a
+talisman which might, perhaps, enable me some day to rediscover her whom
+its syllables had just endowed with a definite personality, whereas, a
+moment earlier, she had been only something vaguely seen. So it came
+to me, uttered across the heads of the stocks and jasmines, pungent and
+cool as the drops which fell from the green watering-pipe; impregnating
+and irradiating the zone of pure air through which it had passed, which
+it set apart and isolated from all other air, with the mystery of the
+life of her whom its syllables designated to the happy creatures that
+lived and walked and travelled in her company; unfolding through the
+arch of the pink hawthorn, which opened at the height of my shoulder,
+the quintessence of their familiarity--so exquisitely painful to
+myself--with her, and with all that unknown world of her existence, into
+which I should never penetrate.
+
+For a moment (while we moved away, and my grandfather murmured: "Poor
+Swann, what a life they are leading him; fancy sending him away so
+that she can be left alone with her Charlus--for that was Charlus: I
+recognised him at once! And the child, too; at her age, to be mixed up
+in all that!") the impression left on me by the despotic tone in which
+Gilberte's mother had spoken to her, without her replying, by exhibiting
+her to me as being obliged to yield obedience to some one else, as not
+being indeed superior to the whole world, calmed my sufferings somewhat,
+revived some hope in me, and cooled the ardour of my love. But very soon
+that love surged up again in me like a reaction by which my humiliated
+heart was endeavouring to rise to Gilberte's level, or to draw her down
+to its own. I loved her; I was sorry not to have had the time and the
+inspiration to insult her, to do her some injury, to force her to keep
+some memory of me. I knew her to be so beautiful that I should have
+liked to be able to retrace my steps so as to shake my fist at her and
+shout, "I think you are hideous, grotesque; you are utterly disgusting!"
+However, I walked away, carrying with me, then and for ever afterwards,
+as the first illustration of a type of happiness rendered inaccessible
+to a little boy of my kind by certain laws of nature which it was
+impossible to transgress, the picture of a little girl with reddish
+hair, and a skin freckled with tiny pink marks, who held a trowel in
+her hand, and smiled as she directed towards me a long and subtle and
+inexpressive stare. And already the charm with which her name, like a
+cloud of incense, had filled that archway in the pink hawthorn through
+which she and I had, together, heard its sound, was beginning to
+conquer, to cover, to embalm, to beautify everything with which it had
+any association: her grandparents, whom my own had been so unspeakably
+fortunate as to know, the glorious profession of a stockholder, even
+the melancholy neighbourhood of the Champs-Elys�es, where she lived in
+Paris.
+
+"L�onie," said my grandfather on our return, "I wish we had had you with
+us this afternoon. You would never have known Tansonville. If I had had
+the courage I would have cut you a branch of that pink hawthorn you used
+to like so much." And so my grandfather told her the story of our walk,
+either just to amuse her, or perhaps because there was still some hope
+that she might be stimulated to rise from her bed and to go out of
+doors. For in earlier days she had been very fond of Tansonville, and,
+moreover, Swann's visits had been the last that she had continued to
+receive, at a time when she had already closed her doors to all the
+world. And just as, when he called, in these later days, to inquire for
+her (and she was still the only person in our household whom he would
+ask to see), she would send down to say that she was tired at the moment
+and resting, but that she would be happy to see him another time,
+so, this evening, she said to my grandfather, "Yes, some day when the
+weather is fine I shall go for a drive as far as the gate of the park."
+And in saying this she was quite sincere. She would have liked to see
+Swann and Tansonville again; but the mere wish to do so sufficed for all
+that remained of her strength, which its fulfilment would have more
+than exhausted. Sometimes a spell of fine weather made her a little more
+energetic, she would rise and put on her clothes; but before she had
+reached the outer room she would be 'tired' again, and would insist on
+returning to her bed. The process which had begun in her--and in her a
+little earlier only than it must come to all of us--was the great and
+general renunciation which old age makes in preparation for death, the
+chrysalis stage of life, which may be observed wherever life has been
+unduly prolonged; even in old lovers who have lived for one another with
+the utmost intensity of passion, and in old friends bound by the closest
+ties of mental sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make, the
+necessary journey, or even to cross the street to see one another, cease
+to correspond, and know well that they will communicate no more in this
+world. My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that she would not
+see Swann again, that she would never leave her own house any more, but
+this ultimate seclusion seemed to be accepted by her with all the more
+readiness for the very reason which, to our minds, ought to have made
+it more unbearable; namely, that such a seclusion was forced upon her by
+the gradual and steady diminution in her strength which she was able to
+measure daily, which, by making every action, every movement 'tiring' to
+her if not actually painful, gave to inaction, isolation and silence the
+blessed, strengthening and refreshing charm of repose.
+
+My aunt did not go to see the pink hawthorn in the hedge, but at all
+hours of the day I would ask the rest of my family whether she was
+not going to go, whether she used not, at one time, to go often to
+Tansonville, trying to make them speak of Mlle. Swann's parents and
+grandparents, who appeared to me to be as great and glorious as gods.
+The name, which had for me become almost mythological, of Swann--when I
+talked with my family I would grow sick with longing to hear them
+utter it; I dared not pronounce it myself, but I would draw them into a
+discussion of matters which led naturally to Gilberte and her family, in
+which she was involved, in speaking of which I would feel myself not too
+remotely banished from her company; and I would suddenly force my father
+(by pretending, for instance, to believe that my grandfather's business
+had been in our family before his day, or that the hedge with the pink
+hawthorn which my aunt L�onie wished to visit was on common ground) to
+correct my statements, to say, as though in opposition to me and of his
+own accord: "No, no, the business belonged to _Swann's_ father, that
+hedge is part of _Swann's_ park." And then I would be obliged to pause
+for breath; so stifling was the pressure, upon that part of me where it
+was for ever inscribed, of that name which, at the moment when I heard
+it, seemed to me fuller, more portentous than any other name, because
+it was burdened with the weight of all the occasions on which I had
+secretly uttered it in my mind. It caused me a pleasure which I was
+ashamed to have dared to demand from my parents, for so great was it
+that to have procured it for me must have involved them in an immensity
+of effort, and with no recompense, since for them there was no pleasure
+in the sound. And so I would prudently turn the conversation. And by
+a scruple of conscience, also. All the singular seductions which I had
+stored up in the sound of that word Swann, I found again as soon as it
+was uttered. And then it occurred to me suddenly that my parents could
+not fail to experience the same emotions, that they must find themselves
+sharing my point of view, that they perceived in their turn, that they
+condoned, that they even embraced my visionary longings, and I was as
+wretched as though I had ravished and corrupted the innocence of their
+hearts.
+
+That year my family fixed the day of their return to Paris rather
+earlier than usual. On the morning of our departure I had had my
+hair curled, to be ready to face the photographer, had had a new hat
+carefully set upon my head, and had been buttoned into a velvet jacket;
+a little later my mother, after searching everywhere for me, found me
+standing in tears on that steep little hillside close to Tansonville,
+bidding a long farewell to my hawthorns, clasping their sharp branches
+to my bosom, and (like a princess in a tragedy, oppressed by the weight
+of all her senseless jewellery) with no gratitude towards the officious
+hand which had, in curling those ringlets, been at pains to collect all
+my hair upon my forehead; trampling underfoot the curl-papers which I
+had torn from my head, and my new hat with them. My mother was not at
+all moved by my tears, but she could not suppress a cry at the sight of
+my battered headgear and my ruined jacket. I did not, however, hear her.
+"Oh, my poor little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it
+is not you that want to make me unhappy, to force me to leave you.
+You, you have never done me any harm. So I shall always love you." And,
+drying my eyes, I promised them that, when I grew up, I would never copy
+the foolish example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring
+days, instead of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I would make
+excursions into the country to see the first hawthorn-trees in bloom.
+
+Once in the fields we never left them again during the rest of our
+M�s�glise walk. They were perpetually crossed, as though by invisible
+streams of traffic, by the wind, which was to me the tutelary genius of
+Combray. Every year, on the day of our arrival, in order to feel that I
+really was at Combray, I would climb the hill to find it running again
+through my clothing, and setting me running in its wake. One always
+had the wind for companion when one went the 'M�s�glise way,' on
+that swelling plain which stretched, mile beyond mile, without any
+disturbance of its gentle contour. I knew that Mlle. Swann used often
+to go and spend a few days at Laon, and, for all that it was many
+miles away, the distance was obviated by the absence of any intervening
+obstacle; when, on hot afternoons, I would see a breath of wind emerge
+from the farthest horizon, bowing the heads of the corn in distant
+fields, pouring like a flood over all that vast expanse, and finally
+settling down, warm and rustling, among the clover and sainfoin at my
+feet, that plain which was common to us both seemed then to draw us
+together, to unite us; I would imagine that the same breath had passed
+by her also, that there was some message from her in what it was
+whispering to me, without my being able to understand it, and I would
+catch and kiss it as it passed. On my left was a village called Champieu
+(_Campus Pagani_, according to the Cur�). On my right I could see
+across the cornfields the two crocketed, rustic spires of
+Saint-Andr�-des-Champs, themselves as tapering, scaly, plated,
+honeycombed, yellowed, and roughened as two ears of wheat.
+
+At regular intervals, among the inimitable ornamentation of their
+leaves, which can be mistaken for those of no other fruit-tree, the
+apple-trees were exposing their broad petals of white satin, or hanging
+in shy bunches their unopened, blushing buds. It was while going
+the 'M�s�glise way' that I first noticed the circular shadow which
+apple-trees cast upon the sunlit ground, and also those impalpable
+threads of golden silk which the setting sun weaves slantingly downwards
+from beneath their leaves, and which I would see my father slash through
+with his stick without ever making them swerve from their straight path.
+
+Sometimes in the afternoon sky a white moon would creep up like a little
+cloud, furtive, without display, suggesting an actress who does not have
+to 'come on' for a while, and so goes 'in front' in her ordinary
+clothes to watch the rest of the company for a moment, but keeps in the
+background, not wishing to attract attention to herself. I was glad to
+find her image reproduced in books and paintings, though these works of
+art were very different--at least in my earlier years, before Bloch had
+attuned my eyes and mind to more subtle harmonies--from those in
+which the moon seems fair to me to-day, but in which I should not have
+recognised her then. It might be, for instance, some novel by Saintine,
+some landscape by Gleyre, in which she is cut out sharply against the
+sky, in the form of a silver sickle, some work as unsophisticated and
+as incomplete as were, at that date, my own impressions, and which it
+enraged my grandmother's sisters to see me admire. They held that one
+ought to set before children, and that children shewed their own innate
+good taste in admiring, only such books and pictures as they would
+continue to admire when their minds were developed and mature. No doubt
+they regarded aesthetic values as material objects which an unclouded
+vision could not fail to discern, without needing to have their
+equivalent in experience of life stored up and slowly ripening in one's
+heart.
+
+It was along the 'M�s�glise 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 shewn 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. Vinteuil assured them that it was, and indeed
+it is remarkable that people never fail to arouse admiration of their
+normal qualities in the relatives of anyone with whom they are in
+physical intercourse. Bodily passion, which has been so unjustly
+decried, compels its victims to display every vestige that is in them
+of unselfishness and generosity, and so effectively that they shine
+resplendent in the eyes of all beholders. Dr. Percepied, whose loud
+voice and bushy eyebrows enabled him to play to his heart's content the
+part of 'double-dealer,' a part to which he was not, otherwise, adapted,
+without in the least degree compromising his unassailable and quite
+unmerited reputation of being a kind-hearted old curmudgeon, could make
+the Cur� and everyone else laugh until they cried by saying in a harsh
+voice: "What d'ye say to this, now? It seems that she plays music with
+her friend, Mlle. Vinteuil. That surprises you, does it? Oh, I know
+nothing, nothing at all. It was Papa Vinteuil who told me all about
+it yesterday. After all, she has every right to be fond of music, that
+girl. I should never dream of thwarting the artistic vocation of a
+child; nor Vinteuil either, it seems. And then he plays music too,
+with his daughter's friend. Why, gracious heavens, it must be a regular
+musical box, that house out there! What are you laughing at? I say
+they've been playing too much music, those people. I met Papa Vinteuil
+the other day, by the cemetery. It was all he could do to keep on his
+feet."
+
+Anyone who, like ourselves, had seen M. Vinteuil, about this time,
+avoiding people whom he knew, and turning away as soon as he caught
+sight of them, changed in a few months into an old man, engulfed in a
+sea of sorrows, incapable of any effort not directly aimed at promoting
+his daughter's happiness, spending whole days beside his wife's grave,
+could hardly have failed to realise that he was gradually dying of a
+broken heart, could hardly have supposed that he paid no attention to
+the rumours which were going about. He knew, perhaps he even believed,
+what his neighbours were saying. There is probably no one, however rigid
+his virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of
+circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which
+he himself has been most outspoken in condemning, without at first
+recognising it beneath the disguise which it assumes on entering his
+presence, so as to wound him and to make him suffer; the odd words, the
+unaccountable attitude, one evening, of a person whom he has a thousand
+reasons for loving. But for a man of M. Vinteuil's sensibility it must
+have been far more painful than for a hardened man of the world to have
+to resign himself to one of those situations which are wrongly supposed
+to occur in Bohemian circles only; for they are produced whenever there
+needs to establish itself in the security necessary to its development a
+vice which Nature herself has planted in the soul of a child, perhaps by
+no more than blending the virtues of its father and mother, as she might
+blend the colours of their eyes. And yet however much M. Vinteuil
+may have known of his daughter's conduct it did not follow that his
+adoration of her grew any less. The facts of life do not penetrate to
+the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that
+engendered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them; they
+can aim at them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without
+weakening them; and an avalanche of miseries and maladies coming, one
+after another, without interruption into the bosom of a family, will not
+make it lose faith in either the clemency of its God or the capacity of
+its physician. But when M. Vinteuil regarded his daughter and himself
+from the point of view of the world, and of their reputation, when he
+attempted to place himself by her side in the rank which they occupied
+in the general estimation of their neighbours, then he was bound to give
+judgment, to utter his own and her social condemnation in precisely
+the terms which the inhabitant of Combray most hostile to him and his
+daughter would have employed; he saw himself and her in 'low,' in the
+very 'lowest water,' inextricably stranded; and his manners had of late
+been tinged with that humility, that respect for persons who ranked
+above him and to whom he must now look up (however far beneath him they
+might hitherto have been), that tendency to search for some means of
+rising again to their level, which is an almost mechanical result of any
+human misfortune.
+
+One day, when we were walking with Swann in one of the streets of
+Combray, M. Vinteuil, turning out of another street, found himself so
+suddenly face to face with us all that he had not time to escape; and
+Swann, with that almost arrogant charity of a man of the world who,
+amid the dissolution of all his own moral prejudices, finds in another's
+shame merely a reason for treating him with a friendly benevolence, the
+outward signs of which serve to enhance and gratify the self-esteem of
+the bestower because he feels that they are all the more precious to him
+upon whom they are bestowed, conversed at great length with M. Vinteuil,
+with whom for a long time he had been barely on speaking terms, and
+invited him, before leaving us, to send his daughter over, one day,
+to play at Tansonville. It was an invitation which, two years earlier,
+would have enraged M. Vinteuil, but which now filled him with so much
+gratitude that he felt himself obliged to refrain from the indiscretion
+of accepting. Swann's friendly regard for his daughter seemed to him to
+be in itself so honourable, so precious a support for his cause that he
+felt it would perhaps be better to make no use of it, so as to have the
+wholly Platonic satisfaction of keeping it in reserve.
+
+"What a charming man!" he said to us, after Swann had gone, with the
+same enthusiasm and veneration which make clever and pretty women of the
+middle classes fall victims to the physical and intellectual charms of a
+duchess, even though she be ugly and a fool. "What a charming man! What
+a pity that he should have made such a deplorable marriage!"
+
+And then, so strong an element of hypocrisy is there in even the most
+sincere of men, who cast off, while they are talking to anyone, the
+opinion they actually hold of him and will express when he is no longer
+there, my family joined with M. Vinteuil in deploring Swann's marriage,
+invoking principles and conventions which (all the more because they
+invoked them in common with him, as though we were all thorough good
+fellows of the same sort) they appeared to suggest were in no way
+infringed at Montjouvain. M. Vinteuil did not send his daughter to visit
+Swann, an omission which Swann was the first to regret. For constantly,
+after meeting M. Vinteuil, he would remember that he had been meaning
+for a long time to ask him about some one of the same name as himself,
+one of his relatives, Swann supposed. And on this occasion he determined
+that he would not forget what he had to say to him when M. Vinteuil
+should appear with his daughter at Tansonville.
+
+Since the 'M�s�glise way' was the shorter of the two that we used to
+take for our walks round Combray, and for that reason was reserved for
+days of uncertain weather, it followed that the climate of M�s�glise
+shewed an unduly high rainfall, and we would never lose sight of the
+fringe of Roussainville wood, so that we could, at any moment, run for
+shelter beneath its dense thatch of leaves.
+
+Often the sun would disappear behind a cloud, which impinged on its
+roundness, but whose edge the sun gilded in return. The brightness,
+though not the light of day, would then be shut off from a landscape
+in which all life appeared to be suspended, while the little village
+of Roussainville carved in relief upon the sky the white mass of its
+gables, with a startling precision of detail. A gust of wind blew from
+its perch a rook, which floated away and settled in the distance, while
+beneath a paling sky the woods on the horizon assumed a deeper tone of
+blue, as though they were painted in one of those cameos which you still
+find decorating the walls of old houses.
+
+But on other days would begin to fall the rain, of which we had had due
+warning from the little barometer-figure which the spectacle-maker hung
+out in his doorway. Its drops, like migrating birds which fly off in a
+body at a given moment, would come down out of the sky in close marching
+order. They would never drift apart, would make no movement at random in
+their rapid course, but each one, keeping in its place, would draw
+after it the drop which was following, and the sky would be as greatly
+darkened as by the swallows flying south. We would take refuge among the
+trees. And when it seemed that their flight was accomplished, a few last
+drops, feebler and slower than the rest, would still come down. But we
+would emerge from our shelter, for the rain was playing a game, now,
+among the branches, and, even when it was almost dry again underfoot, a
+stray drop or two, lingering in the hollow of a leaf, would run down and
+hang glistening from the point of it until suddenly it splashed plump
+upon our upturned faces from the whole height of the tree.
+
+Often, too, we would hurry for shelter, tumbling in among all its stony
+saints and patriarchs, into the porch of Saint-Andr�-des-Champs, How
+typically French that church was! Over its door the saints, the kings
+of chivalry with lilies in their hands, the wedding scenes and funerals
+were carved as they might have been in the mind of Fran�oise. The
+sculptor had also recorded certain anecdotes of Aristotle and Virgil,
+precisely as Fran�oise in her kitchen would break into speech about
+Saint Louis as though she herself had known him, generally in order to
+depreciate, by contrast with him, my grandparents, whom she considered
+less 'righteous.' One could see that the ideas which the mediaeval
+artist and the mediaeval peasant (who had survived to cook for us in
+the nineteenth century) had of classical and of early Christian history,
+ideas whose inaccuracy was atoned for by their honest simplicity, were
+derived not from books, but from a tradition at once ancient and direct,
+unbroken, oral, degraded, unrecognisable, and alive. Another Combray
+person whom I could discern also, potential and typified, in the gothic
+sculptures of Saint-Andr�-des-Champs was young Th�odore, the assistant
+in Camus's shop. And, indeed, Fran�oise herself was well aware that she
+had in him a countryman and contemporary, for when my aunt was too ill
+for Fran�oise to be able, unaided, to lift her in her bed or to carry
+her to her chair, rather than let the kitchen-maid come upstairs
+and, perhaps, 'make an impression' on my aunt, she would send out for
+Th�odore. And this lad, who was regarded, and quite rightly, in the town
+as a 'bad character,' was so abounding in that spirit which had served
+to decorate the porch of Saint-Andr�-des-Champs, and particularly in the
+feelings of respect due, in Fran�oise eyes, to all 'poor invalids,' and,
+above all, to her own 'poor mistress,' that he had, when he bent down
+to raise my aunt's head from her pillow, the same air of pr�rapha�lite
+simplicity and zeal which the little angels in the bas-reliefs wear, who
+throng, with tapers in their hands, about the deathbed of Our Lady, as
+though those carved faces of stone, naked and grey like trees in winter,
+were, like them, asleep only, storing up life and waiting to flower
+again in countless plebeian faces, reverend and cunning as the face of
+Th�odore, and glowing with the ruddy brilliance of ripe apples.
+
+There, too, not fastened to the wall like the little angels, but
+detached from the porch, of more than human stature, erect upon her
+pedestal as upon a footstool, which had been placed there to save her
+feet from contact with the wet ground, stood a saint with the full
+cheeks, the firm breasts which swelled out inside her draperies like
+a cluster of ripe grapes inside a bag, the narrow forehead, short and
+stubborn nose, deep-set eyes, and strong, thick-skinned, courageous
+expression of the country-women of those parts. This similarity, which
+imparted to the statue itself a kindliness that I had not looked to
+find in it, was corroborated often by the arrival of some girl from
+the fields, come, like ourselves, for shelter beneath the porch, whose
+presence there--as when the leaves of a climbing plant have grown up
+beside leaves carved in stone--seemed intended by fate to allow us, by
+confronting it with its type in nature, to form a critical estimate
+of the truth of the work of art. Before our eyes, in the distance, a
+promised or an accursed land, Roussainville, within whose walls I had
+never penetrated, Roussainville was now, when the rain had ceased for
+us, still being chastised, like a village in the Old Testament, by
+all the innumerable spears and arrows of the storm, which beat down
+obliquely upon the dwellings of its inhabitants, or else had already
+received the forgiveness of the Almighty, Who had restored to it the
+light of His sun, which fell upon it in rays of uneven length, like the
+rays of a monstrance upon an altar.
+
+Sometimes, when the weather had completely broken, we were obliged to go
+home and to remain shut up indoors. Here and there, in the distance, in
+a landscape which, what with the failing light and saturated atmosphere,
+resembled a seascape rather, a few solitary houses clinging to the lower
+slopes of a hill whose heights were buried in a cloudy darkness shone
+out like little boats which had folded their sails and would ride at
+anchor, all night, upon the sea. But what mattered rain or storm?
+In summer, bad weather is no more than a passing fit of superficial
+ill-temper expressed by the permanent, underlying fine weather; a very
+different thing from the fluid and unstable 'fine weather' of winter,
+its very opposite, in fact; for has it not (firmly established in the
+soil, on which it has taken solid form in dense masses of foliage over
+which the rain may pour in torrents without weakening the resistance
+offered by their real and lasting happiness) hoisted, to keep them
+flying throughout the season, in the village streets, on the walls of
+the houses and in their gardens, its silken banners, violet and white.
+Sitting in the little parlour, where I would pass the time until dinner
+with a book, I might hear the water dripping from our chestnut-trees,
+but I would know that the shower would only glaze and brighten the
+greenness of their thick, crumpled leaves, and that they themselves
+had undertaken to remain there, like pledges of summer, all through the
+rainy night, to assure me of the fine weather's continuing; it might
+rain as it pleased, but to-morrow, over the white fence of Tansonville,
+there would surge and flow, numerous as ever, a sea of little
+heart-shaped leaves; and without the least anxiety I could watch the
+poplar in the Rue des Perchamps praying for mercy, bowing in desperation
+before the storm; without the least anxiety I could hear, at the far end
+of the garden, the last peals of thunder growling among our lilac-trees.
+
+If the weather was bad all morning, my family would abandon the idea of
+a walk, and I would remain at home. But, later on, I formed the habit
+of going out by myself on such days, and walking towards
+M�s�glise-la-Vineuse, during that autumn when we had to come to Combray
+to settle the division of my aunt L�onie's estate; for she had died at
+last, leaving both parties among her neighbours triumphant in the
+fact of her demise--those who had insisted that her mode of life was
+enfeebling and must ultimately kill her, and, equally, those who had
+always maintained that she suffered from some disease not imaginary,
+but organic, by the visible proof of which the most sceptical would
+be obliged to own themselves convinced, once she had succumbed to it;
+causing no intense grief to any save one of her survivors, but to that
+one a grief savage in its violence. During the long fortnight of my
+aunt's last illness Fran�oise never went out of her room for an instant,
+never took off her clothes, allowed no one else to do anything for my
+aunt, and did not leave her body until it was actually in its grave.
+Then, at last, we understood that the sort of terror in which Fran�oise
+had lived of my aunt's harsh words, her suspicions and her anger, had
+developed in her a sentiment which we had mistaken for hatred, and which
+was really veneration and love. Her true mistress, whose decisions it
+had been impossible to foresee, from whose stratagems it had been
+so hard to escape, of whose good nature it had been so easy to take
+advantage, her sovereign, her mysterious and omnipotent monarch was no
+more. Compared with such a mistress we counted for very little. The
+time had long passed when, on our first coming to spend our holidays
+at Combray, we had been of equal importance, in Fran�oise eyes, with my
+aunt.
+
+During that autumn my parents, finding the days so fully occupied with
+the legal formalities that had to be gone through, and discussions with
+solicitors and farmers, that they had little time for walks which, as it
+happened, the weather made precarious, began to let me go, without them,
+along the 'M�s�glise way,' wrapped up in a huge Highland plaid which
+protected me from the rain, and which I was all the more ready to throw
+over my shoulders because I felt that the stripes of its gaudy tartan
+scandalised Fran�oise, whom it was impossible to convince that the
+colour of one's clothes had nothing whatever to do with one's mourning
+for the dead, and to whom the grief which we had shewn on my aunt's
+death was wholly unsatisfactory, since we had not entertained the
+neighbours to a great funeral banquet, and did not adopt a special tone
+when we spoke of her, while I at times might be heard humming a tune. I
+am sure that in a book--and to that extent my feelings were closely akin
+to those of Fran�oise--such a conception of mourning, in the manner
+of the _Chanson de Roland_ and of the porch of Saint-Andr�-des-Champs,
+would have seemed most attractive. But the moment that Fran�oise herself
+approached, some evil spirit would urge me to attempt to make her angry,
+and I would avail myself of the slightest pretext to say to her that I
+regretted my aunt's death because she had been a good woman in spite of
+her absurdities, but not in the least because she was my aunt; that
+she might easily have been my aunt and yet have been so odious that her
+death would not have caused me a moment's sorrow; statements which, in a
+book, would have struck me as merely fatuous.
+
+And if Fran�oise then, inspired like a poet with a flood of confused
+reflections upon bereavement, grief, and family memories, were to
+plead her inability to rebut my theories, saying: "I don't know how to
+_espress_ myself"--I would triumph over her with an ironical and brutal
+common sense worthy of Dr. Percepied; and if she went on: "All the same
+she was a _geological_ relation; there is always the respect due to your
+_geology_," I would shrug my shoulders and say: "It is really very good
+of me to discuss the matter with an illiterate old woman who cannot
+speak her own language," adopting, to deliver judgment on Fran�oise,
+the mean and narrow outlook of the pedant, whom those who are most
+contemptuous of him in the impartiality of their own minds are only too
+prone to copy when they are obliged to play a part upon the vulgar stage
+of life.
+
+My walks, that autumn, were all the more delightful because I used
+to take them after long hours spent over a book. When I was tired of
+reading, after a whole morning in the house, I would throw my plaid
+across my shoulders and set out; my body, which in a long spell of
+enforced immobility had stored up an accumulation of vital energy, was
+now obliged, like a spinning-top wound and let go, to spend this in
+every direction. The walls of houses, the Tansonville hedge, the trees
+of Roussainville wood, the bushes against which Montjouvain leaned its
+back, all must bear the blows of my walking-stick or umbrella, must
+hear my shouts of happiness, blows and shouts being indeed no more than
+expressions of the confused ideas which exhilarated me, and which, not
+being developed to the point at which they might rest exposed to the
+light of day, rather than submit to a slow and difficult course
+of elucidation, found it easier and more pleasant to drift into an
+immediate outlet. And so it is that the bulk of what appear to be the
+emotional renderings of our inmost sensations do no more than relieve us
+of the burden of those sensations by allowing them to escape from us in
+an indistinct form which does not teach us how it should be interpreted.
+When I attempt to reckon up all that I owe to the 'M�s�glise way,' all
+the humble discoveries of which it was either the accidental setting or
+the direct inspiration and cause, I am reminded that it was in that same
+autumn, on one of those walks, near the bushy precipice which guarded
+Montjouvain from the rear, that I was struck for the first time by
+this lack of harmony between our impressions and their normal forms of
+expression. After an hour of rain and wind, against which I had put up a
+brisk fight, as I came to the edge of the Montjouvain pond, and reached
+a little hut, roofed with tiles, in which M. Vinteuil's gardener kept
+his tools, the sun shone out again, and its golden rays, washed clean
+by the shower, blazed once more in the sky, on the trees, on the wall
+of the hut, and on the still wet tiles of the roof, which had a chicken
+perching upon its ridge. The wind pulled out sideways the wild grass
+that grew in the wall, and the chicken's downy feathers, both of which
+things let themselves float upon the wind's breath to their full extent,
+with the unresisting submissiveness of light and lifeless matter. The
+tiled roof cast upon the pond, whose reflections were now clear again
+in the sunlight, a square of pink marble, the like of which I had never
+observed before. And, seeing upon the water, where it reflected the
+wall, a pallid smile responding to the smiling sky, I cried aloud in my
+enthusiasm, brandishing my furled umbrella: "Damn, damn, damn, damn!"
+But at the same time I felt that I was in duty bound not to content
+myself with these unilluminating words, but to endeavour to see more
+clearly into the sources of my enjoyment.
+
+And it was at that moment, too--thanks to a peasant who went past,
+apparently in a bad enough humour already, but more so when he nearly
+received my umbrella in his face, and who replied without any cordiality
+to my "Fine day, what! good to be out walking!"--that I learned
+that identical emotions do not spring up in the hearts of all men
+simultaneously, by a pre-established order. Later on I discovered that,
+whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the
+friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment
+have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and
+wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed. And if I had been
+thinking with affection of my parents, and forming the most sensible and
+proper plans for giving them pleasure, they would have been using
+the same interval of time to discover some misdeed that I had already
+forgotten, and would begin to scold me severely, just as I flung myself
+upon them with a kiss.
+
+Sometimes to the exhilaration which I derived from being alone would be
+added an alternative feeling, so that I could not be clear in my mind to
+which I should give the casting vote; a feeling stimulated by the desire
+to see rise up before my eyes a peasant-girl whom I might clasp in my
+arms. Coming abruptly, and without giving me time to trace it accurately
+to its source among so many ideas of a very different kind, the pleasure
+which accompanied this desire seemed only a degree superior to what was
+given me by my other thoughts. I found an additional merit in everything
+that was in my mind at the moment, in the pink reflection of the tiled
+roof, the wild grass in the wall, the village of Roussainville into
+which I had long desired to penetrate, the trees of its wood and the
+steeple of its church, created in them by this fresh emotion which made
+them appear more desirable only because I thought it was they that
+had provoked it, and which seemed only to wish to bear me more swiftly
+towards them when it filled my sails with a potent, unknown, and
+propitious breeze. But if this desire that a woman should appear added
+for me something more exalting than the charms of nature, they in their
+turn enlarged what I might, in the woman's charm, have found too much
+restricted. It seemed to me that the beauty of the trees was hers
+also, and that, as for the spirit of those horizons, of the village of
+Roussainville, of the books which I was reading that year, it was her
+kiss which would make me master of them all; and, my imagination drawing
+strength from contact with my sensuality, my sensuality expanding
+through all the realms of my imagination, my desire had no longer any
+bounds. Moreover--just as in moments of musing contemplation of nature,
+the normal actions of the mind being suspended, and our abstract ideas
+of things set on one side, we believe with the profoundest faith in the
+originality, in the individual existence of the place in which we may
+happen to be--the passing figure which my desire evoked seemed to be
+not any one example of the general type of 'woman,' but a necessary and
+natural product of the soil. For at that time everything which was not
+myself, the earth and the creatures upon it, seemed to me more precious,
+more important, endowed with a more real existence than they appear
+to full-grown men. And between the earth and its creatures I made
+no distinction. I had a desire for a peasant-girl from M�s�glise or
+Roussainville, for a fisher-girl from Balbec, just as I had a desire for
+Balbec and M�s�glise. The pleasure which those girls were empowered to
+give me would have seemed less genuine, I should have had no faith in
+it any longer, if I had been at liberty to modify its conditions as I
+chose. To meet in Paris a fisher-girl from Balbec or a peasant-girl from
+M�s�glise would have been like receiving the present of a shell which
+I had never seen upon the beach, or of a fern which I had never found
+among the woods, would have stripped from the pleasure which she was
+about to give me all those other pleasures in the thick of which my
+imagination had enwrapped her. But to wander thus among the woods of
+Roussainville without a peasant-girl to embrace was to see those woods
+and yet know nothing of their secret treasure, their deep-hidden beauty.
+That girl whom I never saw save dappled with the shadows of their
+leaves, was to me herself a plant of local growth, only taller than the
+rest, and one whose structure would enable me to approach more closely
+than in them to the intimate savour of the land from which she had
+sprung. I could believe this all the more readily (and also that
+the caresses by which she would bring that savour to my senses were
+themselves of a particular kind, yielding a pleasure which I could
+never derive from any but herself) since I was still, and must for long
+remain, in that period of life when one has not yet separated the fact
+of this sensual pleasure from the various women in whose company one has
+tasted it, when one has not reduced it to a general idea which makes one
+regard them thenceforward as the variable instruments of a pleasure that
+is always the same. Indeed, that pleasure does not exist, isolated and
+formulated in the consciousness, as the ultimate object with which one
+seeks a woman's company, or as the cause of the uneasiness which, in
+anticipation, one then feels. Hardly even does one think of oneself,
+but only how to escape from oneself. Obscurely awaited, immanent and
+concealed, it rouses to such a paroxysm, at the moment when at last it
+makes itself felt, those other pleasures which we find in the tender
+glance, in the kiss of her who is by our side, that it seems to us, more
+than anything else, a sort of transport of gratitude for the kindness of
+heart of our companion and for her touching predilection of ourselves,
+which we measure by the benefits, by the happiness that she showers upon
+us.
+
+Alas, it was in vain that I implored the dungeon-keep of Roussainville,
+that I begged it to send out to meet me some daughter of its village,
+appealing to it as to the sole confidant to whom I had disclosed my
+earliest desire when, from the top floor of our house at Combray, from
+the little room that smelt of orris-root, I had peered out and seen
+nothing but its tower, framed in the square of the half-opened window,
+while, with the heroic scruples of a traveller setting forth for
+unknown climes, or of a desperate wretch hesitating on the verge of
+self-destruction, faint with emotion, I explored, across the bounds of
+my own experience, an untrodden path which, I believed, might lead me to
+my death, even--until passion spent itself and left me shuddering among
+the sprays of flowering currant which, creeping in through the window,
+tumbled all about my body. In vain I called upon it now. In vain I
+compressed the whole landscape into my field of vision, draining it with
+an exhaustive gaze which sought to extract from it a female creature. I
+might go alone as far as the porch of Saint-Andr�-des-Champs: never did
+I find there the girl whom I should inevitably have met, had I been with
+my grandfather, and so unable to engage her in conversation. I would fix
+my eyes, without limit of time, upon the trunk of a distant tree, from
+behind which she must appear and spring towards me; my closest scrutiny
+left the horizon barren as before; night was falling; without any hope
+now would I concentrate my attention, as though to force up out of it
+the creatures which it must conceal, upon that sterile soil, that stale
+and outworn land; and it was no longer in lightness of heart, but with
+sullen anger that I aimed blows at the trees of Roussainville wood, from
+among which no more living creatures made their appearance than if they
+had been trees painted on the stretched canvas background of a panorama,
+when, unable to resign myself to having to return home without having
+held in my arms the woman I so greatly desired, I was yet obliged to
+retrace my steps towards Combray, and to admit to myself that the chance
+of her appearing in my path grew smaller every moment. And if she had
+appeared, would I have dared to speak to her? I felt that she would have
+regarded me as mad, for I no longer thought of those desires which came
+to me on my walks, but were never realized, as being shared by others,
+or as having any existence apart from myself. They seemed nothing more
+now than the purely subjective, impotent, illusory creatures of my
+temperament. They were in no way connected now with nature, with the
+world of real things, which from now onwards lost all its charm and
+significance, and meant no more to my life than a purely conventional
+framework, just as the action of a novel is framed in the railway
+carriage, on a seat of which a traveller is reading it to pass the time.
+
+And it is perhaps from another impression which I received at
+Montjouvain, some years later, an impression which at that time was
+without meaning, that there arose, long afterwards, my idea of that
+cruel side of human passion called 'sadism.' We shall see, in due
+course, that for quite another reason the memory of this impression was
+to play an important part in my life. It was during a spell of very hot
+weather; my parents, who had been obliged to go away for the whole day,
+had told me that I might stay out as late as I pleased; and having
+gone as far as the Montjouvain pond, where I enjoyed seeing again the
+reflection of the tiled roof of the hut, I had lain down in the shade
+and gone to sleep among the bushes on the steep slope that rose up
+behind the house, just where I had waited for my parents, years before,
+one day when they had gone to call on M. Vinteuil. It was almost dark
+when I awoke, and I wished to rise and go away, but I saw Mlle. Vinteuil
+(or thought, at least, that I recognised her, for I had not seen her
+often at Combray, and then only when she was still a child, whereas
+she was now growing into a young woman), who probably had just come in,
+standing in front of me, and only a few feet away from me, in that room
+in which her father had entertained mine, and which she had now made
+into a little sitting-room for herself. The window was partly open; the
+lamp was lighted; I could watch her every movement without her being
+able to see me; but, had I gone away, I must have made a rustling sound
+among the bushes, she would have heard me, and might have thought that I
+had been hiding there in order to spy upon her.
+
+She was in deep mourning, for her father had but lately died. We had
+not gone to see her; my mother had not cared to go, on account of that
+virtue which alone in her fixed any bounds to her benevolence--namely,
+modesty; but she pitied the girl from the depths of her heart. My
+mother had not forgotten the sad end of M. Vinteuil's life, his complete
+absorption, first in having to play both mother and nursery-maid to his
+daughter, and, later, in the suffering which she had caused him; she
+could see the tortured expression which was never absent from the old
+man's face in those terrible last years; she knew that he had definitely
+abandoned the task of transcribing in fair copies the whole of his later
+work, the poor little pieces, we imagined, of an old music-master, a
+retired village organist, which, we assumed, were of little or no value
+in themselves, though we did not despise them, because they were of such
+great value to him and had been the chief motive of his life before he
+sacrificed them to his daughter; pieces which, being mostly not even
+written down, but recorded only in his memory, while the rest were
+scribbled on loose sheets of paper, and quite illegible, must now remain
+unknown for ever; my mother thought, also, of that other and still more
+cruel renunciation to which M. Vinteuil had been driven, that of seeing
+the girl happily settled, with an honest and respectable future; when
+she called to mind all this utter and crushing misery that had come
+upon my aunts' old music-master, she was moved to very real grief, and
+shuddered to think of that other grief, so different in its bitterness,
+which Mlle. Vinteuil must now be feeling, tinged with remorse at having
+virtually killed her father. "Poor M. Vinteuil," my mother would say,
+"he lived for his daughter, and now he has died for her, without getting
+his reward. Will he get it now, I wonder, and in what form? It can only
+come to him from her."
+
+At the far end of Mlle. Vinteuil's sitting-room, on the mantelpiece,
+stood a small photograph of her father which she went briskly to fetch,
+just as the sound of carriage wheels was heard from the road outside,
+then flung herself down on a sofa and drew close beside her a little
+table on which she placed the photograph, just as, long ago, M. Vinteuil
+had 'placed' beside him the piece of music which he would have liked
+to play over to my parents. And then her friend came in. Mlle. Vinteuil
+greeted her without rising, clasping her hands behind her head, and
+drew her body to one side of the sofa, as though to 'make room.' But no
+sooner had she done this than she appeared to feel that she was perhaps
+suggesting a particular position to her friend, with an emphasis which
+might well be regarded as importunate. She thought that her friend would
+prefer, no doubt, to sit down at some distance from her, upon a chair;
+she felt that she had been indiscreet; her sensitive heart took fright;
+stretching herself out again over the whole of the sofa, she closed her
+eyes and began to yawn, so as to indicate that it was a desire to sleep,
+and that alone, which had made her lie down there. Despite the rude
+and hectoring familiarity with which she treated her companion I could
+recognise in her the obsequious and reticent advances, the abrupt
+scruples and restraints which had characterised her father. Presently
+she rose and came to the window, where she pretended to be trying to
+close the shutters and not succeeding.
+
+"Leave them open," said her friend. "I am hot."
+
+"But it's too dreadful! People will see us," Mlle. Vinteuil answered.
+And then she guessed, probably, that her friend would think that she had
+uttered these words simply in order to provoke a reply in certain other
+words, which she seemed, indeed, to wish to hear spoken, but, from
+prudence, would let her friend be the first to speak. And so, although
+I could not see her face clearly enough, I am sure that the expression
+must have appeared on it which my grandmother had once found so
+delightful, when she hastily went on: "When I say 'see us' I mean, of
+course, see us reading. It's so dreadful to think that in every trivial
+little thing you do some one may be overlooking you."
+
+With the instinctive generosity of her nature, a courtesy beyond her
+control, she refrained from uttering the studied words which, she had
+felt, were indispensable for the full realisation of her desire. And
+perpetually, in the depths of her being, a shy and suppliant maiden
+would kneel before that other element, the old campaigner, battered but
+triumphant, would intercede with him and oblige him to retire.
+
+"Oh, yes, it is so extremely likely that people are looking at us at
+this time of night in this densely populated district!" said her friend,
+with bitter irony. "And what if they are?" she went on, feeling bound
+to annotate with a malicious yet affectionate wink these words which
+she was repeating, out of good nature, like a lesson prepared beforehand
+which, she knew, it would please Mlle. Vinteuil to hear. "And what if
+they are? All the better that they should see us."
+
+Mlle. Vinteuil shuddered and rose to her feet. In her sensitive
+and scrupulous heart she was ignorant what words ought to flow,
+spontaneously, from her lips, so as to produce the scene for which her
+eager senses clamoured. She reached out as far as she could across the
+limitations of her true character to find the language appropriate to
+a vicious young woman such as she longed to be thought, but the
+words which, she imagined, such a young woman might have uttered with
+sincerity sounded unreal in her own mouth. And what little she allowed
+herself to say was said in a strained tone, in which her ingrained
+timidity paralysed her tendency to freedom and audacity of speech; while
+she kept on interrupting herself with: "You're sure you aren't cold? You
+aren't too hot? You don't want to sit and read by yourself?...
+
+"Your ladyship's thoughts seem to be rather 'warm' this evening," she
+concluded, doubtless repeating a phrase which she had heard used, on
+some earlier occasion, by her friend.
+
+In the V-shaped opening of her crape bodice Mlle. Vinteuil felt the
+sting of her friend's sudden kiss; she gave a little scream and
+ran away; and then they began to chase one another about the room,
+scrambling over the furniture, their wide sleeves fluttering like
+wings, clucking and crowing like a pair of amorous fowls. At last Mlle.
+Vinteuil fell down exhausted upon the sofa, where she was screened from
+me by the stooping body of her friend. But the latter now had her back
+turned to the little table on which the old music-master's portrait had
+been arranged. Mlle. Vinteuil realised that her friend would not see
+it unless her attention were drawn to it, and so exclaimed, as if she
+herself had just noticed it for the first time: "Oh! there's my father's
+picture looking at us; I can't think who can have put it there; I'm sure
+I've told them twenty times, that is not the proper place for it."
+
+I remembered the words that M. Vinteuil had used to my parents in
+apologising for an obtrusive sheet of music. This photograph was, of
+course, in common use in their ritual observances, was subjected to
+daily profanation, for the friend replied in words which were evidently
+a liturgical response: "Let him stay there. He can't trouble us any
+longer. D'you think he'd start whining, d'you think he'd pack you out
+of the house if he could see you now, with the window open, the ugly old
+monkey?"
+
+To which Mlle. Vinteuil replied, "Oh, please!"--a gentle reproach
+which testified to the genuine goodness of her nature, not that it
+was prompted by any resentment at hearing her father spoken of in this
+fashion (for that was evidently a feeling which she had trained herself,
+by a long course of sophistries, to keep in close subjection at such
+moments), but rather because it was the bridle which, so as to avoid all
+appearance of egotism, she herself used to curb the gratification which
+her friend was attempting to procure for her. It may well have been,
+too, that the smiling moderation with which she faced and answered these
+blasphemies, that this tender and hypocritical rebuke appeared to her
+frank and generous nature as a particularly shameful and seductive form
+of that criminal attitude towards life which she was endeavouring to
+adopt. But she could not resist the attraction of being treated with
+affection by a woman who had just shewn herself so implacable towards
+the defenceless dead; she sprang on to the knees of her friend and held
+out a chaste brow to be kissed; precisely as a daughter would have done
+to her mother, feeling with exquisite joy that they would thus, between
+them, inflict the last turn of the screw of cruelty, in robbing M.
+Vinteuil, as though they were actually rifling his tomb, of the sacred
+rights of fatherhood. Her friend took the girl's head in her hands and
+placed a kiss on her brow with a docility prompted by the real affection
+she had for Mlle. Vinteuil, as well as by the desire to bring what
+distraction she could into the dull and melancholy life of an orphan.
+
+"Do you know what I should like to do to that old horror?" she said,
+taking up the photograph. She murmured in Mlle. Vinteuil's ear something
+that I could not distinguish.
+
+"Oh! You would never dare."
+
+"Not dare to spit on it? On that?" shouted the friend with deliberate
+brutality.
+
+I heard no more, for Mlle. Vinteuil, who now seemed weary, awkward,
+preoccupied, sincere, and rather sad, came back to the window and drew
+the shutters close; but I knew now what was the reward that M. Vinteuil,
+in return for all the suffering that he had endured in his lifetime, on
+account of his daughter, had received from her after his death.
+
+And yet I have since reflected that if M. Vinteuil had been able to be
+present at this scene, he might still, and in spite of everything, have
+continued to believe in his daughter's soundness of heart, and that he
+might even, in so doing, have been not altogether wrong. It was true
+that in all Mlle. Vinteuil's actions the appearance of evil was so
+strong and so consistent that it would have been hard to find it
+exhibited in such completeness save in what is nowadays called a
+'sadist'; it is behind the footlights of a Paris theatre, and not under
+the homely lamp of an actual country house, that one expects to see a
+girl leading her friend on to spit upon the portrait of a father who has
+lived and died for nothing and no one but herself; and when we find in
+real life a desire for melodramatic effect, it is generally the 'sadic'
+instinct that is responsible for it. It is possible that, without being
+in the least inclined towards 'sadism,' a girl might have shewn the
+same outrageous cruelty as Mlle. Vinteuil in desecrating the memory and
+defying the wishes of her dead father, but she would not have given them
+deliberate expression in an act so crude in its symbolism, so lacking
+in subtlety; the criminal element in her behaviour would have been less
+evident to other people, and even to herself, since she would not have
+admitted to herself that she was doing wrong. But, appearances apart, in
+Mlle. Vinteuil's soul, at least in the earlier stages, the evil element
+was probably not unmixed. A 'sadist' of her kind is an artist in evil,
+which a wholly wicked person could not be, for in that case the evil
+would not have been external, it would have seemed quite natural to her,
+and would not even have been distinguishable from herself; and as for
+virtue, respect for the dead, filial obedience, since she would never
+have practised the cult of these things, she would take no impious
+delight in their profanation. 'Sadists' of Mlle. Vinteuil's sort are
+creatures so purely sentimental, so virtuous by nature, that even
+sensual pleasure appears to them as something bad, a privilege reserved
+for the wicked. And when they allow themselves for a moment to enjoy it
+they endeavour to impersonate, to assume all the outward appearance of
+wicked people, for themselves and their partners in guilt, so as to gain
+the momentary illusion of having escaped beyond the control of their own
+gentle and scrupulous natures into the inhuman world of pleasure. And
+I could understand how she must have longed for such an escape when I
+realised that it was impossible for her to effect it. At the moment when
+she wished to be thought the very antithesis of her father, what she at
+once suggested to me were the mannerisms, in thought and speech, of
+the poor old music-master. Indeed, his photograph was nothing; what she
+really desecrated, what she corrupted into ministering to her pleasures,
+but what remained between them and her and prevented her from any
+direct enjoyment of them, was the likeness between her face and his, his
+mother's blue eyes which he had handed down to her, like some trinket to
+be kept in the family, those little friendly movements and inclinations
+which set up between the viciousness of Mlle. Vinteuil and herself a
+phraseology, a mentality not designed for vice, which made her regard it
+as not in any way different from the numberless little social duties and
+courtesies to which she must devote herself every day. It was not evil
+that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it
+was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil. And as, every time that she
+indulged in it, pleasure came to her attended by evil thoughts such as,
+ordinarily, had no place in her virtuous mind, she came at length to
+see in pleasure itself something diabolical, to identify it with Evil.
+Perhaps Mlle. Vinteuil felt that at heart her friend was not altogether
+bad, not really sincere when she gave vent to those blasphemous
+utterances. At any rate, she had the pleasure of receiving those kisses
+on her brow, those smiles, those glances; all feigned, perhaps, but akin
+in their base and vicious mode of expression to those which would have
+been discernible on the face of a creature formed not out of kindness
+and long-suffering, but out of self-indulgence and cruelty. She was
+able to delude herself for a moment into believing that she was indeed
+amusing herself in the way in which, with so unnatural an accomplice, a
+girl might amuse herself who really did experience that savage antipathy
+towards her father's memory. Perhaps she would not have thought of
+wickedness as a state so rare, so abnormal, so exotic, one which it was
+so refreshing to visit, had she been able to distinguish in herself,
+as in all her fellow-men and women, that indifference to the sufferings
+which they cause which, whatever names else be given it, is the one
+true, terrible and lasting form of cruelty.
+
+If the 'M�s�glise way' was so easy, it was a very different matter when
+we took the 'Guermantes way,' for that meant a long walk, and we must
+make sure, first, of the weather. When we seemed to have entered upon a
+spell of fine days, when Fran�oise, in desperation that not a drop was
+falling upon the 'poor crops,' gazing up at the sky and seeing there
+only a little white cloud floating here and there upon its calm, azure
+surface, groaned aloud and exclaimed: "You would say they were nothing
+more nor less than a lot of dogfish swimming about and sticking up their
+snouts! Ah, they never think of making it rain a little for the poor
+labourers! And then when the corn is all ripe, down it will come,
+rattling all over the place, and think no more of where it is falling
+than if it was on the sea!"--when my father's appeals to the gardener
+had met with the same encouraging answer several times in succession,
+then some one would say, at dinner: "To-morrow, if the weather holds,
+we might go the Guermantes way." And off we would set, immediately after
+luncheon, through the little garden gate which dropped us into the Rue
+des Perchamps, narrow and bent at a sharp angle, dotted with grass-plots
+over which two or three wasps would spend the day botanising, a street
+as quaint as its name, from which its odd characteristics and its
+personality were, I felt, derived; a street for which one might search
+in vain through the Combray of to-day, for the public school now rises
+upon its site. But in my dreams of Combray (like those architects,
+pupils of Viollet-le-Duc, who, fancying that they can detect, beneath
+a Renaissance rood-loft and an eighteenth-century altar, traces of a
+Norman choir, restore the whole church to the state in which it probably
+was in the twelfth century) I leave not a stone of the modern edifice
+standing, I pierce through it and 'restore' the Rue des Perchamps. And
+for such reconstruction memory furnishes me with more detailed guidance
+than is generally at the disposal of restorers; the pictures which it
+has preserved--perhaps the last surviving in the world to-day, and soon
+to follow the rest into oblivion--of what Combray looked like in my
+childhood's days; pictures which, simply because it was the old Combray
+that traced their outlines upon my mind before it vanished, are as
+moving--if I may compare a humble landscape with those glorious works,
+reproductions of which my grandmother was so fond of bestowing on me--as
+those old engravings of the 'Cenacolo,' or that painting by Gentile
+Bellini, in which one sees, in a state in which they no longer exist,
+the masterpiece of Leonardo and the portico of Saint Mark's.
+
+We would pass, in the Rue de l'Oiseau, before the old hostelry of the
+Oiseau Flesch�, into whose great courtyard, once upon a time, would
+rumble the coaches of the Duchesses de Montpensier, de Guermantes,
+and de Montmorency, when they had to come down to Combray for some
+litigation with their farmers, or to receive homage from them. We would
+come at length to the Mall, among whose treetops I could distinguish the
+steeple of Saint-Hilaire. And I should have liked to be able to sit down
+and spend the whole day there, reading and listening to the bells, for
+it was so charming there and so quiet that, when an hour struck, you
+would have said not that it broke in upon the calm of the day, but that
+it relieved the day of its superfluity, and that the steeple, with the
+indolent, painstaking exactitude of a person who has nothing else to do,
+had simply, in order to squeeze out and let fall the few golden drops
+which had slowly and naturally accumulated in the hot sunlight, pressed,
+at a given moment, the distended surface of the silence.
+
+The great charm of the 'Guermantes' way was that we had beside us,
+almost all the time, the course of the Vivonne. We crossed it first, ten
+minutes after leaving the house, by a foot-bridge called the Pont-Vieux.
+And every year, when we arrived at Combray, on Easter morning, after the
+sermon, if the weather was fine, I would run there to see (amid all the
+disorder that prevails on the morning of a great festival, the gorgeous
+preparations for which make the everyday household utensils that they
+have not contrived to banish seem more sordid than ever) the river
+flowing past, sky-blue already between banks still black and bare, its
+only companions a clump of daffodils, come out before their time, a few
+primroses, the first in flower, while here and there burned the blue
+flame of a violet, its stem bent beneath the weight of the drop of
+perfume stored in its tiny horn. The Pont-Vieux led to a tow-path which,
+at this point, would be overhung in summer by the bluish foliage of a
+hazel, under which a fisherman in a straw hat seemed to have taken
+root. At Combray, where I knew everyone, and could always detect the
+blacksmith or grocer's boy through his disguise of a beadle's uniform
+or chorister's surplice, this fisherman was the only person whom I was
+never able to identify. He must have known my family, for he used to
+raise his hat when we passed; and then I would always be just on the
+point of asking his name, when some one would make a sign to me to be
+quiet, or I would frighten the fish. We would follow the tow-path which
+ran along the top of a steep bank, several feet above the stream. The
+ground on the other side was lower, and stretched in a series of broad
+meadows as far as the village and even to the distant railway-station.
+Over these were strewn the remains, half-buried in the long grass, of
+the castle of the old Counts of Combray, who, during the Middle Ages,
+had had on this side the course of the Vivonne as a barrier and defence
+against attack from the Lords of Guermantes and Abbots of Martinville.
+Nothing was left now but a few stumps of towers, hummocks upon the broad
+surface of the fields, hardly visible, broken battlements over which, in
+their day, the bowmen had hurled down stones, the watchmen had gazed out
+over Novepont, Clairefontaine, Martinville-le-Sec, Bailleau-l'Exempt,
+fiefs all of them of Guermantes, a ring in which Combray was locked;
+but fallen among the grass now, levelled with the ground, climbed and
+commanded by boys from the Christian Brothers' school, who came there
+in their playtime, or with lesson-books to be conned; emblems of a past
+that had sunk down and well-nigh vanished under the earth, that lay by
+the water's edge now, like an idler taking the air, yet giving me strong
+food for thought, making the name of Combray connote to me not the
+little town of to-day only, but an historic city vastly different,
+seizing and holding my imagination by the remote, incomprehensible
+features which it half-concealed beneath a spangled veil of buttercups.
+For the buttercups grew past numbering on this spot which they had
+chosen for their games among the grass, standing singly, in couples, in
+whole companies, yellow as the yolk of eggs, and glowing with an added
+lustre, I felt, because, being powerless to consummate with my palate
+the pleasure which the sight of them never failed to give me, I would
+let it accumulate as my eyes ranged over their gilded expanse, until
+it had acquired the strength to create in my mind a fresh example of
+absolute, unproductive beauty; and so it had been from my earliest
+childhood, when from the tow-path I had stretched out my arms towards
+them, before even I could pronounce their charming name--a name fit for
+the Prince in some French fairy-tale; colonists, perhaps, in some far
+distant century from Asia, but naturalised now for ever in the village,
+well satisfied with their modest horizon, rejoicing in the sunshine
+and the water's edge, faithful to their little glimpse of the
+railway-station; yet keeping, none the less, as do some of our old
+paintings, in their plebeian simplicity, a poetic scintillation from the
+golden East.
+
+I would amuse myself by watching the glass jars which the boys used
+to lower into the Vivonne, to catch minnows, and which, filled by the
+current of the stream, in which they themselves also were enclosed, at
+once 'containers' whose transparent sides were like solidified water
+and 'contents' plunged into a still larger container of liquid,
+flowing crystal, suggested an image of coolness more delicious and more
+provoking than the same water in the same jars would have done, standing
+upon a table laid for dinner, by shewing it as perpetually in flight
+between the impalpable water, in which my hands could not arrest it, and
+the insoluble glass, in which my palate could not enjoy it. I decided
+that I would come there again with a line and catch fish; I begged for
+and obtained a morsel of bread from our luncheon basket; and threw into
+the Vivonne pellets which had the power, it seemed, to bring about a
+chemical precipitation, for the water at once grew solid round about
+them in oval clusters of emaciated tadpoles, which until then it had, no
+doubt, been holding in solution, invisible, but ready and alert to enter
+the stage of crystallisation.
+
+Presently the course of the Vivonne became choked with water-plants.
+At first they appeared singly, a lily, for instance, which the current,
+across whose path it had unfortunately grown, would never leave at rest
+for a moment, so that, like a ferry-boat mechanically propelled, it
+would drift over to one bank only to return to the other, eternally
+repeating its double journey. Thrust towards the bank, its stalk would
+be straightened out, lengthened, strained almost to breaking-point until
+the current again caught it, its green moorings swung back over their
+anchorage and brought the unhappy plant to what might fitly be called
+its starting-point, since it was fated not to rest there a moment before
+moving off once again. I would still find it there, on one walk after
+another, always in the same helpless state, suggesting certain victims
+of neurasthenia, among whom my grandfather would have included my aunt
+L�onie, who present without modification, year after year, the spectacle
+of their odd and unaccountable habits, which they always imagine
+themselves to be on the point of shaking off, but which they always
+retain to the end; caught in the treadmill of their own maladies and
+eccentricities, their futile endeavours to escape serve only to actuate
+its mechanism, to keep in motion the clockwork of their strange,
+ineluctable, fatal daily round. Such as these was the water-lily,
+and also like one of those wretches whose peculiar torments, repeated
+indefinitely throughout eternity, aroused the curiosity of Dante, who
+would have inquired of them at greater length and in fuller detail from
+the victims themselves, had not Virgil, striding on ahead, obliged him
+to hasten after him at full speed, as I must hasten after my parents.
+
+But farther on the current slackened, where the stream ran through a
+property thrown open to the public by its owner, who had made a hobby of
+aquatic gardening, so that the little ponds into which the Vivonne was
+here diverted were aflower with water-lilies. As the banks at this
+point were thickly wooded, the heavy shade of the trees gave the water a
+background which was ordinarily dark green, although sometimes, when we
+were coming home on a calm evening after a stormy afternoon, I have seen
+in its depths a clear, crude blue that was almost violet, suggesting a
+floor of Japanese cloisonn�. Here and there, on the surface, floated,
+blushing like a strawberry, the scarlet heart of a lily set in a ring of
+white petals.
+
+Beyond these the flowers were more frequent, but paler, less glossy,
+more thickly seeded, more tightly folded, and disposed, by accident, in
+festoons so graceful that I would fancy I saw floating upon the stream,
+as though after the dreary stripping of the decorations used in some
+Watteau festival, moss-roses in loosened garlands. Elsewhere a corner
+seemed to be reserved for the commoner kinds of lily; of a neat pink or
+white like rocket-flowers, washed clean like porcelain, with housewifely
+care; while, a little farther again, were others, pressed close together
+in a floating garden-bed, as though pansies had flown out of a garden
+like butterflies and were hovering with blue and burnished wings over
+the transparent shadowiness of this watery border; this skiey border
+also, for it set beneath the flowers a soil of a colour more precious,
+more moving than their own; and both in the afternoon, when it sparkled
+beneath the lilies in the kaleidoscope of a happiness silent, restless,
+and alert, and towards evening, when it was filled like a distant heaven
+with the roseate dreams of the setting sun, incessantly changing and
+ever remaining in harmony, about the more permanent colour of the
+flowers themselves, with the utmost profundity, evanescence, and
+mystery--with a quiet suggestion of infinity; afternoon or evening, it
+seemed to have set them flowering in the heart of the sky.
+
+After leaving this park the Vivonne began to flow again more swiftly.
+How often have I watched, and longed to imitate, when I should be free
+to live as I chose, a rower who had shipped his oars and lay stretched
+out on his back, his head down, in the bottom of his boat, letting it
+drift with the current, seeing nothing but the sky which slipped quietly
+above him, shewing upon his features a foretaste of happiness and peace.
+
+We would sit down among the irises at the water's edge. In the holiday
+sky a lazy cloud streamed out to its full length. Now and then, crushed
+by the burden of idleness, a carp would heave up out of the water, with
+an anxious gasp. It was time for us to feed. Before starting homewards
+we would sit for a long time there, eating fruit and bread and
+chocolate, on the grass, over which came to our ears, horizontal, faint,
+but solid still and metallic, the sound of the bells of Saint-Hilaire,
+which had melted not at all in the atmosphere it was so well accustomed
+to traverse, but, broken piecemeal by the successive palpitation of all
+their sonorous strokes, throbbed as it brushed the flowers at our feet.
+
+Sometimes, at the water's edge and embedded in trees, we would come upon
+a house of the kind called 'pleasure houses,' isolated and lost, seeing
+nothing of the world, save the river which bathed its feet. A young
+woman, whose pensive face and fashionable veils did not suggest a local
+origin, and who had doubtless come there, in the popular phrase, 'to
+bury herself,' to taste the bitter sweetness of feeling that her name,
+and still more the name of him whose heart she had once held, but had
+been unable to keep, were unknown there, stood framed in a window from
+which she had no outlook beyond the boat that was moored beside her
+door. She raised her eyes with an air of distraction when she heard,
+through the trees that lined the bank, the voices of passers-by of whom,
+before they came in sight, she might be certain that never had they
+known, nor would they know, the faithless lover, that nothing in their
+past lives bore his imprint, which nothing in their future would have
+occasion to receive. One felt that in her renunciation of life she had
+willingly abandoned those places in which she would at least have been
+able to see him whom she loved, for others where he had never trod. And
+I watched her, as she returned from some walk along a road where she had
+known that he would not appear, drawing from her submissive fingers long
+gloves of a precious, useless charm.
+
+Never, in the course of our walks along the 'Guermantes way,' might
+we penetrate as far as the source of the Vivonne, of which I had often
+thought, which had in my mind so abstract, so ideal an existence, that I
+had been as much surprised when some one told me that it was actually
+to be found in the same department, and at a given number of miles from
+Combray, as I had been on the day when I had learned that there was
+another fixed point somewhere on the earth's surface, where, according
+to the ancients, opened the jaws of Hell. Nor could we ever reach that
+other goal, to which I longed so much to attain, Guermantes itself. I
+knew that it was the residence of its proprietors, the Duc and Duchesse
+de Guermantes, I knew that they were real personages who did actually
+exist, but whenever I thought about them I pictured them to myself
+either in tapestry, as was the 'Coronation of Esther' which hung in our
+church, or else in changing, rainbow colours, as was Gilbert the Bad in
+his window, where he passed from cabbage green, when I was dipping my
+fingers in the holy water stoup, to plum blue when I had reached our row
+of chairs, or again altogether impalpable, like the image of Genevi�ve
+de Brabant, ancestress of the Guermantes family, which the magic lantern
+sent wandering over the curtains of my room or flung aloft upon the
+ceiling--in short, always wrapped in the mystery of the Merovingian age,
+and bathed, as in a sunset, in the orange light which glowed from the
+resounding syllable 'antes.' And if, in spite of that, they were for
+me, in their capacity as a duke and a duchess, real people, though of
+an unfamiliar kind, this ducal personality was in its turn enormously
+distended, immaterialised, so as to encircle and contain that Guermantes
+of which they were duke and duchess, all that sunlit 'Guermantes way'
+of our walks, the course of the Vivonne, its water-lilies and its
+overshadowing trees, and an endless series of hot summer afternoons.
+And I knew that they bore not only the titles of Duc and Duchesse de
+Guermantes, but that since the fourteenth century, when, after vain
+attempts to conquer its earlier lords in battle, they had allied
+themselves by marriage, and so became Counts of Combray, the first
+citizens, consequently, of the place, and yet the only ones among
+its citizens who did not reside in it--Comtes de Combray, possessing
+Combray, threading it on their string of names and titles, absorbing it
+in their personalities, and illustrating, no doubt, in themselves that
+strange and pious melancholy which was peculiar to Combray; proprietors
+of the town, though not of any particular house there; dwelling,
+presumably, out of doors, in the street, between heaven and earth, like
+that Gilbert de Guermantes, of whom I could see, in the stained glass of
+the apse of Saint-Hilaire, only the 'other side' in dull black lacquer,
+if I raised my eyes to look for him, when I was going to Camus's for a
+packet of salt.
+
+And then it happened that, going the 'Guermantes way,' I passed
+occasionally by a row of well-watered little gardens, over whose hedges
+rose clusters of dark blossom. I would stop before them, hoping to gain
+some precious addition to my experience, for I seemed to have before my
+eyes a fragment of that riverside country which I had longed so much
+to see and know since coming upon a description of it by one of my
+favourite authors. And it was with that story-book land, with its
+imagined soil intersected by a hundred bubbling watercourses, that
+Guermantes, changing its form in my mind, became identified, after I
+heard Dr. Percepied speak of the flowers and the charming rivulets and
+fountains that were to be seen there in the ducal park. I used to dream
+that Mme. de Guermantes, taking a sudden capricious fancy for myself,
+invited me there, that all day long she stood fishing for trout by my
+side. And when evening came, holding my hand in her own, as we passed by
+the little gardens of her vassals, she would point out to me the flowers
+that leaned their red and purple spikes along the tops of the low walls,
+and would teach me all their names. She would make me tell her, too, all
+about the poems that I meant to compose. And these dreams reminded me
+that, since I wished, some day, to become a writer, it was high time to
+decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked
+myself the question, and tried to discover some subjects to which I
+could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind
+would stop like a clock, I would see before me vacuity, nothing, would
+feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent, or that, perhaps, a
+malady of the brain was hindering its development. Sometimes I would
+depend upon my father's arranging everything for me. He was so powerful,
+in such favour with the people who 'really counted,' that he made it
+possible for us to transgress laws which Fran�oise had taught me to
+regard as more ineluctable than the laws of life and death, as when we
+were allowed to postpone for a year the compulsory repainting of the
+walls of our house, alone among all the houses in that part of Paris,
+or when he obtained permission from the Minister for Mme. Sazerat's
+son, who had been ordered to some watering-place, to take his degree two
+months before the proper time, among the candidates whose surnames began
+with 'A,' instead of having to wait his turn as an 'S.' If I had fallen
+seriously ill, if I had been captured by brigands, convinced that my
+father's understanding with the supreme powers was too complete, that
+his letters of introduction to the Almighty were too irresistible for my
+illness or captivity to turn out anything but vain illusions, in which
+there was no danger actually threatening me, I should have awaited
+with perfect composure the inevitable hour of my return to comfortable
+realities, of my deliverance from bondage or restoration to health.
+Perhaps this want of talent, this black cavity which gaped in my mind
+when I ransacked it for the theme of my future writings, was itself no
+more, either, than an unsubstantial illusion, and would be brought to
+an end by the intervention of my father, who would arrange with the
+Government and with Providence that I should be the first writer of
+my day. But at other times, while my parents were growing impatient
+at seeing me loiter behind instead of following them, my actual life,
+instead of seeming an artificial creation by my father, and one which he
+could modify as he chose, appeared, on the contrary, to be comprised in
+a larger reality which had not been created for my benefit, from whose
+judgments there was no appeal, in the heart of which I was bound,
+helpless, without friend or ally, and beyond which no further
+possibilities lay concealed. It was evident to me then that I existed in
+the same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die
+like them, and that among them I was to be distinguished merely as one
+of those who have no aptitude for writing. And so, utterly despondent, I
+renounced literature for ever, despite the encouragements that had been
+given me by Bloch. This intimate, spontaneous feeling, this sense of the
+nullity of my intellect, prevailed against all the flattering speeches
+that might be lavished upon me, as a wicked man, when everyone is loud
+in the praise of his good deeds, is gnawed by the secret remorse of
+conscience.
+
+One day my mother said: "You are always talking about Mme. de
+Guermantes. Well, Dr. Percepied did a great deal for her when she was
+ill, four years ago, and so she is coming to Combray for his daughter's
+wedding. You will be able to see her in church." It was from Dr.
+Percepied, as it happened, that I had heard most about Mme. de
+Guermantes, and he had even shewn us the number of an illustrated paper
+in which she was depicted in the costume which she had worn at a fancy
+dress ball given by the Princesse de L�on.
+
+Suddenly, during the nuptial mass, the beadle, by moving to one side,
+enabled me to see, sitting in a chapel, a lady with fair hair and a
+large nose, piercing blue eyes, a billowy scarf of mauve silk, glossy
+and new and brilliant, and a little spot at the corner of her nose. And
+because on the surface of her face, which was red, as though she had
+been very warm, I could make out, diluted and barely perceptible,
+details which resembled the portrait that had been shewn to me; because,
+more especially, the particular features which I remarked in this lady,
+if I attempted to catalogue them, formulated themselves in precisely the
+same terms:--_a large nose, blue eyes_, as Dr. Percepied had used when
+describing in my presence the Duchesse de Guermantes, I said to myself:
+"This lady is like the Duchesse de Guermantes." Now the chapel from
+which she was following the service was that of Gilbert the Bad; beneath
+its flat tombstones, yellowed and bulging like cells of honey in a comb,
+rested the bones of the old Counts of Brabant; and I remembered having
+heard it said that this chapel was reserved for the Guermantes family,
+whenever any of its members came to attend a ceremony at Combray; there
+was, indeed, but one woman resembling the portrait of Mme. de Guermantes
+who on that day, the very day on which she was expected to come there,
+could be sitting in that chapel: it was she! My disappointment was
+immense. It arose from my not having borne in mind, when I thought of
+Mme. de Guermantes, that I was picturing her to myself in the colours of
+a tapestry or a painted window, as living in another century, as being
+of another substance than the rest of the human race. Never had I taken
+into account that she might have a red face, a mauve scarf like Mme.
+Sazerat; and the oval curve of her cheeks reminded me so strongly of
+people whom I had seen at home that the suspicion brushed against my
+mind (though it was immediately banished) that this lady in her creative
+principle, in the molecules of her physical composition, was perhaps
+not substantially the Duchesse de Guermantes, but that her body, in
+ignorance of the name that people had given it, belonged to a certain
+type of femininity which included, also, the wives of doctors and
+tradesmen. "It is, it must be Mme. de Guermantes, and no one else!" were
+the words underlying the attentive and astonished expression with
+which I was gazing upon this image, which, naturally enough, bore no
+resemblance to those that had so often, under the same title of 'Mme. de
+Guermantes,' appeared to me in dreams, since this one had not been, like
+the others, formed arbitrarily by myself, but had sprung into sight for
+the first time, only a moment ago, here in church; an image which was
+not of the same nature, was not colourable at will, like those others
+that allowed themselves to imbibe the orange tint of a sonorous
+syllable, but which was so real that everything, even to the fiery
+little spot at the corner of her nose, gave an assurance of her
+subjection to the laws of life, as in a transformation scene on the
+stage a crease in the dress of a fairy, a quivering of her tiny finger,
+indicate the material presence of a living actress before our eyes,
+whereas we were uncertain, till then, whether we were not looking merely
+at a projection of limelight from a lantern.
+
+Meanwhile I was endeavouring to apply to this image, which the prominent
+nose, the piercing eyes pinned down and fixed in my field of vision
+(perhaps because it was they that had first struck it, that had made the
+first impression on its surface, before I had had time to wonder
+whether the woman who thus appeared before me might possibly be Mme. de
+Guermantes), to this fresh and unchanging image the idea: "It is Mme. de
+Guermantes"; but I succeeded only in making the idea pass between me and
+the image, as though they were two discs moving in separate planes,
+with a space between. But this Mme. de Guermantes of whom I had so often
+dreamed, now that I could see that she had a real existence independent
+of myself, acquired a fresh increase of power over my imagination,
+which, paralysed for a moment by contact with a reality so different
+from anything that it had expected, began to react and to say within me:
+"Great and glorious before the days of Charlemagne, the Guermantes
+had the right of life and death over their vassals; the Duchesse de
+Guermantes descends from Genevi�ve de Brabant. She does not know, nor
+would she consent to know, any of the people who are here to-day."
+
+And then--oh, marvellous independence of the human gaze, tied to the
+human face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray,
+alone, as far as it may choose--while Mme. de Guermantes sat in the
+chapel above the tombs of her dead ancestors, her gaze lingered here
+and wandered there, rose to the capitals of the pillars, and even rested
+upon myself, like a ray of sunlight straying down the nave, but a ray
+of sunlight which, at the moment when I received its caress, appeared
+conscious of where it fell. As for Mme. de Guermantes herself, since
+she remained there motionless, sitting like a mother who affects not to
+notice the rude or awkward conduct of her children who, in the course
+of their play, are speaking to people whom she does not know, it was
+impossible for me to determine whether she approved or condemned the
+vagrancy of her eyes in the careless detachment of her heart.
+
+I felt it to be important that she should not leave the church before
+I had been able to look long enough upon her, reminding myself that for
+years past I had regarded the sight of her as a thing eminently to be
+desired, and I kept my eyes fixed on her, as though by gazing at her
+I should be able to carry away and incorporate, to store up, for later
+reference, in myself the memory of that prominent nose, those red
+cheeks, of all those details which struck me as so much precious,
+authentic, unparalleled information with regard to her face. And now
+that, whenever I brought my mind to bear upon that face--and
+especially, perhaps, in my determination, that form of the instinct
+of self-preservation with which we guard everything that is best in
+ourselves, not to admit that I had been in any way deceived--I found
+only beauty there; setting her once again (since they were one and the
+same person, this lady who sat before me and that Duchesse de Guermantes
+whom, until then, I had been used to conjure into an imagined shape)
+apart from and above that common run of humanity with which the sight,
+pure and simple, of her in the flesh had made me for a moment confound
+her, I grew indignant when I heard people saying, in the congregation
+round me: "She is better looking than Mme. Sazerat" or "than Mlle.
+Vinteuil," as though she had been in any way comparable with them. And
+my gaze resting upon her fair hair, her blue eyes, the lines of her
+neck, and overlooking the features which might have reminded me of
+the faces of other women, I cried out within myself, as I admired this
+deliberately unfinished sketch: "How lovely she is! What true nobility!
+it is indeed a proud Guermantes, the descendant of Genevi�ve de Brabant,
+that I have before me!" And the care which I took to focus all my
+attention upon her face succeeded in isolating it so completely that
+to-day, when I call that marriage ceremony to mind, I find it impossible
+to visualise any single person who was present except her, and the
+beadle who answered me in the affirmative when I inquired whether the
+lady was, indeed, Mme. de Guermantes. But her, I can see her still quite
+clearly, especially at the moment when the procession filed into the
+sacristy, lighted by the intermittent, hot sunshine of a windy and rainy
+day, where Mme. de Guermantes found herself in the midst of all
+those Combray people whose names, even, she did not know, but whose
+inferiority proclaimed her own supremacy so loud that she must, in
+return, feel for them a genuine, pitying sympathy, and whom she might
+count on impressing even more forcibly by virtue of her simplicity and
+natural charm. And then, too, since she could not bring into play the
+deliberate glances, charged with a definite meaning, which one directs,
+in a crowd, towards people whom one knows, but must allow her vague
+thoughts to escape continually from her eyes in a flood of blue light
+which she was powerless to control, she was anxious not to distress in
+any way, not to seem to be despising those humbler mortals over whom
+that current flowed, by whom it was everywhere arrested. I can see
+again to-day, above her mauve scarf, silky and buoyant, the gentle
+astonishment in her eyes, to which she had added, without daring to
+address it to anyone in particular, but so that everyone might enjoy his
+share of it, the almost timid smile of a sovereign lady who seems to
+be making an apology for her presence among the vassals whom she loves.
+This smile rested upon myself, who had never ceased to follow her with
+my eyes. And I, remembering the glance which she had let fall upon me
+during the service, blue as a ray of sunlight that had penetrated the
+window of Gilbert the Bad, said to myself, "Of course, she is thinking
+about me." I fancied that I had found favour in her sight, that she
+would continue to think of me after she had left the church, and would,
+perhaps, grow pensive again, that evening, at Guermantes, on my account.
+And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to
+make us love a woman that she looks on us with contempt, as I supposed
+Mlle. Swann to have done, while we imagine that she cannot ever be ours,
+it is enough, also, sometimes that she looks on us kindly, as Mme. de
+Guermantes did then, while we think of her as almost ours already. Her
+eyes waxed blue as a periwinkle flower, wholly beyond my reach, yet
+dedicated by her to me; and the sun, bursting out again from behind
+a threatening cloud and darting the full force of its rays on to the
+Square and into the sacristy, shed a geranium glow over the red carpet
+laid down for the wedding, along which Mme. de Guermantes smilingly
+advanced, and covered its woollen texture with a nap of rosy velvet, a
+bloom of light, giving it that sort of tenderness, of solemn sweetness
+in the pomp of a joyful celebration, which characterises certain pages
+of _Lohengrin_, certain paintings by Carpaccio, and makes us understand
+how Baudelaire was able to apply to the sound of the trumpet the epithet
+'delicious.'
+
+How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the
+'Guermantes way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect
+on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must
+abandon all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I
+felt for this, while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself,
+made me suffer so acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of
+its own accord, by a sort of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased
+entirely to think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on
+which my want of talent precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart
+from all those literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment
+to anything, suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a
+stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the
+special pleasure that each of them gave me, and also because they
+appeared to be concealing, beneath what my eyes could see, something
+which they invited me to approach and seize from them, but which,
+despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As I felt that the
+mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand there in front
+of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavouring to penetrate with
+my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And if I had then to hasten
+after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still seek to
+recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concentrate upon
+recalling exactly the line of the roof, the colour of the stone, which,
+without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to be teeming,
+ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which they were
+themselves no more than the outer coverings. It was certainly not any
+impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had lost
+of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of them
+was associated with some material object devoid of any intellectual
+value, and suggesting no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an
+unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and
+in that way distracted me from the tedium, from the sense of my own
+impotence which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme
+for some great literary work. So urgent was the task imposed on my
+conscience by these impressions of form or perfume or colour--to strive
+for a perception of what lay hidden beneath them, that I was never
+long in seeking an excuse which would allow me to relax so strenuous an
+effort and to spare myself the fatigue that it involved. As good luck
+would have it, my parents called me; I felt that I had not, for the
+moment, the calm environment necessary for a successful pursuit of my
+researches, and that it would be better to think no more of the matter
+until I reached home, and not to exhaust myself in the meantime to no
+purpose. And so I concerned myself no longer with the mystery that lay
+hidden in a form or a perfume, quite at ease in my mind, since I was
+taking it home with me, protected by its visible and tangible covering,
+beneath which I should find it still alive, like the fish which, on days
+when I had been allowed to go out fishing, I used to carry back in my
+basket, buried in a couch of grass which kept them cool and fresh. Once
+in the house again I would begin to think of something else, and so my
+mind would become littered (as my room was with the flowers that I had
+gathered on my walks, or the odds and ends that people had given me)
+with a stone from the surface of which the sunlight was reflected, a
+roof, the sound of a bell, the smell of fallen leaves, a confused mass
+of different images, under which must have perished long ago the reality
+of which I used to have some foreboding, but which I never had the
+energy to discover and bring to light. Once, however, when we had
+prolonged our walk far beyond its ordinary limits, and so had been very
+glad to encounter, half way home, as afternoon darkened into evening,
+Dr. Percepied, who drove past us at full speed in his carriage, saw and
+recognised us, stopped, and made us jump in beside him, I received an
+impression of this sort which I did not abandon without having first
+subjected it to an examination a little more thorough. I had been set
+on the box beside the coachman, we were going like the wind because
+the Doctor had still, before returning to Combray, to call at
+Martinville-le-Sec, at the house of a patient, at whose door he asked
+us to wait for him. At a bend in the road I experienced, suddenly, that
+special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other, when I caught
+sight of the twin steeples of Martinville, on which the setting sun was
+playing, while the movement of the carriage and the windings of the road
+seemed to keep them continually changing their position; and then of a
+third steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, which, although separated from them
+by a hill and a valley, and rising from rather higher ground in the
+distance, appeared none the less to be standing by their side.
+
+In ascertaining and noting the shape of their spires, the changes
+of aspect, the sunny warmth of their surfaces, I felt that I was not
+penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay
+behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at
+once to contain and to conceal.
+
+The steeples appeared so distant, and we ourselves seemed to come so
+little nearer them, that I was astonished when, a few minutes later, we
+drew up outside the church of Martinville. I did not know the reason for
+the pleasure which I had found in seeing them upon the horizon, and
+the business of trying to find out what that reason was seemed to me
+irksome; I wished only to keep in reserve in my brain those converging
+lines, moving in the sunshine, and, for the time being, to think of
+them no more. And it is probable that, had I done so, those two steeples
+would have vanished for ever, in a great medley of trees and roofs and
+scents and sounds which I had noticed and set apart on account of the
+obscure sense of pleasure which they gave me, but without ever exploring
+them more fully. I got down from the box to talk to my parents while we
+were waiting for the Doctor to reappear. Then it was time to start; I
+climbed up again to my place, turning my head to look back, once more,
+at my steeples, of which, a little later, I caught a farewell glimpse
+at a turn in the road. The coachman, who seemed little inclined for
+conversation, having barely acknowledged my remarks, I was obliged,
+in default of other society, to fall back on my own, and to attempt to
+recapture the vision of my steeples. And presently their outlines and
+their sunlit surface, as though they had been a sort of rind, were
+stripped apart; a little of what they had concealed from me became
+apparent; an idea came into my mind which had not existed for me a
+moment earlier, framed itself in words in my head; and the pleasure
+with which the first sight of them, just now, had filled me was so much
+enhanced that, overpowered by a sort of intoxication, I could no longer
+think of anything but them. At this point, although we had now travelled
+a long way from Martinville, I turned my head and caught sight of them
+again, quite black this time, for the sun had meanwhile set. Every few
+minutes a turn in the road would sweep them out of sight; then they
+shewed themselves for the last time, and so I saw them no more.
+
+Without admitting to myself that what lay buried within the steeples of
+Martinville must be something analogous to a charming phrase, since it
+was in the form of words which gave me pleasure that it had appeared to
+me, I borrowed a pencil and some paper from the Doctor, and composed,
+in spite of the jolting of the carriage, to appease my conscience and to
+satisfy my enthusiasm, the following little fragment, which I have since
+discovered, and now reproduce, with only a slight revision here and
+there.
+
+Alone, rising from the level of the plain, and seemingly lost in
+that expanse of open country, climbed to the sky the twin steeples of
+Martinville. Presently we saw three: springing into position confronting
+them by a daring volt, a third, a dilatory steeple, that of Vieuxvicq,
+was come to join them. The minutes passed, we were moving rapidly, and
+yet the three steeples were always a long way ahead of us, like
+three birds perched upon the plain, motionless and conspicuous in
+the sunlight. Then the steeple of Vieuxvicq withdrew, took its proper
+distance, and the steeples of Martinville remained alone, gilded by
+the light of the setting sun, which, even at that distance, I could
+see playing and smiling upon their sloped sides. We had been so long in
+approaching them that I was thinking of the time that must still elapse
+before we could reach them when, of a sudden, the carriage, having
+turned a corner, set us down at their feet; and they had flung
+themselves so abruptly in our path that we had barely time to stop
+before being dashed against the porch of the church.
+
+We resumed our course; we had left Martinville some little time, and
+the village, after accompanying us for a few seconds, had already
+disappeared, when, lingering alone on the horizon to watch our flight,
+its steeples and that of Vieuxvicq waved once again, in token of
+farewell, their sun-bathed pinnacles. Sometimes one would withdraw,
+so that the other two might watch us for a moment still; then the road
+changed direction, they veered in the light like three golden pivots,
+and vanished from my gaze. But, a little later, when we were already
+close to Combray, the sun having set meanwhile, I caught sight of them
+for the last time, far away, and seeming no more now than three flowers
+painted upon the sky above the low line of fields. They made me think,
+too, of three maidens in a legend, abandoned in a solitary place over
+which night had begun to fall; and while we drew away from them at a
+gallop, I could see them timidly seeking their way, and, after some
+awkward, stumbling movements of their noble silhouettes, drawing close
+to one another, slipping one behind another, shewing nothing more,
+now, against the still rosy sky than a single dusky form, charming and
+resigned, and so vanishing in the night.
+
+I never thought again of this page, but at the moment when, on my
+corner of the box-seat, where the Doctor's coachman was in the habit
+of placing, in a hamper, the fowls which he had bought at Martinville
+market, I had finished writing it, I found such a sense of happiness,
+felt that it had so entirely relieved my mind of the obsession of the
+steeples, and of the mystery which they concealed, that, as though I
+myself were a hen and had just laid an egg, I began to sing at the top
+of my voice.
+
+All day long, during these walks, I had been able to muse upon the
+pleasure that there would be in the friendship of the Duchesse de
+Guermantes, in fishing for trout, in drifting by myself in a boat on the
+Vivonne; and, greedy for happiness, I asked nothing more from life, in
+such moments, than that it should consist always of a series of joyous
+afternoons. But when, on our way home, I had caught sight of a farm, on
+the left of the road, at some distance from two other farms which were
+themselves close together, and from which, to return to Combray, we need
+only turn down an avenue of oaks, bordered on one side by a series of
+orchard-closes, each one planted at regular intervals with apple-trees
+which cast upon the ground, when they were lighted by the setting sun,
+the Japanese stencil of their shadows; then, sharply, my heart would
+begin to beat, I would know that in half an hour we should be at
+home, and that there, as was the rule on days when we had taken the
+'Guermantes way' and dinner was, in consequence, served later than
+usual, I should be sent to bed as soon as I had swallowed my soup, so
+that my mother, kept at table, just as though there had been company to
+dinner, would not come upstairs to say good night to me in bed. The zone
+of melancholy which I then entered was totally distinct from that other
+zone, in which I had been bounding for joy a moment earlier, just as
+sometimes in the sky a band of pink is separated, as though by a line
+invisibly ruled, from a band of green or black. You may see a bird
+flying across the pink; it draws near the border-line, touches it,
+enters and is lost upon the black. The longings by which I had just
+now been absorbed, to go to Guermantes, to travel, to live a life of
+happiness--I was now so remote from them that their fulfilment would
+have afforded me no pleasure. How readily would I have sacrificed them
+all, just to be able to cry, all night long, in the arms of Mamma!
+Shuddering with emotion, I could not take my agonised eyes from my
+mother's face, which was not to appear that evening in the bedroom where
+I could see myself already lying, in imagination; and wished only that
+I were lying dead. And this state would persist until the morrow, when,
+the rays of morning leaning their bars of light, as the gardener might
+lean his ladder, against the wall overgrown with nasturtiums, which
+clambered up it as far as my window-sill, I would leap out of bed to run
+down at once into the garden, with no thought of the fact that evening
+must return, and with it the hour when I must leave my mother. And so
+it was from the 'Guermantes way' that I learned to distinguish between
+these states which reigned alternately in my mind, during certain
+periods, going so far as to divide every day between them, each one
+returning to dispossess the other with the regularity of a fever and
+ague: contiguous, and yet so foreign to one another, so devoid of means
+of communication, that I could no longer understand, or even picture to
+myself, in one state what I had desired or dreaded or even done in the
+other.
+
+So the 'M�s�glise way' and the 'Guermantes way' remain for me linked
+with many of the little incidents of that one of all the divers lives
+along whose parallel lines we are moved, which is the most abundant in
+sudden reverses of fortune, the richest in episodes; I mean the life of
+the mind. Doubtless it makes in us an imperceptible progress, and the
+truths which have changed for us its meaning and its aspect, which have
+opened new paths before our feet, we had for long been preparing for
+their discovery; but that preparation was unconscious; and for us
+those truths date only from the day, from the minute when they became
+apparent. The flowers which played then among the grass, the water
+which rippled past in the sunshine, the whole landscape which served as
+environment to their apparition lingers around the memory of them still
+with its unconscious or unheeding air; and, certainly, when they were
+slowly scrutinised by this humble passer-by, by this dreaming
+child--as the face of a king is scrutinised by a petitioner lost in the
+crowd--that scrap of nature, that corner of a garden could never suppose
+that it would be thanks to him that they would be elected to survive in
+all their most ephemeral details; and yet the scent of hawthorn which
+strays plundering along the hedge from which, in a little while, the
+dog-roses will have banished it, a sound of footsteps followed by no
+echo, upon a gravel path, a bubble formed at the side of a waterplant by
+the current, and formed only to burst--my exaltation of mind has borne
+them with it, and has succeeded in making them traverse all these
+successive years, while all around them the one-trodden ways have
+vanished, while those who thronged those ways, and even the memory of
+those who thronged those trodden ways, are dead. Sometimes the fragment
+of landscape thus transported into the present will detach itself in
+such isolation from all associations that it floats uncertainly upon my
+mind, like a flowering isle of Delos, and I am unable to say from
+what place, from what time--perhaps, quite simply, from which of my
+dreams--it comes. But it is pre-eminently as the deepest layer of my
+mental soil, as firm sites on which I still may build, that I regard
+the M�s�glise and Guermantes 'ways.' It is because I used to think of
+certain things, of certain people, while I was roaming along them, that
+the things, the people which they taught me to know, and these alone,
+I still take seriously, still give me joy. Whether it be that the faith
+which creates has ceased to exist in me, or that reality will take shape
+in the memory alone, the flowers that people shew me nowadays for the
+first time never seem to me to be true flowers. The 'M�s�glise way'
+with its lilacs, its hawthorns, its cornflowers, its poppies, its
+apple-trees, the 'Guermantes way' with its river full of tadpoles, its
+water-lilies, and its buttercups have constituted for me for all time
+the picture of the land in which I fain would pass my life, in which my
+only requirements are that I may go out fishing, drift idly in a boat,
+see the ruins of a gothic fortress in the grass, and find hidden among
+the cornfields--as Saint-Andr�-des-Champs lay hidden--an old church,
+monumental, rustic, and yellow like a mill-stone; and the cornflowers,
+the hawthorns, the apple-trees which I may happen, when I go walking, to
+encounter in the fields, because they are situated at the same depth, on
+the level of my past life, at once establish contact with my heart. And
+yet, because there is an element of individuality in places, when I am
+seized with a desire to see again the 'Guermantes way,' it would not
+be satisfied were I led to the banks of a river in which were lilies
+as fair, or even fairer than those in the Vivonne, any more than on my
+return home in the evening, at the hour when there awakened in me that
+anguish which, later on in life, transfers itself to the passion of
+love, and may even become its inseparable companion, I should have
+wished for any strange mother to come in and say good night to me,
+though she were far more beautiful and more intelligent than my own. No:
+just as the one thing necessary to send me to sleep contented (in that
+untroubled peace which no mistress, in later years, has ever been able
+to give me, since one has doubts of them at the moment when one believes
+in them, and never can possess their hearts as I used to receive, in her
+kiss, the heart of my mother, complete, without scruple or reservation,
+unburdened by any liability save to myself) was that it should be my
+mother who came, that she should incline towards me that face on which
+there was, beneath her eye, something that was, it appears, a blemish,
+and which I loved as much as all the rest--so what I want to see again
+is the 'Guermantes way' as I knew it, with the farm that stood a little
+apart from the two neighbouring farms, pressed so close together, at the
+entrance to the oak avenue; those meadows upon whose surface, when it
+is polished by the sun to the mirroring radiance of a lake, are outlined
+the leaves of the apple-trees; that whole landscape whose individuality
+sometimes, at night, in my dreams, binds me with a power that is almost
+fantastic, of which I can discover no trace when I awake.
+
+No doubt, by virtue of having permanently and indissolubly combined in
+me groups of different impressions, for no reason save that they had
+made me feel several separate things at the same time, the M�s�glise
+and Guermantes 'ways' left me exposed, in later life, to much
+disillusionment, and even to many mistakes. For often I have wished to
+see a person again without realising that it was simply because that
+person recalled to me a hedge of hawthorns in blossom; and I have been
+led to believe, and to make some one else believe in an aftermath of
+affection, by what was no more than an inclination to travel. But by
+the same qualities, and by their persistence in those of my impressions,
+to-day, to which they can find an attachment, the two 'ways' give to
+those impressions a foundation, depth, a dimension lacking from the
+rest. They invest them, too, with a charm, a significance which is for
+me alone. When, on a summer evening, the resounding sky growls like a
+tawny lion, and everyone is complaining of the storm, it is along the
+'M�s�glise way' that my fancy strays alone in ecstasy, inhaling,
+through the noise of falling rain, the odour of invisible and persistent
+lilac-trees.
+
+And so I would often lie until morning, dreaming of the old days at
+Combray, of my melancholy and wakeful evenings there; of other days
+besides, the memory of which had been more lately restored to me by the
+taste--by what would have been called at Combray the 'perfume'---of a
+cup of tea; and, by an association of memories, of a story which, many
+years after I had left the little place, had been told me of a love
+affair in which Swann had been involved before I was born; with that
+accuracy of detail which it is easier, often, to obtain when we are
+studying the lives of people who have been dead for centuries than when
+we are trying to chronicle those of our own most intimate friends, an
+accuracy which it seems as impossible to attain as it seemed impossible
+to speak from one town to another, before we learned of the contrivance
+by which that impossibility has been overcome. All these memories,
+following one after another, were condensed into a single substance,
+but had not so far coalesced that I could not discern between the
+three strata, between my oldest, my instinctive memories, those others,
+inspired more recently by a taste or 'perfume,' and those which were
+actually the memories of another, from whom I had acquired them at
+second hand--no fissures, indeed, no geological faults, but at least
+those veins, those streaks of colour which in certain rocks, in certain
+marbles, point to differences of origin, age, and formation.
+
+It is true that, when morning drew near, I would long have settled the
+brief uncertainty of my waking dream, I would know in what room I
+was actually lying, would have reconstructed it round about me in
+the darkness, and--fixing my orientation by memory alone, or with the
+assistance of a feeble glimmer of light at the foot of which I placed
+the curtains and the window--would have reconstructed it complete and
+with its furniture, as an architect and an upholsterer might do, working
+upon an original, discarded plan of the doors and windows; would have
+replaced the mirrors and set the chest-of-drawers on its accustomed
+site. But scarcely had daylight itself--and no longer the gleam from
+a last, dying ember on a brass curtain-rod, which I had mistaken for
+daylight--traced across the darkness, as with a stroke of chalk across
+a blackboard, its first white correcting ray, when the window, with
+its curtains, would leave the frame of the doorway, in which I had
+erroneously placed it, while, to make room for it, the writing-table,
+which my memory had clumsily fixed where the window ought to be, would
+hurry off at full speed, thrusting before it the mantelpiece, and
+sweeping aside the wall of the passage; the well of the courtyard would
+be enthroned on the spot where, a moment earlier, my dressing-room had
+lain, and the dwelling-place which I had built up for myself in the
+darkness would have gone to join all those other dwellings of which I
+had caught glimpses from the whirlpool of awakening; put to flight
+by that pale sign traced above my window-curtains by the uplifted
+forefinger of day.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SWANN IN LOVE
+
+To admit you to the 'little nucleus,' the 'little group,' the 'little
+clan' at the Verdurins', one condition sufficed, but that one was
+indispensable; you must give tacit adherence to a Creed one of whose
+articles was that the young pianist, whom Mme. Verdurin had taken under
+her patronage that year, and of whom she said "Really, it oughtn't to
+be allowed, to play Wagner as well as that!" left both Plant�
+and Rubinstein 'sitting'; while Dr. Cottard was a more brilliant
+diagnostician than Potain. Each 'new recruit' whom the Verdurins failed
+to persuade that the evenings spent by other people, in other houses
+than theirs, were as dull as ditch-water, saw himself banished
+forthwith. Women being in this respect more rebellious than men, more
+reluctant to lay aside all worldly curiosity and the desire to find out
+for themselves whether other drawing-rooms might not sometimes be as
+entertaining, and the Verdurins feeling, moreover, that this critical
+spirit and this demon of frivolity might, by their contagion, prove
+fatal to the orthodoxy of the little church, they had been obliged to
+expel, one after another, all those of the 'faithful' who were of the
+female sex.
+
+Apart from the doctor's young wife, they were reduced almost exclusively
+that season (for all that Mme. Verdurin herself was a thoroughly 'good'
+woman, and came of a respectable middle-class family, excessively rich
+and wholly undistinguished, with which she had gradually and of her own
+accord severed all connection) to a young woman almost of a 'certain
+class,' a Mme. de Cr�cy, whom Mme. Verdurin called by her Christian
+name, Odette, and pronounced a 'love,' and to the pianist's aunt, who
+looked as though she had, at one period, 'answered the bell': ladies
+quite ignorant of the world, who in their social simplicity were so
+easily led to believe that the Princesse de Sagan and the Duchesse
+de Guermantes were obliged to pay large sums of money to other poor
+wretches, in order to have anyone at their dinner-parties, that if
+somebody had offered to procure them an invitation to the house of
+either of those great dames, the old doorkeeper and the woman of 'easy
+virtue' would have contemptuously declined.
+
+The Verdurins never invited you to dinner; you had your 'place laid'
+there. There was never any programme for the evening's entertainment.
+The young pianist would play, but only if he felt inclined, for no one
+was forced to do anything, and, as M. Verdurin used to say: "We're all
+friends here. Liberty Hall, you know!"
+
+If the pianist suggested playing the Ride of the Valkyries, or the
+Prelude to Tristan, Mme. Verdurin would protest, not that the music was
+displeasing to her, but, on the contrary, that it made too violent an
+impression. "Then you want me to have one of my headaches? You know
+quite well, it's the same every time he plays that. I know what I'm
+in for. Tomorrow, when I want to get up--nothing doing!" If he was not
+going to play they talked, and one of the friends--usually the painter
+who was in favour there that year--would "spin," as M. Verdurin put
+it, "a damned funny yarn that made 'em all split with laughter," and
+especially Mme. Verdurin, for whom--so strong was her habit of taking
+literally the figurative accounts of her emotions--Dr. Cottard, who was
+then just starting in general practice, would "really have to come one
+day and set her jaw, which she had dislocated with laughing too much."
+
+Evening dress was barred, because you were all 'good pals,' and didn't
+want to look like the 'boring people' who were to be avoided like the
+plague, and only asked to the big evenings, which were given as seldom
+as possible, and then only if it would amuse the painter or make the
+musician better known. The rest of the time you were quite happy playing
+charades and having supper in fancy dress, and there was no need to
+mingle any strange element with the little 'clan.'
+
+But just as the 'good pals' came to take a more and more prominent place
+in Mme. Verdurin's life, so the 'bores,' the 'nuisances' grew to include
+everybody and everything that kept her friends away from her, that made
+them sometimes plead 'previous engagements,' the mother of one, the
+professional duties of another, the 'little place in the country' of a
+third. If Dr. Cottard felt bound to say good night as soon as they rose
+from table, so as to go back to some patient who was seriously ill; "I
+don't know," Mme. Verdurin would say, "I'm sure it will do him far more
+good if you don't go disturbing him again this evening; he will have a
+good night without you; to-morrow morning you can go round early and you
+will find him cured." From the beginning of December it would make her
+quite ill to think that the 'faithful' might fail her on Christmas and
+New Year's Days. The pianist's aunt insisted that he must accompany her,
+on the latter, to a family dinner at her mother's.
+
+"You don't suppose she'll die, your mother," exclaimed Mme. Verdurin
+bitterly, "if you don't have dinner with her on New Year's Day, like
+people in the _provinces_!"
+
+Her uneasiness was kindled again in Holy Week: "Now you, Doctor, you're
+a sensible, broad-minded man; you'll come, of course, on Good Friday,
+just like any other day?" she said to Cottard in the first year of the
+little 'nucleus,' in a loud and confident voice, as though there could
+be no doubt of his answer. But she trembled as she waited for it, for if
+he did not come she might find herself condemned to dine alone.
+
+"I shall come on Good Friday--to say good-bye to you, for we are going
+to spend the holidays in Auvergne."
+
+"In Auvergne? To be eaten by fleas and all sorts of creatures! A fine
+lot of good that will do you!" And after a solemn pause: "If you had
+only told us, we would have tried to get up a party, and all gone there
+together, comfortably."
+
+And so, too, if one of the 'faithful' had a friend, or one of the ladies
+a young man, who was liable, now and then, to make them miss an evening,
+the Verdurins, who were not in the least afraid of a woman's having a
+lover, provided that she had him in their company, loved him in their
+company and did not prefer him to their company, would say: "Very well,
+then, bring your friend along." And he would be put to the test, to see
+whether he was willing to have no secrets from Mme. Verdurin, whether he
+was susceptible of being enrolled in the 'little clan.' If he failed
+to pass, the faithful one who had introduced him would be taken on one
+side, and would be tactfully assisted to quarrel with the friend or
+mistress. But if the test proved satisfactory, the newcomer would in
+turn be numbered among the 'faithful.' And so when, in the course of
+this same year, the courtesan told M. Verdurin that she had made the
+acquaintance of such a charming gentleman, M. Swann, and hinted that
+he would very much like to be allowed to come, M. Verdurin carried the
+request at once to his wife. He never formed an opinion on any subject
+until she had formed hers, his special duty being to carry out her
+wishes and those of the 'faithful' generally, which he did with
+boundless ingenuity.
+
+"My dear, Mme. de Cr�cy has something to say to you. She would like to
+bring one of her friends here, a M. Swann. What do you say?"
+
+"Why, as if anybody could refuse anything to a little piece of
+perfection like that. Be quiet; no one asked your opinion. I tell you
+that you are a piece of perfection."
+
+"Just as you like," replied Odette, in an affected tone, and then went
+on: "You know I'm not fishing for compliments."
+
+"Very well; bring your friend, if he's nice."
+
+Now there was no connection whatsoever between the 'little nucleus' and
+the society which Swann frequented, and a purely worldly man would
+have thought it hardly worth his while, when occupying so exceptional
+a position in the world, to seek an introduction to the Verdurins. But
+Swann was so ardent a lover that, once he had got to know almost all the
+women of the aristocracy, once they had taught him all that there was
+to learn, he had ceased to regard those naturalisation papers, almost a
+patent of nobility, which the Faubourg Saint-Germain had bestowed upon
+him, save as a sort of negotiable bond, a letter of credit with no
+intrinsic value, which allowed him to improvise a status for himself in
+some little hole in the country, or in some obscure quarter of Paris,
+where the good-looking daughter of a local squire or solicitor had taken
+his fancy. For at such times desire, or love itself, would revive in
+him a feeling of vanity from which he was now quite free in his everyday
+life, although it was, no doubt, the same feeling which had originally
+prompted him towards that career as a man of fashion in which he had
+squandered his intellectual gifts upon frivolous amusements, and had
+made use of his erudition in matters of art only to advise society
+ladies what pictures to buy and how to decorate their houses; and this
+vanity it was which made him eager to shine, in the sight of any fair
+unknown who had captivated him for the moment, with a brilliance which
+the name of Swann by itself did not emit. And he was most eager when the
+fair unknown was in humble circumstances. Just as it is not by other
+men of intelligence that an intelligent man is afraid of being thought
+a fool, so it is not by the great gentleman but by boors and 'bounders'
+that a man of fashion is afraid of finding his social value underrated.
+Three-fourths of the mental ingenuity displayed, of the social
+falsehoods scattered broadcast ever since the world began by people
+whose importance they have served only to diminish, have been aimed at
+inferiors. And Swann, who behaved quite simply and was at his ease when
+with a duchess, would tremble for fear of being despised, and would
+instantly begin to pose, were he to meet her grace's maid.
+
+Unlike so many people, who, either from lack of energy or else from a
+resigned sense of the obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur
+to remain moored like houseboats to a certain point on the bank of the
+stream of life, abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them
+above and below that point, that degree in life in which they will
+remain fixed until the day of their death, and are content, in the
+end, to describe as pleasures, for want of any better, those mediocre
+distractions, that just not intolerable tedium which is enclosed there
+with them; Swann would endeavour not to find charm and beauty in the
+women with whom he must pass time, but to pass his time among women whom
+he had already found to be beautiful and charming. And these were, as
+often as not, women whose beauty was of a distinctly 'common' type, for
+the physical qualities which attracted him instinctively, and without
+reason, were the direct opposite of those that he admired in the women
+painted or sculptured by his favourite masters. Depth of character, or
+a melancholy expression on a woman's face would freeze his senses, which
+would, however, immediately melt at the sight of healthy, abundant, rosy
+human flesh.
+
+If on his travels he met a family whom it would have been more correct
+for him to make no attempt to know, but among whom a woman caught his
+eye, adorned with a special charm that was new to him, to remain on his
+'high horse' and to cheat the desire that she had kindled in him, to
+substitute a pleasure different from that which he might have tasted in
+her company by writing to invite one of his former mistresses to come
+and join him, would have seemed to him as cowardly an abdication in the
+face of life, as stupid a renunciation of a new form of happiness as if,
+instead of visiting the country where he was, he had shut himself up in
+his own rooms and looked at 'views' of Paris. He did not immure himself
+in the solid structure of his social relations, but had made of them, so
+as to be able to set it up afresh upon new foundations wherever a woman
+might take his fancy, one of those collapsible tents which explorers
+carry about with them. Any part of it which was not portable or could
+not be adapted to some fresh pleasure he would discard as valueless,
+however enviable it might appear to others. How often had his credit
+with a duchess, built up of the yearly accumulation of her desire to
+do him some favour for which she had never found an opportunity, been
+squandered in a moment by his calling upon her, in an indiscreetly
+worded message, for a recommendation by telegraph which would put him
+in touch at once with one of her agents whose daughter he had noticed in
+the country, just as a starving man might barter a diamond for a crust
+of bread. Indeed, when it was too late, he would laugh at himself for
+it, for there was in his nature, redeemed by many rare refinements, an
+element of clownishness. Then he belonged to that class of intelligent
+men who have led a life of idleness, and who seek consolation and,
+perhaps, an excuse in the idea, which their idleness offers to their
+intelligence, of objects as worthy of their interest as any that could
+be attained by art or learning, the idea that 'Life' contains situations
+more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written.
+So, at least, he would assure and had no difficulty in persuading the
+more subtle among his friends in the fashionable world, notably the
+Baron de Charlus, whom he liked to amuse with stories of the startling
+adventures that had befallen him, such as when he had met a woman in the
+train, and had taken her home with him, before discovering that she was
+the sister of a reigning monarch, in whose hands were gathered, at that
+moment, all the threads of European politics, of which he found himself
+kept informed in the most delightful fashion, or when, in the complexity
+of circumstances, it depended upon the choice which the Conclave
+was about to make whether he might or might not become the lover of
+somebody's cook.
+
+It was not only the brilliant phalanx of virtuous dowagers, generals
+and academicians, to whom he was bound by such close ties, that Swann
+compelled with so much cynicism to serve him as panders. All his friends
+were accustomed to receive, from time to time, letters which called on
+them for a word of recommendation or introduction, with a diplomatic
+adroitness which, persisting throughout all his successive 'affairs'
+and using different pretexts, revealed more glaringly than the clumsiest
+indiscretion, a permanent trait in his character and an unvarying quest.
+I used often to recall to myself when, many years later, I began to
+take an interest in his character because of the similarities which, in
+wholly different respects, it offered to my own, how, when he used to
+write to my grandfather (though not at the time we are now considering,
+for it was about the date of my own birth that Swann's great 'affair'
+began, and made a long interruption in his amatory practices) the
+latter, recognising his friend's handwriting on the envelope, would
+exclaim: "Here is Swann asking for something; on guard!" And, either
+from distrust or from the unconscious spirit of devilry which urges us
+to offer a thing only to those who do not want it, my grandparents would
+meet with an obstinate refusal the most easily satisfied of his prayers,
+as when he begged them for an introduction to a girl who dined with us
+every Sunday, and whom they were obliged, whenever Swann mentioned her,
+to pretend that they no longer saw, although they would be wondering,
+all through the week, whom they could invite to meet her, and often
+failed, in the end, to find anyone, sooner than make a sign to him who
+would so gladly have accepted.
+
+Occasionally a couple of my grandparents' acquaintance, who had been
+complaining for some time that they never saw Swann now, would announce
+with satisfaction, and perhaps with a slight inclination to make my
+grandparents envious of them, that he had suddenly become as charming as
+he could possibly be, and was never out of their house. My grandfather
+would not care to shatter their pleasant illusion, but would look at my
+grandmother, as he hummed the air of:
+
+
+  What is this mystery?
+  I cannot understand it;
+
+or of:
+
+
+  Vision fugitive...;
+  In matters such as this
+  'Tis best to close one's eyes.
+
+A few months later, if my grandfather asked Swann's new friend "What
+about Swann? Do you still see as much of him as ever?" the other's face
+would lengthen: "Never mention his name to me again!"
+
+"But I thought that you were such friends..."
+
+He had been intimate in this way for several months with some cousins
+of my grandmother, dining almost every evening at their house. Suddenly,
+and without any warning, he ceased to appear. They supposed him to be
+ill, and the lady of the house was going to send to inquire for him
+when, in her kitchen, she found a letter in his hand, which her cook had
+left by accident in the housekeeping book. In this he announced that he
+was leaving Paris and would not be able to come to the house again. The
+cook had been his mistress, and at the moment of breaking off relations
+she was the only one of the household whom he had thought it necessary
+to inform.
+
+But when his mistress for the time being was a woman in society, or at
+least one whose birth was not so lowly, nor her position so irregular
+that he was unable to arrange for her reception in 'society,' then for
+her sake he would return to it, but only to the particular orbit in
+which she moved or into which he had drawn her. "No good depending on
+Swann for this evening," people would say; "don't you remember, it's his
+American's night at the Opera?" He would secure invitations for her to
+the most exclusive drawing-rooms, to those houses where he himself
+went regularly, for weekly dinners or for poker; every evening, after
+a slight 'wave' imparted to his stiffly brushed red locks had tempered
+with a certain softness the ardour of his bold green eyes, he would
+select a flower for his buttonhole and set out to meet his mistress at
+the house of one or other of the women of his circle; and then, thinking
+of the affection and admiration which the fashionable folk, whom he
+always treated exactly as he pleased, would, when he met them there,
+lavish upon him in the presence of the woman whom he loved, he would
+find a fresh charm in that worldly existence of which he had grown
+weary, but whose substance, pervaded and warmly coloured by the
+flickering light which he had slipped into its midst, seemed to him
+beautiful and rare, now that he had incorporated in it a fresh love.
+
+But while each of these attachments, each of these flirtations had been
+the realisation, more or less complete, of a dream born of the sight of
+a face or a form which Swann had spontaneously, and without effort on
+his part, found charming, it was quite another matter when, one day at
+the theatre, he was introduced to Odette de Cr�cy by an old friend of
+his own, who had spoken of her to him as a ravishing creature with whom
+he might very possibly come to an understanding; but had made her out
+to be harder of conquest than she actually was, so as to appear to be
+conferring a special favour by the introduction. She had struck Swann
+not, certainly, as being devoid of beauty, but as endowed with a style
+of beauty which left him indifferent, which aroused in him no desire,
+which gave him, indeed, a sort of physical repulsion; as one of those
+women of whom every man can name some, and each will name different
+examples, who are the converse of the type which our senses demand. To
+give him any pleasure her profile was too sharp, her skin too delicate,
+her cheek-bones too prominent, her features too tightly drawn. Her eyes
+were fine, but so large that they seemed to be bending beneath their own
+weight, strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell
+or in an ill humour. Some time after this introduction at the theatre
+she had written to ask Swann whether she might see his collections,
+which would interest her so much, she, "an ignorant woman with a taste
+for beautiful things," saying that she would know him better when
+once she had seen him in his 'home,' where she imagined him to be "so
+comfortable with his tea and his books"; although she had not concealed
+her surprise at his being in that part of the town, which must be so
+depressing, and was "not nearly smart enough for such a very smart man."
+And when he allowed her to come she had said to him as she left how
+sorry she was to have stayed so short a time in a house into which she
+was so glad to have found her way at last, speaking of him as though he
+had meant something more to her than the rest of the people she knew,
+and appearing to unite their two selves with a kind of romantic bond
+which had made him smile. But at the time of life, tinged already with
+disenchantment, which Swann was approaching, when a man can content
+himself with being in love for the pleasure of loving without expecting
+too much in return, this linking of hearts, if it is no longer, as in
+early youth, the goal towards which love, of necessity, tends, still
+is bound to love by so strong an association of ideas that it may well
+become the cause of love if it presents itself first. In his younger
+days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves;
+later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough
+to make him fall in love with her. And so, at an age when it would
+appear--since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective
+pleasure--that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part
+in its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical
+order, without any foundation in desire. At this time of life a man has
+already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer
+evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws,
+before his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we falsify
+it by memory and by suggestion; recognising one of its symptoms we
+recall and recreate the rest. Since we possess its hymn, engraved on
+our hearts in its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the
+opening lines, potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for
+us to remember all that follows. And if she begin in the middle, where
+it sings of our existing, henceforward, for one another only, we are
+well enough attuned to that music to be able to take it up and follow
+our partner, without hesitation, at the first pause in her voice.
+
+Odette de Cr�cy came again to see Swann; her visits grew more frequent,
+and doubtless each visit revived the sense of disappointment which he
+felt at the sight of a face whose details he had somewhat forgotten in
+the interval, not remembering it as either so expressive or, in spite
+of her youth, so faded; he used to regret, while she was talking to
+him, that her really considerable beauty was not of the kind which he
+spontaneously admired. It must be remarked that Odette's face appeared
+thinner and more prominent than it actually was, because her forehead
+and the upper part of her cheeks, a single and almost plane surface,
+were covered by the masses of hair which women wore at that period,
+drawn forward in a fringe, raised in crimped waves and falling in stray
+locks over her ears; while as for her figure, and she was admirably
+built, it was impossible to make out its continuity (on account of
+the fashion then prevailing, and in spite of her being one of the
+best-dressed women in Paris) for the corset, jetting forwards in an
+arch, as though over an imaginary stomach, and ending in a sharp point,
+beneath which bulged out the balloon of her double skirts, gave a woman,
+that year, the appearance of being composed of different sections badly
+fitted together; to such an extent did the frills, the flounces, the
+inner bodice follow, in complete independence, controlled only by the
+fancy of their designer or the rigidity of their material, the line
+which led them to the knots of ribbon, falls of lace, fringes of
+vertically hanging jet, or carried them along the bust, but nowhere
+attached themselves to the living creature, who, according as the
+architecture of their fripperies drew them towards or away from her
+own, found herself either strait-laced to suffocation or else completely
+buried.
+
+But, after Odette had left him, Swann would think with a smile of her
+telling him how the time would drag until he allowed her to come again;
+he remembered the anxious, timid way in which she had once begged him
+that it might not be very long, and the way in which she had looked at
+him then, fixing upon him her fearful and imploring gaze, which gave her
+a touching air beneath the bunches of artificial pansies fastened in
+the front of her round bonnet of white straw, tied with strings of black
+velvet. "And won't you," she had ventured, "come just once and take tea
+with me?" He had pleaded pressure of work, an essay--which, in reality,
+he had abandoned years ago--on Vermeer of Delft. "I know that I am quite
+useless," she had replied, "a little wild thing like me beside a learned
+great man like you. I should be like the frog in the fable! And yet I
+should so much like to learn, to know things, to be initiated. What fun
+it would be to become a regular bookworm, to bury my nose in a lot of
+old papers!" she had gone on, with that self-satisfied air which a smart
+woman adopts when she insists that her one desire is to give herself
+up, without fear of soiling her fingers, to some unclean task, such as
+cooking the dinner, with her "hands right in the dish itself." "You will
+only laugh at me, but this painter who stops you from seeing me," she
+meant Vermeer, "I have never even heard of him; is he alive still? Can I
+see any of his things in Paris, so as to have some idea of what is going
+on behind that great brow which works so hard, that head which I feel
+sure is always puzzling away about things; just to be able to say
+'There, that's what he's thinking about!' What a dream it would be to be
+able to help you with your work."
+
+He had sought an excuse in his fear of forming new friendships, which he
+gallantly described as his fear of a hopeless passion. "You are afraid
+of falling in love? How funny that is, when I go about seeking nothing
+else, and would give my soul just to find a little love somewhere!" she
+had said, so naturally and with such an air of conviction that he had
+been genuinely touched. "Some woman must have made you suffer. And you
+think that the rest are all like her. She can't have understood you: you
+are so utterly different from ordinary men. That's what I liked about
+you when I first saw you; I felt at once that you weren't like everybody
+else."
+
+"And then, besides, there's yourself----" he had continued, "I know what
+women are; you must have a whole heap of things to do, and never any
+time to spare."
+
+"I? Why, I have never anything to do. I am always free, and I always
+will be free if you want me. At whatever hour of the day or night it may
+suit you to see me, just send for me, and I shall be only too delighted
+to come. Will you do that? Do you know what I should really like--to
+introduce you to Mme. Verdurin, where I go every evening. Just fancy my
+finding you there, and thinking that it was a little for my sake that
+you had gone."
+
+No doubt, in thus remembering their conversations, in thinking about her
+thus when he was alone, he did no more than call her image into being
+among those of countless other women in his romantic dreams; but if,
+thanks to some accidental circumstance (or even perhaps without that
+assistance, for the circumstance which presents itself at the moment
+when a mental state, hitherto latent, makes itself felt, may well have
+had no influence whatsoever upon that state), the image of Odette de
+Cr�cy came to absorb the whole of his dreams, if from those dreams
+the memory of her could no longer be eliminated, then her bodily
+imperfections would no longer be of the least importance, nor would the
+conformity of her body, more or less than any other, to the requirements
+of Swann's taste; since, having become the body of her whom he loved, it
+must henceforth be the only one capable of causing him joy or anguish.
+
+It so happened that my grandfather had known--which was more than could
+be said of any other actual acquaintance--the family of these Verdurins.
+But he had entirely severed his connection with what he called "young
+Verdurin," taking a general view of him as one who had fallen--though
+without losing hold of his millions--among the riff-raff of Bohemia. One
+day he received a letter from Swann asking whether my grandfather could
+put him in touch with the Verdurins. "On guard! on guard!" he exclaimed
+as he read it, "I am not at all surprised; Swann was bound to finish up
+like this. A nice lot of people! I cannot do what he asks, because, in
+the first place, I no longer know the gentleman in question. Besides,
+there must be a woman in it somewhere, and I don't mix myself up in such
+matters. Ah, well, we shall see some fun if Swann begins running after
+the little Verdurins."
+
+And on my grandfather's refusal to act as sponsor, it was Odette herself
+who had taken Swann to the house.
+
+The Verdurins had had dining with them, on the day when Swann made his
+first appearance, Dr. and Mme. Cottard, the young pianist and his aunt,
+and the painter then in favour, while these were joined, in the course
+of the evening, by several more of the 'faithful.'
+
+Dr. Cottard was never quite certain of the tone in which he ought to
+reply to any observation, or whether the speaker was jesting or
+in earnest. And so in any event he would embellish all his facial
+expressions with the offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose
+expectant subtlety would exonerate him from the charge of being a
+simpleton, if the remark addressed to him should turn out to have been
+facetious. But as he must also be prepared to face the alternative, he
+never dared to allow this smile a definite expression on his features,
+and you would see there a perpetually flickering uncertainty, in which
+you might decipher the question that he never dared to ask: "Do you
+really mean that?" He was no more confident of the manner in which he
+ought to conduct himself in the street, or indeed in life generally,
+than he was in a drawing-room; and he might be seen greeting passers-by,
+carriages, and anything that occurred with a malicious smile which
+absolved his subsequent behaviour of all impropriety, since it proved,
+if it should turn out unsuited to the occasion, that he was well aware
+of that, and that if he had assumed a smile, the jest was a secret of
+his own.
+
+On all those points, however, where a plain question appeared to him to
+be permissible, the Doctor was unsparing in his endeavours to cultivate
+the wilderness of his ignorance and uncertainty and so to complete his
+education.
+
+So it was that, following the advice given him by a wise mother on his
+first coming up to the capital from his provincial home, he would never
+let pass either a figure of speech or a proper name that was new to him
+without an effort to secure the fullest information upon it.
+
+As regards figures of speech, he was insatiable in his thirst for
+knowledge, for often imagining them to have a more definite meaning than
+was actually the case, he would want to know what, exactly, was intended
+by those which he most frequently heard used: 'devilish pretty,' 'blue
+blood,' 'a cat and dog life,' 'a day of reckoning,' 'a queen of fashion,
+'to give a free hand,' 'to be at a deadlock,' and so forth; and in
+what particular circumstances he himself might make use of them in
+conversation. Failing these, he would adorn it with puns and other
+'plays upon words' which he had learned by rote. As for the names of
+strangers which were uttered in his hearing, he used merely to repeat
+them to himself in a questioning tone, which, he thought, would suffice
+to furnish him with explanations for which he would not ostensibly seek.
+
+As the critical faculty, on the universal application of which he prided
+himself, was, in reality, completely lacking, that refinement of good
+breeding which consists in assuring some one whom you are obliging in
+any way, without expecting to be believed, that it is really yourself
+that is obliged to him, was wasted on Cottard, who took everything that
+he heard in its literal sense. However blind she may have been to his
+faults, Mme. Verdurin was genuinely annoyed, though she still continued
+to regard him as brilliantly clever, when, after she had invited him to
+see and hear Sarah Bernhardt from a stage box, and had said politely:
+"It is very good of you to have come, Doctor, especially as I'm sure
+you must often have heard Sarah Bernhardt; and besides, I'm afraid we're
+rather too near the stage," the Doctor, who had come into the box with a
+smile which waited before settling upon or vanishing from his face
+until some one in authority should enlighten him as to the merits of the
+spectacle, replied: "To be sure, we are far too near the stage, and
+one is getting sick of Sarah Bernhardt. But you expressed a wish that
+I should come. For me, your wish is a command. I am only too glad to be
+able to do you this little service. What would one not do to please you,
+you are so good." And he went on, "Sarah Bernhardt; that's what they
+call the Voice of God, ain't it? You see, often, too, that she 'sets the
+boards on fire.' That's an odd expression, ain't it?" in the hope of an
+enlightening commentary, which, however, was not forthcoming.
+
+"D'you know," Mme. Verdurin had said to her husband, "I believe we are
+going the wrong way to work when we depreciate anything we offer the
+Doctor. He is a scientist who lives quite apart from our everyday
+existence; he knows nothing himself of what things are worth, and he
+accepts everything that we say as gospel."
+
+"I never dared to mention it," M. Verdurin had answered, "but I've
+noticed the same thing myself." And on the following New Year's Day,
+instead of sending Dr. Cottard a ruby that cost three thousand francs,
+and pretending that it was a mere trifle, M. Verdurin bought an
+artificial stone for three hundred, and let it be understood that it was
+something almost impossible to match.
+
+When Mme. Verdurin had announced that they were to see M. Swann that
+evening; "Swann!" the Doctor had exclaimed in a tone rendered brutal
+by his astonishment, for the smallest piece of news would always take
+utterly unawares this man who imagined himself to be perpetually in
+readiness for anything. And seeing that no one answered him, "Swann! Who
+on earth is Swann?" he shouted, in a frenzy of anxiety which subsided
+as soon as Mme. Verdurin had explained, "Why, Odette's friend, whom she
+told us about."
+
+"Ah, good, good; that's all right, then," answered the Doctor, at once
+mollified. As for the painter, he was overjoyed at the prospect of
+Swann's appearing at the Verdurins', because he supposed him to be in
+love with Odette, and was always ready to assist at lovers' meetings.
+"Nothing amuses me more than match-making," he confided to Cottard; "I
+have been tremendously successful, even with women!"
+
+In telling the Verdurins that Swann was extremely 'smart,' Odette had
+alarmed them with the prospect of another 'bore.' When he arrived,
+however, he made an excellent impression, an indirect cause of which,
+though they did not know it, was his familiarity with the best society.
+He had, indeed, one of those advantages which men who have lived and
+moved in the world enjoy over others, even men of intelligence and
+refinement, who have never gone into society, namely that they no longer
+see it transfigured by the longing or repulsion with which it fills
+the imagination, but regard it as quite unimportant. Their good nature,
+freed from all taint of snobbishness and from the fear of seeming
+too friendly, grown independent, in fact, has the ease, the grace of
+movement of a trained gymnast each of whose supple limbs will carry out
+precisely the movement that is required without any clumsy participation
+by the rest of his body. 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 shewed 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 Dr. Cottard; for seeing him close one eye with an ambiguous
+smile, before they had yet spoken to one another (a grimace which
+Cottard styled "letting 'em all come"), Swann supposed that the Doctor
+recognised him from having met him already somewhere, probably in some
+house of 'ill-fame,' though these he himself very rarely visited,
+never having made a habit of indulging in the mercenary sort of love.
+Regarding such an allusion as in bad taste, especially before Odette,
+whose opinion of himself it might easily alter for the worse, Swann
+assumed his most icy manner. But when he learned that the lady next to
+the Doctor was Mme. Cottard, he decided that so young a husband would
+not deliberately, in his wife's hearing, have made any allusion to
+amusements of that order, and so ceased to interpret the Doctor's
+expression in the sense which he had at first suspected. The painter at
+once invited Swann to visit his studio with Odette, and Swann found him
+very pleasant. "Perhaps you will be more highly favoured than I have
+been," Mme. Verdurin broke in, with mock resentment of the favour,
+"perhaps you will be allowed to see Cottard's portrait" (for which she
+had given the painter a commission). "Take care, Master Biche," she
+reminded the painter, whom it was a time-honoured pleasantry to address
+as 'Master,' "to catch that nice look in his eyes, that witty little
+twinkle. You know, what I want to have most of all is his smile; that's
+what I've asked you to paint--the portrait of his smile." And since the
+phrase struck her as noteworthy, she repeated it very loud, so as to
+make sure that as many as possible of her guests should hear it, and
+even made use of some indefinite pretext to draw the circle closer
+before she uttered it again. Swann begged to be introduced to everyone,
+even to an old friend of the Verdurins, called Saniette, whose shyness,
+simplicity and good-nature had deprived him of all the consideration due
+to his skill in palaeography, his large fortune, and the distinguished
+family to which he belonged. When he spoke, his words came with
+a confusion which was delightful to hear because one felt that it
+indicated not so much a defect in his speech as a quality of his soul,
+as it were a survival from the age of innocence which he had never
+wholly outgrown. All the consonants which he did not manage to pronounce
+seemed like harsh utterances of which his gentle lips were incapable. By
+asking to be made known to M. Saniette, Swann made M. Verdurin reverse
+the usual form of introduction (saying, in fact, with emphasis on the
+distinction: "M. Swann, pray let me present to you our friend Saniette")
+but he aroused in Saniette himself a warmth of gratitude, which,
+however, the Verdurins never disclosed to Swann, since Saniette rather
+annoyed them, and they did not feel bound to provide him with friends.
+On the other hand the Verdurins were extremely touched by Swann's next
+request, for he felt that he must ask to be introduced to the pianist's
+aunt. She wore a black dress, as was her invariable custom, for she
+believed that a woman always looked well in black, and that nothing
+could be more distinguished; but her face was exceedingly red, as
+it always was for some time after a meal. She bowed to Swann with
+deference, but drew herself up again with great dignity. As she was
+entirely uneducated, and was afraid of making mistakes in grammar and
+pronunciation, she used purposely to speak in an indistinct and garbling
+manner, thinking that if she should make a slip it would be so buried in
+the surrounding confusion that no one could be certain whether she had
+actually made it or not; with the result that her talk was a sort of
+continuous, blurred expectoration, out of which would emerge, at rare
+intervals, those sounds and syllables of which she felt positive.
+Swann supposed himself entitled to poke a little mild fun at her in
+conversation with M. Verdurin, who, however, was not at all amused.
+
+"She is such an excellent woman!" he rejoined. "I grant you that she
+is not exactly brilliant; but I assure you that she can talk most
+charmingly when you are alone with her."
+
+"I am sure she can," Swann hastened to conciliate him. "All I meant was
+that she hardly struck me as 'distinguished,'" he went on, isolating
+the epithet in the inverted commas of his tone, "and, after all, that is
+something of a compliment."
+
+"Wait a moment," said M. Verdurin, "now, this will surprise you; she
+writes quite delightfully. You have never heard her nephew play? It is
+admirable; eh, Doctor? Would you like me to ask him to play something,
+M. Swann?"
+
+"I should count myself most fortunate..." Swann was beginning, a trifle
+pompously, when the Doctor broke in derisively. Having once heard it
+said, and never having forgotten that in general conversation emphasis
+and the use of formal expressions were out of date, whenever he heard a
+solemn word used seriously, as the word 'fortunate' had been used just
+now by Swann, he at once assumed that the speaker was being deliberately
+pedantic. And if, moreover, the same word happened to occur, also, in
+what he called an old 'tag' or 'saw,' however common it might still be
+in current usage, the Doctor jumped to the conclusion that the whole
+thing was a joke, and interrupted with the remaining words of the
+quotation, which he seemed to charge the speaker with having intended
+to introduce at that point, although in reality it had never entered his
+mind.
+
+"Most fortunate for France!" he recited wickedly, shooting up both arms
+with great vigour. M. Verdurin could not help laughing.
+
+"What are all those good people laughing at over there? There's no sign
+of brooding melancholy down in your corner," shouted Mme. Verdurin. "You
+don't suppose I find it very amusing to be stuck up here by myself on
+the stool of repentance," she went on peevishly, like a spoiled child.
+
+Mme. Verdurin was sitting upon a high Swedish chair of waxed pine-wood,
+which a violinist from that country had given her, and which she kept in
+her drawing-room, although in appearance it suggested a school 'form,'
+and 'swore,' as the saying is, at the really good antique furniture
+which she had besides; but she made a point of keeping on view the
+presents which her 'faithful' were in the habit of making her from time
+to time, so that the donors might have the pleasure of seeing them there
+when they came to the house. She tried to persuade them to confine
+their tributes to flowers and sweets, which had at least the merit of
+mortality; but she was never successful, and the house was gradually
+filled with a collection of foot-warmers, cushions, clocks, screens,
+barometers and vases, a constant repetition and a boundless incongruity
+of useless but indestructible objects.
+
+From this lofty perch she would take her spirited part in the
+conversation of the 'faithful,' and would revel in all their fun; but,
+since the accident to her jaw, she had abandoned the effort involved in
+real hilarity, and had substituted a kind of symbolical dumb-show which
+signified, without endangering or even fatiguing her in any way, that
+she was 'laughing until she cried.' At the least witticism aimed by any
+of the circle against a 'bore,' or against a former member of the circle
+who was now relegated to the limbo of 'bores'--and to the utter despair
+of M. Verdurin, who had always made out that he was just as easily
+amused as his wife, but who, since his laughter was the 'real thing,'
+was out of breath in a moment, and so was overtaken and vanquished
+by her device of a feigned but continuous hilarity--she would utter a
+shrill cry, shut tight her little bird-like eyes, which were beginning
+to be clouded over by a cataract, and quickly, as though she had only
+just time to avoid some indecent sight or to parry a mortal blow,
+burying her face in her hands, which completely engulfed it, and
+prevented her from seeing anything at all, she would appear to be
+struggling to suppress, to eradicate a laugh which, were she to give
+way to it, must inevitably leave her inanimate. So, stupefied with
+the gaiety of the 'faithful,' drunken with comradeship, scandal and
+asseveration, Mme. Verdurin, perched on her high seat like a cage-bird
+whose biscuit has been steeped in mulled wine, would sit aloft and sob
+with fellow-feeling.
+
+Meanwhile M. Verdurin, after first asking Swann's permission to light
+his pipe ("No ceremony here, you understand; we're all pals!"), went and
+begged the young musician to sit down at the piano.
+
+"Leave him alone; don't bother him; he hasn't come here to be
+tormented," cried Mme. Verdurin. "I won't have him tormented."
+
+"But why on earth should it bother him?" rejoined M. Verdurin. "I'm sure
+M. Swann has never heard the sonata in F sharp which we discovered; he
+is going to play us the pianoforte arrangement."
+
+"No, no, no, not my sonata!" she screamed, "I don't want to be made to
+cry until I get a cold in the head, and neuralgia all down my face, like
+last time; thanks very much, I don't intend to repeat that performance;
+you are all very kind and considerate; it is easy to see that none of
+you will have to stay in bed, for a week."
+
+This little scene, which was re-enacted as often as the young pianist
+sat down to play, never failed to delight the audience, as though
+each of them were witnessing it for the first time, as a proof of the
+seductive originality of the 'Mistress' as she was styled, and of the
+acute sensitiveness of her musical 'ear.' Those nearest to her would
+attract the attention of the rest, who were smoking or playing cards at
+the other end of the room, by their cries of 'Hear, hear!' which, as
+in Parliamentary debates, shewed that something worth listening to was
+being said. And next day they would commiserate with those who had
+been prevented from coming that evening, and would assure them that the
+'little scene' had never been so amusingly done.
+
+"Well, all right, then," said M. Verdurin, "he can play just the
+andante."
+
+"Just the _andante_! How you do go on," cried his wife. "As if it
+weren't 'just the _andante_' that breaks every bone in my body. The
+'Master' is really too priceless! Just as though, 'in the Ninth,' he
+said 'we need only have the _finale_,' or 'just the overture' of the
+_Meistersinger_."
+
+The Doctor, however, urged Mme. Verdurin to let the pianist play,
+not because he supposed her to be malingering when she spoke of the
+distressing effects that music always had upon her, for he recognised
+the existence of certain neurasthenic states--but from his habit, common
+to many doctors, of at once relaxing the strict letter of a prescription
+as soon as it appeared to jeopardise, what seemed to him far more
+important, the success of some social gathering at which he was present,
+and of which the patient whom he had urged for once to forget her
+dyspepsia or headache formed an essential factor.
+
+"You won't be ill this time, you'll find," he told her, seeking at the
+same time to subdue her mind by the magnetism of his gaze. "And, if you
+are ill, we will cure you."
+
+"Will you, really?" Mme. Verdurin spoke as though, with so great a
+favour in store for her, there was nothing for it but to capitulate.
+Perhaps, too, by dint of saying that she was going to be ill, she had
+worked herself into a state in which she forgot, occasionally, that it
+was all only a 'little scene,' and regarded things, quite sincerely,
+from an invalid's point of view. For it may often be remarked that
+invalids grow weary of having the frequency of their attacks depend
+always on their own prudence in avoiding them, and like to let
+themselves think that they are free to do everything that they most
+enjoy doing, although they are always ill after doing it, provided only
+that they place themselves in the hands of a higher authority which,
+without putting them to the least inconvenience, can and will, by
+uttering a word or by administering a tabloid, set them once again upon
+their feet.
+
+Odette had gone to sit on a tapestry-covered sofa near the piano, saying
+to Mme. Verdurin, "I have my own little corner, haven't I?"
+
+And Mme. Verdurin, seeing Swann by himself upon a chair, made him get
+up. "You're not at all comfortable there; go along and sit by Odette;
+you can make room for M. Swann there, can't you, Odette?"
+
+"What charming Beauvais!" said Swann, stopping to admire the sofa before
+he sat down on it, and wishing to be polite.
+
+"I am glad you appreciate my sofa," replied Mme. Verdurin, "and I warn
+you that if you expect ever to see another like it you may as well
+abandon the idea at once. They never made any more like it. And these
+little chairs, too, are perfect marvels. You can look at them in a
+moment. The emblems in each of the bronze mouldings correspond to the
+subject of the tapestry on the chair; you know, you combine amusement
+with instruction when you look at them;--I can promise you a delightful
+time, I assure you. Just look at the little border around the edges;
+here, look, the little vine on a red background in this one, the Bear
+and the Grapes. Isn't it well drawn? What do you say? I think they knew
+a thing or two about design! Doesn't it make your mouth water, this
+vine? My husband makes out that I am not fond of fruit, because I eat
+less than he does. But not a bit of it, I am greedier than any of you,
+but I have no need to fill my mouth with them when I can feed on them
+with my eyes. What are you all laughing at now, pray? Ask the Doctor;
+he will tell you that those grapes act on me like a regular purge. Some
+people go to Fontainebleau for cures; I take my own little Beauvais cure
+here. But, M. Swann, you mustn't run away without feeling the little
+bronze mouldings on the backs. Isn't it an exquisite surface? No, no,
+not with your whole hand like that; feel them properly!"
+
+"If Mme. Verdurin is going to start playing about with her bronzes,"
+said the painter, "we shan't get any music to-night."
+
+"Be quiet, you wretch! And yet we poor women," she went on, "are
+forbidden pleasures far less voluptuous than this. There is no flesh in
+the world as soft as these. None. When M. Verdurin did me the honour
+of being madly jealous... come, you might at least be polite. Don't say
+that you never have been jealous!"
+
+"But, my dear, I have said absolutely nothing. Look here, Doctor, I call
+you as a witness; did I utter a word?"
+
+Swann had begun, out of politeness, to finger the bronzes, and did not
+like to stop.
+
+"Come along; you can caress them later; now it is you that are going to
+be caressed, caressed in the ear; you'll like that, I think. Here's the
+young gentleman who will take charge of that."
+
+After the pianist had played, Swann felt and shewed more interest in him
+than in any of the other guests, for the following reason:
+
+The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music
+played on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the
+material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it
+had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the
+violin-part, delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole,
+he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a
+flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent,
+level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of
+the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at
+a given moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline,
+or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had
+tried to collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony--he
+knew not which--that had just been played, and had opened and expanded
+his soul, just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist
+air of evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils. Perhaps it was
+owing to his own ignorance of music that he had been able to receive so
+confused an impression, one of those that are, notwithstanding, our only
+purely musical impressions, limited in their extent, entirely original,
+and irreducible into any other kind. An impression of this order,
+vanishing in an instant, is, so to speak, an impression _sine materia_.
+Presumably the notes which we hear at such moments tend to spread out
+before our eyes, over surfaces greater or smaller according to their
+pitch and volume; to trace arabesque designs, to give us the sensation
+of breadth or tenuity, stability or caprice. But the notes themselves
+have vanished before these sensations have developed sufficiently to
+escape submersion under those which the following, or even simultaneous
+notes have already begun to awaken in us. And this indefinite perception
+would continue to smother in its molten liquidity the _motifs_ which now
+and then emerge, barely discernible, to plunge again and disappear and
+drown; recognised only by the particular kind of pleasure which they
+instil, impossible to describe, to recollect, to name; ineffable;--if
+our memory, like a labourer who toils at the laying down of firm
+foundations beneath the tumult of the waves, did not, by fashioning for
+us facsimiles of those fugitive phrases, enable us to compare and to
+contrast them with those that follow. And so, hardly had the delicious
+sensation, which Swann had experienced, died away, before his memory
+had furnished him with an immediate transcript, summary, it is true,
+and provisional, but one on which he had kept his eyes fixed while
+the playing continued, so effectively that, when the same impression
+suddenly returned, it was no longer uncapturable. He was able to picture
+to himself its extent, its symmetrical arrangement, its notation, the
+strength of its expression; he had before him that definite object which
+was no longer pure music, but rather design, architecture, thought,
+and which allowed the actual music to be recalled. This time he had
+distinguished, quite clearly, a phrase which emerged for a few moments
+from the waves of sound. It had at once held out to him an invitation to
+partake of intimate pleasures, of whose existence, before hearing it, he
+had never dreamed, into which he felt that nothing but this phrase could
+initiate him; and he had been filled with love for it, as with a new and
+strange desire.
+
+With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here, there, everywhere,
+towards a state of happiness noble, unintelligible, yet clearly
+indicated. And then, suddenly having reached a certain point from which
+he was prepared to follow it, after pausing for a moment, abruptly it
+changed its direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, multiform,
+melancholy, incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards a vista
+of joys unknown. Then it vanished. He hoped, with a passionate longing,
+that he might find it again, a third time. And reappear it did, though
+without speaking to him more clearly, bringing him, indeed, a pleasure
+less profound. But when he was once more at home he needed it, he
+was like a man into whose life a woman, whom he has seen for a moment
+passing by, has brought a new form of beauty, which strengthens and
+enlarges his own power of perception, without his knowing even whether
+he is ever to see her again whom he loves already, although he knows
+nothing of her, not even her name.
+
+Indeed this passion for a phrase of music seemed, in the first few
+months, to be bringing into Swann's life the possibility of a sort of
+rejuvenation. He had so long since ceased to direct his course towards
+any ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of ephemeral
+satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally
+stating his belief even to himself, that he would remain all his life in
+that condition, which death alone could alter. More than this, since his
+mind no longer entertained any lofty ideals, he had ceased to believe
+in (although he could not have expressly denied) their reality. He had
+grown also into the habit of taking refuge in trivial considerations,
+which allowed him to set on one side matters of fundamental importance.
+Just as he had never stopped to ask himself whether he would not have
+done better by not going into society, knowing very well that if he
+had accepted an invitation he must put in an appearance, and that
+afterwards, if he did not actually call, he must at least leave cards
+upon his hostess; so in his conversation he took care never to express
+with any warmth a personal opinion about a thing, but instead would
+supply facts and details which had a value of a sort in themselves, and
+excused him from shewing how much he really knew. He would be extremely
+precise about the recipe for a dish, the dates of a painter's birth and
+death, and the titles of his works. Sometimes, in spite of himself, he
+would let himself go so far as to utter a criticism of a work of art, or
+of some one's interpretation of life, but then he would cloak his words
+in a tone of irony, as though he did not altogether associate himself
+with what he was saying. But now, like a confirmed invalid whom, all
+of a sudden, a change of air and surroundings, or a new course of
+treatment, or, as sometimes happens, an organic change in himself,
+spontaneous and unaccountable, seems to have so far recovered from his
+malady that he begins to envisage the possibility, hitherto beyond
+all hope, of starting to lead--and better late than never--a wholly
+different life, Swann found in himself, in the memory of the phrase that
+he had heard, in certain other sonatas which he had made people play
+over to him, to see whether he might not, perhaps, discover his phrase
+among them, the presence of one of those invisible realities in which
+he had ceased to believe, but to which, as though the music had had upon
+the moral barrenness from which he was suffering a sort of recreative
+influence, he was conscious once again of a desire, almost, indeed, of
+the power to consecrate his life. But, never having managed to find out
+whose work it was that he had heard played that evening, he had been
+unable to procure a copy, and finally had forgotten the quest. He had
+indeed, in the course of the next few days, encountered several of the
+people who had been at the party with him, and had questioned them;
+but most of them had either arrived after or left before the piece was
+played; some had indeed been in the house, but had gone into another
+room to talk, and those who had stayed to listen had no clearer
+impression than the rest. As for his hosts, they knew that it was a
+recently published work which the musicians whom they had engaged for
+the evening had asked to be allowed to play; but, as these last were now
+on tour somewhere, Swann could learn nothing further. He had, of
+course, a number of musical friends, but, vividly as he could recall the
+exquisite and inexpressible pleasure which the little phrase had given
+him, and could see, still, before his eyes the forms that it had traced
+in outline, he was quite incapable of humming over to them the air. And
+so, at last, he ceased to think of it.
+
+But to-night, at Mme. Verdurin's, scarcely had the little pianist begun
+to play when, suddenly, after a high note held on through two whole
+bars, Swann saw it approaching, stealing forth from underneath that
+resonance, which was prolonged and stretched out over it, like a curtain
+of sound, to veil the mystery of its birth--and recognised, secret,
+whispering, articulate, the airy and fragrant phrase that he had loved.
+And it was so peculiarly itself, it had so personal a charm, which
+nothing else could have replaced, that Swann felt as though he had met,
+in a friend's drawing-room, a woman whom he had seen and admired, once,
+in the street, and had despaired of ever seeing her again. Finally the
+phrase withdrew and vanished, pointing, directing, diligent among the
+wandering currents of its fragrance, leaving upon Swann's features a
+reflection of its smile. But now, at last, he could ask the name of
+his fair unknown (and was told that it was the _andante_ movement of
+Vinteuil's sonata for the piano and violin), he held it safe, could
+have it again to himself, at home, as often as he would, could study its
+language and acquire its secret.
+
+And so, when the pianist had finished, Swann crossed the room and
+thanked him with a vivacity which delighted Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"Isn't he charming?" she asked Swann, "doesn't he just understand it,
+his sonata, the little wretch? You never dreamed, did you, that a piano
+could be made to express all that? Upon my word, there's everything in
+it except the piano! I'm caught out every time I hear it; I think
+I'm listening to an orchestra. Though it's better, really, than an
+orchestra, more complete."
+
+The young pianist bent over her as he answered, smiling and underlining
+each of his words as though he were making an epigram: "You are most
+generous to me."
+
+And while Mme. Verdurin was saying to her husband, "Run and fetch him a
+glass of orangeade; it's well earned!" Swann began to tell Odette how he
+had fallen in love with that little phrase. When their hostess, who was
+a little way off, called out, "Well! It looks to me as though some one
+was saying nice things to you, Odette!" she replied, "Yes, very
+nice," and he found her simplicity delightful. Then he asked for some
+information about this Vinteuil; what else he had done, and at what
+period in his life he had composed the sonata;--what meaning the little
+phrase could have had for him, that was what Swann wanted most to know.
+
+But none of these people who professed to admire this musician (when
+Swann had said that the sonata was really charming Mme. Verdurin had
+exclaimed, "I quite believe it! Charming, indeed! But you don't dare to
+confess that you don't know Vinteuil's sonata; you have no right not to
+know it!"--and the painter had gone on with, "Ah, yes, it's a very fine
+bit of work, isn't it? Not, of course, if you want something 'obvious,'
+something 'popular,' but, I mean to say, it makes a very great
+impression on us artists."), none of them seemed ever to have asked
+himself these questions, for none of them was able to reply.
+
+Even to one or two particular remarks made by Swann on his favourite
+phrase, "D'you know, that's a funny thing; I had never noticed it; I may
+as well tell you that I don't much care about peering at things through
+a microscope, and pricking myself on pin-points of difference; no; we
+don't waste time splitting hairs in this house; why not? well, it's not
+a habit of ours, that's all," Mme. Verdurin replied, while Dr. Cottard
+gazed at her with open-mouthed admiration, and yearned to be able to
+follow her as she skipped lightly from one stepping-stone to another
+of her stock of ready-made phrases. Both he, however, and Mme. Cottard,
+with a kind of common sense which is shared by many people of humble
+origin, would always take care not to express an opinion, or to pretend
+to admire a piece of music which they would confess to each other, once
+they were safely at home, that they no more understood than they could
+understand the art of 'Master' Biche. Inasmuch as the public cannot
+recognise the charm, the beauty, even the outlines of nature save in the
+stereotyped impressions of an art which they have gradually assimilated,
+while an original artist starts by rejecting those impressions, so
+M. and Mme. Cottard, typical, in this respect, of the public, were
+incapable of finding, either in Vinteuil's sonata or in Biche's
+portraits, what constituted harmony, for them, in music or beauty in
+painting. It appeared to them, when the pianist played his sonata, as
+though he were striking haphazard from the piano a medley of notes which
+bore no relation to the musical forms to which they themselves were
+accustomed, and that the painter simply flung the colours haphazard upon
+his canvas. When, on one of these, they were able to distinguish a human
+form, they always found it coarsened and vulgarised (that is to say
+lacking all the elegance of the school of painting through whose
+spectacles they themselves were in the habit of seeing the people--real,
+living people, who passed them in the streets) and devoid of truth, as
+though M. Biche had not known how the human shoulder was constructed, or
+that a woman's hair was not, ordinarily, purple.
+
+And yet, when the 'faithful' were scattered out of earshot, the Doctor
+felt that the opportunity was too good to be missed, and so (while Mme.
+Verdurin was adding a final word of commendation of Vinteuil's sonata)
+like a would-be swimmer who jumps into the water, so as to learn, but
+chooses a moment when there are not too many people looking on:
+"Yes, indeed; he's what they call a musician _di primo cartello_!" he
+exclaimed, with a sudden determination.
+
+Swann discovered no more than that the recent publication of Vinteuil's
+sonata had caused a great stir among the most advanced school of
+musicians, but that it was still unknown to the general public.
+
+"I know some one, quite well, called Vinteuil," said Swann, thinking of
+the old music-master at Combray who had taught my grandmother's sisters.
+
+"Perhaps that's the man!" cried Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"Oh, no!" Swann burst out laughing. "If you had ever seen him for a
+moment you wouldn't put the question."
+
+"Then to put the question is to solve the problem?" the Doctor
+suggested.
+
+"But it may well be some relative," Swann went on. "That would be bad
+enough; but, after all, there is no reason why a genius shouldn't have
+a cousin who is a silly old fool. And if that should be so, I swear
+there's no known or unknown form of torture I wouldn't undergo to
+get the old fool to introduce me to the man who composed the sonata;
+starting with the torture of the old fool's company, which would be
+ghastly."
+
+The painter understood that Vinteuil was seriously ill at the moment,
+and that Dr. Potain despaired of his life.
+
+"What!" cried Mme. Verdurin, "Do people still call in Potain?"
+
+"Ah! Mme. Verdurin," Cottard simpered, "you forget that you are speaking
+of one of my colleagues--I should say, one of my masters."
+
+The painter had heard, somewhere, that Vinteuil was threatened with the
+loss of his reason. And he insisted that signs of this could be detected
+in certain passages in the sonata. This remark did not strike Swann as
+ridiculous; rather, it puzzled him. For, since a purely musical work
+contains none of those logical sequences, the interruption or confusion
+of which, in spoken or written language, is a proof of insanity, so
+insanity diagnosed in a sonata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as
+the insanity of a dog or a horse, although instances may be observed of
+these.
+
+"Don't speak to me about 'your masters'; you know ten times as much as
+he does!" Mme. Verdurin answered Dr. Cottard, in the tone of a woman who
+has the courage of her convictions, and is quite ready to stand up to
+anyone who disagrees with her. "Anyhow, you don't kill your patients!"
+
+"But, Madame, he is in the Academy." The Doctor smiled with bitter
+irony. "If a sick person prefers to die at the hands of one of the
+Princes of Science... It is far more smart to be able to say, 'Yes, I
+have Potain.'"
+
+"Oh, indeed! More smart, is it?" said Mme. Verdurin. "So there are
+fashions, nowadays, in illness, are there? I didn't know that.... Oh,
+you do make me laugh!" she screamed, suddenly, burying her face in her
+hands. "And here was I, poor thing, talking quite seriously, and never
+seeing that you were pulling my leg."
+
+As for M. Verdurin, finding it rather a strain to start laughing again
+over so small a matter, he was content with puffing out a cloud of smoke
+from his pipe, while he reflected sadly that he could never again hope
+to keep pace with his wife in her Atalanta-flights across the field of
+mirth.
+
+"D'you know; we like your friend so very much," said Mme. Verdurin,
+later, when Odette was bidding her good night. "He is so unaffected,
+quite charming. If they're all like that, the friends you want to bring
+here, by all means bring them."
+
+M. Verdurin remarked that Swann had failed, all the same, to appreciate
+the pianist's aunt.
+
+"I dare say he felt a little strange, poor man," suggested Mme.
+Verdurin. "You can't expect him to catch the tone of the house the first
+time he comes; like Cottard, who has been one of our little 'clan' now
+for years. The first time doesn't count; it's just for looking round and
+finding out things. Odette, he understands all right, he's to join us
+to-morrow at the Ch�telet. Perhaps you might call for him and bring
+him." "No, he doesn't want that."
+
+"Oh, very well; just as you like. Provided he doesn't fail us at the
+last moment."
+
+Greatly to Mme. Verdurin's surprise, he never failed them. He would go
+to meet them, no matter where, at restaurants outside Paris (not that
+they went there much at first, for the season had not yet begun), and
+more frequently at the play, in which Mme. Verdurin delighted. One
+evening, when they were dining at home, he heard her complain that she
+had not one of those permits which would save her the trouble of waiting
+at doors and standing in crowds, and say how useful it would be to them
+at first-nights, and gala performances at the Opera, and what a nuisance
+it had been, not having one, on the day of Gambetta's funeral. Swann
+never spoke of his distinguished friends, but only of such as might be
+regarded as detrimental, whom, therefore, he thought it snobbish, and
+in not very good taste to conceal; while he frequented the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain he had come to include, in the latter class, all his
+friends in the official world of the Third Republic, and so broke in,
+without thinking: "I'll see to that, all right. You shall have it in
+time for the _Danicheff_ revival. I shall be lunching with the Prefect
+of Police to-morrow, as it happens, at the Elys�e."
+
+"What's that? The Elys�e?" Dr. Cottard roared in a voice of thunder.
+
+"Yes, at M. Gr�vy's," replied Swann, feeling a little awkward at the
+effect which his announcement had produced.
+
+"Are you often taken like that?" the painter asked Cottard, with
+mock-seriousness.
+
+As a rule, once an explanation had been given, Cottard would say: "Ah,
+good, good; that's all right, then," after which he would shew not the
+least trace of emotion. But this time Swann's last words, instead of the
+usual calming effect, had that of heating, instantly, to boiling-point
+his astonishment at the discovery that a man with whom he himself
+was actually sitting at table, a man who had no official position, no
+honours or distinction of any sort, was on visiting terms with the Head
+of the State.
+
+"What's that you say? M. Gr�vy? Do you know M. Gr�vy?" he demanded of
+Swann, in the stupid and incredulous tone of a constable on duty at the
+palace, when a stranger has come up and asked to see the President of
+the Republic; until, guessing from his words and manner what, as the
+newspapers say, 'it is a case of,' he assures the poor lunatic that he
+will be admitted at once, and points the way to the reception ward of
+the police infirmary.
+
+"I know him slightly; we have some friends in common" (Swann dared not
+add that one of these friends was the Prince of Wales). "Anyhow, he is
+very free with his invitations, and, I assure you, his luncheon-parties
+are not the least bit amusing; they're very simple affairs, too, you
+know; never more than eight at table," he went on, trying desperately
+to cut out everything that seemed to shew off his relations with the
+President in a light too dazzling for the Doctor's eyes.
+
+Whereupon Cottard, at once conforming in his mind to the literal
+interpretation of what Swann was saying, decided that invitations from
+M. Gr�vy were very little sought after, were sent out, in fact, into
+the highways and hedge-rows. And from that moment he never seemed at
+all surprised to hear that Swann, or anyone else, was 'always at
+the Elys�e'; he even felt a little sorry for a man who had to go to
+luncheon-parties which, he himself admitted, were a bore.
+
+"Ah, good, good; that's quite all right then," he said, in the tone of
+a customs official who has been suspicious up to now, but, after hearing
+your explanations, stamps your passport and lets you proceed on your
+journey without troubling to examine your luggage.
+
+"I can well believe you don't find them amusing, those parties; indeed,
+it's very good of you to go to them!" said Mme. Verdurin, who regarded
+the President of the Republic only as a 'bore' to be especially dreaded,
+since he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion,
+which, if employed to captivate her 'faithful,' might easily make them
+'fail.' "It seems, he's as deaf as a post; and eats with his fingers."
+
+"Upon my word! Then it can't be much fun for you, going there." A
+note of pity sounded in the Doctor's voice; and then struck by the
+number--only eight at table--"Are these luncheons what you would
+describe as 'intimate'?" he inquired briskly, not so much out of idle
+curiosity as in his linguistic zeal.
+
+But so great and glorious a figure was the President of the French
+Republic in the eyes of Dr. Cottard that neither the modesty of Swann
+nor the spite of Mme. Verdurin could ever wholly efface that first
+impression, and he never sat down to dinner with the Verdurins without
+asking anxiously, "D'you think we shall see M. Swann here this evening?
+He is a personal friend of M. Gr�vy's. I suppose that means he's what
+you'd call a 'gentleman'?" He even went to the length of offering Swann
+a card of invitation to the Dental Exhibition.
+
+"This will let you in, and anyone you take with you," he explained, "but
+dogs are not admitted. I'm just warning you, you understand, because
+some friends of mine went there once, who hadn't been told, and there
+was the devil to pay."
+
+As for M. Verdurin, he did not fail to observe the distressing effect
+upon his wife of the discovery that Swann had influential friends of
+whom he had never spoken.
+
+If no arrangement had been made to 'go anywhere,' it was at the
+Verdurins' that Swann would find the 'little nucleus' assembled, but
+he never appeared there except in the evenings, and would hardly ever
+accept their invitations to dinner, in spite of Odette's entreaties.
+
+"I could dine with you alone somewhere, if you'd rather," she suggested.
+
+"But what about Mme. Verdurin?"
+
+"Oh, that's quite simple. I need only say that my dress wasn't ready, or
+that my cab came late. There is always some excuse."
+
+"How charming of you."
+
+But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette feel (by
+consenting to meet her only after dinner) that there were other
+pleasures which he preferred to that of her company, then the desire
+that she felt for his would be all the longer in reaching the point of
+satiety. Besides, as he infinitely preferred to Odette's style of beauty
+that of a little working girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with whom
+he happened to be simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the
+first part of the evening with her, knowing that he was sure to see
+Odette later on. For the same reason, he would never allow Odette to
+call for him at his house, to take him on to the Verdurins'. The little
+girl used to wait, not far from his door, at a street corner; R�mi, his
+coachman, knew where to stop; she would jump in beside him, and hold him
+in her arms until the carriage drew up at the Verdurins'. He would enter
+the drawing-room; and there, while Mme. Verdurin, pointing to the roses
+which he had sent her that morning, said: "I am furious with you!" and
+sent him to the place kept for him, by the side of Odette, the pianist
+would play to them--for their two selves, and for no one else--that
+little phrase by Vinteuil which was, so to speak, the national anthem of
+their love. He began, always, with a sustained tremolo from the violin
+part, which, for several bars, was unaccompanied, and filled all the
+foreground; until suddenly it seemed to be drawn aside, and--just as in
+those interiors by Pieter de Hooch, where the subject is set back a
+long way through the narrow framework of a half-opened door--infinitely
+remote, in colour quite different, velvety with the radiance of some
+intervening light, the little phrase appeared, dancing, pastoral,
+interpolated, episodic, belonging to another world. It passed, with
+simple and immortal movements, scattering on every side the bounties of
+its grace, smiling ineffably still; but Swann thought that he could now
+discern in it some disenchantment. It seemed to be aware how vain, how
+hollow was the happiness to which it shewed the way. In its airy grace
+there was, indeed, something definitely achieved, and complete in
+itself, like the mood of philosophic detachment which follows an
+outburst of vain regret. But little did that matter to him; he looked
+upon the sonata less in its own light--as what it might express, had,
+in fact, expressed to a certain musician, ignorant that any Swann or
+Odette, anywhere in the world, existed, when he composed it, and
+would express to all those who should hear it played in centuries
+to come--than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the
+Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same
+time, of himself--which bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that
+point he had (whimsically entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of
+getting some 'professional' to play over to him the whole sonata, of
+which he still knew no more than this one passage. "Why do you want the
+rest?" she had asked him. "Our little bit; that's all we need." He went
+farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by
+him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed
+to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had
+a meaning of its own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to
+themselves, just as in the jewels given to us, or even in the letters
+written to us by a woman with whom we are in love, we find fault with
+the 'water' of a stone, or with the words of a sentence because they are
+not fashioned exclusively from the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of
+a 'lass unparalleled.'
+
+It would happen, as often as not, that he had stayed so long outside,
+with his little girl, before going to the Verdurins' that, as soon as
+the little phrase had been rendered by the pianist, Swann would discover
+that it was almost time for Odette to go home. He used to take her back
+as far as the door of her little house in the Rue La P�rouse, behind the
+Arc de Triomphe. And it was perhaps on this account, and so as not to
+demand the monopoly of her favours, that he sacrificed the pleasure (not
+so essential to his well-being) of seeing her earlier in the evening,
+of arriving with her at the Verdurins', to the exercise of this other
+privilege, for which she was grateful, of their leaving together; a
+privilege which he valued all the more because, thanks to it, he had
+the feeling that no one else would see her, no one would thrust himself
+between them, no one could prevent him from remaining with her in
+spirit, after he had left her for the night.
+
+And so, night after night, she would be taken home in Swann's carriage;
+and one night, after she had got down, and while he stood at the gate
+and murmured "Till to-morrow, then!" she turned impulsively from him,
+plucked a last lingering chrysanthemum in the tiny garden which flanked
+the pathway from the street to her house, and as he went back to his
+carriage thrust it into his hand. He held it pressed to his lips during
+the drive home, and when, in due course, the flower withered, locked it
+away, like something very precious, in a secret drawer of his desk.
+
+He would escort her to her gate, but no farther. Twice only had he gone
+inside to take part in the ceremony--of such vital importance in her
+life--of 'afternoon tea.' The loneliness and emptiness of those
+short streets (consisting, almost entirely, of low-roofed houses,
+self-contained but not detached, their monotony interrupted here and
+there by the dark intrusion of some sinister little shop, at once
+an historical document and a sordid survival from the days when the
+district was still one of ill repute), the snow which had lain on the
+garden-beds or clung to the branches of the trees, the careless disarray
+of the season, the assertion, in this man-made city, of a state of
+nature, had all combined to add an element of mystery to the warmth, the
+flowers, the luxury which he had found inside.
+
+Passing by (on his left-hand side, and on what, although raised some way
+above the street, was the ground floor of the house) Odette's bedroom,
+which looked out to the back over another little street running parallel
+with her own, he had climbed a staircase that went straight up between
+dark painted walls, from which hung Oriental draperies, strings of
+Turkish beads, and a huge Japanese lantern, suspended by a silken cord
+from the ceiling (which last, however, so that her visitors should not
+have to complain of the want of any of the latest comforts of
+Western civilisation, was lighted by a gas-jet inside), to the two
+drawing-rooms, large and small. These were entered through a narrow
+lobby, the wall of which, chequered with the lozenges of a wooden
+trellis such as you see on garden walls, only gilded, was lined from
+end to end by a long rectangular box in which bloomed, as though in a
+hothouse, a row of large chrysanthemums, at that time still
+uncommon, though by no means so large as the mammoth blossoms which
+horticulturists have since succeeded in making grow. Swann was
+irritated, as a rule, by the sight of these flowers, which had then been
+'the rage' in Paris for about a year, but it had pleased him, on this
+occasion, to see the gloom of the little lobby shot with rays of pink
+and gold and white by the fragrant petals of these ephemeral stars,
+which kindle their cold fires in the murky atmosphere of winter
+afternoons. Odette had received him in a tea-gown of pink silk, which
+left her neck and arms bare. She had made him sit down beside her in one
+of the many mysterious little retreats which had been contrived in the
+various recesses of the room, sheltered by enormous palmtrees growing
+out of pots of Chinese porcelain, or by screens upon which were fastened
+photographs and fans and bows of ribbon. She had said at once, "You're
+not comfortable there; wait a minute, I'll arrange things for you," and
+with a titter of laughter, the complacency of which implied that
+some little invention of her own was being brought into play, she
+had installed behind his head and beneath his feet great cushions of
+Japanese silk, which she pummelled and buffeted as though determined to
+lavish on him all her riches, and regardless of their value. But when
+her footman began to come into the room, bringing, one after another,
+the innumerable lamps which (contained, mostly, in porcelain vases)
+burned singly or in pairs upon the different pieces of furniture as upon
+so many altars, rekindling in the twilight, already almost nocturnal, of
+this winter afternoon, the glow of a sunset more lasting, more roseate,
+more human--filling, perhaps, with romantic wonder the thoughts of
+some solitary lover, wandering in the street below and brought to a
+standstill before the mystery of the human presence which those lighted
+windows at once revealed and screened from sight--she had kept an eye
+sharply fixed on the servant, to see whether he set each of the lamps
+down in the place appointed it. She felt that, if he were to put
+even one of them where it ought not to be, the general effect of her
+drawing-room would be destroyed, and that her portrait, which rested
+upon a sloping easel draped with plush, would not catch the light. And
+so, with feverish impatience, she followed the man's clumsy movements,
+scolding him severely when he passed too close to a pair of beaupots,
+which she made a point of always tidying herself, in case the plants
+should be knocked over--and went across to them now to make sure that he
+had not broken off any of the flowers. She found something 'quaint' in
+the shape of each of her Chinese ornaments, and also in her orchids, the
+cattleyas especially (these being, with chrysanthemums, her favourite
+flowers), because they had the supreme merit of not looking in the least
+like other flowers, but of being made, apparently, out of scraps of silk
+or satin. "It looks just as though it had been cut out of the lining
+of my cloak," she said to Swann, pointing to an orchid, with a shade of
+respect in her voice for so 'smart' a flower, for this distinguished,
+unexpected sister whom nature had suddenly bestowed upon her, so far
+removed from her in the scale of existence, and yet so delicate, so
+refined, so much more worthy than many real women of admission to
+her drawing-room. As she drew his attention, now to the fiery-tongued
+dragons painted upon a bowl or stitched upon a fire-screen, now to a
+fleshy cluster of orchids, now to a dromedary of inlaid silver-work with
+ruby eyes, which kept company, upon her mantelpiece, with a toad carved
+in jade, she would pretend now to be shrinking from the ferocity of the
+monsters or laughing at their absurdity, now blushing at the indecency
+of the flowers, now carried away by an irresistible desire to run across
+and kiss the toad and dromedary, calling them 'darlings.' And these
+affectations were in sharp contrast to the sincerity of some of her
+attitudes, notably her devotion to Our Lady of the Laghetto who had
+once, when Odette was living at Nice, cured her of a mortal illness, and
+whose medal, in gold, she always carried on her person, attributing
+to it unlimited powers. She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon
+or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," went on, smiling, "A
+cloud!" And as he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you
+like it." This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to
+her, something precious, and love is so far obliged to find some
+justification for itself, some guarantee of its duration in pleasures
+which, on the contrary, would have no existence apart from love and must
+cease with its passing, that when he left her, at seven o'clock, to go
+and dress for the evening, all the way home, sitting bolt upright in
+his brougham, unable to repress the happiness with which the afternoon's
+adventure had filled him, he kept on repeating to himself: "What fun
+it would be to have a little woman like that in a place where one could
+always be certain of finding, what one never can be certain of finding,
+a really good cup of tea." An hour or so later he received a note from
+Odette, and at once recognised that florid handwriting, in which an
+affectation of British stiffness imposed an apparent discipline upon its
+shapeless characters, significant, perhaps, to less intimate eyes
+than his, of an untidiness of mind, a fragmentary education, a want of
+sincerity and decision. Swann had left his cigarette-case at her house.
+"Why," she wrote, "did you not forget your heart also? I should never
+have let you have that back."
+
+More important, perhaps, was a second visit which he paid her, a little
+later. On his way to the house, as always when he knew that they were to
+meet, he formed a picture of her in his mind; and the necessity, if he
+was to find any beauty in her face, of fixing his eyes on the fresh and
+rosy protuberance of her cheekbones, and of shutting out all the rest of
+those cheeks which were so often languorous and sallow, except when
+they were punctuated with little fiery spots, plunged him in acute
+depression, as proving that one's ideal is always unattainable, and
+one's actual happiness mediocre. He was taking her an engraving which
+she had asked to see. She was not very well; she received him, wearing
+a wrapper of mauve _cr�pe de Chine_, which draped her bosom, like a
+mantle, with a richly embroidered web. As she stood there beside him,
+brushing his cheek with the loosened tresses of her hair, bending one
+knee in what was almost a dancer's pose, so that she could lean without
+tiring herself over the picture, at which she was gazing, with bended
+head, out of those great eyes, which seemed so weary and so sullen when
+there was nothing to animate her, Swann was struck by her resemblance to
+the figure of Zipporah, Jethro's Daughter, which is to be seen in one
+of the Sistine frescoes. He had always found a peculiar fascination
+in tracing in the paintings of the Old Masters, not merely the general
+characteristics of the people whom he encountered in his daily life, but
+rather what seems least susceptible of generalisation, the individual
+features of men and women whom he knew, as, for instance, in a bust
+of the Doge Loredan by Antonio Rizzo, the prominent cheekbones, the
+slanting eyebrows, in short, a speaking likeness to his own coachman
+R�mi; in the colouring of a Ghirlandaio, the nose of M. de Palancy; in a
+portrait by Tintoretto, the invasion of the plumpness of the cheek by an
+outcrop of whisker, the broken nose, the penetrating stare, the swollen
+eyelids of Dr. du Boulbon. Perhaps because he had always regretted,
+in his heart, that he had confined his attention to the social side of
+life, had talked, always, rather than acted, he felt that he might find
+a sort of indulgence bestowed upon him by those great artists, in his
+perception of the fact that they also had regarded with pleasure and had
+admitted into the canon of their works such types of physiognomy as give
+those works the strongest possible certificate of reality and trueness
+to life; a modern, almost a topical savour; perhaps, also, he had so far
+succumbed to the prevailing frivolity of the world of fashion that he
+felt the necessity of finding in an old masterpiece some such obvious
+and refreshing allusion to a person about whom jokes could be made and
+repeated and enjoyed to-day. Perhaps, on the other hand, he had
+retained enough of the artistic temperament to be able to find a genuine
+satisfaction in watching these individual features take on a more
+general significance when he saw them, uprooted and disembodied, in the
+abstract idea of similarity between an historic portrait and a modern
+original, whom it was not intended to represent. However that might be,
+and perhaps because the abundance of impressions which he, for some time
+past, had been receiving--though, indeed, they had come to him rather
+through the channel of his appreciation of music--had enriched his
+appetite for painting as well, it was with an unusual intensity
+of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his
+character and conduct, that Swann remarked Odette's resemblance to the
+Zipporah of that Alessandro de Mariano, to whom one shrinks from giving
+his more popular surname, now that 'Botticelli' suggests not so much the
+actual work of the Master as that false and banal conception of it which
+has of late obtained common currency. He no longer based his estimate
+of the merit of Odette's face on the more or less good quality of her
+cheeks, and the softness and sweetness--as of carnation-petals--which,
+he supposed, would greet his lips there, should he ever hazard an
+embrace, but regarded it rather as a skein of subtle and lovely silken
+threads, which his gazing eyes collected and wound together, following
+the curving line from the skein to the ball, where he mingled the
+cadence of her neck with the spring of her hair and the droop of her
+eyelids, as though from a portrait of herself, in which her type was
+made clearly intelligible.
+
+He stood gazing at her; traces of the old fresco were apparent in
+her face and limbs, and these he tried incessantly, afterwards, to
+recapture, both when he was with Odette, and when he was only thinking
+of her in her absence; and, albeit his admiration for the Florentine
+masterpiece was probably based upon his discovery that it had been
+reproduced in her, the similarity enhanced her beauty also, and rendered
+her more precious in his sight. Swann reproached himself with his
+failure, hitherto, to estimate at her true worth a creature whom the
+great Sandro would have adored, and counted himself fortunate that his
+pleasure in the contemplation of Odette found a justification in his own
+system of aesthetic. He told himself that, in choosing the thought of
+Odette as the inspiration of his dreams of ideal happiness, he was not,
+as he had until then supposed, falling back, merely, upon an expedient
+of doubtful and certainly inadequate value, since she contained in
+herself what satisfied the utmost refinement of his taste in art. He
+failed to observe that this quality would not naturally avail to bring
+Odette into the category of women whom he found desirable, simply
+because his desires had always run counter to his aesthetic taste. The
+words 'Florentine painting' were invaluable to Swann. They enabled him
+(gave him, as it were, a legal title) to introduce the image of Odette
+into a world of dreams and fancies which, until then, she had been
+debarred from entering, and where she assumed a new and nobler form. And
+whereas the mere sight of her in the flesh, by perpetually reviving his
+misgivings as to the quality of her face, her figure, the whole of her
+beauty, used to cool the ardour of his love, those misgivings were swept
+away and that love confirmed now that he could re-erect his estimate of
+her on the sure foundations of his aesthetic principles; while the kiss,
+the bodily surrender which would have seemed natural and but moderately
+attractive, had they been granted him by a creature of somewhat withered
+flesh and sluggish blood, coming, as now they came, to crown his
+adoration of a masterpiece in a gallery, must, it seemed, prove as
+exquisite as they would be supernatural.
+
+And when he was tempted to regret that, for months past, he had done
+nothing but visit Odette, he would assure himself that he was
+not unreasonable in giving up much of his time to the study of an
+inestimably precious work of art, cast for once in a new, a different,
+an especially charming metal, in an unmatched exemplar which he would
+contemplate at one moment with the humble, spiritual, disinterested mind
+of an artist, at another with the pride, the selfishness, the sensual
+thrill of a collector.
+
+On his study table, at which he worked, he had placed, as it were a
+photograph of Odette, a reproduction of Jethro's Daughter. He would
+gaze in admiration at the large eyes, the delicate features in which the
+imperfection of her skin might be surmised, the marvellous locks of hair
+that fell along her tired cheeks; and, adapting what he had already felt
+to be beautiful, on aesthetic grounds, to the idea of a living woman,
+he converted it into a series of physical merits which he congratulated
+himself on finding assembled in the person of one whom he might,
+ultimately, possess. The vague feeling of sympathy which attracts a
+spectator to a work of art, now that he knew the type, in warm flesh
+and blood, of Jethro's Daughter, became a desire which more than
+compensated, thenceforward, for that with which Odette's physical charms
+had at first failed to inspire him. When he had sat for a long time
+gazing at the Botticelli, he would think of his own living Botticelli,
+who seemed all the lovelier in contrast, and as he drew towards him
+the photograph of Zipporah he would imagine that he was holding Odette
+against his heart.
+
+It was not only Odette's indifference, however, that he must take pains
+to circumvent; it was also, not infrequently, his own; feeling that,
+since Odette had had every facility for seeing him, she seemed no longer
+to have very much to say to him when they did meet, he was afraid
+lest the manner--at once trivial, monotonous, and seemingly
+unalterable--which she now adopted when they were together should
+ultimately destroy in him that romantic hope, that a day might come when
+she would make avowal of her passion, by which hope alone he had become
+and would remain her lover. And so to alter, to give a fresh moral
+aspect to that Odette, of whose unchanging mood he was afraid of growing
+weary, he wrote, suddenly, a letter full of hinted discoveries and
+feigned indignation, which he sent off so that it should reach her
+before dinner-time. He knew that she would be frightened, and that she
+would reply, and he hoped that, when the fear of losing him clutched at
+her heart, it would force from her words such as he had never yet heard
+her utter: and he was right--by repeating this device he had won from
+her the most affectionate letters that she had, so far, written him, one
+of them (which she had sent to him at midday by a special messenger from
+the Maison Dor�e--it was the day of the Paris-Murcie F�te given for
+the victims of the recent floods in Murcia) beginning "My dear, my hand
+trembles so that I can scarcely write----"; and these letters he had
+kept in the same drawer as the withered chrysanthemum. Or else, if she
+had not had time to write, when he arrived at the Verdurins' she would
+come running up to him with an "I've something to say to you!" and he
+would gaze curiously at the revelation in her face and speech of what
+she had hitherto kept concealed from him of her heart.
+
+Even as he drew near to the Verdurins' door, and caught sight of the
+great lamp-lit spaces of the drawing-room windows, whose shutters were
+never closed, he would begin to melt at the thought of the charming
+creature whom he would see, as he entered the room, basking in that
+golden light. Here and there the figures of the guests stood out, sharp
+and black, between lamp and window, shutting off the light, like those
+little pictures which one sees sometimes pasted here and there upon a
+glass screen, whose other panes are mere transparencies. He would try
+to make out Odette. And then, when he was once inside, without thinking,
+his eyes sparkled suddenly with such radiant happiness that M. Verdurin
+said to the painter: "H'm. Seems to be getting warm." Indeed, her
+presence gave the house what none other of the houses that he visited
+seemed to possess: a sort of tactual sense, a nervous system which
+ramified into each of its rooms and sent a constant stimulus to his
+heart.
+
+And so the simple and regular manifestations of a social organism,
+namely the 'little clan,' were transformed for Swann into a series of
+daily encounters with Odette, and enabled him to feign indifference to
+the prospect of seeing her, or even a desire not to see her; in doing
+which he incurred no very great risk since, even although he had written
+to her during the day, he would of necessity see her in the evening and
+accompany her home.
+
+But one evening, when, irritated by the thought of that inevitable dark
+drive together, he had taken his other 'little girl' all the way to the
+Bois, so as to delay as long as possible the moment of his appearance at
+the Verdurins', he was so late in reaching them that Odette, supposing
+that he did not intend to come, had already left. Seeing the room bare
+of her, Swann felt his heart wrung by sudden anguish; he shook with the
+sense that he was being deprived of a pleasure whose intensity he began
+then for the first time to estimate, having always, hitherto, had that
+certainty of finding it whenever he would, which (as in the case of
+all our pleasures) reduced, if it did not altogether blind him to its
+dimensions.
+
+"Did you notice the face he pulled when he saw that she wasn't here?" M.
+Verdurin asked his wife. "I think we may say that he's hooked."
+
+"The face he pulled?" exploded Dr. Cottard who, having left the house
+for a moment to visit a patient, had just returned to fetch his wife and
+did not know whom they were discussing.
+
+"D'you mean to say you didn't meet him on the doorstep--the loveliest of
+Swanns?"
+
+"No. M. Swann has been here?"
+
+"Just for a moment. We had a glimpse of a Swann tremendously agitated.
+In a state of nerves. You see, Odette had left."
+
+"You mean to say that she has gone the 'whole hog' with him; that she
+has 'burned her boats'?" inquired the Doctor cautiously, testing the
+meaning of his phrases.
+
+"Why, of course not; there's absolutely nothing in it; in fact, between
+you and me, I think she's making a great mistake, and behaving like a
+silly little fool, which she is, incidentally."
+
+"Come, come, come!" said M. Verdurin, "How on earth do you know that
+there's 'nothing in it'? We haven't been there to see, have we now?"
+
+"She would have told me," answered Mme. Verdurin with dignity. "I may
+say that she tells me everything. As she has no one else at present, I
+told her that she ought to live with him. She makes out that she can't;
+she admits, she was immensely attracted by him, at first; but he's
+always shy with her, and that makes her shy with him. Besides, she
+doesn't care for him in that way, she says; it's an ideal love,
+'Platonic,' you know; she's afraid of rubbing the bloom off--oh, I don't
+know half the things she says, how should I? And yet he's exactly the
+sort of man she wants."
+
+"I beg to differ from you," M. Verdurin courteously interrupted. "I am
+only half satisfied with the gentleman. I feel that he 'poses.'"
+
+Mme. Verdurin's whole body stiffened, her eyes stared blankly as though
+she had suddenly been turned into a statue; a device by means of which
+she might be supposed not to have caught the sound of that unutterable
+word which seemed to imply that it was possible for people to 'pose'
+in her house, and, therefore, that there were people in the world who
+'mattered more' than herself.
+
+"Anyhow, if there is nothing in it, I don't suppose it's because our
+friend believes in her virtue. And yet, you never know; he seems to
+believe in her intelligence. I don't know whether you heard the way he
+lectured her the other evening about Vinteuil's sonata. I am devoted
+to Odette, but really--to expound theories of aesthetic to her--the man
+must be a prize idiot."
+
+"Look here, I won't have you saying nasty things about Odette," broke in
+Mme. Verdurin in her 'spoiled child' manner. "She is charming."
+
+"There's no reason why she shouldn't be charming; we are not saying
+anything nasty about her, only that she is not the embodiment of either
+virtue or intellect. After all," he turned to the painter, "does it
+matter so very much whether she is virtuous or not? You can't tell; she
+might be a great deal less charming if she were."
+
+On the landing Swann had run into the Verdurins' butler, who had been
+somewhere else a moment earlier, when he arrived, and who had been asked
+by Odette to tell Swann (but that was at least an hour ago) that she
+would probably stop to drink a cup of chocolate at Pr�vost's on her
+way home. Swann set off at once for Pr�vost's, but every few yards
+his carriage was held up by others, or by people crossing the street,
+loathsome obstacles each of which he would gladly have crushed beneath
+his wheels, were it not that a policeman fumbling with a note-book would
+delay him even longer than the actual passage of the pedestrian. He
+counted the minutes feverishly, adding a few seconds to each so as to
+be quite certain that he had not given himself short measure, and so,
+possibly, exaggerated whatever chance there might actually be of his
+arriving at Pr�vost's in time, and of finding her still there. And then,
+in a moment of illumination, like a man in a fever who awakes from sleep
+and is conscious of the absurdity of the dream-shapes among which his
+mind has been wandering without any clear distinction between himself
+and them, Swann suddenly perceived how foreign to his nature were the
+thoughts which he had been revolving in his mind ever since he had heard
+at the Verdurins' that Odette had left, how novel the heartache from
+which he was suffering, but of which he was only now conscious, as
+though he had just woken up. What! all this disturbance simply because
+he would not see Odette, now, till to-morrow, exactly what he had been
+hoping, not an hour before, as he drove toward Mme. Verdurin's. He was
+obliged to admit also that now, as he sat in the same carriage and
+drove to Pr�vost's, he was no longer the same man, was no longer alone
+even--but that a new personality was there beside him, adhering to him,
+amalgamated with him, a creature from whom he might, perhaps, be unable
+to liberate himself, towards whom he might have to adopt some such
+stratagem as one uses to outwit a master or a malady. And yet, during
+this last moment in which he had felt that another, a fresh personality
+was thus conjoined with his own, life had seemed, somehow, more
+interesting.
+
+It was in vain that he assured himself that this possible meeting at
+Pr�vost's (the tension of waiting for which so ravished, stripped so
+bare the intervening moments that he could find nothing, not one idea,
+not one memory in his mind beneath which his troubled spirit might take
+shelter and repose) would probably, after all, should it take place, be
+much the same as all their meetings, of no great importance. As on every
+other evening, once he was in Odette's company, once he had begun to
+cast furtive glances at her changing countenance, and instantly to
+withdraw his eyes lest she should read in them the first symbols of
+desire and believe no more in his indifference, he would cease to
+be able even to think of her, so busy would he be in the search for
+pretexts which would enable him not to leave her immediately, and to
+assure himself, without betraying his concern, that he would find her
+again, next evening, at the Verdurins'; pretexts, that is to say, which
+would enable him to prolong for the time being, and to renew for one day
+more the disappointment, the torturing deception that must always come
+to him with the vain presence of this woman, whom he might approach, yet
+never dared embrace.
+
+She was not at Prevost's; he must search for her, then, in every
+restaurant upon the boulevards. To save time, while he went in one
+direction, he sent in the other his coachman R�mi (Rizzo's Doge Loredan)
+for whom he presently--after a fruitless search--found himself waiting
+at the spot where the carriage was to meet him. It did not appear, and
+Swann tantalised himself with alternate pictures of the approaching
+moment, as one in which R�mi would say to him: "Sir, the lady is there,"
+or as one in which R�mi would say to him: "Sir, the lady was not in
+any of the caf�s." And so he saw himself faced by the close of his
+evening--a thing uniform, and yet bifurcated by the intervening accident
+which would either put an end to his agony by discovering Odette, or
+would oblige him to abandon any hope of finding her that night, to
+accept the necessity of returning home without having seen her.
+
+The coachman returned; but, as he drew up opposite him, Swann asked,
+not "Did you find the lady?" but "Remind me, to-morrow, to order in
+some more firewood. I am sure we must be running short." Perhaps he had
+persuaded himself that, if R�mi had at last found Odette in some caf�,
+where she was waiting for him still, then his night of misery was
+already obliterated by the realisation, begun already in his mind, of a
+night of joy, and that there was no need for him to hasten towards the
+attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place,
+which would not escape his grasp again. But it was also by the force of
+inertia; there was in his soul that want of adaptability which can be
+seen in the bodies of certain people who, when the moment comes to avoid
+a collision, to snatch their clothes out of reach of a flame, or to
+perform any other such necessary movement, take their time (as the
+saying is), begin by remaining for a moment in their original position,
+as though seeking to find in it a starting-point, a source of strength
+and motion. And probably, if the coachman had interrupted him with,
+"I have found the lady," he would have answered, "Oh, yes, of course;
+that's what I told you to do. I had quite forgotten," and would have
+continued to discuss his supply of firewood, so as to hide from his
+servant the emotion that he had felt, and to give himself time to break
+away from the thraldom of his anxieties and abandon himself to pleasure.
+
+The coachman came back, however, with the report that he could not find
+her anywhere, and added the advice, as an old and privileged servant, "I
+think, sir, that all we can do now is to go home."
+
+But the air of indifference which Swann could so lightly assume when
+R�mi uttered his final, unalterable response, fell from him like a
+cast-off cloak when he saw R�mi attempt to make him abandon hope and
+retire from the quest.
+
+"Certainly not!" he exclaimed. "We must find the lady. It is most
+important. She would be extremely put out--it's a business matter--and
+vexed with me if she didn't see me."
+
+"But I do not see how the lady can be vexed, sir," answered R�mi, "since
+it was she that went away without waiting for you, sir, and said she was
+going to Pr�vost's, and then wasn't there."
+
+Meanwhile the restaurants were closing, and their lights began to go
+out. Under the trees of the boulevards there were still a few people
+strolling to and fro, barely distinguishable in the gathering darkness.
+Now and then the ghost of a woman glided up to Swann, murmured a few
+words in his ear, asked him to take her home, and left him shuddering.
+Anxiously he explored every one of these vaguely seen shapes, as though
+among the phantoms of the dead, in the realms of darkness, he had been
+searching for a lost Eurydice.
+
+Among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the
+agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious
+as the great gust of agitation which, now and then, sweeps over the
+human spirit. For then the creature in whose company we are seeking
+amusement at the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided,
+that is the creature whom we shall henceforward love. It is not
+necessary that she should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or
+even as much as others. All that is necessary is that our taste for her
+should become exclusive. And that condition is fulfilled so soon as--in
+the moment when she has failed to meet us--for the pleasure which
+we were on the point of enjoying in her charming company is abruptly
+substituted an anxious torturing desire, whose object is the creature
+herself, an irrational, absurd desire, which the laws of civilised
+society make it impossible to satisfy and difficult to assuage--the
+insensate, agonising desire to possess her.
+
+Swann made R�mi drive him to such restaurants as were still open; it was
+the sole hypothesis, now, of that happiness which he had contemplated
+so calmly; he no longer concealed his agitation, the price he set upon
+their meeting, and promised, in case of success, to reward his coachman,
+as though, by inspiring in him a will to triumph which would reinforce
+his own, he could bring it to pass, by a miracle, that Odette--assuming
+that she had long since gone home to bed,--might yet be found seated in
+some restaurant on the boulevards. He pursued the quest as far as the
+Maison Dor�e, burst twice into Tortoni's and, still without catching
+sight of her, was emerging from the Caf� Anglais, striding with haggard
+gaze towards his carriage, which was waiting for him at the corner of
+the Boulevard des Italiens, when he collided with a person coming in the
+opposite direction; it was Odette; she explained, later, that there had
+been no room at Pr�vost's, that she had gone, instead, to sup at the
+Maison Dor�e, and had been sitting there in an alcove where he must have
+overlooked her, and that she was now looking for her carriage.
+
+She had so little expected to see him that she started back in alarm. As
+for him, he had ransacked the streets of Paris, not that he supposed
+it possible that he should find her, but because he would have suffered
+even more cruelly by abandoning the attempt. But now the joy (which, his
+reason had never ceased to assure him, was not, that evening at least,
+to be realised) was suddenly apparent, and more real than ever
+before; for he himself had contributed nothing to it by anticipating
+probabilities,--it remained integral and external to himself; there
+was no need for him to draw on his own resources to endow it with
+truth--'twas from itself that there emanated, 'twas itself that
+projected towards him that truth whose glorious rays melted and
+scattered like the cloud of a dream the sense of loneliness which had
+lowered over him, that truth upon which he had supported, nay founded,
+albeit unconsciously, his vision of bliss. So will a traveller, who has
+come down, on a day of glorious weather, to the Mediterranean shore, and
+is doubtful whether they still exist, those lands which he has left, let
+his eyes be dazzled, rather than cast a backward glance, by the radiance
+streaming towards him from the luminous and unfading azure at his feet.
+
+He climbed after her into the carriage which she had kept waiting, and
+ordered his own to follow.
+
+She had in her hand a bunch of cattleyas, and Swann could see, beneath
+the film of lace that covered her head, more of the same flowers
+fastened to a swansdown plume. She was wearing, under her cloak, a
+flowing gown of black velvet, caught up on one side so as to reveal a
+large triangular patch of her white silk skirt, with an 'insertion,'
+also of white silk, in the cleft of her low-necked bodice, in which were
+fastened a few more cattleyas. She had scarcely recovered from the shock
+which the sight of Swann had given her, when some obstacle made the
+horse start to one side. They were thrown forward from their seats; she
+uttered a cry, and fell back quivering and breathless.
+
+"It's all right," he assured her, "don't be frightened." And he slipped
+his arm round her shoulder, supporting her body against his own; then
+went on: "Whatever you do, don't utter a word; just make a sign, yes
+or no, or you'll be out of breath again. You won't mind if I put the
+flowers straight on your bodice; the jolt has loosened them. I'm afraid
+of their dropping out; I'm just going to fasten them a little more
+securely."
+
+She was not used to being treated with so much formality by men, and
+smiled as she answered: "No, not at all; I don't mind in the least."
+
+But he, chilled a little by her answer, perhaps, also, to bear out the
+pretence that he had been sincere in adopting the stratagem, or even
+because he was already beginning to believe that he had been, exclaimed:
+"No, no; you mustn't speak. You will be out of breath again. You can
+easily answer in signs; I shall understand. Really and truly now, you
+don't mind my doing this? Look, there is a little--I think it must be
+pollen, spilt over your dress,--may I brush it off with my hand? That's
+not too hard; I'm not hurting you, am I? I'm tickling you, perhaps, a
+little; but I don't want to touch the velvet in case I rub it the wrong
+way. But, don't you see, I really had to fasten the flowers; they would
+have fallen out if I hadn't. Like that, now; if I just push them a
+little farther down.... Seriously, I'm not annoying you, am I? And if
+I just sniff them to see whether they've really lost all their scent? I
+don't believe I ever smelt any before; may I? Tell the truth, now."
+
+Still smiling, she shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly, as who
+should say, "You're quite mad; you know very well that I like it."
+
+He slipped his other hand upwards along Odette's cheek; she fixed her
+eyes on him with that languishing and solemn air which marks the women
+of the old Florentine's paintings, in whose faces he had found the type
+of hers; swimming at the brink of her fringed lids, her brilliant eyes,
+large and finely drawn as theirs, seemed on the verge of breaking from
+her face and rolling down her cheeks like two great tears. She bent her
+neck, as all their necks may be seen to bend, in the pagan scenes as
+well as in the scriptural. And although her attitude was, doubtless,
+habitual and instinctive, one which she knew to be appropriate to such
+moments, and was careful not to forget to assume, she seemed to need all
+her strength to hold her face back, as though some invisible force
+were drawing it down towards Swann's. And Swann it was who, before she
+allowed her face, as though despite her efforts, to fall upon his lips,
+held it back for a moment longer, at a little distance between his
+hands. He had intended to leave time for her mind to overtake her body's
+movements, to recognise the dream which she had so long cherished and to
+assist at its realisation, like a mother invited as a spectator when
+a prize is given to the child whom she has reared and loves. Perhaps,
+moreover, Swann himself was fixing upon these features of an Odette not
+yet possessed, not even kissed by him, on whom he was looking now for
+the last time, that comprehensive gaze with which, on the day of his
+departure, a traveller strives to bear away with him in memory the view
+of a country to which he may never return.
+
+But he was so shy in approaching her that, after this evening which
+had begun by his arranging her cattleyas and had ended in her complete
+surrender, whether from fear of chilling her, or from reluctance to
+appear, even retrospectively, to have lied, or perhaps because he lacked
+the audacity to formulate a more urgent requirement than this (which
+could always be repeated, since it had not annoyed her on the first
+occasion), he resorted to the same pretext on the following days. If
+she had any cattleyas pinned to her bodice, he would say: "It is most
+unfortunate; the cattleyas don't need tucking in this evening; they've
+not been disturbed as they were the other night; I think, though, that
+this one isn't quite straight. May I see if they have more scent than
+the others?" Or else, if she had none: "Oh! no cattleyas this evening;
+then there's nothing for me to arrange." So that for some time there
+was no change from the procedure which he had followed on that first
+evening, when he had started by touching her throat, with his fingers
+first and then with his lips, but their caresses began invariably with
+this modest exploration. And long afterwards, when the arrangement (or,
+rather, the ritual pretence of an arrangement) of her cattleyas had
+quite fallen into desuetude, the metaphor "Do a cattleya," transmuted
+into a simple verb which they would employ without a thought of its
+original meaning when they wished to refer to the act of physical
+possession (in which, paradoxically, the possessor possesses nothing),
+survived to commemorate in their vocabulary the long forgotten custom
+from which it sprang. And yet possibly this particular manner of saying
+"to make love" had not the precise significance of its synonyms.
+However disillusioned we may be about women, however we may regard
+the possession of even the most divergent types as an invariable
+and monotonous experience, every detail of which is known and can be
+described in advance, it still becomes a fresh and stimulating pleasure
+if the women concerned be--or be thought to be--so difficult as to
+oblige us to base our attack upon some unrehearsed incident in our
+relations with them, as was originally for Swann the arrangement of the
+cattleyas. He trembled as he hoped, that evening, (but Odette, he told
+himself, if she were deceived by his stratagem, could not guess his
+intention) that it was the possession of this woman that would emerge
+for him from their large and richly coloured petals; and the pleasure
+which he already felt, and which Odette tolerated, he thought, perhaps
+only because she was not yet aware of it herself, seemed to him for that
+reason--as it might have seemed to the first man when he enjoyed it amid
+the flowers of the earthly paradise--a pleasure which had never before
+existed, which he was striving now to create, a pleasure--and the
+special name which he was to give to it preserved its identity--entirely
+individual and new.
+
+The ice once broken, every evening, when he had taken her home, he must
+follow her into the house; and often she would come out again in her
+dressing-gown, and escort him to his carriage, and would kiss him before
+the eyes of his coachman, saying: "What on earth does it matter what
+people see?" And on evenings when he did not go to the Verdurins' (which
+happened occasionally, now that he had opportunities of meeting Odette
+elsewhere), when--more and more rarely--he went into society, she would
+beg him to come to her on his way home, however late he might be. The
+season was spring, the nights clear and frosty. He would come away from
+an evening party, jump into his victoria, spread a rug over his knees,
+tell the friends who were leaving at the same time, and who insisted on
+his going home with them, that he could not, that he was not going
+in their direction; then the coachman would start off at a fast trot
+without further orders, knowing quite well where he had to go. His
+friends would be left marvelling, and, as a matter of fact, Swann was
+no longer the same man. No one ever received a letter from him now
+demanding an introduction to a woman. He had ceased to pay any attention
+to women, and kept away from the places in which they were ordinarily to
+be met. In a restaurant, or in the country, his manner was deliberately
+and directly the opposite of that by which, only a few days earlier,
+his friends would have recognised him, that manner which had seemed
+permanently and unalterably his own. To such an extent does passion
+manifest itself in us as a temporary and distinct character, which not
+only takes the place of our normal character but actually obliterates
+the signs by which that character has hitherto been discernible. On the
+other hand, there was one thing that was, now, invariable, namely that
+wherever Swann might be spending the evening, he never failed to go on
+afterwards to Odette. The interval of space separating her from him
+was one which he must as inevitably traverse as he must descend, by an
+irresistible gravitation, the steep slope of life itself. To be frank,
+as often as not, when he had stayed late at a party, he would have
+preferred to return home at once, without going so far out of his way,
+and to postpone their meeting until the morrow; but the very fact of his
+putting himself to such inconvenience at an abnormal hour in order to
+visit her, while he guessed that his friends, as he left them, were
+saying to one another: "He is tied hand and foot; there must certainly
+be a woman somewhere who insists on his going to her at all hours,"
+made him feel that he was leading the life of the class of men whose
+existence is coloured by a love-affair, and in whom the perpetual
+sacrifice which they are making of their comfort and of their practical
+interests has engendered a spiritual charm. Then, though he may not
+consciously have taken this into consideration, the certainty that she
+was waiting for him, that she was not anywhere or with anyone else, that
+he would see her before he went home, drew the sting from that anguish,
+forgotten, it is true, but latent and ever ready to be reawakened, which
+he had felt on the evening when Odette had left the Verdurins' before
+his arrival, an anguish the actual cessation of which was so agreeable
+that it might even be called a state of happiness. Perhaps it was to
+that hour of anguish that there must be attributed the importance which
+Odette had since assumed in his life. Other people are, as a rule, so
+immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the
+power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person
+seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with
+poetry, makes of our lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on
+which that person and ourselves are ever more or less in contact. Swann
+could not without anxiety ask himself what Odette would mean to him
+in the years that were to come. Sometimes, as he looked up from his
+victoria on those fine and frosty nights of early spring, and saw the
+dazzling moonbeams fall between his eyes and the deserted streets, he
+would think of that other face, gleaming and faintly roseate like the
+moon's, which had, one day, risen on the horizon of his mind and since
+then had shed upon the world that mysterious light in which he saw it
+bathed. If he arrived after the hour at which Odette sent her servants
+to bed, before ringing the bell at the gate of her little garden,
+he would go round first into the other street, over which, at the
+ground-level, among the windows (all exactly alike, but darkened) of
+the adjoining houses, shone the solitary lighted window of her room.
+He would rap upon the pane, and she would hear the signal, and answer,
+before running to meet him at the gate. He would find, lying open on the
+piano, some of her favourite music, the _Valse des Roses_, the _Pauvre
+Fou_ of Tagliafico (which, according to the instructions embodied in her
+will, was to be played at her funeral); but he would ask her, instead,
+to give him the little phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. It was true that
+Odette played vilely, but often the fairest impression that remains in
+our minds of a favourite air is one which has arisen out of a jumble
+of wrong notes struck by unskilful fingers upon a tuneless piano. The
+little phrase was associated still, in Swann's mind, with his love for
+Odette. He felt clearly that this love was something to which there were
+no corresponding external signs, whose meaning could not be proved by
+any but himself; he realised, too, that Odette's qualities were not such
+as to justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in
+her company. And often, when the cold government of reason stood
+unchallenged, he would readily have ceased to sacrifice so many of his
+intellectual and social interests to this imaginary pleasure. But the
+little phrase, as soon as it struck his ear, had the power to liberate
+in him the room that was needed to contain it; the proportions of
+Swann's soul were altered; a margin was left for a form of enjoyment
+which corresponded no more than his love for Odette to any external
+object, and yet was not, like his enjoyment of that love, purely
+individual, but assumed for him an objective reality superior to that
+of other concrete things. This thirst for an untasted charm, the little
+phrase would stimulate it anew in him, but without bringing him any
+definite gratification to assuage it. With the result that those parts
+of Swann's soul in which the little phrase had obliterated all care
+for material interests, those human considerations which affect all men
+alike, were left bare by it, blank pages on which he was at liberty to
+inscribe the name of Odette. Moreover, where Odette's affection might
+seem ever so little abrupt and disappointing, the little phrase would
+come to supplement it, to amalgamate with it its own mysterious essence.
+Watching Swann's face while he listened to the phrase, one would have
+said that he was inhaling an anaesthetic which allowed him to breathe
+more deeply. And the pleasure which the music gave him, which was
+shortly to create in him a real longing, was in fact closely akin,
+at such moments, to the pleasure which he would have derived from
+experimenting with perfumes, from entering into contract with a world
+for which we men were not created, which appears to lack form because
+our eyes cannot perceive it, to lack significance because it escapes
+our intelligence, to which we may attain by way of one sense only. Deep
+repose, mysterious refreshment for Swann,--for him whose eyes, although
+delicate interpreters of painting, whose mind, although an acute
+observer of manners, must bear for ever the indelible imprint of the
+barrenness of his life,--to feel himself transformed into a creature
+foreign to humanity, blinded, deprived of his logical faculty, almost
+a fantastic unicorn, a chimaera-like creature conscious of the world
+through his two ears alone. And as, notwithstanding, he sought in the
+little phrase for a meaning to which his intelligence could not descend,
+with what a strange frenzy of intoxication must he strip bare his
+innermost soul of the whole armour of reason, and make it pass,
+unattended, through the straining vessel, down into the dark filter of
+sound. He began to reckon up how much that was painful, perhaps even how
+much secret and unappeased sorrow underlay the sweetness of the phrase;
+and yet to him it brought no suffering. What matter though the phrase
+repeated that love is frail and fleeting, when his love was so strong!
+He played with the melancholy which the phrase diffused, he felt it
+stealing over him, but like a caress which only deepened and sweetened
+his sense of his own happiness. He would make Odette play him the phrase
+again, ten, twenty times on end, insisting that, while she played, she
+must never cease to kiss him. Every kiss provokes another. Ah, in those
+earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring into life. How
+closely, in their abundance, are they pressed one against another; until
+lovers would find it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour,
+as to count the flowers in a meadow in May. Then she would pretend to
+stop, saying: "How do you expect me to play when you keep on holding me?
+I can't do everything at once. Make up your mind what you want; am I to
+play the phrase or do you want to play with me?" Then he would become
+annoyed, and she would burst out with a laugh which, was transformed, as
+it left her lips, and descended upon him in a shower of kisses. Or else
+she would look at him sulkily, and he would see once again a face worthy
+to figure in Botticelli's 'Life of Moses,' he would place it there,
+giving to Odette's neck the necessary inclination; and when he had
+finished her portrait in distemper, in the fifteenth century, on the
+wall of the Sixtine, the idea that she was, none the less, in the room
+with him still, by the piano, at that very moment, ready to be kissed
+and won, the idea of her material existence, of her being alive, would
+sweep over him with so violent an intoxication that, with eyes starting
+from his head and jaws that parted as though to devour her, he would
+fling himself upon this Botticelli maiden and kiss and bite her cheeks.
+And then, as soon as he had left the house, not without returning to
+kiss her once again, because he had forgotten to take away with him, in
+memory, some detail of her fragrance or of her features, while he drove
+home in his victoria, blessing the name of Odette who allowed him to pay
+her these daily visits, which, although they could not, he felt, bring
+any great happiness to her, still, by keeping him immune from the fever
+of jealousy--by removing from him every possibility of a fresh outbreak
+of the heart-sickness which had manifested itself in him that evening,
+when he had failed to find her at the Verdurins'--might help him to
+arrive, without any recurrence of those crises, of which the first had
+been so distressing that it must also be the last, at the termination of
+this strange series of hours in his life, hours almost enchanted, in the
+same manner as these other, following hours, in which he drove through a
+deserted Paris by the light of the moon: noticing as he drove home that
+the satellite had now changed its position, relatively to his own,
+and was almost touching the horizon; feeling that his love, also, was
+obedient to these immutable laws of nature, he asked himself whether
+this period, upon which he had entered, was to last much longer, whether
+presently his mind's eye would cease to behold that dear countenance,
+save as occupying a distant and diminished position, and on the verge of
+ceasing to shed on him the radiance of its charm. For Swann was finding
+in things once more, since he had fallen in love, the charm that he had
+found when, in his adolescence, he had fancied himself an artist; with
+this difference, that what charm lay in them now was conferred by Odette
+alone. He could feel reawakening in himself the inspirations of his
+boyhood, which had been dissipated among the frivolities of his later
+life, but they all bore, now, the reflection, the stamp of a particular
+being; and during the long hours which he now found a subtle pleasure
+in spending at home, alone with his convalescent spirit, he became
+gradually himself again, but himself in thraldom to another.
+
+He went to her only in the evenings, and knew nothing of how she spent
+her time during the day, any more than he knew of her past; so little,
+indeed, that he had not even the tiny, initial clue which, by allowing
+us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge.
+And so he never asked himself what she might be doing, or what her life
+had been. Only he smiled sometimes at the thought of how, some years
+earlier, when he still did not know her, some one had spoken to him of a
+woman who, if he remembered rightly, must certainly have been Odette,
+as of a 'tart,' a 'kept' woman, one of those women to whom he still
+attributed (having lived but little in their company) the entire set of
+characteristics, fundamentally perverse, with which they had been, for
+many years, endowed by the imagination of certain novelists. He would
+say to himself that one has, as often as not, only to take the exact
+counterpart of the reputation created by the world in order to judge a
+person fairly, when with such a character he contrasted that of Odette,
+so good, so simple, so enthusiastic in the pursuit of ideals, so nearly
+incapable of not telling the truth that, when he had once begged her, so
+that they might dine together alone, to write to Mme. Verdurin, saying
+that she was unwell, the next day he had seen her, face to face
+with Mme. Verdurin, who asked whether she had recovered, blushing,
+stammering, and, in spite of herself, revealing in every feature how
+painful, what a torture it was to her to act a lie; and, while in her
+answer she multiplied the fictitious details of an imaginary illness,
+seeming to ask pardon, by her suppliant look and her stricken accents,
+for the obvious falsehood of her words.
+
+On certain days, however, though these came seldom, she would call upon
+him in the afternoon, to interrupt his musings or the essay on Vermeer
+to which he had latterly returned. His servant would come in to say that
+Mme. de Cr�cy was in the small drawing-room. He would go in search of
+her, and, when he opened the door, on Odette's blushing countenance, as
+soon as she caught sight of Swann, would appear--changing the curve
+of her lips, the look in her eyes, the moulding of her cheeks--an
+all-absorbing smile. Once he was left alone he would see again that
+smile, and her smile of the day before, another with which she had
+greeted him sometime else, the smile which had been her answer, in the
+carriage that night, when he had asked her whether she objected to his
+rearranging her cattleyas; and the life of Odette at all other times,
+since he knew nothing of it, appeared to him upon a neutral and
+colourless background, like those sheets of sketches by Watteau upon
+which one sees, here and there, in every corner and in all directions,
+traced in three colours upon the buff paper, innumerable smiles. But,
+once in a while, illuminating a chink of that existence which Swann
+still saw as a complete blank, even if his mind assured him that it was
+not so, because he was unable to imagine anything that might occupy it,
+some friend who knew them both, and suspecting that they were in love,
+had not dared to tell him anything about her that was of the least
+importance, would describe Odette's figure, as he had seen her, that
+very morning, going on foot up the Rue Abbattucci, in a cape trimmed
+with skunks, wearing a Rembrandt hat, and a bunch of violets in her
+bosom. This simple outline reduced Swann to utter confusion by enabling
+him suddenly to perceive that Odette had an existence which was not
+wholly subordinated to his own; he burned to know whom she had been
+seeking to fascinate by this costume in which he had never seen her; he
+registered a vow to insist upon her telling him where she had been going
+at that intercepted moment, as though, in all the colourless life--a
+life almost nonexistent, since she was then invisible to him--of his
+mistress, there had been but a single incident apart from all those
+smiles directed towards himself; namely, her walking abroad beneath a
+Rembrandt hat, with a bunch of violets in her bosom.
+
+Except when he asked her for Vinteuil's little phrase instead of the
+_Valse des Roses_, Swann made no effort to induce her to play the things
+that he himself preferred, nor, in literature any more than in music, to
+correct the manifold errors of her taste. He fully realised that she was
+not intelligent. When she said how much she would like him to tell her
+about the great poets, she had imagined that she would suddenly get
+to know whole pages of romantic and heroic verse, in the style of the
+Vicomte de Borelli, only even more moving. As for Vermeer of Delft, she
+asked whether he had been made to suffer by a woman, if it was a woman
+that had inspired him, and once Swann had told her that no one knew, she
+had lost all interest in that painter. She would often say: "I'm sure,
+poetry; well, of course, there'd be nothing like it if it was all true,
+if the poets really believed the things they said. But as often as not
+you'll find there's no one so mean and calculating as those fellows. I
+know something about poetry. I had a friend, once, who was in love with
+a poet of sorts. In his verses he never spoke of anything but love, and
+heaven, and the stars. Oh! she was properly taken in! He had more than
+three hundred thousand francs out of her before he'd finished." If,
+then, Swann tried to shew her in what artistic beauty consisted, how one
+ought to appreciate poetry or painting, after a minute or two she would
+cease to listen, saying: "Yes... I never thought it would be like that."
+And he felt that her disappointment was so great that he preferred to
+lie to her, assuring her that what he had said was nothing, that he
+had only touched the surface, that he had not time to go into it all
+properly, that there was more in it than that. Then she would interrupt
+with a brisk, "More in it? What?... Do tell me!", but he did not tell
+her, for he realised how petty it would appear to her, and how different
+from what she had expected, less sensational and less touching; he was
+afraid, too, lest, disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the
+same time be disillusioned in the greater matter of love.
+
+With the result that she found Swann inferior, intellectually, to what
+she had supposed. "You're always so reserved; I can't make you out." She
+marvelled increasingly at his indifference to money, at his courtesy
+to everyone alike, at the delicacy of his mind. And indeed it happens,
+often enough, to a greater man than Swann ever was, to a scientist or
+artist, when he is not wholly misunderstood by the people among whom
+he lives, that the feeling in them which proves that they have been
+convinced of the superiority of his intellect is created not by any
+admiration for his ideas--for those are entirely beyond them--but by
+their respect for what they term his good qualities. There was also the
+respect with which Odette was inspired by the thought of Swann's social
+position, although she had no desire that he should attempt to secure
+invitations for herself. Perhaps she felt that such attempts would be
+bound to fail; perhaps, indeed, she feared lest, merely by speaking of
+her to his friends, he should provoke disclosures of an unwelcome kind.
+The fact remains that she had consistently held him to his promise never
+to mention her name. Her reason for not wishing to go into society was,
+she had told him, a quarrel which she had had, long ago, with another
+girl, who had avenged herself by saying nasty things about her. "But,"
+Swann objected, "surely, people don't all know your friend." "Yes,
+don't you see, it's like a spot of oil; people are so horrid." Swann was
+unable, frankly, to appreciate this point; on the other hand, he knew
+that such generalisations as "People are so horrid," and "A word of
+scandal spreads like a spot of oil," were generally accepted as true;
+there must, therefore, be cases to which they were literally applicable.
+Could Odette's case be one of these? He teased himself with the
+question, though not for long, for he too was subject to that mental
+oppression which had so weighed upon his father, whenever he was faced
+by a difficult problem. In any event, that world of society which
+concealed such terrors for Odette inspired her, probably, with no very
+great longing to enter it, since it was too far removed from the world
+which she already knew for her to be able to form any clear conception
+of it. At the same time, while in certain respects she had retained a
+genuine simplicity (she had, for instance, kept up a friendship with a
+little dressmaker, now retired from business, up whose steep and dark
+and fetid staircase she clambered almost every day), she still thirsted
+to be in the fashion, though her idea of it was not altogether that held
+by fashionable people. For the latter, fashion is a thing that emanates
+from a comparatively small number of leaders, who project it to a
+considerable distance--with more or less strength according as one
+is nearer to or farther from their intimate centre--over the widening
+circle of their friends and the friends of their friends, whose names
+form a sort of tabulated index. People 'in society' know this index by
+heart, they are gifted in such matters with an erudition from which they
+have extracted a sort of taste, of tact, so automatic in its operation
+that Swann, for example, without needing to draw upon his knowledge of
+the world, if he read in a newspaper the names of the people who had
+been guests at a dinner, could tell at once how fashionable the dinner
+had been, just as a man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can
+estimate exactly the literary merit of its author. But Odette was one
+of those persons (an extremely numerous class, whatever the fashionable
+world may think, and to be found in every section of society) who do
+not share this knowledge, but imagine fashion to be something of quite
+another kind, which assumes different aspects according to the circle to
+which they themselves belong, but has the special characteristic--common
+alike to the fashion of which Odette used to dream and to that before
+which Mme. Cottard bowed--of being directly accessible to all. The other
+kind, the fashion of 'fashionable people,' is, it must be admitted,
+accessible also; but there are inevitable delays. Odette would say of
+some one: "He never goes to any place that isn't really smart."
+
+And if Swann were to ask her what she meant by that, she would answer,
+with a touch of contempt, "Smart places! Why, good heavens, just fancy,
+at your age, having to be told what the smart places are in Paris! What
+do you expect me to say? Well, on Sunday mornings there's the Avenue de
+l'Imp�ratrice, and round the lake at five o'clock, and on Thursdays
+the Eden-Th��tre, and the Hippodrome on Fridays; then there are the
+balls..."
+
+"What balls?"
+
+"Why, silly, the balls people give in Paris; the smart ones, I mean.
+Wait now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of
+the jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the
+best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears
+such swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a
+light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with
+that old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave
+a ball the other night, and all the smart people in Paris were there.
+I should have loved to go! but you had to shew your invitation at the
+door, and I couldn't get one anywhere. After all, I'm just as glad,
+now, that I didn't go; I should have been killed in the crush, and seen
+nothing. Still, just to be able to say one had been to Herbinger's ball.
+You know how vain I am! However, you may be quite certain that half the
+people who tell you they were there are telling stories.... But I am
+surprised that you weren't there, a regular 'tip-topper' like you."
+
+Swann made no attempt, however, to modify this conception of fashion;
+feeling that his own came no nearer to the truth, was just as fatuous,
+devoid of all importance, he saw no advantage to be gained by imparting
+it to his mistress, with the result that, after a few months, she ceased
+to take any interest in the people to whose houses he went, except
+when they were the means of his obtaining tickets for the paddock at
+race-meetings or first-nights at the theatre. She hoped that he would
+continue to cultivate such profitable acquaintances, but she had come to
+regard them as less smart since the day when she had passed the Marquise
+de Villeparisis in the street, wearing a black serge dress and a bonnet
+with strings.
+
+"But she looks like a pew-opener, like an old charwoman, darling! That a
+marquise! Goodness knows I'm not a marquise, but you'd have to pay me
+a lot of money before you'd get me to go about Paris rigged out like
+that!"
+
+Nor could she understand Swann's continuing to live in his house on the
+Quai d'Orl�ans, which, though she dared not tell him so, she considered
+unworthy of him.
+
+It was true that she claimed to be fond of 'antiques,' and used to
+assume a rapturous and knowing air when she confessed how she loved
+to spend the whole day 'rummaging' in second-hand shops, hunting for
+'bric-�-brac,' and things of the 'right date.' Although it was a point
+of honour, to which she obstinately clung, as though obeying some old
+family custom, that she should never answer any questions, never give
+any account of what she did during the daytime, she spoke to Swann once
+about a friend to whose house she had been invited, and had found that
+everything in it was 'of the period.' Swann could not get her to tell
+him what 'period' it was. Only after thinking the matter over she
+replied that it was 'mediaeval'; by which she meant that the walls were
+panelled. Some time later she spoke to him again of her friend, and
+added, in the hesitating but confident tone in which one refers to a
+person whom one has met somewhere, at dinner, the night before, of whom
+one had never heard until then, but whom one's hosts seemed to regard as
+some one so celebrated and important that one hopes that one's listener
+will know quite well who is meant, and will be duly impressed: "Her
+dining-room... is... eighteenth century!" Incidentally, she had thought
+it hideous, all bare, as though the house were still unfinished; women
+looked frightful in it, and it would never become the fashion. She
+mentioned it again, a third time, when she shewed Swann a card with the
+name and address of the man who had designed the dining-room, and whom
+she wanted to send for, when she had enough money, to see whether he
+could not do one for her too; not one like that, of course, but one
+of the sort she used to dream of, one which, unfortunately, her little
+house would not be large enough to contain, with tall sideboards,
+Renaissance furniture and fireplaces like the Ch�teau at Blois. It was
+on this occasion that she let out to Swann what she really thought of
+his abode on the Quai d'Orl�ans; he having ventured the criticism that
+her friend had indulged, not in the Louis XVI style, for, he went on,
+although that was not, of course, done, still it might be made charming,
+but in the 'Sham-Antique.'
+
+"You wouldn't have her live, like you, among a lot of broken-down chairs
+and threadbare carpets!" she exclaimed, the innate respectability of
+the middle-class housewife rising impulsively to the surface through the
+acquired dilettantism of the 'light woman.'
+
+People who enjoyed 'picking-up' things, who admired poetry, despised
+sordid calculations of profit and loss, and nourished ideals of honour
+and love, she placed in a class by themselves, superior to the rest of
+humanity. There was no need actually to have those tastes, provided
+one talked enough about them; when a man had told her at dinner that he
+loved to wander about and get his hands all covered with dust in the
+old furniture shops, that he would never be really appreciated in
+this commercial age, since he was not concerned about the things that
+interested it, and that he belonged to another generation altogether,
+she would come home saying: "Why, he's an adorable creature; so
+sensitive! I had no idea," and she would conceive for him a strong and
+sudden friendship. But, on the other hand, men who, like Swann, had
+these tastes but did not speak of them, left her cold. She was obliged,
+of course, to admit that Swann was most generous with his money, but she
+would add, pouting: "It's not the same thing, you see, with him,"
+and, as a matter of fact, what appealed to her imagination was not the
+practice of disinterestedness, but its vocabulary.
+
+Feeling that, often, he could not give her in reality the pleasures of
+which she dreamed, he tried at least to ensure that she should be happy
+in his company, tried not to contradict those vulgar ideas, that bad
+taste which she displayed on every possible occasion, which all the same
+he loved, as he could not help loving everything that came from her,
+which even fascinated him, for were they not so many more of those
+characteristic features, by virtue of which the essential qualities
+of the woman emerged, and were made visible? And so, when she was in a
+happy mood because she was going to see the _Reine Topaze_, or when her
+eyes grew serious, troubled, petulant, if she was afraid of missing the
+flower-show, or merely of not being in time for tea, with muffins and
+toast, at the Rue Royale tea-rooms, where she believed that regular
+attendance was indispensable, and set the seal upon a woman's
+certificate of 'smartness,' Swann, enraptured, as all of us are, at
+times, by the natural behaviour of a child, or by the likeness of a
+portrait, which appears to be on the point of speaking, would feel so
+distinctly the soul of his mistress rising to fill the outlines of her
+face that he could not refrain from going across and welcoming it
+with his lips. "Oh, then, so little Odette wants us to take her to the
+flower-show, does she? she wants to be admired, does she? very well, we
+will take her there, we can but obey her wishes." As Swann's sight was
+beginning to fail, he had to resign himself to a pair of spectacles,
+which he wore at home, when working, while to face the world he adopted
+a single eyeglass, as being less disfiguring. The first time that she
+saw it in his eye, she could not contain herself for joy: "I really do
+think--for a man, that is to say--it is tremendously smart! How nice you
+look with it! Every inch a gentleman. All you want now is a title!" she
+concluded, with a tinge of regret in her voice. He liked Odette to say
+these things, just as, if he had been in love with a Breton girl, he
+would have enjoyed seeing her in her coif and hearing her say that she
+believed in ghosts. Always until then, as is common among men whose
+taste for the fine arts develops independently of their sensuality, a
+grotesque disparity had existed between the satisfactions which he would
+accord to either taste simultaneously; yielding to the seduction of
+works of art which grew more and more subtle as the women in whose
+company he enjoyed them grew more illiterate and common, he would take a
+little servant-girl to a screened box in a theatre where there was some
+decadent piece which he had wished to see performed, or to an exhibition
+of impressionist painting, with the conviction, moreover, that an
+educated, 'society' woman would have understood them no better, but
+would not have managed to keep quiet about them so prettily. But, now
+that he was in love with Odette, all this was changed; to share her
+sympathies, to strive to be one with her in spirit was a task so
+attractive that he tried to find satisfaction in the things that she
+liked, and did find a pleasure, not only in copying her habits but in
+adopting her opinions, which was all the deeper because, as those habits
+and opinions sprang from no roots in her intelligence, they suggested
+to him nothing except that love, for the sake of which he had preferred
+them to his own. If he went again to _Serge Panine_, if he looked out
+for opportunities of going to watch Olivier M�tra conducting, it was for
+the pleasure of being initiated into every one of the ideas in Odette's
+mind, of feeling that he had an equal share in all her tastes. This
+charm of drawing him closer to her, which her favourite plays and
+pictures and places possessed, struck him as being more mysterious than
+the intrinsic charm of more beautiful things and places, which appealed
+to him by their beauty, but without recalling her. Besides, having
+allowed the intellectual beliefs of his youth to grow faint, until his
+scepticism, as a finished 'man of the world,' had gradually penetrated
+them unawares, he held (or at least he had held for so long that he had
+fallen into the habit of saying) that the objects which we admire have
+no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of
+dates and castes, and consists in a series of fashions, the most vulgar
+of which are worth just as much as those which are regarded as the most
+refined. And as he had decided that the importance which Odette attached
+to receiving cards tot a private view was not in itself any more
+ridiculous than the pleasure which he himself had at one time felt in
+going to luncheon with the Prince of Wales, so he did not think that the
+admiration which she professed for Monte-Carlo or for the Righi was any
+more unreasonable than his own liking for Holland (which she imagined
+as ugly) and for Versailles (which bored her to tears). And so he denied
+himself the pleasure of visiting those places, consoling himself with
+the reflection that it was for her sake that he wished to feel, to like
+nothing that was not equally felt and liked by her.
+
+Like everything else that formed part of Odette's environment, and was
+no more, in a sense, than the means whereby he might see and talk to her
+more often, he enjoyed the society of the Verdurins. With them, since,
+at the heart of all their entertainments, dinners, musical evenings,
+games, suppers in fancy dress, excursions to the country, theatre
+parties, even the infrequent 'big evenings' when they entertained
+'bores,' there were the presence of Odette, the sight of Odette,
+conversation with Odette, an inestimable boon which the Verdurins, by
+inviting him to their house, bestowed on Swann, he was happier in the
+little 'nucleus' than anywhere else, and tried to find some genuine
+merit in each of its members, imagining that his tastes would lead him
+to frequent their society for the rest of his life. Never daring to
+whisper to himself, lest he should doubt the truth of the suggestion,
+that he would always be in love with Odette, at least when he tried to
+suppose that he would always go to the Verdurins' (a proposition
+which, a priori, raised fewer fundamental objections on the part of his
+intelligence), he saw himself for the future continuing to meet Odette
+every evening; that did not, perhaps, come quite to the same thing as
+his being permanently in love with her, but for the moment while he was
+in love with her, to feel that he would not, one day, cease to see her
+was all that he could ask. "What a charming atmosphere!" he said to
+himself. "How entirely genuine life is to these people! They are far
+more intelligent, far more artistic, surely, than the people one knows.
+Mme. Verdurin, in spite of a few trifling exaggerations which are rather
+absurd, has a sincere love of painting and music! What a passion for
+works of art, what anxiety to give pleasure to artists! Her ideas about
+some of the people one knows are not quite right, but then their ideas
+about artistic circles are altogether wrong! Possibly I make no great
+intellectual demands upon conversation, but I am perfectly happy talking
+to Cottard, although he does trot out those idiotic puns. And as for
+the painter, if he is rather unpleasantly affected when he tries to be
+paradoxical, still he has one of the finest brains that I have ever come
+across. Besides, what is most important, one feels quite free there, one
+does what one likes without constraint or fuss. What a flow of humour
+there is every day in that drawing-room! Certainly, with a few rare
+exceptions, I never want to go anywhere else again. It will become more
+and more of a habit, and I shall spend the rest of my life among them."
+
+And as the qualities which he supposed to be an intrinsic part of
+the Verdurin character were no more, really, than their superficial
+reflection of the pleasure which had been enjoyed in their society by
+his love for Odette, those qualities became more serious, more profound,
+more vital, as that pleasure increased. Since Mme. Verdurin gave Swann,
+now and then, what alone could constitute his happiness; since, on an
+evening when he felt anxious because Odette had talked rather more to
+one of the party than to another, and, in a spasm of irritation, would
+not take the initiative by asking her whether she was coming home, Mme.
+Verdurin brought peace and joy to his troubled spirit by the spontaneous
+exclamation: "Odette! You'll see M. Swann home, won't you?"; since,
+when the summer holidays came, and after he had asked himself uneasily
+whether Odette might not leave Paris without him, whether he would still
+be able to see her every day, Mme. Verdurin was going to invite them
+both to spend the summer with her in the country; Swann, unconsciously
+allowing gratitude and self-interest to filter into his intelligence and
+to influence his ideas, went so far as to proclaim that Mme. Verdurin
+was "a great and noble soul." Should any of his old fellow-pupils in the
+Louvre school of painting speak to him of some rare or eminent artist,
+"I'd a hundred times rather," he would reply, "have the Verdurins." And,
+with a solemnity of diction which was new in him: "They are magnanimous
+creatures, and magnanimity is, after all, the one thing that matters,
+the one thing that gives us distinction here on earth. Look you, there
+are only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have
+reached an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all
+whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes,
+and, to make up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to
+leave them again as long as one lives. Very well!" he went on, with the
+slight emotion which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of
+what he is doing, he says something, not because it is true but because
+he enjoys saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words
+as though they came from some one else, "The die is now cast; I have
+elected to love none but magnanimous souls, and to live only in an
+atmosphere of magnanimity. You ask me whether Mme. Verdurin is really
+intelligent. I can assure you that she has given me proofs of a nobility
+of heart, of a loftiness of soul, to which no one could possibly
+attain--how could they?--without a corresponding loftiness of mind.
+Without question, she has a profound understanding of art. But it is
+not, perhaps, in that that she is most admirable; every little action,
+ingeniously, exquisitely kind, which she has performed for my sake,
+every friendly attention, simple little things, quite domestic and yet
+quite sublime, reveal a more profound comprehension of existence than
+all your textbooks of philosophy."
+
+* * *
+
+He might have reminded himself, all the same, that there were various
+old friends of his family who were just as simple as the Verdurins,
+companions of his early days who were just as fond of art, that he knew
+other 'great-hearted creatures,' and that, nevertheless, since he had
+cast his vote in favour of simplicity, the arts, and magnanimity, he had
+entirely ceased to see them. But these people did not know Odette, and,
+if they had known her, would never have thought of introducing her to
+him.
+
+And so there was probably not, in the whole of the Verdurin circle, a
+single one of the 'faithful' who loved them, or believed that he loved
+them, as dearly as did Swann. And yet, when M. Verdurin said that he was
+not satisfied with Swann, he had not only expressed his own sentiments,
+he had unwittingly discovered his wife's. Doubtless Swann had too
+particular an affection for Odette, as to which he had failed to take
+Mme. Verdurin daily into his confidence; doubtless the very discretion
+with which he availed himself of the Verdurins' hospitality, refraining,
+often, from coming to dine with them for a reason which they never
+suspected, and in place of which they saw only an anxiety on his part
+not to have to decline an invitation to the house of some 'bore' or
+other; doubtless, also, and despite all the precautions which he had
+taken to keep it from them, the gradual discovery which they were
+making of his brilliant position in society--doubtless all these things
+contributed to their general annoyance with Swann. But the real, the
+fundamental reason was quite different. What had happened was that they
+had at once discovered in him a locked door, a reserved, impenetrable
+chamber in which he still professed silently to himself that the
+Princesse de Sagan was not grotesque, and that Cottard's jokes were
+not amusing; in a word (and for all that he never once abandoned his
+friendly attitude towards them all, or revolted from their dogmas), they
+had discovered an impossibility of imposing those dogmas upon him, of
+entirely converting him to their faith, the like of which they had never
+come across in anyone before. They would have forgiven his going to the
+houses of 'bores' (to whom, as it happened, in his heart of hearts he
+infinitely preferred the Verdurins and all their little 'nucleus') had
+he consented to set a good example by openly renouncing those 'bores'
+in the presence of the 'faithful.' But that was an abjuration which, as
+they well knew, they were powerless to extort.
+
+What a difference was there in a 'newcomer' whom Odette had asked them
+to invite, although she herself had met him only a few times, and on
+whom they were building great hopes--the Comte de Forcheville! (It
+turned out that he was nothing more nor less than the brother-in-law of
+Saniette, a discovery which filled all the 'faithful' with amazement:
+the manners of the old palaeographer were so humble that they had always
+supposed him to be of a class inferior, socially, to their own, and
+had never expected to learn that he came of a rich and relatively
+aristocratic family.) Of course, Forcheville was enormously the 'swell,'
+which Swann was not or had quite ceased to be; of course, he would never
+dream of placing, as Swann now placed, the Verdurin circle above any
+other. But he lacked that natural refinement which prevented Swann from
+associating himself with the criticisms (too obviously false to be worth
+his notice) that Mme. Verdurin levelled at people whom he knew. As for
+the vulgar and affected tirades in which the painter sometimes indulged,
+the bag-man's pleasantries which Cottard used to hazard,--whereas
+Swann, who liked both men sincerely, could easily find excuses for these
+without having either the courage or the hypocrisy to applaud them,
+Forcheville, on the other hand, was on an intellectual level which
+permitted him to be stupified, amazed by the invective (without in the
+least understanding what it all was about), and to be frankly delighted
+by the wit. And the very first dinner at the Verdurins' at which
+Forcheville was present threw a glaring light upon all the differences
+between them, made his qualities start into prominence and precipitated
+the disgrace of Swann.
+
+There was, at this dinner, besides the usual party, a professor from
+the Sorbonne, one Brichot, who had met M. and Mme. Verdurin at a
+watering-place somewhere, and, if his duties at the university and his
+other works of scholarship had not left him with very little time
+to spare, would gladly have come to them more often. For he had that
+curiosity, that superstitious outlook on life, which, combined with a
+certain amount of scepticism with regard to the object of their studies,
+earn for men of intelligence, whatever their profession, for doctors
+who do not believe in medicine, for schoolmasters who do not believe in
+Latin exercises, the reputation of having broad, brilliant, and indeed
+superior minds. He affected, when at Mme. Verdurin's, to choose his
+illustrations from among the most topical subjects of the day, when he
+spoke of philosophy or history, principally because he regarded those
+sciences as no more, really, than a preparation for life itself, and
+imagined that he was seeing put into practice by the 'little clan'
+what hitherto he had known only from books; and also, perhaps,
+because, having had drilled into him as a boy, and having unconsciously
+preserved, a feeling of reverence for certain subjects, he thought that
+he was casting aside the scholar's gown when he ventured to treat those
+subjects with a conversational licence, which seemed so to him only
+because the folds of the gown still clung.
+
+Early in the course of the dinner, when M. de Forcheville, seated on the
+right of Mme. Verdurin, who, in the 'newcomer's' honour, had taken great
+pains with her toilet, observed to her: "Quite original, that white
+dress," the Doctor, who had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was
+he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a "de," and was
+on the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as
+to come into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective
+'_blanche_' and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out,
+"_Blanche_? Blanche of Castile?" then, without moving his head, shot
+a furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the
+whole. While Swann, by the painful and futile effort which he made to
+smile, testified that he thought the pun absurd, Forcheville had shewn
+at once that he could appreciate its subtlety, and that he was a man of
+the world, by keeping within its proper limits a mirth the spontaneity
+of which had charmed Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"What are you to say of a scientist like that?" she asked Forcheville.
+"You can't talk seriously to him for two minutes on end. Is that the
+sort of thing you tell them at your hospital?" she went on, turning to
+the Doctor. "They must have some pretty lively times there, if that's
+the case. I can see that I shall have to get taken in as a patient!"
+
+"I think I heard the Doctor speak of that wicked old humbug, Blanche of
+Castile, if I may so express myself. Am I not right, Madame?" Brichot
+appealed to Mme. Verdurin, who, swooning with merriment, her eyes
+tightly closed, had buried her face in her two hands, from between
+which, now and then, escaped a muffled scream.
+
+"Good gracious, Madame, I would not dream of shocking the
+reverent-minded, if there are any such around this table, _sub rosa_...
+I recognise, moreover, that our ineffable and Athenian--oh, how
+infinitely Athenian--Republic is capable of honouring, in the person of
+that obscurantist old she-Capet, the first of our chiefs of police. Yes,
+indeed, my dear host, yes, indeed!" he repeated in his ringing voice,
+which sounded a separate note for each syllable, in reply to a protest
+by M. Verdurin. "The Chronicle of Saint Denis, and the authenticity of
+its information is beyond question, leaves us no room for doubt on that
+point. No one could be more fitly chosen as Patron by a secularising
+proletariat than that mother of a Saint, who let him see some pretty
+fishy saints besides, as Suger says, and other great St. Bernards of the
+sort; for with her it was a case of taking just what you pleased."
+
+"Who is that gentleman?" Forcheville asked Mme. Verdurin. "He seems to
+speak with great authority."
+
+"What! Do you mean to say you don't know the famous Brichot? Why, he's
+celebrated all over Europe."
+
+"Oh, that's Br�chot, is it?" exclaimed Forcheville, who had not quite
+caught the name. "You must tell me all about him"; he went on, fastening
+a pair of goggle eyes on the celebrity. "It's always interesting to
+meet well-known people at dinner. But, I say, you ask us to very select
+parties here. No dull evenings in this house, I'm sure."
+
+"Well, you know what it is really," said Mme. Verdurin modestly.
+"They feel safe here. They can talk about whatever they like, and the
+conversation goes off like fireworks. Now Brichot, this evening, is
+nothing. I've seen him, don't you know, when he's been with me, simply
+dazzling; you'd want to go on your knees to him. Well, with anyone else
+he's not the same man, he's not in the least witty, you have to drag the
+words out of him, he's even boring."
+
+"That's strange," remarked Forcheville with fitting astonishment.
+
+A sort of wit like Brichot's would have been regarded as out-and-out
+stupidity by the people among whom Swann had spent his early life,
+for all that it is quite compatible with real intelligence. And the
+intelligence of the Professor's vigorous and well-nourished brain might
+easily have been envied by many of the people in society who seemed
+witty enough to Swann. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into
+him their likes and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained
+to their ordinary social existence, including that annex to social
+existence which belongs, strictly speaking, to the domain of
+intelligence, namely, conversation, that Swann could not see anything
+in Brichot's pleasantries; to him they were merely pedantic, vulgar,
+and disgustingly coarse. He was shocked, too, being accustomed to
+good manners, by the rude, almost barrack-room tone which this
+student-in-arms adopted, no matter to whom he was speaking. Finally,
+perhaps, he had lost all patience that evening as he watched Mme.
+Verdurin welcoming, with such unnecessary warmth, this Forcheville
+fellow, whom it had been Odette's unaccountable idea to bring to the
+house. Feeling a little awkward, with Swann there also, she had asked
+him on her arrival: "What do you think of my guest?"
+
+And he, suddenly realising for the first time that Forcheville, whom
+he had known for years, could actually attract a woman, and was quite a
+good specimen of a man, had retorted: "Beastly!" He had, certainly,
+no idea of being jealous of Odette, but did not feel quite so happy as
+usual, and when Brichot, having begun to tell them the story of Blanche
+of Castile's mother, who, according to him, "had been with Henry
+Plantagenet for years before they were married," tried to prompt Swann
+to beg him to continue the story, by interjecting "Isn't that so, M.
+Swann?" in the martial accents which one uses in order to get down to
+the level of an unintelligent rustic or to put the 'fear of God' into
+a trooper, Swann cut his story short, to the intense fury of their
+hostess, by begging to be excused for taking so little interest in
+Blanche of Castile, as he had something that he wished to ask the
+painter. He, it appeared, had been that afternoon to an exhibition of
+the work of another artist, also a friend of Mme. Verdurin, who had
+recently died, and Swann wished to find out from him (for he valued
+his discrimination) whether there had really been anything more in this
+later work than the virtuosity which had struck people so forcibly in
+his earlier exhibitions.
+
+"From that point of view it was extraordinary, but it did not seem to me
+to be a form of art which you could call 'elevated,'" said Swann with a
+smile.
+
+"Elevated... to the height of an Institute!" interrupted Cottard,
+raising his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table burst out
+laughing.
+
+"What did I tell you?" said Mme. Verdurin to Forcheville. "It's simply
+impossible to be serious with him. When you least expect it, out he
+comes with a joke."
+
+But she observed that Swann, and Swann alone, had not unbent. For one
+thing he was none too well pleased with Cottard for having secured a
+laugh at his expense in front of Forcheville. But the painter, instead
+of replying in a way that might have interested Swann, as he would
+probably have done had they been alone together, preferred to win the
+easy admiration of the rest by exercising his wit upon the talent of
+their dead friend.
+
+"I went up to one of them," he began, "just to see how it was done; I
+stuck my nose into it. Yes, I don't think! Impossible to say whether
+it was done with glue, with soap, with sealing-wax, with sunshine, with
+leaven, with excrem..."
+
+"And one make twelve!" shouted the Doctor, wittily, but just too late,
+for no one saw the point of his interruption.
+
+"It looks as though it were done with nothing at all," resumed the
+painter. "No more chance of discovering the trick than there is in the
+'Night Watch,' or the 'Regents,' and it's even bigger work than either
+Rembrandt or Hals ever did. It's all there,--and yet, no, I'll take my
+oath it isn't."
+
+Then, just as singers who have reached the highest note in their
+compass, proceed to hum the rest of the air in falsetto, he had to be
+satisfied with murmuring, smiling the while, as if, after all, there had
+been something irresistibly amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting:
+"It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your
+breath; you feel ticklish all over--and not the faintest clue to how
+it's done. The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring-trick, it's
+a miracle," bursting outright into laughter, "it's dishonest!" Then
+stopping, solemnly raising his head, pitching his voice on a double-bass
+note which he struggled to bring into harmony, he concluded, "And it's
+so loyal!"
+
+Except at the moment when he had called it "bigger than the 'Night
+Watch,'" a blasphemy which had called forth an instant protest from Mme.
+Verdurin, who regarded the 'Night Watch' as the supreme masterpiece of
+the universe (conjointly with the 'Ninth' and the 'Samothrace'), and at
+the word "excrement," which had made Forcheville throw a sweeping glance
+round the table to see whether it was 'all right,' before he allowed his
+lips to curve in a prudish and conciliatory smile, all the party
+(save Swann) had kept their fascinated and adoring eyes fixed upon the
+painter.
+
+"I do so love him when he goes up in the air like that!" cried
+Mme. Verdurin, the moment that he had finished, enraptured that the
+table-talk should have proved so entertaining on the very night that
+Forcheville was dining with them for the first time. "Hallo, you!" she
+turned to her husband, "what's the matter with you, sitting there gaping
+like a great animal? You know, though, don't you," she apologised
+for him to the painter, "that he can talk quite well when he chooses;
+anybody would think it was the first time he had ever listened to you.
+If you had only seen him while you were speaking; he was just drinking
+it all in. And to-morrow he will tell us everything you said, without
+missing a word."
+
+"No, really, I'm not joking!" protested the painter, enchanted by the
+success of his speech. "You all look as if you thought I was pulling
+your legs, that it was just a trick. I'll take you to see the show, and
+then you can say whether I've been exaggerating; I'll bet you anything
+you like, you'll come away more 'up in the air' than I am!"
+
+"But we don't suppose for a moment that you're exaggerating; we only
+want you to go on with your dinner, and my husband too. Give M. Biche
+some more sole, can't you see his has got cold? We're not in any hurry;
+you're dashing round as if the house was on fire. Wait a little; don't
+serve the salad just yet."
+
+Mme. Cottard, who was a shy woman and spoke but seldom, was not lacking,
+for all that, in self-assurance when a happy inspiration put the right
+word in her mouth. She felt that it would be well received; the thought
+gave her confidence, and what she was doing was done with the object not
+so much of shining herself, as of helping her husband on in his career.
+And so she did not allow the word 'salad,' which Mme. Verdurin had just
+uttered, to pass unchallenged.
+
+"It's not a Japanese salad, is it?" she whispered, turning towards
+Odette.
+
+And then, in her joy and confusion at the combination of neatness
+and daring which there had been in making so discreet and yet so
+unmistakable an allusion to the new and brilliantly successful play by
+Dumas, she broke down in a charming, girlish laugh, not very loud, but
+so irresistible that it was some time before she could control it.
+
+"Who is that lady? She seems devilish clever," said Forcheville.
+
+"No, it is not. But we will have one for you if you will all come to
+dinner on Friday."
+
+"You will think me dreadfully provincial, sir," said Mme. Cottard to
+Swann, "but, do you know, I haven't been yet to this famous _Francillon_
+that everybody's talking about. The Doctor has been (I remember now,
+he told me what a very great pleasure it had been to him to spend the
+evening with you there) and I must confess, I don't see much sense in
+spending money on seats for him to take me, when he's seen the play
+already. Of course an evening at the Th��tre-Fran�ais is never wasted,
+really; the acting's so good there always; but we have some very nice
+friends," (Mme. Cottard would hardly ever utter a proper name, but
+restricted herself to "some friends of ours" or "one of my friends," as
+being more 'distinguished,' speaking in an affected tone and with all
+the importance of a person who need give names only when she chooses)
+"who often have a box, and are kind enough to take us to all the
+new pieces that are worth going to, and so I'm certain to see this
+_Francillon_ sooner or later, and then I shall know what to think. But I
+do feel such a fool about it, I must confess, for, whenever I pay a
+call anywhere, I find everybody talking--it's only natural--about that
+wretched Japanese salad. Really and truly, one's beginning to get just a
+little tired of hearing about it," she went on, seeing that Swann seemed
+less interested than she had hoped in so burning a topic. "I must admit,
+though, that it's sometimes quite amusing, the way they joke about it:
+I've got a friend, now, who is most original, though she's really a
+beautiful woman, most popular in society, goes everywhere, and she tells
+me that she got her cook to make one of these Japanese salads, putting
+in everything that young M. Dumas says you're to put in, in the play.
+Then she asked just a few friends to come and taste it. I was not among
+the favoured few, I'm sorry to say. But she told us all about it on her
+next 'day'; it seems it was quite horrible, she made us all laugh
+till we cried. I don't know; perhaps it was the way she told it," Mme.
+Cottard added doubtfully, seeing that Swann still looked grave.
+
+And, imagining that it was, perhaps, because he had not been amused by
+_Francillon_: "Well, I daresay I shall be disappointed with it, after
+all. I don't suppose it's as good as the piece Mme. de Cr�cy worships,
+_Serge Panine_. There's a play, if you like; so deep, makes you
+think! But just fancy giving a receipt for a salad on the stage of the
+Th��tre-Fran�ais! Now, _Serge Panine_--! But then, it's like everything
+that comes from the pen of M. Georges Ohnet, it's so well written. I
+wonder if you know the _Ma�tre des Forges_, which I like even better
+than _Serge Panine_."
+
+"Pardon me," said Swann with polite irony, "but I can assure you that
+my want of admiration is almost equally divided between those
+masterpieces."
+
+"Really, now; that's very interesting. And what don't you like about
+them? Won't you ever change your mind? Perhaps you think he's a little
+too sad. Well, well, what I always say is, one should never argue about
+plays or novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things, and what
+may be horrible to you is, perhaps, just what I like best."
+
+She was interrupted by Forcheville's addressing Swann. What had happened
+was that, while Mme. Cottard was discussing _Francillon_, Forcheville
+had been expressing to Mme. Verdurin his admiration for what he called
+the "little speech" of the painter. "Your friend has such a flow of
+language, such a memory!" he had said to her when the painter had
+come to a standstill, "I've seldom seen anything like it. He'd make a
+first-rate preacher. By Jove, I wish I was like that. What with him and
+M. Br�chot you've drawn two lucky numbers to-night; though I'm not so
+sure that, simply as a speaker, this one doesn't knock spots off the
+Professor. It comes more naturally with him, less like reading from a
+book. Of course, the way he goes on, he does use some words that are
+a bit realistic, and all that; but that's quite the thing nowadays;
+anyhow, it's not often I've seen a man hold the floor as cleverly as
+that, 'hold the spittoon,' as we used to say in the regiment, where, by
+the way, we had a man he rather reminds me of. You could take anything
+you liked--I don't know what--this glass, say; and he'd talk away about
+it for hours; no, not this glass; that's a silly thing to say, I'm
+sorry; but something a little bigger, like the battle of Waterloo, or
+anything of that sort, he'd tell you things you simply wouldn't believe.
+Why, Swann was in the regiment then; he must have known him."
+
+"Do you see much of M. Swann?" asked Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"Oh dear, no!" he answered, and then, thinking that if he made himself
+pleasant to Swann he might find favour with Odette, he decided to
+take this opportunity of flattering him by speaking of his fashionable
+friends, but speaking as a man of the world himself, in a tone of
+good-natured criticism, and not as though he were congratulating Swann
+upon some undeserved good fortune: "Isn't that so, Swann? I never see
+anything of you, do I?--But then, where on earth is one to see him? The
+creature spends all his time shut up with the La Tr�mo�lles, with the
+Laumes and all that lot!" The imputation would have been false at any
+time, and was all the more so, now that for at least a year Swann had
+given up going to almost any house but the Verdurins'. But the mere
+names of families whom the Verdurins did not know were received by them
+in a reproachful silence. M. Verdurin, dreading the painful impression
+which the mention of these 'bores,' especially when flung at her in this
+tactless fashion, and in front of all the 'faithful,' was bound to
+make on his wife, cast a covert glance at her, instinct with anxious
+solicitude. He saw then that in her fixed resolution to take no notice,
+to have escaped contact, altogether, with the news which had just been
+addressed to her, not merely to remain dumb but to have been deaf
+as well, as we pretend to be when a friend who has been in the wrong
+attempts to slip into his conversation some excuse which we should
+appear to be accepting, should we appear to have heard it without
+protesting, or when some one utters the name of an enemy, the very
+mention of whom in our presence is forbidden; Mme. Verdurin, so that
+her silence should have the appearance, not of consent but of the
+unconscious silence which inanimate objects preserve, had suddenly
+emptied her face of all life, of all mobility; her rounded forehead was
+nothing, now, but an exquisite study in high relief, which the name of
+those La Tr�mo�lles, with whom Swann was always 'shut up,' had failed
+to penetrate; her nose, just perceptibly wrinkled in a frown, exposed to
+view two dark cavities that were, surely, modelled from life. You would
+have said that her half-opened lips were just about to speak. It was
+all no more, however, than a wax cast, a mask in plaster, the sculptor's
+design for a monument, a bust to be exhibited in the Palace of Industry,
+where the public would most certainly gather in front of it and marvel
+to see how the sculptor, in expressing the unchallengeable dignity of
+the Verdurins, as opposed to that of the La Tr�mo�lles or Laumes, whose
+equals (if not, indeed, their betters) they were, and the equals and
+betters of all other 'bores' upon the face of the earth, had managed to
+invest with a majesty that was almost Papal the whiteness and rigidity
+of his stone. But the marble at last grew animated and let it be
+understood that it didn't do to be at all squeamish if one went to that
+house, since the woman was always tipsy and the husband so uneducated
+that he called a corridor a 'collidor'!
+
+"You'd need to pay me a lot of money before I'd let any of that lot set
+foot inside my house," Mme. Verdurin concluded, gazing imperially down
+on Swann.
+
+She could scarcely have expected him to capitulate so completely as to
+echo the holy simplicity of the pianist's aunt, who at once exclaimed:
+"To think of that, now! What surprises me is that they can get anybody
+to go near them; I'm sure I should be afraid; one can't be too careful.
+How can people be so common as to go running after them?"
+
+But he might, at least, have replied, like Forcheville: "Gad, she's a
+duchess; there are still plenty of people who are impressed by that sort
+of thing," which would at least have permitted Mme. Verdurin the final
+retort, "And a lot of good may it do them!" Instead of which, Swann
+merely smiled, in a manner which shewed, quite clearly, that he could
+not, of course, take such an absurd suggestion seriously. M. Verdurin,
+who was still casting furtive and intermittent glances at his wife,
+could see with regret, and could understand only too well that she was
+now inflamed with the passion of a Grand Inquisitor who cannot succeed
+in stamping out a heresy; and so, in the hope of bringing Swann round
+to a retractation (for the courage of one's opinions is always a form of
+calculating cowardice in the eyes of the 'other side'), he broke in:
+
+"Tell us frankly, now, what you think of them yourself. We shan't repeat
+it to them, you may be sure."
+
+To which Swann answered: "Why, I'm not in the least afraid of the
+Duchess (if it is of the La Tr�mo�lles that you're speaking). I can
+assure you that everyone likes going to see her. I don't go so far as
+to say that she's at all 'deep'--" he pronounced the word as if it meant
+something ridiculous, for his speech kept the traces of certain mental
+habits which the recent change in his life, a rejuvenation illustrated
+by his passion for music, had inclined him temporarily to discard,
+so that at times he would actually state his views with considerable
+warmth--"but I am quite sincere when I say that she is intelligent,
+while her husband is positively a bookworm. They are charming people."
+
+His explanation was terribly effective; Mme. Verdurin now realised that
+this one state of unbelief would prevent her 'little nucleus' from ever
+attaining to complete unanimity, and was unable to restrain herself, in
+her fury at the obstinacy of this wretch who could not see what anguish
+his words were causing her, but cried aloud, from the depths of her
+tortured heart, "You may think so if you wish, but at least you need not
+say so to us."
+
+"It all depends upon what you call intelligence." Forcheville felt that
+it was his turn to be brilliant. "Come now, Swann, tell us what you mean
+by intelligence."
+
+"There," cried Odette, "that's one of the big things I beg him to tell
+me about, and he never will."
+
+"Oh, but..." protested Swann.
+
+"Oh, but nonsense!" said Odette.
+
+"A water-butt?" asked the Doctor.
+
+"To you," pursued Forcheville, "does intelligence mean what they call
+clever talk; you know, the sort of people who worm their way into
+society?"
+
+"Finish your sweet, so that they can take your plate away!" said Mme.
+Verdurin sourly to Saniette, who was lost in thought and had stopped
+eating. And then, perhaps a little ashamed of her rudeness, "It doesn't
+matter; take your time about it; there's no hurry; I only reminded you
+because of the others, you know; it keeps the servants back."
+
+"There is," began Brichot, with a resonant smack upon every syllable, "a
+rather curious definition of intelligence by that pleasing old anarchist
+F�nelon..."
+
+"Just listen to this!" Mme. Verdurin rallied Forcheville and the Doctor.
+"He's going to give us F�nelon's definition of intelligence. That's
+interesting. It's not often you get a chance of hearing that!"
+
+But Brichot was keeping F�nelon's definition until Swann should
+have given his own. Swann remained silent, and, by this fresh act of
+recreancy, spoiled the brilliant tournament of dialectic which Mme.
+Verdurin was rejoicing at being able to offer to Forcheville.
+
+"You see, it's just the same as with me!" Odette was peevish. "I'm not
+at all sorry to see that I'm not the only one he doesn't find quite up
+to his level."
+
+"These de La Tr�mouailles whom Mme. Verdurin has exhibited to us as so
+little to be desired," inquired Brichot, articulating vigorously, "are
+they, by any chance, descended from the couple whom that worthy old
+snob, S�vign�, said she was delighted to know, because it was so good
+for her peasants? True, the Marquise had another reason, which in her
+case probably came first, for she was a thorough journalist at heart,
+and always on the look-out for 'copy.' And, in the journal which she
+used to send regularly to her daughter, it was Mme. de La Tr�mouaille,
+kept well-informed through all her grand connections, who supplied the
+foreign politics."
+
+"Oh dear, no. I'm quite sure they aren't the same family," said Mme.
+Verdurin desperately.
+
+Saniette who, ever since he had surrendered his untouched plate to the
+butler, had been plunged once more in silent meditation, emerged finally
+to tell them, with a nervous laugh, a story of how he had once dined
+with the Duc de La Tr�mo�lle, the point of which was that the Duke
+did not know that George Sand was the pseudonym of a woman. Swann,
+who really liked Saniette, felt bound to supply him with a few facts
+illustrative of the Duke's culture, which would prove that such
+ignorance on his part was literally impossible; but suddenly he stopped
+short; he had realised, as he was speaking, that Saniette needed no
+proof, but knew already that the story was untrue for the simple reason
+that he had at that moment invented it. The worthy man suffered acutely
+from the Verdurins' always finding him so dull; and as he was conscious
+of having been more than ordinarily morose this evening, he had made up
+his mind that he would succeed in being amusing, at least once, before
+the end of dinner. He surrendered so quickly, looked so wretched at the
+sight of his castle in ruins, and replied in so craven a tone to Swann,
+appealing to him not to persist in a refutation which was already
+superfluous, "All right; all right; anyhow, even if I have made a
+mistake that's not a crime, I hope," that Swann longed to be able
+to console him by insisting that the story was indubitably true and
+exquisitely funny. The Doctor, who had been listening, had an idea that
+it was the right moment to interject "_Se non � vero_," but he was not
+quite certain of the words, and was afraid of being caught out.
+
+After dinner, Forcheville went up to the Doctor. "She can't have been
+at all bad looking, Mme. Verdurin; anyhow, she's a woman you can really
+talk to; that's all I want. Of course she's getting a bit broad in the
+beam. But Mme. de Cr�cy! There's a little woman who knows what's what,
+all right. Upon my word and soul, you can see at a glance she's got
+the American eye, that girl has. We are speaking of Mme. de Cr�cy," he
+explained, as M. Verdurin joined them, his pipe in his mouth. "I should
+say that, as a specimen of the female form--"
+
+"I'd rather have it in my bed than a clap of thunder!" the words came
+tumbling from Cottard, who had for some time been waiting in vain until
+Forcheville should pause for breath, so that he might get in his hoary
+old joke, a chance for which might not, he feared, come again, if the
+conversation should take a different turn; and he produced it now with
+that excessive spontaneity and confidence which may often be noticed
+attempting to cover up the coldness, and the slight flutter of emotion,
+inseparable from a prepared recitation. Forcheville knew and saw the
+joke, and was thoroughly amused. As for M. Verdurin, he was unsparing
+of his merriment, having recently discovered a way of expressing it by
+a symbol, different from his wife's, but equally simple and obvious.
+Scarcely had he begun the movement of head and shoulders of a man
+who was 'shaking with laughter' than he would begin also to cough, as
+though, in laughing too violently, he had swallowed a mouthful of smoke
+from his pipe. And by keeping the pipe firmly in his mouth he could
+prolong indefinitely the dumb-show of suffocation and hilarity. So he
+and Mme. Verdurin (who, at the other side of the room, where the painter
+was telling her a story, was shutting her eyes preparatory to flinging
+her face into her hands) resembled two masks in a theatre, each
+representing Comedy, but in a different way.
+
+M. Verdurin had been wiser than he knew in not taking his pipe out of
+his mouth, for Cottard, having occasion to leave the room for a moment,
+murmured a witty euphemism which he had recently acquired and repeated
+now whenever he had to go to the place in question: "I must just go and
+see the Duc d'Aumale for a minute," so drolly, that M. Verdurin's cough
+began all over again.
+
+"Now, then, take your pipe out of your mouth; can't you see, you'll
+choke if you try to bottle up your laughter like that," counselled Mme.
+Verdurin, as she came round with a tray of liqueurs.
+
+"What a delightful man your husband is; he has the wit of a dozen!"
+declared Forcheville to Mme. Cottard. "Thank you, thank you, an old
+soldier like me can never say 'No' to a drink."
+
+"M. de Forcheville thinks Odette charming," M. Verdurin told his wife.
+
+"Why, do you know, she wants so much to meet you again some day at
+luncheon. We must arrange it, but don't on any account let Swann hear
+about it. He spoils everything, don't you know. I don't mean to say that
+you're not to come to dinner too, of course; we hope to see you very
+often. Now that the warm weather's coming, we're going to have dinner
+out of doors whenever we can. That won't bore you, will it, a quiet
+little dinner, now and then, in the Bois? Splendid, splendid, that will
+be quite delightful....
+
+"Aren't you going to do any work this evening, I say?" she screamed
+suddenly to the little pianist, seeing an opportunity for displaying,
+before a 'newcomer' of Forcheville's importance, at once her unfailing
+wit and her despotic power over the 'faithful.'
+
+"M. de Forcheville was just going to say something dreadful about you,"
+Mme. Cottard warned her husband as he reappeared in the room. And he,
+still following up the idea of Forcheville's noble birth, which had
+obsessed him all through dinner, began again with: "I am treating a
+Baroness just now, Baroness Putbus; weren't there some Putbuses in the
+Crusades? Anyhow they've got a lake in Pomerania that's ten times the
+size of the Place de la Concorde. I am treating her for dry arthritis;
+she's a charming woman. Mme. Verdurin knows her too, I believe."
+
+Which enabled Forcheville, a moment later, finding himself alone with
+Mme. Cottard, to complete his favourable verdict on her husband with:
+"He's an interesting man, too; you can see that he knows some good
+people. Gad! but they get to know a lot of things, those doctors."
+
+"D'you want me to play the phrase from the sonata for M. Swann?" asked
+the pianist.
+
+"What the devil's that? Not the sonata-snake, I hope!" shouted M. de
+Forcheville, hoping to create an effect. But Dr. Cottard, who had
+never heard this pun, missed the point of it, and imagined that M. de
+Forcheville had made a mistake. He dashed in boldly to correct it: "No,
+no. The word isn't _serpent-�-sonates_, it's _serpent-�-sonnettes_!" he
+explained in a tone at once zealous, impatient, and triumphant.
+
+Forcheville explained the joke to him. The Doctor blushed.
+
+"You'll admit it's not bad, eh, Doctor?"
+
+"Oh! I've known it for ages."
+
+Then they were silenced; heralded by the waving tremolo of the
+violin-part, which formed a bristling bodyguard of sound two octaves
+above it--and as in a mountainous country, against the seeming
+immobility of a vertically falling torrent, one may distinguish, two
+hundred feet below, the tiny form of a woman walking in the valley--the
+little phrase had just appeared, distant but graceful, protected by
+the long, gradual unfurling of its transparent, incessant and sonorous
+curtain. And Swann, in his heart of hearts, turned to it, spoke to it as
+to a confidant in the secret of his love, as to a friend of Odette who
+would assure him that he need pay no attention to this Forcheville.
+
+"Ah! you've come too late!" Mme. Verdurin greeted one of the 'faithful,'
+whose invitation had been only 'to look in after dinner,' "we've been
+having a simply incomparable Brichot! You never heard such eloquence!
+But he's gone. Isn't that so, M. Swann? I believe it's the first time
+you've met him," she went on, to emphasize the fact that it was to her
+that Swann owed the introduction. "Isn't that so; wasn't he delicious,
+our Brichot?"
+
+Swann bowed politely.
+
+"No? You weren't interested?" she asked dryly.
+
+"Oh, but I assure you, I was quite enthralled. He is perhaps a little
+too peremptory, a little too jovial for my taste. I should like to see
+him a little less confident at times, a little more tolerant, but one
+feels that he knows a great deal, and on the whole he seems a very sound
+fellow."
+
+The party broke up very late. Cottard's first words to his wife were: "I
+have rarely seen Mme. Verdurin in such form as she was to-night."
+
+"What exactly is your Mme. Verdurin? A bit of a bad hat, eh?" said
+Forcheville to the painter, to whom he had offered a 'lift.' Odette
+watched his departure with regret; she dared not refuse to let Swann
+take her home, but she was moody and irritable in the carriage, and,
+when he asked whether he might come in, replied, "I suppose so," with an
+impatient shrug of her shoulders. When they had all gone, Mme. Verdurin
+said to her husband: "Did you notice the way Swann laughed, such an
+idiotic laugh, when we spoke about Mme. La Tr�mo�lle?"
+
+She had remarked, more than once, how Swann and Forcheville suppressed
+the particle 'de' before that lady's name. Never doubting that it was
+done on purpose, to shew that they were not afraid of a title, she had
+made up her mind to imitate their arrogance, but had not quite
+grasped what grammatical form it ought to take. Moreover, the natural
+corruptness of her speech overcoming her implacable republicanism,
+she still said instinctively "the de La Tr�mo�lles," or, rather (by
+an abbreviation sanctified by the usage of music-hall singers and the
+writers of the 'captions' beneath caricatures, who elide the 'de'),
+"the d'La Tr�mo�lles," but she corrected herself at once to "Madame La
+Tr�mo�lle.--The _Duchess_, as Swann calls her," she added ironically,
+with a smile which proved that she was merely quoting, and would not,
+herself, accept the least responsibility for a classification so puerile
+and absurd.
+
+"I don't mind saying that I thought him extremely stupid."
+
+M. Verdurin took it up. "He's not sincere. He's a crafty customer,
+always hovering between one side and the other. He's always trying to
+run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. What a difference between
+him and Forcheville. There, at least, you have a man who tells you
+straight out what he thinks. Either you agree with him or you don't.
+Not like the other fellow, who's never definitely fish or fowl. Did you
+notice, by the way, that Odette seemed all out for Forcheville, and I
+don't blame her, either. And then, after all, if Swann tries to come
+the man of fashion over us, the champion of distressed Duchesses, at any
+rate the other man has got a title; he's always Comte de Forcheville!"
+he let the words slip delicately from his lips, as though, familiar with
+every page of the history of that dignity, he were making a scrupulously
+exact estimate of its value, in relation to others of the sort.
+
+"I don't mind saying," Mme. Verdurin went on, "that he saw fit to utter
+some most venomous, and quite absurd insinuations against Brichot.
+Naturally, once he saw that Brichot was popular in this house, it was a
+way of hitting back at us, of spoiling our party. I know his sort, the
+dear, good friend of the family, who pulls you all to pieces on the
+stairs as he's going away."
+
+"Didn't I say so?" retorted her husband. "He's simply a failure; a poor
+little wretch who goes through life mad with jealousy of anything that's
+at all big."
+
+Had the truth been known, there was not one of the 'faithful' who was
+not infinitely more malicious than Swann; but the others would all take
+the precaution of tempering their malice with obvious pleasantries, with
+little sparks of emotion and cordiality; while the least indication of
+reserve on Swann's part, undraped in any such conventional formula
+as "Of course, I don't want to say anything--" to which he would have
+scorned to descend, appeared to them a deliberate act of treachery.
+There are certain original and distinguished authors in whom the least
+'freedom of speech' is thought revolting because they have not begun
+by flattering the public taste, and serving up to it the commonplace
+expressions to which it is used; it was by the same process that Swann
+infuriated M. Verdurin. In his case as in theirs it was the novelty
+of his language which led his audience to suspect the blackness of his
+designs.
+
+Swann was still unconscious of the disgrace that threatened him at the
+Verdurins', and continued to regard all their absurdities in the most
+rosy light, through the admiring eyes of love.
+
+As a rule he made no appointments with Odette except for the evenings;
+he was afraid of her growing tired of him if he visited her during the
+day as well; at the same time he was reluctant to forfeit, even for
+an hour, the place that he held in her thoughts, and so was constantly
+looking out for an opportunity of claiming her attention, in any way
+that would not be displeasing to her. If, in a florist's or a jeweller's
+window, a plant or an ornament caught his eye, he would at once think
+of sending them to Odette, imagining that the pleasure which the casual
+sight of them had given him would instinctively be felt, also, by her,
+and would increase her affection for himself; and he would order them to
+be taken at once to the Rue La p�rouse, so as to accelerate the moment
+in which, as she received an offering from him, he might feel himself,
+in a sense, transported into her presence. He was particularly anxious,
+always, that she should receive these presents before she went out
+for the evening, so that her sense of gratitude towards him might give
+additional tenderness to her welcome when he arrived at the Verdurins',
+might even--for all he knew--if the shopkeeper made haste, bring him a
+letter from her before dinner, or herself, in person, upon his doorstep,
+come on a little extraordinary visit of thanks. As in an earlier phase,
+when he had experimented with the reflex action of anger and contempt
+upon her character, he sought now by that of gratification to elicit
+from her fresh particles of her intimate feelings, which she had never
+yet revealed.
+
+Often she was embarrassed by lack of money, and under pressure from
+a creditor would come to him for assistance. He enjoyed this, as he
+enjoyed everything which could impress Odette with his love for herself,
+or merely with his influence, with the extent of the use that she might
+make of him. Probably if anyone had said to him, at the beginning, "It's
+your position that attracts her," or at this stage, "It's your money
+that she's really in love with," he would not have believed the
+suggestion, nor would he have been greatly distressed by the thought
+that people supposed her to be attached to him, that people felt them,
+to be united by any ties so binding as those of snobbishness or wealth.
+But even if he had accepted the possibility, it might not have caused
+him any suffering to discover that Odette's love for him was based on a
+foundation more lasting than mere affection, or any attractive qualities
+which she might have found in him; on a sound, commercial interest; an
+interest which would postpone for ever the fatal day on which she might
+be tempted to bring their relations to an end. For the moment, while
+he lavished presents upon her, and performed all manner of services,
+he could rely on advantages not contained in his person, or in his
+intellect, could forego the endless, killing effort to make himself
+attractive. And this delight in being a lover, in living by love alone,
+of the reality of which he was inclined to be doubtful, the price which,
+in the long run, he must pay for it, as a dilettante in immaterial
+sensations, enhanced its value in his eyes--as one sees people who are
+doubtful whether the sight of the sea and the sound of its waves are
+really enjoyable, become convinced that they are, as also of the rare
+quality and absolute detachment of their own taste, when they have
+agreed to pay several pounds a day for a room in an hotel, from which
+that sight and that sound may be enjoyed.
+
+One day, when reflections of this order had brought him once again to
+the memory of the time when some one had spoken to him of Odette as of
+a 'kept' woman, and when, once again, he had amused himself with
+contrasting that strange personification, the 'kept' woman--an
+iridescent mixture of unknown and demoniacal qualities, embroidered,
+as in some fantasy of Gustave Moreau, with poison-dripping flowers,
+interwoven with precious jewels--with that Odette upon whose face he
+had watched the passage of the same expressions of pity for a sufferer,
+resentment of an act of injustice, gratitude for an act of kindness,
+which he had seen, in earlier days, on his own mother's face, and on
+the faces of friends; that Odette, whose conversation had so frequently
+turned on the things that he himself knew better than anyone, his
+collections, his room, his old servant, his banker, who kept all his
+title-deeds and bonds;--the thought of the banker reminded him that he
+must call on him shortly, to draw some money. And indeed, if, during the
+current month, he were to come less liberally to the aid of Odette in
+her financial difficulties than in the month before, when he had given
+her five thousand francs, if he refrained from offering her a diamond
+necklace for which she longed, he would be allowing her admiration for
+his generosity to decline, that gratitude which had made him so happy,
+and would even be running the risk of her imagining that his love
+for her (as she saw its visible manifestations grow fewer) had itself
+diminished. And then, suddenly, he asked himself whether that was not
+precisely what was implied by 'keeping' a woman (as if, in fact, that
+idea of 'keeping' could be derived from elements not at all mysterious
+nor perverse, but belonging to the intimate routine of his daily life,
+such as that thousand-franc note, a familiar and domestic object, torn
+in places and mended with gummed paper, which his valet, after paying
+the household accounts and the rent, had locked up in a drawer in
+the old writing-desk whence he had extracted it to send it, with four
+others, to Odette) and whether it was not possible to apply to Odette,
+since he had known her (for he never imagined for a moment that she
+could ever have taken a penny from anyone else, before), that title,
+which he had believed so wholly inapplicable to her, of 'kept' woman. He
+could not explore the idea further, for a sudden access of that mental
+lethargy which was, with him, congenital, intermittent and providential,
+happened, at that moment, to extinguish every particle of light in his
+brain, as instantaneously as, at a later period, when electric lighting
+had been everywhere installed, it became possible, merely by fingering
+a switch, to cut off all the supply of light from a house. His mind
+fumbled, for a moment, in the darkness, he took off his spectacles,
+wiped the glasses, passed his hands over his eyes, but saw no light
+until he found himself face to face with a wholly different idea, the
+realisation that he must endeavour, in the coming month, to send Odette
+six or seven thousand-franc notes instead of five, simply as a surprise
+for her and to give her pleasure.
+
+In the evening, when he did not stay at home until it was time to meet
+Odette at the Verdurins', or rather at one of the open-air restaurants
+which they liked to frequent in the Bois and especially at Saint-Cloud,
+he would go to dine in one of those fashionable houses in which, at one
+time, he had been a constant guest. He did not wish to lose touch with
+people who, for all that he knew, might be of use, some day, to Odette,
+and thanks to whom he was often, in the meantime, able to procure for
+her some privilege or pleasure. Besides, he had been used for so long to
+the refinement and comfort of good society that, side by side with his
+contempt, there had grown up also a desperate need for it, with the
+result that, when he had reached the point after which the humblest
+lodgings appeared to him as precisely on a par with the most princely
+mansions, his senses were so thoroughly accustomed to the latter that he
+could not enter the former without a feeling of acute discomfort. He
+had the same regard--to a degree of identity which they would never have
+suspected--for the little families with small incomes who asked him to
+dances in their flats ("straight upstairs to the fifth floor, and the
+door on the left") as for the Princesse de Parme, who gave the most
+splendid parties in Paris; but he had not the feeling of being actually
+'at the ball' when he found himself herded with the fathers of families
+in the bedroom of the lady of the house, while the spectacle of
+wash-hand-stands covered over with towels, and of beds converted into
+cloak-rooms, with a mass of hats and great-coats sprawling over their
+counterpanes, gave him the same stifling sensation that, nowadays,
+people who have been used for half a lifetime to electric light derive
+from a smoking lamp or a candle that needs to be snuffed. If he were
+dining out, he would order his carriage for half-past seven; while he
+changed his clothes, he would be wondering, all the time, about Odette,
+and in this way was never alone, for the constant thought of Odette
+gave to the moments in which he was separated from her the same peculiar
+charm as to those in which she was at his side. He would get into his
+carriage and drive off, but he knew that this thought had jumped in
+after him and had settled down upon his knee, like a pet animal which
+he might take everywhere, and would keep with him at the dinner-table,
+unobserved by his fellow-guests. He would stroke and fondle it, warm
+himself with it, and, as a feeling of languor swept over him, would
+give way to a slight shuddering movement which contracted his throat
+and nostrils--a new experience, this,--as he fastened the bunch of
+columbines in his buttonhole. He had for some time been feeling neither
+well nor happy, especially since Odette had brought Forcheville to the
+Verdurins', and he would have liked to go away for a while to rest in
+the country. But he could never summon up courage to leave Paris, even
+for a day, while Odette was there. The weather was warm; it was the
+finest part of the spring. And for all that he was driving through a
+city of stone to immure himself in a house without grass or garden, what
+was incessantly before his eyes was a park which he owned, near Combray,
+where, at four in the afternoon, before coming to the asparagus-bed,
+thanks to the breeze that was wafted across the fields from M�s�glise,
+he could enjoy the fragrant coolness of the air as well beneath an
+arbour of hornbeams in the garden as by the bank of the pond, fringed
+with forget-me-not and iris; and where, when he sat down to dinner,
+trained and twined by the gardener's skilful hand, there ran all about
+his table currant-bush and rose.
+
+After dinner, if he had an early appointment in the Bois or at
+Saint-Cloud, he would rise from table and leave the house so
+abruptly--especially if it threatened to rain, and so to scatter the
+'faithful' before their normal time--that on one occasion the Princesse
+des Laumes (at whose house dinner had been so late that Swann had left
+before the coffee came in, to join the Verdurins on the Island in the
+Bois) observed:
+
+"Really, if Swann were thirty years older, and had diabetes, there might
+be some excuse for his running away like that. He seems to look upon us
+all as a joke."
+
+He persuaded himself that the spring-time charm, which he could not go
+down to Combray to enjoy, he would find at least on the He des Cygnes
+or at Saint-Cloud. But as he could think only of Odette, he would
+return home not knowing even if he had tasted the fragrance of the young
+leaves, or if the moon had been shining. He would be welcomed by the
+little phrase from the sonata, played in the garden on the restaurant
+piano. If there was none in the garden, the Verdurins would have taken
+immense pains to have a piano brought out either from a private room
+or from the restaurant itself; not because Swann was now restored to
+favour; far from it. But the idea of arranging an ingenious form of
+entertainment for some one, even for some one whom they disliked, would
+stimulate them, during the time spent in its preparation, to a momentary
+sense of cordiality and affection. Now and then he would remind himself
+that another fine spring evening was drawing to a close, and would force
+himself to notice the trees and the sky. But the state of excitement
+into which Odette's presence never failed to throw him, added to a
+feverish ailment which, for some time now, had scarcely left him,
+robbed him of that sense of quiet and comfort which is an indispensable
+background to the impressions that we derive from nature.
+
+One evening, when Swann had consented to dine with the Verdurins, and
+had mentioned during dinner that he had to attend, next day, the annual
+banquet of an old comrades' association, Odette had at once exclaimed
+across the table, in front of everyone, in front of Forcheville, who was
+now one of the 'faithful,' in front of the painter, in front of Cottard:
+
+"Yes, I know, you have your banquet to-morrow; I sha'n't see you, then,
+till I get home; don't be too late."
+
+And although Swann had never yet taken offence, at all seriously,
+at Odette's demonstrations of friendship for one or other of the
+'faithful,' he felt an exquisite pleasure on hearing her thus avow,
+before them all, with that calm immodesty, the fact that they saw each
+other regularly every evening, his privileged position in her house, and
+her own preference for him which it implied. It was true that Swann had
+often reflected that Odette was in no way a remarkable woman; and in
+the supremacy which he wielded over a creature so distinctly inferior to
+himself there was nothing that especially flattered him when he heard
+it proclaimed to all the 'faithful'; but since he had observed that,
+to several other men than himself, Odette seemed a fascinating and
+desirable woman, the attraction which her body held for him had aroused
+a painful longing to secure the absolute mastery of even the tiniest
+particles of her heart. And he had begun to attach an incalculable value
+to those moments passed in her house in the evenings, when he held her
+upon his knee, made her tell him what she thought about this or that,
+and counted over that treasure to which, alone of all his earthly
+possessions, he still clung. And so, after this dinner, drawing her
+aside, he took care to thank her effusively, seeking to indicate to
+her by the extent of his gratitude the corresponding intensity of
+the pleasures which it was in her power to bestow on him, the supreme
+pleasure being to guarantee him immunity, for as long as his love should
+last and he remain vulnerable, from the assaults of jealousy.
+
+When he came away from his banquet, the next evening, it was pouring
+rain, and he had nothing but his victoria. A friend offered to take
+him home in a closed carriage, and as Odette, by the fact of her having
+invited him to come, had given him an assurance that she was expecting
+no one else, he could, with a quiet mind and an untroubled heart, rather
+than set off thus in the rain, have gone home and to bed. But perhaps,
+if she saw that he seemed not to adhere to his resolution to end every
+evening, without exception, in her company, she might grow careless, and
+fail to keep free for him just the one evening on which he particularly
+desired it.
+
+It was after eleven when he reached her door, and as he made his apology
+for having been unable to come away earlier, she complained that it was
+indeed very late; the storm had made her unwell, her head ached, and
+she warned him that she would not let him stay longer than half an hour,
+that at midnight she would send him away; a little while later she felt
+tired and wished to sleep.
+
+"No cattleya, then, to-night?" he asked, "and I've been looking forward
+so to a nice little cattleya."
+
+But she was irresponsive; saying nervously: "No, dear, no cattleya
+tonight. Can't you see, I'm not well?"
+
+"It might have done you good, but I won't bother you."
+
+She begged him to put out the light before he went; he drew the curtains
+close round her bed and left her. But, when he was in his own house
+again, the idea suddenly struck him that, perhaps, Odette was expecting
+some one else that evening, that she had merely pretended to be tired,
+that she had asked him to put the light out only so that he should
+suppose that she was going to sleep, that the moment he had left
+the house she had lighted it again, and had reopened her door to the
+stranger who was to be her guest for the night. He looked at his watch.
+It was about an hour and a half since he had left her; he went out, took
+a cab, and stopped it close to her house, in a little street running at
+right angles to that other street, which lay at the back of her house,
+and along which he used to go, sometimes, to tap upon her bedroom
+window, for her to let him in. He left his cab; the streets were all
+deserted and dark; he walked a few yards and came out almost opposite
+her house. Amid the glimmering blackness of all the row of windows, the
+lights in which had long since been put out, he saw one, and only one,
+from which overflowed, between the slats of its shutters, dosed like a
+wine-press over its mysterious golden juice, the light that filled the
+room within, a light which on so many evenings, as soon as he saw it,
+far off, as he turned into the street, had rejoiced his heart with its
+message: "She is there--expecting you," and now tortured him with: "She
+is there with the man she was expecting." He must know who; he tiptoed
+along by the wall until he reached the window, but between the slanting
+bars of the shutters he could see nothing; he could hear, only, in the
+silence of the night, the murmur of conversation. What agony he suffered
+as he watched that light, in whose golden atmosphere were moving, behind
+the closed sash, the unseen and detested pair, as he listened to that
+murmur which revealed the presence of the man who had crept in after his
+own departure, the perfidy of Odette, and the pleasures which she was at
+that moment tasting with the stranger.
+
+And yet he was not sorry that he had come; the torment which had forced
+him to leave his own house had lost its sharpness when it lost its
+uncertainty, now that Odette's other life, of which he had had, at that
+first moment, a sudden helpless suspicion, was definitely there, almost
+within his grasp, before his eyes, in the full glare of the lamp-light,
+caught and kept there, an unwitting prisoner, in that room into which,
+when he would, he might force his way to surprise and seize it; or
+rather he would tap upon the shutters, as he had often done when he had
+come there very late, and by that signal Odette would at least learn
+that he knew, that he had seen the light and had heard the voices; while
+he himself, who a moment ago had been picturing her as laughing at him,
+as sharing with that other the knowledge of how effectively he had been
+tricked, now it was he that saw them, confident and persistent in
+their error, tricked and trapped by none other than himself, whom they
+believed to be a mile away, but who was there, in person, there with a
+plan, there with the knowledge that he was going, in another minute, to
+tap upon the shutter. And, perhaps, what he felt (almost an agreeable
+feeling) at that moment was something more than relief at the solution
+of a doubt, at the soothing of a pain; was an intellectual pleasure.
+If, since he had fallen in love, things had recovered a little of the
+delicate attraction that they had had for him long ago--though only when
+a light was shed upon them by a thought, a memory of Odette--now it was
+another of the faculties, prominent in the studious days of his youth,
+that Odette had quickened with new life, the passion for truth, but for
+a truth which, too, was interposed between himself and his mistress,
+receiving its light from her alone, a private and personal truth the
+sole object of which (an infinitely precious object, and one almost
+impersonal in its absolute beauty) was Odette--Odette in her activities,
+her environment, her projects, and her past. At every other period in
+his life, the little everyday words and actions of another person had
+always seemed wholly valueless to Swann; if gossip about such things
+were repeated to him, he would dismiss it as insignificant, and while he
+listened it was only the lowest, the most commonplace part of his
+mind that was interested; at such moments he felt utterly dull and
+uninspired. But in this strange phase of love the personality of another
+person becomes so enlarged, so deepened, that the curiosity which
+he could now feel aroused in himself, to know the least details of a
+woman's daily occupation, was the same thirst for knowledge with which
+he had once studied history. And all manner of actions, from which,
+until now, he would have recoiled in shame, such as spying, to-night,
+outside a window, to-morrow, for all he knew, putting adroitly
+provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants, listening
+at doors, seemed to him, now, to be precisely on a level with the
+deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the interpretation
+of old monuments, that was to say, so many different methods of
+scientific investigation, each one having a definite intellectual value
+and being legitimately employable in the search for truth.
+
+As his hand stole out towards the shutters he felt a pang of shame at
+the thought that Odette would now know that he had suspected her, that
+he had returned, that he had posted himself outside her window. She
+had often told him what a horror she had of jealous men, of lovers who
+spied. What he was going to do would be extremely awkward, and she would
+detest him for ever after, whereas now, for the moment, for so long as
+he refrained from knocking, perhaps even in the act of infidelity, she
+loved him still. How often is not the prospect of future happiness
+thus sacrificed to one's impatient insistence upon an immediate
+gratification. But his desire to know the truth was stronger, and seemed
+to him nobler than his desire for her. He knew that the true story
+of certain events, which he would have given his life to be able to
+reconstruct accurately and in full, was to be read within that window,
+streaked with bars of light, as within the illuminated, golden boards of
+one of those precious manuscripts, by whose wealth of artistic treasures
+the scholar who consults them cannot remain unmoved. He yearned for
+the satisfaction of knowing the truth which so impassioned him in that
+brief, fleeting, precious transcript, on that translucent page, so warm,
+so beautiful. And besides, the advantage which he felt--which he so
+desperately wanted to feel--that he had over them, lay perhaps not so
+much in knowing as in being able to shew them that he knew. He drew
+himself up on tiptoe. He knocked. They had not heard; he knocked again;
+louder; their conversation ceased. A man's voice--he strained his ears
+to distinguish whose, among such of Odette's friends as he knew, the
+voice could be--asked:
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+He could not be certain of the voice. He knocked once again. The window
+first, then the shutters were thrown open. It was too late, now, to
+retire, and since she must know all, so as not to seem too contemptible,
+too jealous and inquisitive, he called out in a careless, hearty,
+welcoming tone:
+
+"Please don't bother; I just happened to be passing, and saw the light.
+I wanted to know if you were feeling better."
+
+He looked up. Two old gentlemen stood facing him, in the window, one
+of them with a lamp in his hand; and beyond them he could see into
+the room, a room that he had never seen before. Having fallen into the
+habit, When he came late to Odette, of identifying her window by
+the fact that it was the only one still lighted in a row of windows
+otherwise all alike, he had been misled, this time, by the light, and
+had knocked at the window beyond hers, in the adjoining house. He made
+what apology he could and hurried home, overjoyed that the satisfaction
+of his curiosity had preserved their love intact, and that, having
+feigned for so long, when in Odette's company, a sort of indifference,
+he had not now, by a demonstration of jealousy, given her that proof
+of the excess of his own passion which, in a pair of lovers, fully and
+finally dispenses the recipient from the obligation to love the other
+enough. He never spoke to her of this misadventure, he ceased even to
+think of it himself. But now and then his thoughts in their wandering
+course would come upon this memory where it lay unobserved, would
+startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down into his consciousness,
+and leave him aching with a sharp, far-rooted pain. As though this had
+been a bodily pain, Swann's mind was powerless to alleviate it; in the
+case of bodily pain, however, since it is independent of the mind, the
+mind can dwell upon it, can note that it has diminished, that it has
+momentarily ceased. But with this mental pain, the mind, merely by
+recalling it, created it afresh. To determine not to think of it was but
+to think of it still, to suffer from it still. And when, in conversation
+with his friends, he forgot his sufferings, suddenly a word casually
+uttered would make him change countenance as a wounded man does when a
+clumsy hand has touched his aching limb. When he came away from Odette,
+he was happy, he felt calm, he recalled the smile with which, in gentle
+mockery, she had spoken to him of this man or of that, a smile which was
+all tenderness for himself; he recalled the gravity of her head which
+she seemed to have lifted from its axis to let it droop and fall, as
+though against her will, upon his lips, as she had done on that first
+evening in the carriage; her languishing gaze at him while she lay
+nestling in his arms, her bended head seeming to recede between her
+shoulders, as though shrinking from the cold.
+
+But then, at once, his jealousy, as it had been the shadow of his love,
+presented him with the complement, with the converse of that new smile
+with which she had greeted him that very evening,--with which, now,
+perversely, she was mocking Swann while she tendered her love to
+another--of that lowering of her head, but lowered now to fall on other
+lips, and (but bestowed upon a stranger) of all the marks of affection
+that she had shewn to him. And all these voluptuous memories which he
+bore away from her house were, as one might say, but so many sketches,
+rough plans, like the schemes of decoration which a designer submits to
+one in outline, enabling Swann to form an idea of the various attitudes,
+aflame or faint with passion, which she was capable of adopting for
+others. With the result that he came to regret every pleasure that he
+tasted in her company, every new caress that he invented (and had been
+so imprudent as to point out to her how delightful it was), every fresh
+charm that he found in her, for he knew that, a moment later, they
+would go to enrich the collection of instruments in his secret
+torture-chamber.
+
+A fresh turn was given to the screw when Swann recalled a sudden
+expression which he had intercepted, a few days earlier, and for the
+first time, in Odette's eyes. It was after dinner at the Verdurins'.
+Whether it was because Forcheville, aware that Saniette, his
+brother-in-law, was not in favour with them, had decided to make a butt
+of him, and to shine at his expense, or because he had been annoyed
+by some awkward remark which Saniette had made to him, although it had
+passed unnoticed by the rest of the party who knew nothing of whatever
+tactless allusion it might conceal, or possibly because he had been for
+some time looking out for an opportunity of securing the expulsion from
+the house of a fellow-guest who knew rather too much about him, and
+whom he knew to be so nice-minded that he himself could not help feeling
+embarrassed at times merely by his presence in the room, Forcheville
+replied to Saniette's tactless utterance with such a volley of abuse,
+going out of his way to insult him, emboldened, the louder he shouted,
+by the fear, the pain, the entreaties of his victim, that the poor
+creature, after asking Mme. Verdurin whether he should stay and
+receiving no answer, had left the house in stammering confusion and with
+tears in his eyes. Odette had looked on, impassive, at this scene; but
+when the door had closed behind Saniette, she had forced the normal
+expression of her face down, as the saying is, by several pegs, so as to
+bring herself on to the same level of vulgarity as Forcheville; her eyes
+had sparkled with a malicious smile of congratulation upon his audacity,
+of ironical pity for the poor wretch who had been its victim; she
+had darted at him a look of complicity in the crime, which so clearly
+implied: "That's finished him off, or I'm very much mistaken. Did you
+see what a fool he looked? He was actually crying," that Forcheville,
+when his eyes met hers, sobered in a moment from the anger, or pretended
+anger with which he was still flushed, smiled as he explained: "He need
+only have made himself pleasant and he'd have been here still; a good
+scolding does a man no harm, at any time."
+
+One day when Swann had gone out early in the afternoon to pay a call,
+and had failed to find the person at home whom he wished to see, it
+occurred to him to go, instead, to Odette, at an hour when, although he
+never went to her house then as a rule, he knew that she was always at
+home, resting or writing letters until tea-time, and would enjoy seeing
+her for a moment, if it did not disturb her. The porter told him that he
+believed Odette to be in; Swann rang the bell, thought that he heard a
+sound, that he heard footsteps, but no one came to the door. Anxious and
+annoyed, he went round to the other little street, at the back of her
+house, and stood beneath her bedroom window; the curtains were drawn and
+he could see nothing; he knocked loudly upon the pane, he shouted; still
+no one came. He could see that the neighbours were staring at him. He
+turned away, thinking that, after all, he had perhaps been mistaken in
+believing that he heard footsteps; but he remained so preoccupied with
+the suspicion that he could turn his mind to nothing else. After waiting
+for an hour, he returned. He found her at home; she told him that she
+had been in the house when he rang, but had been asleep; the bell had
+awakened her; she had guessed that it must be Swann, and had run out
+to meet him, but he had already gone. She had, of course, heard him
+knocking at the window. Swann could at once detect in this story one of
+those fragments of literal truth which liars, when taken by surprise,
+console themselves by introducing into the composition of the falsehood
+which they have to invent, thinking that it can be safely incorporated,
+and will lend the whole story an air of verisimilitude. It was true
+that, when Odette had just done something which she did not wish to
+disclose, she would take pains to conceal it in a secret place in her
+heart. But as soon as she found herself face to face with the man to
+whom she was obliged to lie, she became uneasy, all her ideas melted
+like wax before a flame, her inventive and her reasoning faculties
+were paralysed, she might ransack her brain but would find only a void;
+still, she must say something, and there lay within her reach precisely
+the fact which she had wished to conceal, which, being the truth, was
+the one thing that had remained. She broke off from it a tiny fragment,
+of no importance in itself, assuring herself that, after all, it was
+the best thing to do, since it was a detail of the truth, and less
+dangerous, therefore, than a falsehood. "At any rate, this is true,"
+she said to herself; "that's always something to the good; he may make
+inquiries; he will see that this is true; it won't be this, anyhow, that
+will give me away." But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she
+had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth
+had sharp edges which could not: be made to fit in, except to those
+contiguous fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily
+detached it, edges which, whatever the fictitious details in which she
+might embed it, would continue to shew, by their overlapping angles and
+by the gaps which she had forgotten to fill, that its proper place was
+elsewhere.
+
+"She admits that she heard me ring, and then knock, that she knew it was
+myself, that she wanted to see me," Swann thought to himself. "But that
+doesn't correspond with the fact that she did not let me in."
+
+He did not, however, draw her attention to this inconsistency, for he
+thought that, if left to herself, Odette might perhaps produce some
+falsehood which would give him a faint indication of the truth; she
+spoke; he did not interrupt her, he gathered up, with an eager and
+sorrowful piety, the words that fell from her lips, feeling (and rightly
+feeling, since she was hiding the truth behind them as she spoke) that,
+like the veil of a sanctuary, they kept a vague imprint, traced a
+faint outline of that infinitely precious and, alas, undiscoverable
+truth;--what she had been doing, that afternoon, at three o'clock, when
+he had called,--a truth of which he would never possess any more than
+these falsifications, illegible and divine traces, a truth which would
+exist henceforward only in the secretive memory of this creature, who
+would contemplate it in utter ignorance of its value, but would never
+yield it up to him. It was true that he had, now and then, a strong
+suspicion that Odette's daily activities were not in themselves
+passionately interesting, and that such relations as she might have with
+other men did not exhale, naturally, in a universal sense, or for every
+rational being, a spirit of morbid gloom capable of infecting with
+fever or of inciting to suicide. He realised, at such moments, that that
+interest, that gloom, existed in him only as a malady might exist, and
+that, once he was cured of the malady, the actions of Odette, the kisses
+that she might have bestowed, would become once again as innocuous as
+those of countless other women. But the consciousness that the painful
+curiosity with which Swann now studied them had its origin only in
+himself was not enough to make him decide that it was unreasonable to
+regard that curiosity as important, and to take every possible step
+to satisfy it. Swann had, in fact, reached an age the philosophy of
+which--supported, in his case, by the current philosophy of the day, as
+well as by that of the circle in which he had spent most of his life,
+the group that surrounded the Princesse des Laumes, in which one's
+intelligence was understood to increase with the strength of one's
+disbelief in everything, and nothing real and incontestable was to be
+discovered, except the individual tastes of each of its members--is no
+longer that of youth, but a positive, almost a medical philosophy, the
+philosophy of men who, instead of fixing their aspirations upon external
+objects, endeavour to separate from the accumulation of the years
+already spent a definite residue of habits and passions which they
+can regard as characteristic and permanent, and with which they will
+deliberately arrange, before anything else, that the kind of existence
+which they choose to adopt shall not prove inharmonious. Swann deemed
+it wise to make allowance in his life for the suffering which he derived
+from not knowing what Odette had done, just as he made allowance for the
+impetus which a damp climate always gave to his eczema; to anticipate
+in his budget the expenditure of a considerable sum on procuring, with
+regard to the daily occupations of Odette, information the lack of
+which would make him unhappy, just as he reserved a margin for the
+gratification of other tastes from which he knew that pleasure was to be
+expected (at least, before he had fallen in love) such as his taste for
+collecting things, or for good cooking.
+
+When he proposed to take leave of Odette, and to return home, she begged
+him to stay a little longer, and even detained him forcibly, seizing him
+by the arm as he was opening the door to go. But he gave no thought to
+that, for, among the crowd of gestures and speeches and other little
+incidents which go to make up a conversation, it is inevitable that we
+should pass (without noticing anything that arouses our interest) by
+those that hide a truth for which our suspicions are blindly searching,
+whereas we stop to examine others beneath which nothing lies concealed.
+She kept on saying: "What a dreadful pity; you never by any chance come
+in the afternoon, and the one time you do come then I miss you." He knew
+very well that she was not sufficiently in love with him to be so
+keenly distressed merely at having missed his visit, but as she was a
+good-natured woman, anxious to give him pleasure, and often sorry when
+she had done anything that annoyed him, he found it quite natural that
+she should be sorry, on this occasion, that she had deprived him of that
+pleasure of spending an hour in her company, which was so very great a
+pleasure, if not to herself, at any rate to him. All the same, it was a
+matter of so little importance that her air of unrelieved sorrow began
+at length to bewilder him. She reminded him, even more than was
+usual, of the faces of some of the women created by the painter of
+the Primavera.' She had, at that moment, their downcast, heartbroken
+expression, which seems ready to succumb beneath the burden of a grief
+too heavy to be borne, when they are merely allowing the Infant Jesus to
+play with a pomegranate, or watching Moses pour water into a trough. He
+had seen the same sorrow once before on her face, but when, he could
+no longer say. Then, suddenly, he remembered it; it was when Odette had
+lied, in apologising to Mme. Verdurin on the evening after the dinner
+from which she had stayed away on a pretext of illness, but really so
+that she might be alone with Swann. Surely, even had she been the most
+scrupulous of women, she could hardly have felt remorse for so innocent
+a lie. But the lies which Odette ordinarily told were less innocent, and
+served to prevent discoveries which might have involved her in the most
+terrible difficulties with one or another of her friends. And so, when
+she lied, smitten with fear, feeling herself to be but feebly armed for
+her defence, unconfident of success, she was inclined to weep from sheer
+exhaustion, as children weep sometimes when they have not slept. She
+knew, also, that her lie, as a rule, was doing a serious injury to the
+man to whom she was telling it, and that she might find herself at
+his mercy if she told it badly. Therefore she felt at once humble and
+culpable in his presence. And when she had to tell an insignificant,
+social lie its hazardous associations, and the memories which it
+recalled, would leave her weak with a sense of exhaustion and penitent
+with a consciousness of wrongdoing.
+
+What depressing lie was she now concocting for Swann's benefit, to give
+her that pained expression, that plaintive voice, which seemed to falter
+beneath the effort that she was forcing herself to make, and to plead
+for pardon? He had an idea that it was not merely the truth about what
+had occurred that afternoon that she was endeavouring to hide from him,
+but something more immediate, something, possibly, which had not yet
+happened, but might happen now at any time, and, when it did, would
+throw a light upon that earlier event. At that moment, he heard the
+front-door bell ring. Odette never stopped speaking, but her words
+dwindled into an inarticulate moan. Her regret at not having seen Swann
+that afternoon, at not having opened the door to him, had melted into a
+universal despair.
+
+He could hear the gate being closed, and the sound of a carriage, as
+though some one were going away--probably the person whom Swann must on
+no account meet--after being told that Odette was not at home. And then,
+when he reflected that, merely by coming at an hour when he was not in
+the habit of coming, he had managed to disturb so many arrangements of
+which she did not wish him to know, he had a feeling of discouragement
+that amounted, almost, to distress. But since he was in love with
+Odette, since he was in the habit of turning all his thoughts towards
+her, the pity with which he might have been inspired for himself he felt
+for her only, and murmured: "Poor darling!" When finally he left her,
+she took up several letters which were lying on the table, and asked him
+if he would be so good as to post them for her. He walked along to the
+post-office, took the letters from his pocket, and, before dropping each
+of them into the box, scanned its address. They were all to tradesmen,
+except the last, which was to Forcheville. He kept it in his hand. "If
+I saw what was in this," he argued, "I should know what she calls him,
+what she says to him, whether there really is anything between them.
+Perhaps, if I don't look inside, I shall be lacking in delicacy towards
+Odette, since in this way alone I can rid myself of a suspicion which
+is, perhaps, a calumny on her, which must, in any case, cause her
+suffering, and which can never possibly be set at rest, once the letter
+is posted."
+
+He left the post-office and went home, but he had kept the last letter
+in his pocket. He lighted a candle, and held up close to its flame the
+envelope which he had not dared to open. At first he could distinguish
+nothing, but the envelope was thin, and by pressing it down on to the
+stiff card which it enclosed he was able, through the transparent paper,
+to read the concluding words. They were a coldly formal signature. If,
+instead of its being himself who was looking at a letter addressed to
+Forcheville, it had been Forcheville who had read a letter addressed
+to Swann, he might have found words in it of another, a far more tender
+kind! He took a firm hold of the card, which was sliding to and fro, the
+envelope being too large for it and then, by moving it with his finger
+and thumb, brought one line after another beneath the part of the
+envelope where the paper was not doubled, through which alone it was
+possible to read.
+
+In spite of all these manoeuvres he could not make it out clearly. Not
+that it mattered, for he had seen enough to assure himself that the
+letter was about some trifling incident of no importance, and had
+nothing at all to do with love; it was something to do with Odette's
+uncle. Swann had read quite plainly at the beginning of the line "I
+was right," but did not understand what Odette had been right in doing,
+until suddenly a word which he had not been able, at first, to decipher,
+came to light and made the whole sentence intelligible: "I was right to
+open the door; it was my uncle." To open the door! Then Forcheville had
+been there when Swann rang the bell, and she had sent him away; hence
+the sound that Swann had heard.
+
+After that he read the whole letter; at the end she apologised for
+having treated Forcheville with so little ceremony, and reminded him
+that he had left his cigarette-case at her house, precisely what she
+had written to Swann after one of his first visits. But to Swann she had
+added: "Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never have let
+you have that back." To Forcheville nothing of that sort; no allusion
+that could suggest any intrigue between them. And, really, he was
+obliged to admit that in all this business Forcheville had been worse
+treated than himself, since Odette was writing to him to make him
+believe that her visitor had been an uncle. From which it followed that
+he, Swann, was the man to whom she attached importance, and for whose
+sake she had sent the other away. And yet, if there had been nothing
+between Odette and Forcheville, why not have opened the door at once,
+why have said, "I was right to open the door; it was my uncle." Right?
+if she was doing nothing wrong at that moment how could Forcheville
+possibly have accounted for her not opening the door? For a time Swann
+stood still there, heartbroken, bewildered, and yet happy; gazing at
+this envelope which Odette had handed to him without a scruple, so
+absolute was her trust in his honour; through its transparent window
+there had been disclosed to him, with the secret history of an incident
+which he had despaired of ever being able to learn, a fragment of the
+life of Odette, seen as through a narrow, luminous incision, cut into
+its surface without her knowledge. Then his jealousy rejoiced at the
+discovery, as though that jealousy had had an independent existence,
+fiercely egotistical, gluttonous of every thing that would feed its
+vitality, even at the expense of Swann himself. Now it had food in
+store, and Swann could begin to grow uneasy afresh every evening, over
+the visits that Odette had received about five o'clock, and could
+seek to discover where Forcheville had been at that hour. For Swann's
+affection for Odette still preserved the form which had been imposed on
+it, from the beginning, by his ignorance of the occupations in which she
+passed her days, as well as by the mental lethargy which prevented him
+from supplementing that ignorance by imagination. He was not jealous, at
+first, of the whole of Odette's life, but of those moments only in which
+an incident, which he had perhaps misinterpreted, had led him to suppose
+that Odette might have played him false. His jealousy, like an octopus
+which throws out a first, then a second, and finally a third tentacle,
+fastened itself irremovably first to that moment, five o'clock in
+the afternoon, then to another, then to another again. But Swann was
+incapable of inventing his sufferings. They were only the memory, the
+perpetuation of a suffering that had come to him from without.
+
+From without, however, everything brought him fresh suffering. He
+decided to separate Odette from Forcheville, by taking her away for a
+few days to the south. But he imagined that she was coveted by every
+male person in the hotel, and that she coveted them in return. And so
+he, who, in old days, when he travelled, used always to seek out new
+people and crowded places, might now be seen fleeing savagely from human
+society as if it had cruelly injured him. And how could he not have
+turned misanthrope, when in every man he saw a potential lover for
+Odette? Thus his jealousy did even more than the happy, passionate
+desire which he had originally felt for Odette had done to alter Swann's
+character, completely changing, in the eyes of the world, even the
+outward signs by which that character had been intelligible.
+
+A month after the evening on which he had intercepted and read Odette's
+letter to Forcheville, Swann went to a dinner which the Verdurins were
+giving in the Bois. As the party was breaking up he noticed a series of
+whispered discussions between Mme. Verdurin and several of her guests,
+and thought that he heard the pianist being reminded to come next day to
+a party at Chatou; now he, Swann, had not been invited to any party.
+
+The Verdurins had spoken only in whispers, and in vague terms, but the
+painter, perhaps without thinking, shouted out: "There must be no lights
+of any sort, and he must play the Moonlight Sonata in the dark, for us
+to see by."
+
+Mme. Verdurin, seeing that Swann was within earshot, assumed that
+expression in which the two-fold desire to make the speaker be quiet and
+to preserve, oneself, an appearance of guilelessness in the eyes of the
+listener, is neutralised in an intense vacuity; in which the unflinching
+signs of intelligent complicity are overlaid by the smiles of innocence,
+an expression invariably adopted by anyone who has noticed a blunder,
+the enormity of which is thereby at once revealed if not to those who
+have made it, at any rate to him in whose hearing it ought not to have
+been made. Odette seemed suddenly to be in despair, as though she had
+decided not to struggle any longer against the crushing difficulties of
+life, and Swann was anxiously counting the minutes that still separated
+him from the point at which, after leaving the restaurant, while he
+drove her home, he would be able to ask for an explanation, to make her
+promise, either that she would not go to Chatou next day, or that she
+would procure an invitation for him also, and to lull to rest in her
+arms the anguish that still tormented him. At last the carriages were
+ordered. Mme. Verdurin said to Swann:
+
+"Good-bye, then. We shall see you soon, I hope," trying, by the
+friendliness of her manner and the constraint of her smile, to prevent
+him from noticing that she was not saying, as she would always have
+until then:
+
+"To-morrow, then, at Chatou, and at my house the day after." M. and Mme.
+Verdurin made Forcheville get into their carriage; Swann's was drawn up
+behind it, and he waited for theirs to start before helping Odette into
+his own.
+
+"Odette, we'll take you," said Mme. Verdurin, "we've kept a little
+corner specially for you, beside M. de Forcheville."
+
+"Yes, Mme. Verdurin," said Odette meekly.
+
+"What! I thought I was to take you home," cried Swann, flinging
+discretion to the winds, for the carriage-door hung open, time was
+precious, and he could not, in his present state, go home without her.
+
+"But Mme. Verdurin has asked me..."
+
+"That's all right, you can quite well go home alone; we've left you like
+this dozens of times," said Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"But I had something important to tell Mme. de Cr�cy."
+
+"Very well, you can write it to her instead."
+
+"Good-bye," said Odette, holding out her hand.
+
+He tried hard to smile, but could only succeed in looking utterly
+dejected.
+
+"What do you think of the airs that Swann is pleased to put on with
+us?" Mme. Verdurin asked her husband when they had reached home. "I was
+afraid he was going to eat me, simply because we offered to take Odette
+back. It really is too bad, that sort of thing. Why doesn't he say,
+straight out, that we keep a disorderly house? I can't conceive how
+Odette can stand such manners. He positively seems to be saying, all the
+time, 'You belong to me!' I shall tell Odette exactly what I think about
+it all, and I hope she will have the sense to understand me." A moment
+later she added, inarticulate with rage: "No, but, don't you see, the
+filthy creature..." using unconsciously, and perhaps in satisfaction of
+the same obscure need to justify herself--like Fran�oise at Combray when
+the chicken refused to die--the very words which the last convulsions of
+an inoffensive animal in its death agony wring from the peasant who is
+engaged in taking its life. And when Mme. Verdurin's carriage had moved
+on, and Swann's took its place, his coachman, catching sight of his
+face, asked whether he was unwell, or had heard bad news.
+
+Swann sent him away; he preferred to walk, and it was on foot, through
+the Bois, that he came home. He talked to himself, aloud, and in
+the same slightly affected tone which he had been used to adopt
+when describing the charms of the 'little nucleus' and extolling the
+magnanimity of the Verdurins. But just as the conversation, the smiles,
+the kisses of Odette became as odious to him as he had once found
+them charming, if they were diverted to others than himself, so the
+Verdurins' drawing-room, which, not an hour before, had still seemed
+to him amusing, inspired with a genuine feeling for art and even with
+a sort of moral aristocracy, now that it was another than himself whom
+Odette was going to meet there, to love there without restraint, laid
+bare to him all its absurdities, its stupidity, its shame.
+
+He drew a fanciful picture, at which he shuddered in disgust, of the
+party next evening at Chatou. "Imagine going to Chatou, of all places!
+Like a lot of drapers after closing time! Upon my word, these people are
+sublime in their smugness; they can't really exist; they must all have
+come out of one of Labiche's plays!"
+
+The Cottards would be there; possibly Brichot. "Could anything be more
+grotesque than the lives of these little creatures, hanging on to one
+another like that. They'd imagine they were utterly lost, upon my soul
+they would, if they didn't all meet again to-morrow at _Chatou_!"
+Alas! there would be the painter there also, the painter who enjoyed
+match-making, who would invite Forcheville to come with Odette to his
+studio. He could see Odette, in a dress far too smart for the country,
+"for she is so vulgar in that way, and, poor little thing, she is such a
+fool!"
+
+He could hear the jokes that Mme. Verdurin would make after dinner,
+jokes which, whoever the 'bore' might be at whom they were aimed,
+had always amused him because he could watch Odette laughing at them,
+laughing with him, her laughter almost a part of his. Now he felt that
+it was possibly at him that they would make Odette laugh. "What a fetid
+form of humour!" he exclaimed, twisting his mouth into an expression of
+disgust so violent that he could feel the muscles of his throat stiffen
+against his collar. "How, in God's name, can a creature made in His
+image find anything to laugh at in those nauseating witticisms? The
+least sensitive nose must be driven away in horror from such stale
+exhalations. It is really impossible to believe that any human being is
+incapable of understanding that, in allowing herself merely to smile at
+the expense of a fellow-creature who has loyally held out his hand
+to her, she is casting herself into a mire from which it will be
+impossible, with the best will in the world, ever to rescue her. I dwell
+so many miles above the puddles in which these filthy little vermin
+sprawl and crawl and bawl their cheap obscenities, that I cannot
+possibly be spattered by the witticisms of a Verdurin!" he cried,
+tossing up his head and arrogantly straightening his body. "God knows
+that I have honestly attempted to pull Odette out of that sewer, and to
+teach her to breathe a nobler and a purer air. But human patience has
+its limits, and mine is at an end," he concluded, as though this sacred
+mission to tear Odette away from an atmosphere of sarcasms dated from
+longer than a few minutes ago, as though he had not undertaken it only
+since it had occurred to him that those sarcasms might, perchance, be
+directed at himself, and might have the effect of detaching Odette from
+him.
+
+He could see the pianist sitting down to play the Moonlight Sonata, and
+the grimaces of Mme. Verdurin, in terrified anticipation of the wrecking
+of her nerves by Beethoven's music. "Idiot, liar!" he shouted, "and a
+creature like that imagines that she's fond of _Art_!" She would say to
+Odette, after deftly insinuating a few words of praise for Forcheville,
+as she had so often done for himself: "You can make room for M. de
+Forcheville there, can't you, Odette?"... '"In the dark!' Codfish!
+Pander!"... 'Pander' was the name he applied also to the music which
+would invite them to sit in silence, to dream together, to gaze in each
+other's eyes, to feel for each other's hands. He felt that there was
+much to be said, after all, for a sternly censorous attitude towards
+the arts, such as Plato adopted, and Bossuet, and the old school of
+education in France.
+
+In a word, the life which they led at the Verdurins', which he had so
+often described as 'genuine,' seemed to him now the worst possible form
+of life, and their 'little nucleus' the most degraded class of society.
+"It really is," he repeated, "beneath the lowest rung of the social
+ladder, the nethermost circle of Dante. Beyond a doubt, the august words
+of the Florentine refer to the Verdurins! When one comes to think of it,
+surely people 'in society' (and, though one may find fault with them now
+and then, still, after all they are a very different matter from that
+gang of blackmailers) shew a profound sagacity in refusing to know
+them, or even to dirty the tips of their fingers with them. What a sound
+intuition there is in that '_Noli me tangere_' motto of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain."
+
+He had long since emerged from the paths and avenues of the Bois, he had
+almost reached his own house, and still, for he had not yet thrown off
+the intoxication of grief, or his whim of insincerity, but was ever more
+and more exhilarated by the false intonation, the artificial sonority
+of his own voice, he continued to perorate aloud in the silence of the
+night: "People 'in society' have their failings, as no one knows better
+than I; but, after all, they are people to whom some things, at least,
+are impossible. So-and-so" (a fashionable woman whom he had known)
+"was far from being perfect, but, after all, one did find in her a
+fundamental delicacy, a loyalty in her conduct which made her, whatever
+happened, incapable of a felony, which fixes a vast gulf between her and
+an old hag like Verdurin. Verdurin! What a name! Oh, there's something
+complete about them, something almost fine in their trueness to type;
+they're the most perfect specimens of their disgusting class! Thank God,
+it was high time that I stopped condescending to promiscuous intercourse
+with such infamy, such dung."
+
+But, just as the virtues which he had still attributed, an hour or so
+earlier, to the Verdurins, would not have sufficed, even although the
+Verdurins had actually possessed them, if they had not also favoured
+and protected his love, to excite Swann to that state of intoxication
+in which he waxed tender over their magnanimity, an intoxication which,
+even when disseminated through the medium of other persons, could
+have come to him from Odette alone;--so the immorality (had it really
+existed) which he now found in the Verdurins would have been powerless,
+if they had not invited Odette with Forcheville and without him, to
+unstop the vials of his wrath and to make him scarify their 'infamy.'
+Doubtless Swann's voice shewed a finer perspicacity than his own when it
+refused to utter those words full of disgust at the Verdurins and their
+circle, and of joy at his having shaken himself free of it, save in an
+artificial and rhetorical tone, and as though his words had been chosen
+rather to appease his anger than to express his thoughts. The latter, in
+fact, while he abandoned himself to invective, were probably, though he
+did not know it, occupied with a wholly different matter, for once he
+had reached his house, no sooner had he closed the front-door behind him
+than he suddenly struck his forehead, and, making his servant open the
+door again, dashed out into the street shouting, in a voice which,
+this time, was quite natural; "I believe I have found a way of getting
+invited to the dinner at Chatou to-morrow!" But it must have been a
+bad way, for M. Swann was not invited; Dr. Cottard, who, having been
+summoned to attend a serious case in the country, had not seen the
+Verdurins for some days, and had been prevented from appearing at
+Chatou, said, on the evening after this dinner, as he sat down to table
+at their house:
+
+"Why, aren't we going to see M. Swann this evening? He is quite what you
+might call a personal friend..." "I sincerely trust that we sha'n't!"
+cried Mme. Verdurin. "Heaven preserve us from him; he's too deadly for
+words, a stupid, ill-bred boor."
+
+On hearing these words Cottard exhibited an intense astonishment blended
+with entire submission, as though in the face of a scientific truth
+which contradicted everything that he had previously believed, but was
+supported by an irresistible weight of evidence; with timorous
+emotion he bowed his head over his plate, and merely replied:
+"Oh--oh--oh--oh--oh!" traversing, in an orderly retirement of his
+forces, into the depths of his being, along a descending scale, the
+whole compass of his voice. After which there was no more talk of Swann
+at the Verdurins'.
+
+And so that drawing-room which had brought Swann and Odette together
+became an obstacle in the way of their meeting. She no longer said to
+him, as she had said in the early days of their love: "We shall meet,
+anyhow, to-morrow evening; there's a supper-party at the Verdurins',"
+but "We sha'n't be able to meet to-morrow evening; there's a
+supper-party at the Verdurins'." Or else the Verdurins were taking her
+to the Op�ra-Comique, to see _Une Nuit de Cl�op�tre_, and Swann could
+read in her eyes that terror lest he should ask her not to go, which,
+but a little time before, he could not have refrained from greeting
+with a kiss as it flitted across the face of his mistress, but which now
+exasperated him. "Yet I'm not really angry," he assured himself, "when I
+see how she longs to run away and scratch from maggots in that
+dunghill of cacophony. I'm disappointed; not for myself, but for her;
+disappointed to find that, after living for more than six months in
+daily contact with myself, she has not been capable of improving her
+mind even to the point of spontaneously eradicating from it a taste for
+Victor Mass�! More than that, to find that she has not arrived at the
+stage of understanding that there are evenings on which anyone with
+the least shade of refinement of feeling should be willing to forego
+an amusement when she is asked to do so. She ought to have the sense to
+say: 'I shall not go,' if it were only from policy, since it is by what
+she answers now that the quality of her soul will be determined once and
+for all." And having persuaded himself that it was solely, after all,
+in order that he might arrive at a favourable estimate of Odette's
+spiritual worth that he wished her to stay at home with him that evening
+instead of going to the Op�ra-Comique, he adopted the same line of
+reasoning with her, with the same degree of insincerity as he had
+used with himself, or even with a degree more, for in her case he was
+yielding also to the desire to capture her by her own self-esteem.
+
+"I swear to you," he told her, shortly before she was to leave for the
+theatre, "that, in asking you not to go, I should hope, were I a
+selfish man, for nothing so much as that you should refuse, for I have
+a thousand other things to do this evening, and I shall feel that I have
+been tricked and trapped myself, and shall be thoroughly annoyed, if,
+after all, you tell me that you are not going. But my occupations, my
+pleasures are not everything; I must think of you also. A day may come
+when, seeing me irrevocably sundered from you, you will be entitled to
+reproach me with not having warned you at the decisive hour in which
+I felt that I was going to pass judgment on you, one of those stern
+judgments which love cannot long resist. You see, your _Nuit de
+Cl�op�tre_ (what a title!) has no bearing on the point. What I must know
+is whether you are indeed one of those creatures in the lowest grade of
+mentality and even of charm, one of those contemptible creatures who are
+incapable of foregoing a pleasure. For if you are such, how could anyone
+love you, for you are not even a person, a definite, imperfect, but at
+least perceptible entity. You are a formless water that will trickle
+down any slope that it may come upon, a fish devoid of memory, incapable
+of thought, which all its life long in its aquarium will continue to
+dash itself, a hundred times a day, against a wall of glass, always
+mistaking it for water. Do you realise that your answer will have the
+effect--I do not say of making me cease from that moment to love you,
+that goes without saying, but of making you less attractive to my
+eyes when I realise that you are not a person, that you are beneath
+everything in the world and have not the intelligence to raise yourself
+one inch higher? Obviously, I should have preferred to ask you, as
+though it had been a matter of little or no importance, to give up your
+_Nuit de Cl�op�tre_ (since you compel me to sully my lips with so abject
+a name), in the hope that you would go to it none the less. But, since
+I had resolved to weigh you in the balance, to make so grave an issue
+depend upon your answer, I considered it more honourable to give you due
+warning."
+
+Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emotion and uncertainty.
+Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it
+was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes
+which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying
+any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not
+make unless they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in
+love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in
+love later on. And so, she would have heard Swann out with the utmost
+tranquillity had she not noticed that it was growing late, and that if
+he went on speaking for any length of time she would "never" as she told
+him with a fond smile, obstinate but slightly abashed, "get there in
+time for the Overture."
+
+On other occasions he had assured himself that the one thing which,
+more than anything else, would make him cease to love her, would be her
+refusal to abandon the habit of lying. "Even from the point of view of
+coquetry, pure and simple," he had told her, "can't you see how much
+of your attraction you throw away when you stoop to lying? By a frank
+admission--how many faults you might redeem! Really, you are far less
+intelligent than I supposed!" In vain, however, did Swann expound to
+her thus all the reasons that she had for not lying; they might have
+succeeded in overthrowing any universal system of mendacity, but Odette
+had no such system; she contented herself, merely, whenever she wished
+Swann to remain in ignorance of anything that she had done, with not
+telling him of it. So that a lie was, to her, something to be used only
+as a special expedient; and the one thing that could make her decide
+whether she should avail herself of a lie or not was a reason which,
+too, was of a special and contingent order, namely the risk of Swann's
+discovering that she had not told him the truth.
+
+Physically, she was passing through an unfortunate phase; she was
+growing stouter, and the expressive, sorrowful charm, the surprised,
+wistful expressions which she had formerly had, seemed to have vanished
+with her first youth, with the result that she became most precious to
+Swann at the very moment when he found her distinctly less good-looking.
+He would gaze at her for hours on end, trying to recapture the charm
+which he had once seen in her and could not find again. And yet the
+knowledge that, within this new and strange chrysalis, it was still
+Odette that lurked, still the same volatile temperament, artful and
+evasive, was enough to keep Swann seeking, with as much passion as ever,
+to captivate her. Then he would look at photographs of her, taken two
+years before, and would remember how exquisite she had been. And that
+would console him, a little, for all the sufferings that he voluntarily
+endured on her account.
+
+When the Verdurins took her off to Saint-Germain, or to Chatou, or to
+Meulan, as often as not, if the weather was fine, they would propose
+to remain there for the night, and not go home until next day. Mme.
+Verdurin would endeavour to set at rest the scruples of the pianist,
+whose aunt had remained in Paris: "She will be only too glad to be rid
+of you for a day. How on earth could she be anxious, when she knows
+you're with us? Anyhow, I'll take you all under my wing; she can put the
+blame on me."
+
+If this attempt failed, M. Verdurin would set off across country until
+he came to a telegraph office or some other kind of messenger, after
+first finding out which of the 'faithful' had anyone whom they must
+warn. But Odette would thank him, and assure him that she had no message
+for anyone, for she had told Swann, once and for all, that she could
+not possibly send messages to him, before all those people, without
+compromising herself. Sometimes she would be absent for several days
+on end, when the Verdurins took her to see the tombs at Dreux, or to
+Compi�gne, on the painter's advice, to watch the sun setting through the
+forest--after which they went on to the Ch�teau of Pierrefonds.
+
+"To think that she could visit really historic buildings with me, who
+have spent ten years in the study of architecture, who am constantly
+bombarded, by people who really count, to take them over Beauvais or
+Saint-Loup-de-Naud, and refuse to take anyone but her; and instead of
+that she trundles off with the lowest, the most brutally degraded
+of creatures, to go into ecstasies over the petrified excretions of
+Louis-Philippe and Viollet-le-Duc! One hardly needs much knowledge
+of art, I should say, to do that; though, surely, even without any
+particularly refined sense of smell, one would not deliberately choose
+to spend a holiday in the latrines, so as to be within range of their
+fragrant exhalations."
+
+But when she had set off for Dreux or Pierrefonds--alas, without
+allowing him to appear there, as though by accident, at her side, for,
+as she said, that would "create a dreadful impression,"--he would plunge
+into the most intoxicating romance in the lover's library, the railway
+timetable, from which he learned the ways of joining her there in the
+afternoon, in the evening, even in the morning. The ways? More than
+that, the authority, the right to join her. For, after all, the
+time-table, and the trains themselves, were not meant for dogs. If the
+public were carefully informed, by means of printed advertisements, that
+at eight o'clock in the morning a train started for Pierrefonds which
+arrived there at ten, that could only be because going to Pierrefonds
+was a lawful act, for which permission from Odette would be superfluous;
+an act, moreover, which might be performed from a motive altogether
+different from the desire to see Odette, since persons who had never
+even heard of her performed it daily, and in such numbers as justified
+the labour and expense of stoking the engines.
+
+So it came to this; that she could not prevent him from going to
+Pierrefonds if he chose to do so. Now that was precisely what he found
+that he did choose to do, and would at that moment be doing were he,
+like the travelling public, not acquainted with Odette. For a long
+time past he had wanted to form a more definite impression of
+Viollet-le-Duc's work as a restorer. And the weather being what it was,
+he felt an overwhelming desire to spend the day roaming in the forest of
+Compi�gne.
+
+It was, indeed, a piece of bad luck that she had forbidden him access
+to the one spot that tempted him to-day. To-day! Why, if he went down
+there, in defiance of her prohibition, he would be able to see her that
+very day! But then, whereas, if she had met, at Pierrefonds, some one
+who did not matter, she would have hailed him with obvious pleasure:
+"What, you here?" and would have invited him to come and see her at the
+hotel where she was staying with the Verdurins, if, on the other hand,
+it was himself, Swann, that she encountered there, she would be annoyed,
+would complain that she was being followed, would love him less in
+consequence, might even turn away in anger when she caught sight of him.
+"So, then, I am not to be allowed to go away for a day anywhere!" she
+would reproach him on her return, whereas in fact it was he himself who
+was not allowed to go.
+
+He had had the sudden idea, so as to contrive to visit Compi�gne and
+Pierrefonds without letting it be supposed that his object was to meet
+Odette, of securing an invitation from one of his friends, the Marquis
+de Forestelle, who had a country house in that neighbourhood. This
+friend, to whom Swann suggested the plan without disclosing its
+ulterior purpose, was beside himself with joy; he did not conceal his
+astonishment at Swann's consenting at last, after fifteen years, to come
+down and visit his property, and since he did not (he told him) wish
+to stay there, promised to spend some days, at least, in taking him for
+walks and excursions in the district. Swann imagined himself down there
+already with M. de Forestelle. Even before he saw Odette, even if he did
+not succeed in seeing her there, what a joy it would be to set foot on
+that soil where, not knowing the exact spot in which, at any moment, she
+was to be found, he would feel all around him the thrilling possibility
+of her suddenly appearing: in the courtyard of the Ch�teau, now
+beautiful in his eyes since it was on her account that he had gone to
+visit it; in all the streets of the town, which struck him as romantic;
+down every ride of the forest, roseate with the deep and tender glow of
+sunset;--innumerable and alternative hiding-places, to which would fly
+simultaneously for refuge, in the uncertain ubiquity of his hopes, his
+happy, vagabond and divided heart. "We mustn't, on any account," he
+would warn M. de Forestelle, "run across Odette and the Verdurins. I
+have just heard that they are at Pierrefonds, of all places, to-day. One
+has plenty of time to see them in Paris; it would hardly be worth while
+coming down here if one couldn't go a yard without meeting them." And
+his host would fail to understand why, once they had reached the place,
+Swann would change his plans twenty times in an hour, inspect the
+dining-rooms of all the hotels in Compi�gne without being able to make
+up his mind to settle down in any of them, although he had found no
+trace anywhere of the Verdurins, seeming to be in search of what he had
+claimed to be most anxious to avoid, and would in fact avoid, the moment
+he found it, for if he had come upon the little 'group,' he would have
+hastened away at once with studied indifference, satisfied that he had
+seen Odette and she him, especially that she had seen him when he was
+not, apparently, thinking about her. But no; she would guess at
+once that it was for her sake that he had come there. And when M. de
+Forestelle came to fetch him, and it was time to start, he excused
+himself: "No, I'm afraid not; I can't go to Pierrefonds to-day. You see,
+Odette is there." And Swann was happy in spite of everything in feeling
+that if he, alone among mortals, had not the right to go to Pierrefonds
+that day, it was because he was in fact, for Odette, some one who
+differed from all other mortals, her lover; and because that restriction
+which for him alone was set upon the universal right to travel freely
+where one would, was but one of the many forms of that slavery, that
+love which was so dear to him. Decidedly, it was better not to risk a
+quarrel with her, to be patient, to wait for her return. He spent his
+days in poring over a map of the forest of Compi�gne, as though it
+had been that of the 'Pays du Tendre'; he surrounded himself with
+photographs of the Ch�teau of Pierrefonds. When the day dawned on which
+it was possible that she might return, he opened the time-table
+again, calculated what train she must have taken, and, should she have
+postponed her departure, what trains were still left for her to take. He
+did not leave the house, for fear of missing a telegram, he did not go
+to bed, in case, having come by the last train, she decided to surprise
+him with a midnight visit. Yes! The front-door bell rang. There seemed
+some delay in opening the door, he wanted to awaken the porter, he
+leaned out of the window to shout to Odette, if it was Odette, for
+in spite of the orders which he had gone downstairs a dozen times to
+deliver in person, they were quite capable of telling her that he was
+not at home. It was only a servant coming in. He noticed the incessant
+rumble of passing carriages, to which he had never before paid any
+attention. He could hear them, one after another, a long way off, coming
+nearer, passing his door without stopping, and bearing away into the
+distance a message which was not for him. He waited all night, to no
+purpose, for the Verdurins had returned unexpectedly, and Odette had
+been in Paris since midday; it had not occurred to her to tell him; not
+knowing what to do with herself she had spent the evening alone at a
+theatre, had long since gone home to bed, and was peacefully asleep.
+
+As a matter of fact, she had never given him a thought. And such moments
+as these, in which she forgot Swann's very existence, were of more value
+to Odette, did more to attach him to her, than all her infidelities. For
+in this way Swann was kept in that state of painful agitation which had
+once before been effective in making his interest blossom into love, on
+the night when he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins' and had
+hunted for her all evening. And he did not have (as I had, afterwards,
+at Combray in my childhood) happy days in which to forget the sufferings
+that would return with the night. For his days, Swann must pass them
+without Odette; and as he told himself, now and then, to allow so pretty
+a woman to go out by herself in Paris was just as rash as to leave a
+case filled with jewels in the middle of the street. In this mood he
+would scowl furiously at the passers-by, as though they were so many
+pickpockets. But their faces--a collective and formless mass--escaped
+the grasp of his imagination, and so failed to feed the flame of his
+jealousy. The effort exhausted Swann's brain, until, passing his hand
+over his eyes, he cried out: "Heaven help me!" as people, after lashing
+themselves into an intellectual frenzy in their endeavours to master the
+problem of the reality of the external world, or that of the immortality
+of the soul, afford relief to their weary brains by an unreasoning
+act of faith. But the thought of his absent mistress was incessantly,
+indissolubly blended with all the simplest actions of Swann's daily
+life--when he took his meals, opened his letters, went for a walk or
+to bed--by the fact of his regret at having to perform those actions
+without her; like those initials of Philibert the Fair which, in the
+church of Brou, because of her grief, her longing for him, Margaret of
+Austria intertwined everywhere with her own. On some days, instead of
+staying at home, he would go for luncheon to a restaurant not far off,
+to which he had been attracted, some time before, by the excellence of
+its cookery, but to which he now went only for one of those reasons,
+at once mystical and absurd, which people call 'romantic'; because this
+restaurant (which, by the way, still exists) bore the same name as the
+street in which Odette lived: the Lap�rouse. Sometimes, when she had
+been away on a short visit somewhere, several days would elapse before
+she thought of letting him know that she had returned to Paris. And
+then she would say quite simply, without taking (as she would once have
+taken) the precaution of covering herself, at all costs, with a little
+fragment borrowed from the truth, that she had just, at that very
+moment, arrived by the morning train. What she said was a falsehood;
+at least for Odette it was a falsehood, inconsistent, lacking (what it
+would have had, if true) the support of her memory of her actual arrival
+at the station; she was even prevented from forming a mental picture of
+what she was saying, while she said it, by the contradictory picture, in
+her mind, of whatever quite different thing she had indeed been doing at
+the moment when she pretended to have been alighting from the train. In
+Swann's mind, however, these words, meeting no opposition, settled
+and hardened until they assumed the indestructibility of a truth so
+indubitable that, if some friend happened to tell him that he had
+come by the same train and had not seen Odette, Swann would have been
+convinced that it was his friend who had made a mistake as to the day or
+hour, since his version did not agree with the words uttered by Odette.
+These words had never appeared to him false except when, before hearing
+them, he had suspected that they were going to be. For him to believe
+that she was lying, an anticipatory suspicion was indispensable. It was
+also, however, sufficient. Given that, everything that Odette might say
+appeared to him suspect. Did she mention a name: it was obviously that
+of one of her lovers; once this supposition had taken shape, he would
+spend weeks in tormenting himself; on one occasion he even approached a
+firm of 'inquiry agents' to find out the address and the occupation of
+the unknown rival who would give him no peace until he could be proved
+to have gone abroad, and who (he ultimately learned) was an uncle of
+Odette, and had been dead for twenty years.
+
+Although she would not allow him, as a rule, to meet her at public
+gatherings, saying that people would talk, it happened occasionally
+that, at an evening party to which he and she had each been invited--at
+Forcheville's, at the painter's, or at a charity ball given in one of
+the Ministries--he found himself in the same room with her. He could
+see her, but dared not remain for fear of annoying her by seeming to be
+spying upon the pleasures which she tasted in other company, pleasures
+which--while he drove home in utter loneliness, and went to bed,
+as anxiously as I myself was to go to bed, some years later, on the
+evenings when he came to dine with us at Combray--seemed illimitable to
+him since he had not been able to see their end. And, once or twice,
+he derived from such evenings that kind of happiness which one would be
+inclined (did it not originate in so violent a reaction from an anxiety
+abruptly terminated) to call peaceful, since it consists in a pacifying
+of the mind: he had looked in for a moment at a revel in the painter's
+studio, and was getting ready to go home; he was leaving behind him
+Odette, transformed into a brilliant stranger, surrounded by men to whom
+her glances and her gaiety, which were not for him, seemed to hint at
+some voluptuous pleasure to be enjoyed there or elsewhere (possibly at
+the Bal des Incoh�rents, to which he trembled to think that she might be
+going on afterwards) which made Swann more jealous than the thought of
+their actual physical union, since it was more difficult to imagine; he
+was opening the door to go, when he heard himself called back in these
+words (which, by cutting off from the party that possible ending which
+had so appalled him, made the party itself seem innocent in retrospect,
+made Odette's return home a thing no longer inconceivable and terrible,
+but tender and familiar, a thing that kept close to his side, like
+a part of his own daily life, in his carriage; a thing that stripped
+Odette herself of the excess of brilliance and gaiety in her appearance,
+shewed that it was only a disguise which she had assumed for a moment,
+for his sake and not in view of any mysterious pleasures, a disguise of
+which she had already wearied)--in these words, which Odette flung out
+after him as he was crossing the threshold: "Can't you wait a minute for
+me? I'm just going; we'll drive back together and you can drop me." It
+was true that on one occasion Forcheville had asked to be driven home at
+the same time, but when, on reaching Odette's gate, he had begged to be
+allowed to come in too, she had replied, with a finger pointed at Swann:
+"Ah! That depends on this gentleman. You must ask him. Very well, you
+may come in, just for a minute, if you insist, but you mustn't stay
+long, for, I warn you, he likes to sit and talk quietly with me, and
+he's not at all pleased if I have visitors when he's here. Oh, if you
+only knew the creature as I know him; isn't that so, my love, there's no
+one that really knows you, is there, except me?"
+
+And Swann was, perhaps, even more touched by the spectacle of her
+addressing him thus, in front of Forcheville, not only in these tender
+words of predilection, but also with certain criticisms, such as: "I
+feel sure you haven't written yet to your friends, about dining with
+them on Sunday. You needn't go if you don't want to, but you might at
+least be polite," or "Now, have you left your essay on Vermeer here, so
+that you can do a little more to it to-morrow? What a lazy-bones! I'm
+going to make you work, I can tell you," which proved that Odette kept
+herself in touch with his social engagements and his literary work, that
+they had indeed a life in common. And as she spoke she bestowed on him a
+smile which he interpreted as meaning that she was entirely his.
+
+And then, while she was making them some orangeade, suddenly, just as
+when the reflector of a lamp that is badly fitted begins by casting
+all round an object, on the wall beyond it, huge and fantastic shadows
+which, in time, contract and are lost in the shadow of the object
+itself, all the terrible and disturbing ideas which he had formed of
+Odette melted away and vanished in the charming creature who stood there
+before his eyes. He had the sudden suspicion that this hour spent in
+Odette's house, in the lamp-light, was, perhaps, after all, not an
+artificial hour, invented for his special use (with the object of
+concealing that frightening and delicious thing which was incessantly
+in his thoughts without his ever being able to form a satisfactory
+impression of it, an hour of Odette's real life, of her life when he was
+not there, looking on) with theatrical properties and pasteboard fruits,
+but was perhaps a genuine hour of Odette's life; that, if he himself
+had not been there, she would have pulled forward the same armchair for
+Forcheville, would have poured out for him, not any unknown brew, but
+precisely that orangeade which she was now offering to them both; that
+the world inhabited by Odette was not that other world, fearful and
+supernatural, in which he spent his time in placing her--and which
+existed, perhaps, only in his imagination, but the real universe,
+exhaling no special atmosphere of gloom, comprising that table at which
+he might sit down, presently, and write, and this drink which he was
+being permitted, now, to taste; all the objects which he contemplated
+with as much curiosity and admiration as gratitude, for if, in absorbing
+his dreams, they had delivered him from an obsession, they themselves
+were, in turn, enriched by the absorption; they shewed him the palpable
+realisation of his fancies, and they interested his mind; they took
+shape and grew solid before-his eyes, and at the same time they soothed
+his troubled heart. Ah! had fate but allowed him to share a single
+dwelling with Odette, so that in her house he should be in his own; if,
+when asking his servant what there would be for luncheon, it had been
+Odette's bill of fare that he had learned from the reply; if, when
+Odette wished to go for a walk, in the morning, along the Avenue du
+Bois-de-Boulogne, his duty as a good husband had obliged him, though he
+had no desire to go out, to accompany her, carrying her cloak when she
+was too warm; and in the evening, after dinner, if she wished to stay at
+home, and not to dress, if he had been forced to stay beside her, to
+do what she asked; then how completely would all the trivial details
+of Swann's life, which seemed to him now so gloomy, simply because they
+would, at the same time, have formed part of the life of Odette, have
+taken on--like that lamp, that orangeade, that armchair, which had
+absorbed so much of his dreams, which materialised so much of his
+longing,--a sort of superabundant sweetness and a mysterious solidity.
+
+And yet he was inclined to suspect that the state for which he so much
+longed was a calm, a peace, which would not have created an atmosphere
+favourable to his love. When Odette ceased to be for him a creature
+always absent, regretted, imagined; when the feeling that he had for her
+was no longer the same mysterious disturbance that was wrought in him by
+the phrase from the sonata, but constant affection and gratitude, when
+those normal relations were established between them which would put an
+end to his melancholy madness; then, no doubt, the actions of Odette's
+daily life would appear to him as being of but little intrinsic
+interest--as he had several times, already, felt that they might be,
+on the day, for instance, when he had read, through its envelope, her
+letter to Forcheville. Examining his complaint with as much scientific
+detachment as if he had inoculated himself with it in order to study
+its effects, he told himself that, when he was cured of it, what Odette
+might or might not do would be indifferent to him. But in his morbid
+state, to tell the truth, he feared death itself no more than such a
+recovery, which would, in fact, amount to the death of all that he then
+was.
+
+After these quiet evenings, Swann's suspicions would be temporarily
+lulled; he would bless the name of Odette, and next day, in the morning,
+would order the most attractive jewels to be sent to her, because her
+kindnesses to him overnight had excited either his gratitude, or the
+desire to see them repeated, or a paroxysm of love for her which had
+need of some such outlet.
+
+But at other times, grief would again take hold of him; he would imagine
+that Odette was Forcheville's mistress, and that, when they had both sat
+watching him from the depths of the Verdurins' landau, in the Bois, on
+the evening before the party at Chatou to which he had not been invited,
+while he implored her in vain, with that look of despair on his face
+which even his coachman had noticed, to come home with him, and then
+turned away, solitary, crushed,--she must have employed, to draw
+Forcheville's attention to him, while she murmured: "Do look at him,
+storming!" the same glance, brilliant, malicious, sidelong, cunning, as
+on the evening when Forcheville had driven Saniette from the Verdurins'.
+
+At such times Swann detested her. "But I've been a fool, too," he would
+argue. "I'm paying for other men's pleasures with my money. All the
+same, she'd better take care, and not pull the string too often, for
+I might very well stop giving her anything at all. At any rate, we'd
+better knock off supplementary favours for the time being. To think
+that, only yesterday, when she said she would like to go to Bayreuth
+for the season, I was such an ass as to offer to take one of those jolly
+little places the King of Bavaria has there, for the two of us. However
+she didn't seem particularly keen; she hasn't said yes or no yet. Let's
+hope that she'll refuse. Good God! Think of listening to Wagner for a
+fortnight on end with her, who takes about as much interest in music as
+a fish does in little apples; it will be fun!" And his hatred, like
+his love, needing to manifest itself in action, he amused himself with
+urging his evil imaginings further and further, because, thanks to the
+perfidies with which he charged Odette, he detested her still more, and
+would be able, if it turned out--as he tried to convince himself--that
+she was indeed guilty of them, to take the opportunity of punishing her,
+emptying upon her the overflowing vials of his wrath. In this way, he
+went so far as to suppose that he was going to receive a letter from
+her, in which she would ask him for money to take the house at Bayreuth,
+but with the warning that he was not to come there himself, as she had
+promised Forcheville and the Verdurins to invite them. Oh, how he
+would have loved it, had it been conceivable that she would have
+that audacity. What joy he would have in refusing, in drawing up that
+vindictive reply, the terms of which he amused himself by selecting and
+declaiming aloud, as though he had actually received her letter.
+
+The very next day, her letter came. She wrote that the Verdurins and
+their friends had expressed a desire to be present at these performances
+of Wagner, and that, if he would be so good as to send her the money,
+she would be able at last, after going so often to their house, to have
+the pleasure of entertaining the Verdurins in hers. Of him she said not
+a word; it was to be taken for granted that their presence at Bayreuth
+would be a bar to his.
+
+Then that annihilating answer, every word of which he had carefully
+rehearsed overnight, without venturing to hope that it could ever be
+used, he had the satisfaction of having it conveyed to her. Alas! he
+felt only too certain that with the money which she had, or could easily
+procure, she would be able, all the same, to take a house at Bayreuth,
+since she wished to do so, she who was incapable of distinguishing
+between Bach and Clapisson. Let her take it, then; she would have to
+live in it more frugally, that was all. No means (as there would have
+been if he had replied by sending her several thousand-franc notes) of
+organising, each evening, in her hired castle, those exquisite little
+suppers, after which she might perhaps be seized by the whim (which,
+it was possible, had never yet seized her) of falling into the arms of
+Forcheville. At any rate, this loathsome expedition, it would not be
+Swann who had to pay for it. Ah! if he could only manage to prevent
+it, if she could sprain her ankle before starting, if the driver of the
+carriage which was to take her to the station would consent (no matter
+how great the bribe) to smuggle her to some place where she could be
+kept for a time in seclusion, that perfidious woman, her eyes tinselled
+with a smile of complicity for Forcheville, which was what Odette had
+become for Swann in the last forty-eight hours.
+
+But she was never that for very long; after a few days the shining,
+crafty eyes lost their brightness and their duplicity, that picture of
+an execrable Odette saying to Forcheville: "Look at him storming!" began
+to grow pale and to dissolve. Then gradually reappeared and rose before
+him, softly radiant, the face of the other Odette, of that Odette who
+also turned with a smile to Forcheville, but with a smile in which there
+was nothing but affection for Swann, when she said: "You mustn't stay
+long, for this gentleman doesn't much like my having visitors when he's
+here. Oh! if you only knew the creature as I know him!" that same smile
+with which she used to thank Swann for some instance of his courtesy
+which she prized so highly, for some advice for which she had asked him
+in one of those grave crises in her life, when she could turn to him
+alone.
+
+Then, to this other Odette, he would ask himself what could have induced
+him to write that outrageous letter, of which, probably, until then,
+she had never supposed him capable, a letter which must have lowered him
+from the high, from the supreme place which, by his generosity, by his
+loyalty, he had won for himself in her esteem. He would become less dear
+to her, since it was for those qualities, which she found neither in
+Forcheville nor in any other, that she loved him. It was for them that
+Odette so often shewed him a reciprocal kindness, which counted for less
+than nothing in his moments of jealousy, because it was not a sign of
+reciprocal desire, was indeed a proof rather of affection than of love,
+but the importance of which he began once more to feel in proportion as
+the spontaneous relaxation of his suspicions, often accelerated by the
+distraction brought to him by reading about art or by the conversation
+of a friend, rendered his passion less exacting of reciprocities.
+
+Now that, after this swing of the pendulum, Odette had naturally
+returned to the place from which Swann's jealousy had for the moment
+driven her, in the angle in which he found her charming, he pictured her
+to himself as full of tenderness, with a look of consent in her eyes,
+and so beautiful that he could not refrain from moving his lips towards
+her, as though she had actually been in the room for him to kiss; and
+he preserved a sense of gratitude to her for that bewitching, kindly
+glance, as strong as though she had really looked thus at him, and it
+had not been merely his imagination that had portrayed it in order to
+satisfy his desire.
+
+What distress he must have caused her! Certainly he found adequate
+reasons for his resentment, but they would not have been sufficient to
+make him feel that resentment, if he had not so passionately loved her.
+Had he not nourished grievances, just as serious, against other women,
+to whom he would, none the less, render willing service to-day, feeling
+no anger towards them because he no longer loved them? If the day ever
+came when he would find himself in the same state of indifference with
+regard to Odette, he would then understand that it was his jealousy
+alone which had led him to find something atrocious, unpardonable, in
+this desire (after all, so natural a desire, springing from a childlike
+ingenuousness and also from a certain delicacy in her nature) to be
+able, in her turn, when an occasion offered, to repay the Verdurins for
+their hospitality, and to play the hostess in a house of her own.
+
+He returned to the other point of view--opposite to that of his love
+and of his jealousy, to which he resorted at times by a sort of mental
+equity, and in order to make allowance for different eventualities--from
+which he tried to form a fresh judgment of Odette, based on the
+supposition that he had never been in love with her, that she was to him
+just a woman like other women, that her life had not been (whenever he
+himself was not present) different, a texture woven in secret apart from
+him, and warped against him.
+
+Wherefore believe that she would enjoy down there with Forcheville or
+with other men intoxicating pleasures which she had never known with
+him, and which his jealousy alone had fabricated in all their elements?
+At Bayreuth, as in Paris, if it should happen that Forcheville thought
+of him at all, it would only be as of some one who counted for a great
+deal in the life of Odette, some one for whom he was obliged to make
+way, when they met in her house. If Forcheville and she scored a
+triumph by being down there together in spite of him, it was he who had
+engineered that triumph by striving in vain to prevent her from going
+there, whereas if he had approved of her plan, which for that matter was
+quite defensible, she would have had the appearance of being there by
+his counsel, she would have felt herself sent there, housed there by
+him, and for the pleasure which she derived from entertaining those
+people who had so often entertained her, it was to him that she would
+have had to acknowledge her indebtedness.
+
+And if--instead of letting her go off thus, at cross-purposes with him,
+without having seen him again--he were to send her this money, if he
+were to encourage her to take this journey, and to go out of his way to
+make it comfortable and pleasant for her, she would come running to him,
+happy, grateful, and he would have the joy--the sight of her face--which
+he had not known for nearly a week, a joy which none other could
+replace. For the moment that Swann was able to form a picture of her
+without revulsion, that he could see once again the friendliness in
+her smile, and that the desire to tear her away from every rival was
+no longer imposed by his jealousy upon his love, that love once again
+became, more than anything, a taste for the sensations which Odette's
+person gave him, for the pleasure which he found in admiring, as one
+might a spectacle, or in questioning, as one might a phenomenon, the
+birth of one of her glances, the formation of one of her smiles, the
+utterance of an intonation of her voice. And this pleasure, different
+from every other, had in the end created in him a need of her, which
+she alone, by her presence or by her letters, could assuage, almost as
+disinterested, almost as artistic, as perverse as another need which
+characterised this new period in Swann's life, when the sereness,
+the depression of the preceding years had been followed by a sort of
+spiritual superabundance, without his knowing to what he owed this
+unlooked-for enrichment of his life, any more than a person in delicate
+health who from a certain moment grows stronger, puts on flesh, and
+seems for a time to be on the road to a complete recovery:--this
+other need, which, too, developed in him independently of the visible,
+material world, was the need to listen to music and to learn to know it.
+
+And so, by the chemical process of his malady, after he had created
+jealousy out of his love, he began again to generate tenderness, pity
+for Odette. She had become once more the old Odette, charming and kind.
+He was full of remorse for having treated her harshly. He wished her to
+come to him, and, before she came, he wished to have already procured
+for her some pleasure, so as to watch her gratitude taking shape in her
+face and moulding her smile.
+
+So, too, Odette, certain of seeing him come to her in a few days,
+as tender and submissive as before, and plead with her for a
+reconciliation, became inured, was no longer afraid of displeasing him,
+or even of making him angry, and refused him, whenever it suited her,
+the favours by which he set most store.
+
+Perhaps she did not realise how sincere he had been with her during
+their quarrel, when he had told her that he would not send her any
+money, but would do what he could to hurt her. Perhaps she did not
+realise, either, how sincere he still was, if not with her, at any rate
+with himself, on other occasions when, for the sake of their future
+relations, to shew Odette that he was capable of doing without her, that
+a rupture was still possible between them, he decided to wait some time
+before going to see her again.
+
+Sometimes several days had elapsed, during which she had caused him no
+fresh anxiety; and as, from the next few visits which he would pay her,
+he knew that he was likely to derive not any great pleasure, but, more
+probably, some annoyance which would put an end to the state of calm in
+which he found himself, he wrote to her that he was very busy, and
+would not be able to see her on any of the days that he had suggested.
+Meanwhile, a letter from her, crossing his, asked him to postpone one of
+those very meetings. He asked himself, why; his suspicions, his grief,
+again took hold of him. He could no longer abide, in the new state of
+agitation into which he found himself plunged, by the arrangements which
+he had made in his preceding state of comparative calm; he would run
+to find her, and would insist upon seeing her on each of the following
+days. And even if she had not written first, if she merely acknowledged
+his letter, it was enough to make him unable to rest without seeing
+her. For, upsetting all Swann's calculations, Odette's acceptance had
+entirely changed his attitude. Like everyone who possesses something
+precious, so as to know what would happen if he ceased for a moment to
+possess it, he had detached the precious object from his mind, leaving,
+as he thought, everything else in the same state as when it was there.
+But the absence of one part from a whole is not only that, it is not
+simply a partial omission, it is a disturbance of all the other parts, a
+new state which it was impossible to foresee from the old.
+
+But at other times--when Odette was on the point of going away for a
+holiday--it was after some trifling quarrel for which he had chosen the
+pretext, that he decided not to write to her and not to see her until
+her return, giving the appearance (and expecting the reward) of
+a serious rupture, which she would perhaps regard as final, to a
+separation, the greater part of which was inevitable, since she was
+going away, which, in fact, he was merely allowing to start a little
+sooner than it must. At once he could imagine Odette, puzzled, anxious,
+distressed at having received neither visit nor letter from him and this
+picture of her, by calming his jealousy, made it easy for him to break
+himself of the habit of seeing her. At odd moments, no doubt, in the
+furthest recesses of his brain, where his determination had thrust
+it away, and thanks to the length of the interval, the three weeks'
+separation to which he had agreed, it was with pleasure that he would
+consider the idea that he would see Odette again on her return; but it
+was also with so little impatience that he began to ask himself whether
+he would not readily consent to the doubling of the period of so easy an
+abstinence. It had lasted, so far, but three days, a much shorter time
+than he had often, before, passed without seeing Odette, and without
+having, as on this occasion he had, premeditated a separation. And
+yet, there and then, some tiny trace of contrariety in his mind, or
+of weakness in his body,--by inciting him to regard the present as an
+exceptional moment, one not to be governed by the rules, one in which
+prudence itself would allow him to take advantage of the soothing
+effects of a pleasure and to give his will (until the time should come
+when its efforts might serve any purpose) a holiday--suspended the
+action of his will, which ceased to exert its inhibitive control; or,
+without that even, the thought of some information for which he had
+forgotten to ask Odette, such as if she had decided in what colour she
+would have her carriage repainted, or, with regard to some investment,
+whether they were 'ordinary' or 'preference' shares that she wished him
+to buy (for it was all very well to shew her that he could live without
+seeing her, but if, after that, the carriage had to be painted over
+again, if the shares produced no dividend, a fine lot of good he would
+have done),--and suddenly, like a stretched piece of elastic which is
+let go, or the air in a pneumatic machine which is ripped open, the idea
+of seeing her again, from the remote point in time to which it had been
+attached, sprang back into the field of the present and of immediate
+possibilities.
+
+It sprang back thus without meeting any further resistance, so
+irresistible, in fact, that Swann had been far less unhappy in watching
+the end gradually approaching, day by day, of the fortnight which he
+must spend apart from Odette, than he was when kept waiting ten minutes
+while his coachman brought round the carriage which was to take him to
+her, minutes which he passed in transports of impatience and joy, in
+which he recaptured a thousand times over, to lavish on it all the
+wealth of his affection, that idea of his meeting with Odette, which, by
+so abrupt a repercussion, at a moment when he supposed it so remote, was
+once more present and on the very surface of his consciousness. The fact
+was that this idea no longer found, as an obstacle in its course, the
+desire to contrive without further delay to resist its coming, which
+had ceased to have any place in Swann's mind since, having proved to
+himself--or so, at least, he believed--that he was so easily capable of
+resisting it, he no longer saw any inconvenience in postponing a plan of
+separation which he was now certain of being able to put into operation
+whenever he would. Furthermore, this idea of seeing her again came back
+to him adorned with a novelty, a seductiveness, armed with a virulence,
+all of which long habit had enfeebled, but which had acquired new vigour
+during this privation, not of three days but of a fortnight (for a
+period of abstinence may be calculated, by anticipation, as having
+lasted already until the final date assigned to it), and had converted
+what had been, until then, a pleasure in store, which could easily be
+sacrificed, into an unlooked-for happiness which he was powerless to
+resist. Finally, the idea returned to him with its beauty enhanced by
+his own ignorance of what Odette might have thought, might, perhaps,
+have done on finding that he shewed no sign of life, with the result
+that he was going now to meet with the entrancing revelation of an
+Odette almost unknown.
+
+But she, just as she had supposed that his refusal to send her money was
+only a feint, saw nothing but a pretext in the question which he came,
+now, to ask her, about the repainting of her carriage, or the purchase
+of stock. For she could not reconstruct the several phases of these
+crises through which he passed, and in the general idea which she formed
+of them she made no attempt to understand their mechanism, looking only
+to what she knew beforehand, their necessary, never-failing and always
+identical termination. An imperfect idea (though possibly all the more
+profound in consequence), if one were to judge it from the point of
+view of Swann, who would doubtless have considered that Odette failed
+to understand him, just as a morphinomaniac or a consumptive, each
+persuaded that he has been thrown back, one by some outside event,
+at the moment when he was just going to shake himself free from his
+inveterate habit, the other by an accidental indisposition at the
+moment when he was just going to be finally cured, feels himself to be
+misunderstood by the doctor who does not attach the same importance
+to these pretended contingencies, mere disguises, according to him,
+assumed, so as to be perceptible by his patients, by the vice of one
+and the morbid state of the other, which in reality have never ceased
+to weigh heavily and incurably upon them while they were nursing their
+dreams of normality and health. And, as a matter of fact, Swann's
+love had reached that stage at which the physician and (in the case of
+certain affections) the boldest of surgeons ask themselves whether
+to deprive a patient of his vice or to rid him of his malady is still
+reasonable, or indeed possible.
+
+Certainly, of the extent of this love Swann had no direct knowledge.
+When he sought to measure it, it happened sometimes that he found it
+diminished, shrunken almost to nothing; for instance, the very moderate
+liking, amounting almost to dislike, which, in the days before he was
+in love with Odette, he had felt for her expressive features, her faded
+complexion, returned on certain days. "Really, I am making distinct
+headway," he would tell himself on the morrow, "when I come to think it
+over carefully, I find out that I got hardly any pleasure, last night,
+out of being in bed with her; it's an odd thing, but I actually thought
+her ugly." And certainly he was sincere, but his love extended a long
+way beyond the province of physical desire. Odette's person, indeed,
+no longer held any great place in it. When his eyes fell upon the
+photograph of Odette on his table, or when she came to see him, he
+had difficulty in identifying her face, either in the flesh or on the
+pasteboard, with the painful and continuous anxiety which dwelt in his
+mind. He would say to himself, almost with astonishment, "It is she!" as
+when suddenly some one shews us in a detached, externalised form one
+of our own maladies, and we find in it no resemblance to what we are
+suffering. "She?"--he tried to ask himself what that meant; for it
+is something like love, like death (rather than like those vague
+conceptions of maladies), a thing which one repeatedly calls in
+question, in order to make oneself probe further into it, in the fear
+that the question will find no answer, that the substance will escape
+our grasp--the mystery of personality. And this malady, which was
+Swann's love, had so far multiplied, was so closely interwoven with all
+his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his
+sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so
+entirely one with him that it would have been impossible to wrest it
+away without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his case
+was past operation.
+
+By this love Swann had been so far detached from all other interests
+that when by chance he reappeared in the world of fashion, reminding
+himself that his social relations, like a beautifully wrought setting
+(although she would not have been able to form any very exact estimate
+of its worth), might, still, add a little to his own value in Odette's
+eyes (as indeed they might have done had they not been cheapened by his
+love itself, which for Odette depreciated everything that it touched by
+seeming to denounce such things as less precious than itself), he would
+feel there, simultaneously with his distress at being in places and
+among people that she did not know, the same detached sense of pleasure
+as he would have derived from a novel or a painting in which were
+depicted the amusements of a leisured class; just as, at home, he used
+to enjoy the thought of the smooth efficiency of his household, the
+smartness of his own wardrobe and of his servants' liveries, the
+soundness of his investments, with the same relish as when he read in
+Saint-Simon, who was one of his favourite authors, of the machinery of
+daily life at Versailles, what Mme. de Maintenon ate and drank, or the
+shrewd avarice and great pomp of Lulli. And in the small extent to which
+this detachment was not absolute, the reason for this new pleasure which
+Swann was tasting was that he could emigrate for a moment into those few
+and distant parts of himself which had remained almost foreign to his
+love and to his pain. In this respect the personality, with which my
+great-aunt endowed him, of 'young Swann,' as distinct from the more
+individual personality of Charles Swann, was that in which he now most
+delighted. Once when, because it was the birthday of the Princesse de
+Parme (and because she could often be of use, indirectly, to Odette,
+by letting her have seats for galas and jubilees and all that sort of
+thing), he had decided to send her a basket of fruit, and was not quite
+sure where or how to order it, he had entrusted the task to a cousin of
+his mother who, delighted to be doing a commission for him, had written
+to him, laying stress on the fact that she had not chosen all the fruit
+at the same place, but the grapes from Crapote, whose speciality they
+were, the straw berries from Jauret, the pears from Chevet, who always
+had the best, am soon, "every fruit visited and examined, one by one,
+by myself." And in the sequel, by the cordiality with which the
+Princess thanked him, he had been able to judge of the flavour of the
+strawberries and of the ripeness of the pears. But, most of all, that
+"every fruit visited and examined one by one, by myself" had brought
+balm to his sufferings by carrying his mind off to a region which he
+rarely visited, although it was his by right, as the heir of a rich
+and respectable middle-class family in which had been handed down from
+generation to generation the knowledge of the 'right places' and the art
+of ordering things from shops.
+
+Of a truth, he had too long forgotten that he was 'young Swann' not to
+feel, when he assumed that part again for a moment, a keener pleasure
+than he was capable of feeling at other times--when, indeed, he was
+grown sick of pleasure; and if the friendliness of the middle-class
+people, for whom he had never been anything else than 'young Swann,' was
+less animated than that of the aristocrats (though more flattering, for
+all that, since in the middle-class mind friendship is inseparable from
+respect), no letter from a Royal Personage, offering him some princely
+entertainment, could ever be so attractive to Swann as the letter which
+asked him to be a witness, or merely to be present at a wedding in the
+family of some old friends of his parents; some of whom had 'kept up'
+with him, like my grandfather, who, the year before these events, had
+invited him to my mother's wedding, while others barely knew him by
+sight, but were, they thought, in duty bound to shew civility to the
+son, to the worthy successor of the late M. Swann.
+
+But, by virtue of his intimacy, already time-honoured, with so many of
+them, the people of fashion, in a certain sense, were also a part of his
+house, his service, and his family. He felt, when his mind dwelt upon
+his brilliant connections, the same external support, the same solid
+comfort as when he looked at the fine estate, the fine silver, the
+fine table-linen which had come down to him from his forebears. And the
+thought that, if he were seized by a sudden illness and confined to the
+house, the people whom his valet would instinctively run to find would
+be the Duc de Chartres, the Prince de Reuss, the Duc de Luxembourg
+and the Baron de Charlus, brought him the same consolation as our old
+Fran�oise derived from the knowledge that she would, one day, be buried
+in her own fine clothes, marked with her name, not darned at all (or so
+exquisitely darned that it merely enhanced one's idea of the skill and
+patience of the seamstress), a shroud from the constant image of which
+in her mind's eye she drew a certain satisfactory sense, if not actually
+of wealth and prosperity, at any rate of self-esteem. But most of
+all,--since in every one of his actions and thoughts which had reference
+to Odette, Swann was constantly subdued and swayed by the unconfessed
+feeling that he was, perhaps not less dear, but at least less welcome
+to her than anyone, even the most wearisome of the Verdurins'
+'faithful,'--when he betook himself to a world in which he was the
+paramount example of taste, a man whom no pains were spared to attract,
+whom people were genuinely sorry not to see, he began once again to
+believe in the existence of a happier life, almost to feel an appetite
+for it, as an invalid may feel who has been in bed for months and on a
+strict diet, when he picks up a newspaper and reads the account of an
+official banquet or the advertisement of a cruise round Sicily.
+
+If he was obliged to make excuses to his fashionable friends for not
+paying them visits, it was precisely for the visits that he did pay her
+that he sought to excuse himself to Odette. He still paid them (asking
+himself at the end of each month whether, seeing that he had perhaps
+exhausted her patience, and had certainly gone rather often to see her,
+it would be enough if he sent her four thousand francs), and for each
+visit he found a pretext, a present that he had to bring her, some
+information which she required, M. de Charlus, whom he had met actually
+going to her house, and who had insisted upon Swann's accompanying him.
+And, failing any excuse, he would beg M. de Charlus to go to her
+at once, and to tell her, as though spontaneously, in the course of
+conversation, that he had just remembered something that he had to say
+to Swann, and would she please send a message to Swann's house asking
+him to come to her then and there; but as a rule Swann waited at home
+in vain, and M. de Charlus informed him, later in the evening, that his
+device had not proved successful. With the result that, if she was now
+frequently away from Paris, even when she was there he scarcely saw her;
+that she who, when she was in love with him, used to say, "I am always
+free" and "What can it matter to me, what other people think?" now,
+whenever he wanted to see her, appealed to the proprieties or pleaded
+some engagement. When he spoke of going to a charity entertainment, or a
+private view, or a first-night at which she was to be present, she would
+expostulate that he wished to advertise their relations in public, that
+he was treating her like a woman off the streets. Things came to such a
+pitch that, in an effort to save himself from being altogether forbidden
+to meet her anywhere, Swann, remembering that she knew and was deeply
+attached to my great-uncle Adolphe, whose friend he himself also
+had been, went one day to see him in his little flat in the Rue
+de Bellechasse, to ask him to use his influence with Odette. As it
+happened, she invariably adopted, when she spoke to Swann about my
+uncle, a poetical tone, saying: "Ah, he! He is not in the least
+like you; it is an exquisite thing, a great, a beautiful thing, his
+friendship for me. He's not the sort of man who would have so little
+consideration for me as to let himself be seen with me everywhere in
+public." This was embarrassing for Swann, who did not know quite to what
+rhetorical pitch he should screw himself up in speaking of Odette to my
+uncle. He began by alluding to her excellence, _a priori_, the axiom
+of her seraphic super-humanity, the revelation of her inexpressible
+virtues, no conception of which could possibly be formed. "I should
+like to speak to you about her," he went on, "you, who know what a woman
+supreme above all women, what an adorable being, what an angel Odette
+is. But you know, also, what life is in Paris. Everyone doesn't see
+Odette in the light in which you and I have been Privileged to see her.
+And so there are people who think that I am behaving rather foolishly;
+she won't even allow me to meet her out of doors, at the theatre. Now
+you, in whom she has such enormous confidence, couldn't you say a few
+words for me to her, just to assure her that she exaggerate the harm
+which my bowing to her in the street might do her?"
+
+My uncle advised Swann not to see Odette for some days, after which she
+would love him all the more; he advised Odette to let Swann meet her
+everywhere, and as often as he pleased. A few days later Odette told
+Swann that she had just had a rude awakening; she had discovered that
+my uncle was the same as other men; he had tried to take her by assault.
+She calmed Swann, who, at first, was for rushing out to challenge my
+uncle to a duel, but he refused to shake hands with him when they met
+again. He regretted this rupture all the more because he had hoped, if
+he had met my uncle Adolphe again sometimes and had contrived to talk
+things over with him in strict confidence, to be able to get him to
+throw a light on certain rumours with regard to the life that Odette had
+led, in the old days, at Nice. For my uncle Adolphe used to spend the
+winter there, and Swann thought that it might indeed have been there,
+perhaps, that he had first known Odette. The few words which some one
+had let fall, in his hearing, about a man who, it appeared, had been
+Odette's lover, had left Swann dumbfounded. But the very things which he
+would, before knowing them, have regarded as the most terrible to
+learn and the most impossible to believe, were, once he knew them,
+incorporated for all time in the general mass of his sorrow; he admitted
+them, he could no longer have understood their not existing. Only,
+each one of them in its passage traced an indelible line, altering the
+picture that he had formed of his mistress. At one time indeed he felt
+that he could understand that this moral 'lightness,' of which he would
+never have suspected Odette, was perfectly well known, and that at Baden
+or Nice, when she had gone, in the past, to spend several months in
+one or the other place, she had enjoyed a sort of amorous notoriety.
+He attempted, in order to question them, to get into touch again with
+certain men of that stamp; but these were aware that he knew Odette,
+and, besides, he was afraid of putting the thought of her into their
+heads, of setting them once more upon her track. But he, to whom,
+up till then, nothing could have seemed so tedious as was all that
+pertained to the cosmopolitan life of Baden or of Nice, now that
+he learned that Odette had, perhaps, led a 'gay' life once in those
+pleasure-cities, although he could never find out whether it had been
+solely to satisfy a want of money which, thanks to himself, she no
+longer felt, or from some capricious instinct which might, at any
+moment, revive in her, he would lean, in impotent anguish, blinded and
+dizzy, over the bottomless abyss into which had passed, in which had
+been engulfed those years of his own, early in MacMahon's _Septennat_,
+in which one spent the winter on the Promenade des Anglais, the summer
+beneath the limes of Baden, and would find in those years a sad but
+splendid profundity, such as a poet might have lent to them; and he
+would have devoted to the reconstruction of all the insignificant
+details that made up the daily round on the C�te d'Azur in those days,
+if it could have helped him to understand something that still baffled
+him in the smile or in the eyes of Odette, more enthusiasm than does
+the aesthete who ransacks the extant documents of fifteenth-century
+Florence, so as to try to penetrate further into the soul of the
+Primavera, the fair Vanna or the Venus of Botticelli. He would sit,
+often, without saying a word to her, only gazing at her and dreaming;
+and she would comment: "You do look sad!" It was not very long since,
+from the idea that she was an excellent creature, comparable to the best
+women that he had known, he had passed to that of her being 'kept'; and
+yet already, by an inverse process, he had returned from the Odette de
+Cr�cy, perhaps too well known to the holiday-makers, to the 'ladies'
+men' of Nice and Baden, to this face, the expression on which was so
+often gentle, to this nature so eminently human. He would ask himself:
+"What does it mean, after all, to say that everyone at Nice knows who
+Odette de Cr�cy is? Reputations of that sort, even when they're true,
+are always based upon other people's ideas"; he would reflect that this
+legend--even if it were authentic--was something external to Odette,
+was not inherent in her like a mischievous and ineradicable personality;
+that the creature who might have been led astray was a woman with frank
+eyes, a heart full of pity for the sufferings of others, a docile body
+which he had pressed tightly in his arms and explored with his fingers,
+a woman of whom he might one day come into absolute possession if he
+succeeded in making himself indispensable to her. There she was,
+often tired, her face left blank for the nonce by that eager, feverish
+preoccupation with the unknown things which made Swann suffer; she would
+push back her hair with both hands; her forehead, her whole face would
+seem to grow larger; then, suddenly, some ordinary human thought, some
+worthy sentiment such as is to be found in all creatures when, in a
+moment of rest or meditation, they are free to express themselves, would
+flash out from her eyes like a ray of gold. And immediately the whole of
+her face would light up like a grey landscape, swathed in clouds which,
+suddenly, are swept away and the dull scene transfigured, at the moment
+of the sun's setting. The life which occupied Odette at such times, even
+the future which she seemed to be dreamily regarding, Swann could have
+shared with her. No evil disturbance seemed to have left any effect on
+them. Rare as they became, those moments did not occur in vain. By the
+process of memory, Swann joined the fragments together, abolished the
+intervals between them, cast, as in molten gold, the image of an Odette
+compact of kindness and tranquillity, for whom he was to make, later on
+(as we shall see in the second part of this story) sacrifices which the
+other Odette would never have won from him. But how rare those moments
+were, and how seldom he now saw her! Even in regard to their evening
+meetings, she would never tell him until the last minute whether she
+would be able to see him, for, reckoning on his being always free, she
+wished first to be certain that no one else would offer to come to her.
+She would plead that she was obliged to wait for an answer which was of
+the very greatest importance, and if, even after she had made Swann
+come to her house, any of her friends asked her, half-way through the
+evening, to join them at some theatre, or at supper afterwards, she
+would jump for joy and dress herself with all speed. As her toilet
+progressed, every movement that she made brought Swann nearer to the
+moment when he would have to part from her, when she would fly off with
+irresistible force; and when at length she was ready, and, Plunging into
+her mirror a last glance strained and brightened by her anxiety to look
+well, smeared a little salve on her lips, fixed a stray loci of hair
+over her brow, and called for her cloak of sky-blue silk with golden
+tassels, Swann would be looking so wretched that she would be unable to
+restrain a gesture of impatience as she flung at him: "So that is how
+you thank me for keeping you here till the last minute! And I thought
+I was being so nice to you. Well, I shall know better another time!"
+Sometime... at the risk of annoying her, he made up his mind that he
+would find out where she had gone, and even dreamed of a defensive
+alliance with Forcheville, who might perhaps have been able to tell him.
+But anyhow, when he knew with whom she was spending the evening, it
+was very seldom that he could not discover, among all his innumerable
+acquaintance, some one who knew--if only indirectly--the man with
+whom she had gone out, and could easily obtain this or that piece of
+information about him. And while he was writing to one of his friends,
+asking him to try to get a little light thrown upon some point or other,
+he would feel a sense of relief on ceasing to vex himself with questions
+to which there was no answer and transferring to some one else the
+strain of interrogation. It is true that Swann was little the wiser for
+such information as he did receive. To know a thing does not enable us,
+always, to prevent its happening, but after all the things that we know
+we do hold, if not in our hands, at any rate in our minds, where we can
+dispose of them as we choose, which gives us the illusion of a sort of
+power to control them. He was quite happy whenever M. de Charlus was
+with Odette. He knew that between M. de Charlus and her nothing untoward
+could ever happen, that when M. de Charlus went anywhere with her, it
+was out of friendship for himself, and that he would make no difficulty
+about telling him everything that she had done. Sometimes she had
+declared so emphatically to Swann that it was impossible for him to see
+her on a particular evening, she seemed to be looking forward so keenly
+to some outing, that Swann attached a very real importance to the fact
+that M. de Charlus was free to accompany her. Next day, without daring
+to put many questions to M. de Charlus, he would force him, by appearing
+not quite to understand his first answers, to give him more, after each
+of which he would feel himself increasingly relieved, for he very
+soon learned that Odette had spent her evening in the most innocent of
+dissipations.
+
+"But what do you mean, my dear M�m�, I don't quite understand.... You
+didn't go straight from her house to the Mus�e Gr�vin? Surely you went
+somewhere else first? No? That is very odd! You don't know how amusing
+you are, my dear M�m�. But what an odd idea of hers to go on to the Chat
+Noir afterwards; it was her idea, I suppose? No? Yours? That's strange.
+After all, it wasn't a bad idea; she must have known dozens of people
+there? No? She never spoke to a soul? How extraordinary! Then you sat
+there like that, just you and she, all by yourselves? I can picture you,
+sitting there! You are a worthy fellow, my dear M�m�; I'm exceedingly
+fond of you."
+
+Swann was now quite at ease. To him, who had so often happened, when
+talking to friends who knew nothing of his love, friends to whom he
+hardly listened, to hear certain detached sentences (as, for instance,
+"I saw Mme. de Cr�cy yesterday; she was with a man I didn't know."),
+sentences which dropped into his heart and passed at once into a solid
+state, grew hard as stalagmites, and seared and tore him as they lay
+there irremovable,--how charming, by way of contrast, were the words:
+"She didn't know a soul; she never spoke to a soul." How freely they
+coursed through him, how fluid they were, how vaporous, how easy to
+breathe! And yet, a moment later, he was telling himself that Odette
+must find him very dull if those were the pleasures that she preferred
+to his company. And their very insignificance, though it reassured him,
+pained him as if her enjoyment of them had been an act of treachery.
+
+Even when he could not discover where she had gone, it would have
+sufficed to alleviate the anguish that he then felt, for which Odette's
+presence, the charm of her company, was the sole specific (a specific
+which in the long run served, like many other remedies, to aggravate the
+disease, but at least brought temporary relief to his sufferings), it
+would have sufficed, had Odette only permitted him to remain in her
+house while she was out, to wait there until that hour of her return,
+into whose stillness and peace would flow, to be mingled and lost there,
+all memory of those intervening hours which some sorcery, some cursed
+spell had made him imagine as, somehow, different from the rest. But she
+would not; he must return home; he forced himself, on the way, to form
+various plans, ceased to think of Odette; he even reached the stage,
+while he undressed, of turning over all sorts of happy ideas in his
+mind: it was with a light heart, buoyed with the anticipation of going
+to see some favourite work of art on the morrow, that he jumped into
+bed and turned out the light; but no sooner had he made himself ready
+to sleep, relaxing a self-control of which he was not even conscious,
+so habitual had it become, than an icy shudder convulsed his body and he
+burst into sobs. He did not wish to know why, but dried his eyes, saying
+with a smile: "This is delightful; I'm becoming neurasthenic." After
+which he could not save himself from utter exhaustion at the thought
+that, next day, he must begin afresh his attempt to find out what Odette
+had been doing, must use all his influence to contrive to see her. This
+compulsion to an activity without respite, without variety, without
+result, was so cruel a scourge that one day, noticing a swelling over
+his stomach, he felt an actual joy in the idea that he had, perhaps, a
+tumour which would prove fatal, that he need not concern himself with
+anything further, that it was his malady which was going to govern his
+life, to make a plaything of him, until the not-distant end. If indeed,
+at this period, it often happened that, though without admitting it even
+to himself, he longed for death, it was in order to escape not so
+much from the keenness of his sufferings as from the monotony of his
+struggle.
+
+And yet he would have wished to live until the time came when he no
+longer loved her, when she would have no reason for lying to him, when
+at length he might learn from her whether, on the day when he had gone
+to see her in the afternoon, she had or had not been in the arms of
+Forcheville. Often for several days on end the suspicion that she was
+in love with some one else would distract his mind from the question
+of Forcheville, making it almost immaterial to him, like those new
+developments of a continuous state of ill-health which seem for a little
+time to have delivered us from their predecessors. There were even
+days when he was not tormented by any suspicion. He fancied that he was
+cured. But next morning, when he awoke, he felt in the same place
+the same pain, a sensation which, the day before, he had, as it were,
+diluted in the torrent of different impressions. But it had not stirred
+from its place. Indeed, it was the sharpness of this pain that had
+awakened him.
+
+Since Odette never gave him any information as to those vastly important
+matters which took up so much of her time every day (albeit he had lived
+long enough in the world to know that such matters are never anything
+else than pleasures) he could not sustain for any length of time the
+effort to imagine them; his brain would become a void; then he would
+pass a finger over his tired eyelids, in the same way as he might have
+wiped his eyeglass, and would cease altogether to think. There
+emerged, however, from this unexplored tract, certain occupations which
+reappeared from time to time, vaguely connected by Odette with some
+obligation towards distant relatives or old friends who, inasmuch as
+they were the only people whom she was in the habit of mentioning
+as preventing her from seeing him, seemed to Swann to compose the
+necessary, unalterable setting of her life. Because of the tone in which
+she referred, from time to time, to "the day when I go with my friend
+to the Hippodrome," if, when he felt unwell and had thought, "Perhaps
+Odette would be kind and come to see me," he remembered, suddenly, that
+it was one of those very days, he would correct himself with an "Oh,
+no! It's not worth while asking her to come; I should have thought of it
+before, this is the day when she goes with her friend to the Hippodrome.
+We must confine ourselves to what is possible; no use wasting our time
+in proposing things that can't be accepted and are declined in
+advance." And this duty that was incumbent upon Odette, of going to the
+Hippodrome, to which Swann thus gave way, seemed to him to be not merely
+ineluctable in itself; but the mark of necessity which stamped it seemed
+to make plausible and legitimate everything that was even remotely
+connected with it. If, when Odette, in the street, had acknowledged the
+salute of a passer-by, which had aroused Swann's jealousy, she replied
+to his questions by associating the stranger with any of the two or
+three paramount duties of which she had often spoken to him; if, for
+instance, she said: "That's a gentleman who was in my friend's box the
+other day; the one I go to the Hippodrome with," that explanation would
+set Swann's suspicions at rest; it was, after all, inevitable that
+this friend should have other guests than Odette in her box at the
+Hippodrome, but he had never sought to form or succeeded in forming any
+coherent impression of them. Oh! how he would have loved to know her,
+that friend who went to the Hippodrome, how he would have loved her to
+invite him there with Odette. How readily he would have sacrificed
+all his acquaintance for no matter what person who was in the habit of
+seeing Odette, were she but a manicurist or a girl out of a shop. He
+would have taken more trouble, incurred more expense for them than for
+queens. Would they not have supplied him, out of what was contained in
+their knowledge of the life of Odette, with the one potent anodyne for
+his pain? With what joy would he have hastened to spend his days with
+one or other of those humble folk with whom Odette kept up friendly
+relations, either with some ulterior motive or from genuine simplicity
+of nature. How willingly would he have fixed his abode for ever in the
+attics of some sordid but enviable house, where Odette went but never
+took him, and where, if he had lived with the little retired dressmaker,
+whose lover he would readily have pretended to be, he would have been
+visited by Odette almost daily. In those regions, that were almost
+slums, what a modest existence, abject, if you please, but delightful,
+nourished by tranquillity and happiness, he would have consented to lead
+indefinitely.
+
+It sometimes happened, again, that, when, after meeting Swann, she saw
+some man approaching whom he did not know, he could distinguish upon
+Odette's face that look of sorrow which she had worn on the day when he
+had come to her while Forcheville was there. But this was rare; for, on
+the days when, in spite of all that she had to do, and of her dread
+of what people would think, she did actually manage to see Swann, the
+predominant quality in her attitude, now, was self-assurance; a striking
+contrast, perhaps an unconscious revenge for, perhaps a natural reaction
+from the timorous emotion which, in the early days of their friendship,
+she had felt in his presence, and even in his absence, when she began a
+letter to him with the words: "My dear, my hand trembles so that I can
+scarcely write." (So, at least, she pretended, and a little of that
+emotion must have been sincere, or she would not have been anxious to
+enlarge and emphasise it.) So Swann had been pleasing to her then. Our
+hands do not tremble except for ourselves, or for those whom we love.
+When they have ceased to control our happiness how peaceful, how easy,
+how bold do we become in their presence! In speaking to him, in writing
+to him now, she no longer employed those words by which she had
+sought to give herself the illusion that he belonged to her, creating
+opportunities for saying "my" and "mine" when she referred to him: "You
+are all that I have in the world; it is the perfume of our friendship, I
+shall keep it," nor spoke to him of the future, of death itself, as of
+a single adventure which they would have to share. In those early days,
+whatever he might say to her, she would answer admiringly: "You know,
+you will never be like other people!"--she would gaze at his long,
+slightly bald head, of which people who know only of his successes
+used to think: "He's not regularly good-looking, if you like, but he is
+smart; that tuft, that eyeglass, that smile!" and, with more curiosity
+perhaps to know him as he really was than desire to become his mistress,
+she would sigh:
+
+"I do wish I could find out what there is in that head of yours!"
+
+But, now, whatever he might say, she would answer, in a tone sometimes
+of irritation, sometimes indulgent: "Ah! so you never will be like other
+people!"
+
+She would gaze at his head, which was hardly aged at all by his recent
+anxieties (though people now thought of it, by the same mental process
+which enables one to discover the meaning of a piece of symphonic music
+of which one has read the programme, or the 'likenesses' in a child
+whose family one has known: "He's not positively ugly, if you like,
+but he is really rather absurd; that eyeglass, that tuft, that smile!"
+realising in their imagination, fed by suggestion, the invisible
+boundary which divides, at a few months' interval, the head of an ardent
+lover from a cuckold's), and would say:
+
+"Oh, I do wish I could change you; put some sense into that head of
+yours."
+
+Always ready to believe in the truth of what he hoped, if it was only
+Odette's way of behaving to him that left room for doubt, he would fling
+himself greedily upon her words: "You can if you like," he would tell
+her.
+
+And he tried to explain to her that to comfort him, to control him, to
+make him work would be a noble task, to which numbers of other women
+asked for nothing better than to be allowed to devote themselves, though
+it is only fair to add that in those other women's hands the noble
+task would have seemed to Swann nothing more than an indiscreet and
+intolerable usurpation of his freedom of action. "If she didn't love me,
+just a little," he told himself, "she would not wish to have me altered.
+To alter me, she will have to see me more often." And so he was able to
+trace, in these faults which she found in him, a proof at least of
+her interest, perhaps even of her love; and, in fact, she gave him so
+little, now, of the last, that he was obliged to regard as proofs of
+her interest in him the various things which, every now and then, she
+forbade him to do. One day she announced that she did not care for his
+coachman, who, she thought, was perhaps setting Swann against her, and,
+anyhow, did not shew that promptness and deference to Swann's orders
+which she would have liked to see. She felt that he wanted to hear her
+say: "Don't have him again when you come to me," just as he might have
+wanted her to kiss him. So, being in a good temper, she said it; and he
+was deeply moved. That evening, when talking to M. de Charlus, with whom
+he had the satisfaction of being able to speak of her openly (for the
+most trivial remarks that he uttered now, even to people who had never
+heard of her, had always some sort of reference to Odette), he said to
+him:
+
+"I believe, all the same, that she loves me; she is so nice to me now,
+and she certainly takes an interest in what I do."
+
+And if, when he was starting off for her house, getting into his
+carriage with a friend whom he was to drop somewhere on the way,
+his friend said: "Hullo! that isn't Loredan on the box?" with what
+melancholy joy would Swann answer him:
+
+"Oh! Good heavens, no! I can tell you, I daren't take Loredan when I
+go to the Rue La P�rouse; Odette doesn't like me to have Loredan, she
+thinks he doesn't suit me. What on earth is one to do? Women, you know,
+women. My dear fellow, she would be furious. Oh, lord, yes; I've only to
+take R�mi there; I should never hear the last of it!"
+
+These new manners, indifferent, listless, irritable, which Odette now
+adopted with Swann, undoubtedly made him suffer; but he did not realise
+how much he suffered; since it had been with a regular progression, day
+after day, that Odette had chilled towards him, it was only by directly
+contrasting what she was to-day with what she had been at first that he
+could have measured the extent of the change that had taken place. Now
+this change was his deep, his secret wound, which pained him day and
+night, and whenever he felt that his thoughts were straying too near it,
+he would quickly turn them into another channel for fear of being made
+to suffer too keenly. He might say to himself in a vague way: "There
+was a time when Odette loved me more," but he never formed any definite
+picture of that time. Just as he had in his study a cupboard at which he
+contrived never to look, which he turned aside to avoid passing whenever
+he entered or left the room, because in one of its drawers he had locked
+away the chrysanthemum which she had given him on one of those first
+evenings when he had taken her home in his carriage, and the letters in
+which she said: "Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never
+have let you have that back," and "At whatever hour of the day or night
+you may need me, just send me a word, and dispose of me as you please,"
+so there was a place in his heart to which he would never allow his
+thoughts to trespass too near, forcing them, if need be, to evade it by
+a long course of reasoning so that they should not have to pass within
+reach of it; the place in which lingered his memories of happy days.
+
+But his so meticulous prudence was defeated one evening when he had gone
+out to a party.
+
+It was at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte's, on the last, for that season,
+of the evenings on which she invited people to listen to the musicians
+who would serve, later on, for her charity concerts. Swann, who had
+intended to go to each of the previous evenings in turn, but had never
+been able to make up his mind, received, while he was dressing for this
+party, a visit from the Baron de Charlus, who came with an offer to
+go with him to the Marquise's, if his company could be of any use in
+helping Swann not to feel quite so bored when he got there, to be a
+little less unhappy. But Swann had thanked him with:
+
+"You can't conceive how glad I should be of your company. But the
+greatest pleasure that you can give me will be if you will go instead
+to see Odette. You know what a splendid influence you have over her. I
+don't suppose she'll be going anywhere this evening, unless she goes to
+see her old dressmaker, and I'm sure she would be delighted if you went
+with her there. In any case, you'll find her at home before then. Try
+to keep her amused, and also to give her a little sound advice. If you
+could arrange something for to-morrow which would please her, something
+that we could all three do together. Try to put out a feeler, too, for
+the summer; see if there's anything she wants to do, a cruise that we
+might all three take; anything you can think of. I don't count upon
+seeing her to-night, myself; still if she would like me to come, or
+if you find a loophole, you've only to send me a line at Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte's up till midnight; after that I shall be here. Ever so
+many thanks for all you are doing for me--you know what I feel about
+you!"
+
+His friend promised to go and do as Swann wished as soon as he had
+deposited him at the door of the Saint-Euverte house, where he arrived
+soothed by the thought that M. de Charlus would be spending the evening
+in the Rue La P�rouse, but in a state of melancholy indifference to
+everything that did not involve Odette, and in particular to the details
+of fashionable life, a state which invested them with the charm that is
+to be found in anything which, being no longer an object of our desire,
+appears to us in its own guise. On alighting from his carriage, in the
+foreground of that fictitious summary of their domestic existence which
+hostesses are pleased to offer to their guests on ceremonial occasions,
+and in which they shew a great regard for accuracy of costume and
+setting, Swann was amused to discover the heirs and successors of
+Balzac's 'tigers'--now 'grooms'--. who normally followed their mistress
+when she walked abroad, but now, hatted and booted, were posted out
+of doors, in front of the house on the gravelled drive, or outside the
+stables, as gardeners might be drawn up for inspection at the ends of
+their several flower-beds. The peculiar tendency which he had always
+had to look for analogies between living people and the portraits
+in galleries reasserted itself here, but in a more positive and more
+general form; it was society as a whole, now that he was detached
+from it, which presented itself to him in a series of pictures. In the
+cloak-room, into which, in the old days, when he was still a man of
+fashion, he would have gone in his overcoat, to emerge from it in
+evening dress, but without any impression of what had occurred there,
+his mind having been, during the minute or two that he had spent in
+it, either still at the party which he had just left, or already at the
+party into which he was just about to be ushered, he now noticed, for
+the first time, roused by the unexpected arrival of so belated a guest,
+the scattered pack of splendid effortless animals, the enormous footmen
+who were drowsing here and there upon benches and chests, until,
+pointing their noble greyhound profiles, they towered upon their feet
+and gathered in a circle round about him.
+
+One of them, of a particularly ferocious aspect, and not unlike the
+headsman in certain Renaissance pictures which represent executions,
+tortures, and the like, advanced upon him with an implacable air to take
+his 'things.' But the harshness of his steely glare was compensated by
+the softness of his cotton gloves, so effectively that, as he approached
+Swann, he seemed to be exhibiting at once an utter contempt for his
+person and the most tender regard for his hat. He took it with a care to
+which the precision of his movements imparted something that was almost
+over-fastidious, and with a delicacy that was rendered almost touching
+by the evidence of his splendid strength. Then he passed it to one of
+his satellites, a novice and timid, who was expressing the panic that
+overpowered him by casting furious glances in every direction, and
+displayed all the dumb agitation of a wild animal in the first hours of
+its captivity.
+
+A few feet away, a strapping great lad in livery stood musing,
+motionless, statuesque, useless, like that purely decorative warrior
+whom one sees in the most tumultuous of Mantegna's paintings, lost in
+dreams, leaning upon his shield, while all around him are fighting and
+bloodshed and death; detached from the group of his companions who were
+thronging about Swann, he seemed as determined to remain unconcerned in
+the scene, which he followed vaguely with his cruel, greenish eyes, as
+if it had been the Massacre of the Innocents or the Martyrdom of Saint
+James. He seemed precisely to have sprung from that vanished race--if,
+indeed, it ever existed, save in the reredos of San Zeno and the
+frescoes of the Eremitani, where Swann had come in contact with it, and
+where it still dreams--fruit of the impregnation of a classical statue
+by some one of the Master's Paduan models, or of Albert Duerer's Saxons.
+And the locks of his reddish hair, crinkled by nature, but glued to his
+head by brilliantine, were treated broadly as they are in that Greek
+sculpture which the Mantuan painter never ceased to study, and which,
+if in its creator's purpose it represents but man, manages at least to
+extract from man's simple outlines such a variety of richness, borrowed,
+as it were, from the whole of animated nature, that a head of hair,
+by the glossy undulation and beak-like points of its curls, or in the
+overlaying of the florid triple diadem of its brushed tresses, can
+suggest at once a bunch of seaweed, a brood of fledgling doves, a bed of
+hyacinths and a serpent's writhing back. Others again, no less colossal,
+were disposed upon the steps of a monumental staircase which, by their
+decorative presence and marmorean immobility, was made worthy to be
+named, like that god-crowned ascent in the Palace of the Doges, the
+'Staircase of the Giants,' and on which Swann now set foot, saddened by
+the thought that Odette had never climbed it. Ah, with what joy would
+he, on the other hand, have raced up the dark, evil-smelling, breakneck
+flights to the little dressmaker's, in whose attic he would so gladly
+have paid the price of a weekly stage-box at the Opera for the right to
+spend the evening there when Odette came, and other days too, for the
+privilege of talking about her, of living among people whom she was in
+the habit of seeing when he was not there, and who, on that account,
+seemed to keep secret among themselves some part of the life of his
+mistress more real, more inaccessible and more mysterious than anything
+that he knew. Whereas upon that pestilential, enviable staircase to
+the old dressmaker's, since there was no other, no service stair in the
+building, one saw in the evening outside every door an empty, unwashed
+milk-can set out, in readiness for the morning round, upon the door-mat;
+on the despicable, enormous staircase which Swann was at that moment
+climbing, on either side of him, at different levels, before each
+anfractuosity made in its walls by the window of the porter's lodge or
+the entrance to a set of rooms, representing the departments of indoor
+service which they controlled, and doing homage for them to the guests,
+a gate-keeper, a major-domo, a steward (worthy men who spent the rest
+of the week in semi-independence in their own domains, dined there by
+themselves like small shopkeepers, and might to-morrow lapse to the
+plebeian service of some successful doctor or industrial magnate),
+scrupulous in carrying out to the letter all the instructions that had
+been heaped upon them before they were allowed to don the brilliant
+livery which they wore only at long intervals, and in which they did not
+feel altogether at their ease, stood each in the arcade of his doorway,
+their splendid pomp tempered by a democratic good-fellowship, like
+saints in their niches, and a gigantic usher, dressed Swiss Guard
+fashion, like the beadle in a church, struck the pavement with his staff
+as each fresh arrival passed him. Coming to the top of the staircase, up
+which he had been followed by a servant with a pallid countenance and
+a small pigtail clubbed at the back of his head, like one of Goya's
+sacristans or a tabellion in an old play, Swann passed by an office in
+which the lackeys, seated like notaries before their massive registers,
+rose solemnly to their feet and inscribed his name. He next crossed a
+little hall which--just as certain rooms are arranged by their owners
+to serve as the setting for a single work of art (from which they
+take their name), and, in their studied bareness, contain nothing else
+besides--displayed to him as he entered it, like some priceless effigy
+by Benvenuto Cellini of an armed watchman, a young footman, his body
+slightly bent forward, rearing above his crimson gorget an even more
+crimson face, from which seemed to burst forth torrents of fire,
+timidity and zeal, who, as he pierced the Aubusson tapestries that
+screened the door of the room in which the music was being given with
+his impetuous, vigilant, desperate gaze, appeared, with a soldierly
+impassibility or a supernatural faith--an allegory of alarums,
+incarnation of alertness, commemoration of a riot--to be looking out,
+angel or sentinel, from the tower of dungeon or cathedral, for the
+approach of the enemy or for the hour of Judgment. Swann had now only to
+enter the concert-room, the doors of which were thrown open to him by an
+usher loaded with chains, who bowed low before him as though tendering
+to him the keys of a conquered city. But he thought of the house
+in which at that very moment he might have been, if Odette had but
+permitted, and the remembered glimpse of an empty milk-can upon a
+door-mat wrung his heart.
+
+He speedily recovered his sense of the general ugliness of the human
+male when, on the other side of the tapestry curtain, the spectacle of
+the servants gave place to that of the guests. But even this ugliness of
+faces, which of course were mostly familiar to him, seemed something new
+and uncanny, now that their features,--instead of being to him symbols
+of practical utility in the identification of this or that man, who
+until then had represented merely so many pleasures to be sought after,
+boredoms to be avoided, or courtesies to be acknowledged--were at rest,
+measurable by aesthetic co-ordinates alone, in the autonomy of their
+curves and angles. And in these men, in the thick of whom Swann now
+found himself packed, there was nothing (even to the monocle which many
+of them wore, and which, previously, would, at the most, have enabled
+Swann to say that so-and-so wore a monocle) which, no longer restricted
+to the general connotation of a habit, the same in all of them, did not
+now strike him with a sense of individuality in each. Perhaps because
+he did not regard General de Froberville and the Marquis de Br�aute, who
+were talking together just inside the door, as anything more than two
+figures in a picture, whereas they were the old and useful friends who
+had put him up for the Jockey Club and had supported him in duels, the
+General's monocle, stuck like a shell-splinter in his common, scarred,
+victorious, overbearing face, in the middle of a forehead which it
+left half-blinded, like the single-eyed flashing front of the Cyclops,
+appeared to Swann as a monstrous wound which it might have been glorious
+to receive but which it was certainly not decent to expose, while
+that which M. de Br�aute wore, as a festive badge, with his pearl-grey
+gloves, his crush hat and white tie, substituting it for the familiar
+pair of glasses (as Swann himself did) when he went out to places, bore,
+glued to its other side, like a specimen prepared on a slide for the
+microscope, an infinitesimal gaze that swarmed with friendly feeling and
+never ceased to twinkle at the loftiness of ceilings, the delightfulness
+of parties, the interestingness of programmes and the excellence of
+refreshments.
+
+"Hallo! you here! why, it's ages since I've seen you," the General
+greeted Swann and, noticing the look of strain on his face and
+concluding that it was perhaps a serious illness that had kept him away,
+went on, "You're looking well, old man!" while M. de Br�aut� turned
+with, "My dear fellow, what on earth are you doing here?" to a 'society
+novelist' who had just fitted into the angle of eyebrow and cheek his
+own monocle, the sole instrument that he used in his psychological
+investigations and remorseless analyses of character, and who now
+replied, with an air of mystery and importance, rolling the 'r':--"I am
+observing!"
+
+The Marquis de Forestelle's monocle was minute and rimless, and, by
+enforcing an incessant and painful contraction of the eye over which it
+was incrusted like a superfluous cartilage, the presence of which there
+was inexplicable and its substance unimaginable, it gave to his face a
+melancholy refinement, and led women to suppose him capable of suffering
+terribly when in love. But that of M. de Saint-Cand�, girdled, like
+Saturn, with an enormous ring, was the centre of gravity of a face which
+composed itself afresh every moment in relation to the glass, while
+his thrusting red nose and swollen sarcastic lips endeavoured by their
+grimaces to rise to the level of the steady flame of wit that sparkled
+in the polished disk, and saw itself preferred to the most ravishing
+eyes in the world by the smart, depraved young women whom it set
+dreaming of artificial charms and a refinement of sensual bliss; and
+then, behind him, M. de Palancy, who with his huge carp's head and
+goggling eyes moved slowly up and down the stream of festive gatherings,
+unlocking his great mandibles at every moment as though in search of
+his orientation, had the air of carrying about upon his person only an
+accidental and perhaps purely symbolical fragment of the glass wall of
+his aquarium, a part intended to suggest the whole which recalled to
+Swann, a fervent admirer of Giotto's Vices and Virtues at Padua, that
+Injustice by whose side a leafy bough evokes the idea of the forests
+that enshroud his secret lair.
+
+Swann had gone forward into the room, under pressure from Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte and in order to listen to an aria from _Orfeo_ which was
+being rendered on the flute, and had taken up a position in a corner
+from which, unfortunately, his horizon was bounded by two ladies of
+'uncertain' age, seated side by side, the Marquise de Cambremer and the
+Vicomtesse de Franquetot, who, because they were cousins, used to spend
+their time at parties in wandering through the rooms, each clutching her
+bag and followed by her daughter, hunting for one another like people at
+a railway station, and could never be at rest until they had reserved,
+by marking them with their fans or handkerchiefs, two adjacent chairs;
+Mme. de Cambremer, since she knew scarcely anyone, being all the more
+glad of a companion, while Mme. de Franquetot, who, on the contrary,
+was extremely popular, thought it effective and original to shew all
+her fine friends that she preferred to their company that of an obscure
+country cousin with whom she had childish memories in common. Filled
+with ironical melancholy, Swann watched them as they listened to the
+pianoforte intermezzo (Liszt's 'Saint Francis preaching to the birds')
+which came after the flute, and followed the virtuoso in his dizzy
+flight; Mme. de Franquetot anxiously, her eyes starting from her head,
+as though the keys over which his fingers skipped with such agility were
+a series of trapezes, from any one of which he might come crashing,
+a hundred feet, to the ground, stealing now and then a glance of
+astonishment and unbelief at her companion, as who should say: "It isn't
+possible, I would never have believed that a human being could do all
+that!"; Mme. de Cambremer, as a woman who had received a sound musical
+education, beating time with her head--transformed for the nonce into
+the pendulum of a metronome, the sweep and rapidity of whose movements
+from one shoulder to the other (performed with that look of wild
+abandonment in her eye which a sufferer shews who is no longer able to
+analyse his pain, nor anxious to master it, and says merely "I can't
+help it") so increased that at every moment her diamond earrings caught
+in the trimming of her bodice, and she was obliged to put straight the
+bunch of black grapes which she had in her hair, though without any
+interruption of her constantly accelerated motion. On the other side
+(and a little way in front) of Mme. de Franquetot, was the Marquise de
+Gallardon, absorbed in her favourite meditation, namely upon her own
+kinship with the Guermantes family, from which she derived both publicly
+and in private a good deal of glory not unmingled with shame, the most
+brilliant ornaments of that house remaining somewhat aloof from her,
+perhaps because she was just a tiresome old woman, or because she was a
+scandalous old woman, or because she came of an inferior branch of the
+family, or very possibly for no reason at all. When she found herself
+seated next to some one whom she did not know, as she was at this moment
+next to Mme. de Franquetot, she suffered acutely from the feeling that
+her own consciousness of her Guermantes connection could not be made
+externally manifest in visible character like those which, in the
+mosaics in Byzantine churches, placed one beneath another, inscribe in a
+vertical column by the side of some Sacred Personage the words which he
+is supposed to be uttering. At this moment she was pondering the fact
+that she had never received an invitation, or even call, from her young
+cousin the Princesse des Laumes, during the six years that had already
+elapsed since the latter's marriage. The thought filled her with
+anger--and with pride; for, by virtue of having told everyone who
+expressed surprise at never seeing her at Mme. des Laumes's, that it
+was because of the risk of meeting the Princesse Mathilde there--a
+degradation which her own family, the truest and bluest of Legitimists,
+would never have forgiven her, she had come gradually to believe that
+this actually was the reason for her not visiting her young cousin. She
+remembered, it is true, that she had several times inquired of Mme. des
+Laumes how they might contrive to meet, but she remembered it only in
+a confused way, and besides did more than neutralise this slightly
+humiliating reminiscence by murmuring, "After all, it isn't for me to
+take the first step; I am at least twenty years older than she is." And
+fortified by these unspoken words she flung her shoulders proudly back
+until they seemed to part company with her bust, while her head, which
+lay almost horizontally upon them, made one think of the 'stuck-on' head
+of a pheasant which is brought to the table regally adorned with its
+feathers. Not that she in the least degree resembled a pheasant, having
+been endowed by nature with a short and squat and masculine figure; but
+successive mortifications had given her a backward tilt, such as one may
+observe in trees which have taken root on the very edge of a precipice
+and are forced to grow backwards to preserve their balance. Since she
+was obliged, in order to console herself for not being quite on a level
+with the rest of the Guermantes, to repeat to herself incessantly that
+it was owing to the uncompromising rigidity of her principles and pride
+that she saw so little of them, the constant iteration had gradually
+remoulded her body, and had given her a sort of 'bearing' which was
+accepted by the plebeian as a sign of breeding, and even kindled, at
+times, a momentary spark in the jaded eyes of old gentlemen in clubs.
+Had anyone subjected Mme. de Gallardon's conversation to that form of
+analysis which by noting the relative frequency of its several terms
+would furnish him with the key to a ciphered message, he would at
+once have remarked that no expression, not even the commonest forms
+of speech, occurred in it nearly so often as "at my cousins the
+Guermantes's," "at my aunt Guermantes's," "Elz�ar de Guermantes's
+health," "my cousin Guermantes's box." If anyone spoke to her of a
+distinguished personage, she would reply that, although she was not
+personally acquainted with him, she had seen him hundreds of times at
+her aunt Guermantes's, but she would utter this reply in so icy a tone,
+with such a hollow sound, that it was at once quite clear that if
+she did not know the celebrity personally that was because of all the
+obstinate, ineradicable principles against which her arching shoulders
+were stretched back to rest, as on one of those ladders on which
+gymnastic instructors make us 'extend' so as to develop the expansion of
+our chests.
+
+At this moment the Princesse des Laumes, who had not been expected to
+appear at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's that evening, did in fact arrive. To
+shew that she did not wish any special attention, in a house to which
+she had come by an act of condescension, to be paid to her superior
+rank, she had entered the room with her arms pressed close to her sides,
+even when there was no crowd to be squeezed through, no one attempting
+to get past her; staying purposely at the back, with the air of being
+in her proper place, like a king who stands in the waiting procession at
+the doors of a theatre where the management have not been warned of his
+coming; and strictly limiting her field of vision--so as not to seem to
+be advertising her presence and claiming the consideration that was her
+due--to the study of a pattern in the carpet or of her own skirt, she
+stood there on the spot which had struck her as the most modest (and
+from which, as she very well knew, a cry of rapture from Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte would extricate her as soon as her presence there was
+noticed), next to Mme. de Cambremer, whom, however, she did not know.
+She observed the dumb-show by which her neighbour was expressing her
+passion for music, but she refrained from copying it. This was not to
+say that, for once that she had consented to spend a few minutes in Mme.
+de Saint-Euverte's house, the Princesse des Laumes would not have wished
+(so that the act of politeness to her hostess which she had performed by
+coming might, so to speak, 'count double') to shew herself as friendly
+and obliging as possible. But she had a natural horror of what she
+called 'exaggerating,' and always made a point of letting people see
+that she 'simply must not' indulge in any display of emotion that was
+not in keeping with the tone of the circle in which she moved, although
+such displays never failed to make an impression upon her, by virtue of
+that spirit of imitation, akin to timidity, which is developed in the
+most self-confident persons, by contact with an unfamiliar environment,
+even though it be inferior to their own. She began to ask herself
+whether these gesticulations might not, perhaps, be a necessary
+concomitant of the piece of music that was being played, a piece which,
+it might be, was in a different category from all the music that she had
+ever heard before; and whether to abstain from them was not a sign of
+her own inability to understand the music, and of discourtesy towards
+the lady of the house; with the result that, in order to express by a
+compromise both of her contradictory inclinations in turn, at one moment
+she would merely straighten her shoulder-straps or feel in her golden
+hair for the little balls of coral or of pink enamel, frosted with tiny
+diamonds, which formed its simple but effective ornament, studying, with
+a cold interest, her impassioned neighbour, while at another she would
+beat time for a few bars with her fan, but, so as not to forfeit her
+independence, she would beat a different time from the pianist's. When
+he had finished the Liszt Intermezzo and had begun a Prelude by Chopin,
+Mme. de Cambremer turned to Mme. de Franquetot with a tender smile,
+full of intimate reminiscence, as well as of satisfaction (that of
+a competent judge) with the performance. She had been taught in her
+girlhood to fondle and cherish those long-necked, sinuous creatures,
+the phrases of Chopin, so free, so flexible, so tactile, which begin by
+seeking their ultimate resting-place somewhere beyond and far wide of
+the direction in which they started, the point which one might have
+expected them to reach, phrases which divert themselves in those
+fantastic bypaths only to return more deliberately--with a more
+premeditated reaction, with more precision, as on a crystal bowl which,
+if you strike it, will ring and throb until you cry aloud in anguish--to
+clutch at one's heart.
+
+Brought up in a provincial household with few friends or visitors,
+hardly ever invited to a ball, she had fuddled her mind, in the solitude
+of her old manor-house, over setting the pace, now crawling-slow, now
+passionate, whirling, breathless, for all those imaginary waltzing
+couples, gathering them like flowers, leaving the ball-room for a moment
+to listen, where the wind sighed among the pine-trees, on the shore of
+the lake, and seeing of a sudden advancing towards her, more different
+from anything one had ever dreamed of than earthly lovers are, a slender
+young man, whose voice was resonant and strange and false, in white
+gloves. But nowadays the old-fashioned beauty of this music seemed
+to have become a trifle stale. Having forfeited, some years back, the
+esteem of 'really musical' people, it had lost its distinction and its
+charm, and even those whose taste was frankly bad had ceased to find in
+it more than a moderate pleasure to which they hardly liked to confess.
+Mme. de Cambremer cast a furtive glance behind her. She knew that her
+young daughter-in-law (full of respect for her new and noble family,
+except in such matters as related to the intellect, upon which, having
+'got as far' as Harmony and the Greek alphabet, she was specially
+enlightened) despised Chopin, and fell quite ill when she heard him
+played. But finding herself free from the scrutiny of this Wagnerian,
+who was sitting, at some distance, in a group of her own contemporaries,
+Mme. de Cambremer let herself drift upon a stream of exquisite memories
+and sensations. The Princesse des Laumes was touched also. Though
+without any natural gift for music, she had received, some fifteen
+years earlier, the instruction which a music-mistress of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain, a woman of genius who had been, towards the end of
+her life, reduced to penury, had started, at seventy, to give to the
+daughters and granddaughters of her old pupils. This lady was now dead.
+But her method, an echo of her charming touch, came to life now and
+then in the fingers of her pupils, even of those who had been in other
+respects quite mediocre, had given up music, and hardly ever opened a
+piano. And so Mme. des Laumes could let her head sway to and fro, fully
+aware of the cause, with a perfect appreciation of the manner in which
+the pianist was rendering this Prelude, since she knew it by heart. The
+closing notes of the phrase that he had begun sounded already on her
+lips. And she murmured "How charming it is!" with a stress on the
+opening consonants of the adjective, a token of her refinement by which
+she felt her lips so romantically compressed, like the petals of a
+beautiful, budding flower, that she instinctively brought her eyes into
+harmony, illuminating them for a moment with a vague and sentimental
+gaze. Meanwhile Mme. de Gallardon had arrived at the point of saying to
+herself how annoying it was that she had so few opportunities of meeting
+the Princesse des Laumes, for she meant to teach her a lesson by not
+acknowledging her bow. She did not know that her cousin was in the room.
+A movement of Mme. Franquetot's head disclosed the Princess. At once
+Mme. de Gallardon dashed towards her, upsetting all her neighbours;
+although determined to preserve a distant and glacial manner which
+should remind everyone present that she had no desire to remain on
+friendly terms with a person in whose house one might find oneself, any
+day, cheek by jowl with the Princesse Mathilde, and to whom it was not
+her duty to make advances since she was not 'of her generation,'
+she felt bound to modify this air of dignity and reserve by some
+non-committal remark which would justify her overture and would force
+the Princess to engage in conversation; and so, when she reached her
+cousin, Mme. de Gallardon, with a stern countenance and one hand thrust
+out as though she were trying to 'force' a card, began with: "How is
+your husband?" in the same anxious tone that she would have used if the
+Prince had been seriously ill. The Princess, breaking into a laugh which
+was one of her characteristics, and was intended at once to shew the
+rest of an assembly that she was making fun of some one and also to
+enhance her own beauty by concentrating her features around her animated
+lips and sparkling eyes, answered: "Why; he's never been better in his
+life!" And she went on laughing.
+
+Mme. de Gallardon then drew herself up and, chilling her expression
+still further, perhaps because she was still uneasy about the Prince's
+health, said to her cousin:
+
+"Oriane," (at once Mme. des Laumes looked with amused astonishment
+towards an invisible third, whom she seemed to call to witness that she
+had never authorised Mme. de Gallardon to use her Christian name) "I
+should be so pleased if you would look in, just for a minute, to-morrow
+evening, to hear a quintet, with the clarinet, by Mozart. I should like
+to have your opinion of it."
+
+She seemed not so much to be issuing an invitation as to be asking
+favour, and to want the Princess's opinion of the Mozart quintet just
+though it had been a dish invented by a new cook, whose talent it was
+most important that an epicure should come to judge.
+
+"But I know that quintet quite well. I can tell you now--that I adore
+it."
+
+"You know, my husband isn't at all well; it's his liver. He would like
+so much to see you," Mme. de Gallardon resumed, making it now a corporal
+work of charity for the Princess to appear at her party.
+
+The Princess never liked to tell people that she would not go to their
+houses. Every day she would write to express her regret at having
+been kept away--by the sudden arrival of her husband's mother, by an
+invitation from his brother, by the Opera, by some excursion to the
+country--from some party to which she had never for a moment dreamed of
+going. In this way she gave many people the satisfaction of feeling that
+she was on intimate terms with them, that she would gladly have come to
+their houses, and that she had been prevented from doing so only by some
+princely occurrence which they were flattered to find competing with
+their own humble entertainment. And then, as she belonged to that
+witty 'Guermantes set'--in which there survived something of the
+alert mentality, stripped of all commonplace phrases and conventional
+sentiments, which dated from M�rim�e, and found its final expression in
+the plays of Meilhac and Hal�vy--she adapted its formula so as to suit
+even her social engagements, transposed it into the courtesy which was
+always struggling to be positive and precise, to approximate itself to
+the plain truth. She would never develop at any length to a hostess the
+expression of her anxiety to be present at her party; she found it more
+pleasant to disclose to her all the various little incidents on which it
+would depend whether it was or was not possible for her to come.
+
+"Listen, and I'll explain," she began to Mme. de Gallardon. "To-morrow
+evening I must go to a friend of mine, who has been pestering me to fix
+a day for ages. If she takes us to the theatre afterwards, then I can't
+possibly come to you, much as I should love to; but if we just stay in
+the house, I know there won't be anyone else there, so I can slip away."
+
+"Tell me, have you seen your friend M. Swann?"
+
+"No! my precious Charles! I never knew he was here. Where is he? I must
+catch his eye."
+
+"It's a funny thing that he should come to old Saint-Euverte's," Mme. de
+Gallardon went on. "Oh, I know he's very clever," meaning by that 'very
+cunning,' "but that makes no difference; fancy a Jew here, and she the
+sister and sister-in-law of two Archbishops."
+
+"I am ashamed to confess that I am not in the least shocked," said the
+Princesse des Laumes.
+
+"I know he's a converted Jew, and all that, and his parents and
+grandparents before him. But they do say that the converted ones are
+worse about their religion than the practising ones, that it's all just
+a pretence; is that true, d'you think?"
+
+"I can throw no light at all on the matter."
+
+The pianist, who was 'down' to play two pieces by Chopin, after
+finishing the Prelude had at once attacked a Polonaise. But once Mme.
+de Gallardon had informed her cousin that Swann was in the room, Chopin
+himself might have risen from the grave and played all his works in
+turn without Mme. des Laumes's paying him the slightest attention. She
+belonged to that one of the two divisions of the human race in which the
+untiring curiosity which the other half feels about the people whom it
+does not know is replaced by an unfailing interest in the people whom it
+does. As with many women of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the presence, in
+any room in which she might find herself, of another member of her set,
+even although she had nothing in particular to say to him, would occupy
+her mind to the exclusion of every other consideration. From that
+moment, in the hope that Swann would catch sight of her, the Princess
+could do nothing but (like a tame white mouse when a lump of sugar is
+put down before its nose and then taken away) turn her face, in which
+were crowded a thousand signs of intimate connivance, none of them with
+the least relevance to the sentiment underlying Chopin's music, in the
+direction where Swann was, and, if he moved, divert accordingly the
+course of her magnetic smile.
+
+"Oriane, don't be angry with me," resumed Mme. de Gallardon, who could
+never restrain herself from sacrificing her highest social ambitions,
+and the hope that she might one day emerge into a light that would
+dazzle the world, to the immediate and secret satisfaction of saying
+something disagreeable, "people do say about your M. Swann that he's the
+sort of man one can't have in the house; is that true?"
+
+"Why, you, of all people, ought to know that it's true," replied the
+Princesse des Laumes, "for you must have asked him a hundred times, and
+he's never been to your house once."
+
+And leaving her cousin mortified afresh, she broke out again into a
+laugh which scandalised everyone who was trying to listen to the music,
+but attracted the attention of Mme. de Saint-Euverte, who had stayed,
+out of politeness, near the piano, and caught sight of the Princess now
+for the first time. Mme. de Saint-Euverte was all the more delighted
+to see Mme. des Laumes, as she imagined her to be still at Guermantes,
+looking after her father-in-law, who was ill.
+
+"My dear Princess, you here?"
+
+"Yes, I tucked myself away in a corner, and I've been hearing such
+lovely things."
+
+"What, you've been in the room quite a time?"
+
+"Oh, yes, quite a long time, which seemed very short; it was only long
+because I couldn't see you."
+
+Mme. de Saint-Euverte offered her own chair to the Princess, who
+declined it with:
+
+"Oh, please, no! Why should you? It doesn't matter in the least where
+I sit." And deliberately picking out, so as the better to display the
+simplicity of a really great lady, a low seat without a back: "There
+now, that hassock, that's all I want. It will make me keep my back
+straight. Oh! Good heavens, I'm making a noise again; they'll be telling
+you to have me 'chucked out'."
+
+Meanwhile, the pianist having doubled his speed, the emotion of the
+music-lovers was reaching its climax, a servant was handing refreshments
+about on a salver, and was making the spoons rattle, and, as on every
+other 'party-night', Mme. de Saint-Euverte was making signs to him,
+which he never saw, to leave the room. A recent bride, who had been told
+that a young woman ought never to appear bored, was smiling vigorously,
+trying to catch her hostess's eye so as to flash a token of her
+gratitude for the other's having 'thought of her' in connection with so
+delightful an entertainment. And yet, although she remained more calm
+than Mme. de Franquetot, it was not without some uneasiness that she
+followed the flying fingers; what alarmed her being not the pianist's
+fate but the piano's, on which a lighted candle, jumping at each
+_fortissimo_, threatened, if not to set its shade on fire, at least to
+spill wax upon the ebony. At last she could contain herself no longer,
+and, running up the two steps of the platform on which the piano stood,
+flung herself on the candle to adjust its sconce. But scarcely had her
+hand come within reach of it when, on a final chord, the piece finished,
+and the pianist rose to his feet. Nevertheless the bold initiative shewn
+by this young woman and the moment of blushing confusion between her
+and the pianist which resulted from it, produced an impression that was
+favourable on the whole.
+
+"Did you see what that girl did just now, Princess?" asked General de
+Froberville, who had come up to Mme. des Laumes as her hostess left her
+for a moment. "Odd, wasn't it? Is she one of the performers?"
+
+"No, she's a little Mme. de Cambremer," replied the Princess carelessly,
+and then, with more animation: "I am only repeating what I heard just
+now, myself; I haven't the faintest notion who said it, it was some one
+behind me who said that they were neighbours of Mme. de Saint-Euverte in
+the country, but I don't believe anyone knows them, really. They must be
+'country cousins'! By the way, I don't know whether you're particularly
+'well-up' in the brilliant society which we see before us, because I've
+no idea who all these astonishing people can be. What do you suppose
+they do with themselves when they're not at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's
+parties? She must have ordered them in with the musicians and the chairs
+and the food. 'Universal providers,' you know. You must admit, they're
+rather splendid, General. But can she really have the courage to hire
+the same 'supers' every week? It isn't possible!"
+
+"Oh, but Cambremer is quite a good name; old, too," protested the
+General.
+
+"I see no objection to its being old," the Princess answered dryly, "but
+whatever else it is it's not euphonious," she went on, isolating the
+word euphonious as though between inverted commas, a little affectation
+to which the Guermantes set were addicted.
+
+"You think not, eh! She's a regular little peach, though," said the
+General, whose eyes never strayed from Mme. de Cambremer. "Don't you
+agree with me, Princess?"
+
+"She thrusts herself forward too much; I think, in so young a woman,
+that's not very nice--for I don't suppose she's my generation," replied
+Mme. des Laumes (the last word being common, it appeared, to Gallardon
+and Guermantes). And then, seeing that M. de Froberville was still
+gazing at Mme. de Cambremer, she added, half out of malice towards the
+lady, half wishing to oblige the General: "Not very nice... for her
+husband! I am sorry that I do not know her, since she seems to attract
+you so much; I might have introduced you to her," said the Princess,
+who, if she had known the young woman, would most probably have done
+nothing of the sort. "And now I must say good night, because one of
+my friends is having a birthday party, and I must go and wish her many
+happy returns," she explained, modestly and with truth, reducing the
+fashionable gathering to which she was going to the simple proportions
+of a ceremony which would be boring in the extreme, but at which she was
+obliged to be present, and there would be something touching about her
+appearance. "Besides, I must pick up Basin. While I've been here, he's
+gone to see those friends of his--you know them too, I'm sure,--who are
+called after a bridge--oh, yes, the I�nas."
+
+"It was a battle before it was a bridge, Princess; it was a victory!"
+said the General. "I mean to say, to an old soldier like me," he went
+on, wiping his monocle and replacing it, as though he were laying
+a fresh dressing on the raw wound underneath, while the Princess
+instinctively looked away, "that Empire nobility, well, of course, it's
+not the same thing, but, after all, taking it as it is, it's very fine
+of its kind; they were people who really did fight like heroes."
+
+"But I have the deepest respect for heroes," the Princess assented,
+though with a faint trace of irony. "If I don't go with Basin to see
+this Princesse d'I�na, it isn't for that, at all; it's simply because
+I don't know them. Basin knows them; he worships them. Oh, no, it's not
+what you think; he's not in love with her. I've nothing to set my face
+against! Besides, what good has it ever done when I have set my face
+against them?" she queried sadly, for the whole world knew that,
+ever since the day upon which the Prince des Laumes had married his
+fascinating cousin, he had been consistently unfaithful to her. "Anyhow,
+it isn't that at all. They're people he has known for ever so long, they
+do him very well, and that suits me down to the ground. But I must tell
+you what he's told me about their house; it's quite enough. Can you
+imagine it, all their furniture is 'Empire'!"
+
+"But, my dear Princess, that's only natural; it belonged to their
+grandparents."
+
+"I don't quite say it didn't, but that doesn't make it any less ugly. I
+quite understand that people can't always have nice things, but at least
+they needn't have things that are merely grotesque. What do you say?
+I can think of nothing more devastating, more utterly smug than that
+hideous style--cabinets covered all over with swans' heads, like
+bath-taps!"
+
+"But I believe, all the same, that they've got some lovely things; why,
+they must have that famous mosaic table on which the Treaty of..."
+
+"Oh, I don't deny, they may have things that are interesting enough
+from the historic point of view. But things like that can't, ever, be
+beautiful ... because they're simply horrible! I've got things like that
+myself, that came to Basin from the Montesquious. Only, they're up in
+the attics at Guermantes, where nobody ever sees them. But, after all,
+that's not the point, I would fly to see them, with Basin; I would even
+go to see them among all their sphinxes and brasses, if I knew them,
+but--I don't know them! D'you know, I was always taught, when I was a
+little girl, that it was not polite to call on people one didn't know."
+She assumed a tone of childish gravity. "And so I am just doing what
+I was taught to do. Can't you see those good people, with a totally
+strange woman bursting into their house? Why, I might get a most hostile
+reception."
+
+And she coquettishly enhanced the charm of the smile which the idea had
+brought to her lips, by giving to her blue eyes, which were fixed on the
+General, a gentle, dreamy expression.
+
+"My dear Princess, you know that they'd be simply wild with joy."
+
+"No, why?" she inquired, with the utmost vivacity, either so as to seem
+unaware that it would be because she was one of the first ladies in
+France, or so as to have the pleasure of hearing the General tell
+her so. "Why? How can you tell? Perhaps they would think it the most
+unpleasant thing that could possibly happen. I know nothing about them,
+but if they're anything like me, I find it quite boring enough to see
+the people I do know; I'm sure if I had to see people I didn't know
+as well, even if they had 'fought like heroes,' I should go stark mad.
+Besides, except when it's an old friend like you, whom one knows quite
+apart from that, I'm not sure that 'heroism' takes one very far in
+society. It's often quite boring enough to have to give a dinner-party,
+but if one had to offer one's arm to Spartacus, to let him take one
+down...! Really, no; it would never be Vercingetorix I should send for,
+to make a fourteenth. I feel sure, I should keep him for really big
+'crushes.' And as I never give any..."
+
+"Ah! Princess, it's easy to see you're not a Guermantes for nothing. You
+have your share of it, all right, the 'wit of the Guermantes'!"
+
+"But people always talk about the wit of the Guermantes; I never could
+make out why. Do you really know any others who have it?" she rallied
+him, with a rippling flow of laughter, her features concentrated, yoked
+to the service of her animation, her eyes sparkling, blazing with
+a radiant sunshine of gaiety which could be kindled only by such
+speeches--even if the Princess had to make them herself--as were in
+praise of her wit or of her beauty. "Look, there's Swann talking to your
+Cambremer woman; over there, beside old Saint-Euverte, don't you see
+him? Ask him to introduce you. But hurry up, he seems to be just going!"
+
+"Did you notice how dreadfully ill he's looking?" asked the General.
+
+"My precious Charles? Ah, he's coming at last; I was beginning to think
+he didn't want to see me!"
+
+Swann was extremely fond of the Princesse des Laumes, and the sight of
+her recalled to him Guermantes, a property close to Combray, and all
+that country which he so dearly loved and had ceased to visit, so as not
+to be separated from Odette. Slipping into the manner, half-artistic,
+half-amorous--with which he could always manage to amuse the Princess--a
+manner which came to him quite naturally whenever he dipped for a moment
+into the old social atmosphere, and wishing also to express in words,
+for his own satisfaction, the longing that he felt for the country:
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, or rather intoned, in such a way as to be audible at
+once to Mme. de Saint-Euverte, to whom he spoke, and to Mme. des Laumes,
+for whom he was speaking, "Behold our charming Princess! See, she has
+come up on purpose from Guermantes to hear Saint Francis preach to the
+birds, and has only just had time, like a dear little tit-mouse, to go
+and pick a few little hips and haws and put them in her hair; there are
+even some drops of dew upon them still, a little of the hoar-frost
+which must be making the Duchess, down there, shiver. It is very pretty
+indeed, my dear Princess."
+
+"What! The Princess came up on purpose from Guermantes? But that's too
+wonderful! I never knew; I'm quite bewildered," Mme. de Saint-Euverte
+protested with quaint simplicity, being but little accustomed to Swann's
+way of speaking. And then, examining the Princess's headdress,
+"Why, you're quite right; it is copied from... what shall I say, not
+chestnuts, no,--oh, it's a delightful idea, but how can the Princess
+have known what was going to be on my programme? The musicians didn't
+tell me, even."
+
+Swann, who was accustomed, when he was with a woman whom he had kept
+up the habit of addressing in terms of gallantry, to pay her delicate
+compliments which most other people would not and need not understand,
+did not condescend to explain to Mme. de Saint-Euverte that he had
+been speaking metaphorically. As for the Princess, she was in fits of
+laughter, both because Swann's wit was highly appreciated by her set,
+and because she could never hear a compliment addressed to herself
+without finding it exquisitely subtle and irresistibly amusing.
+
+"Indeed! I'm delighted, Charles, if my little hips and haws meet with
+your approval. But tell me, why did you bow to that Cambremer person,
+are you also her neighbour in the country?"
+
+Mme. de Saint-Euverte, seeing that the Princess seemed quite happy
+talking to Swann, had drifted away.
+
+"But you are, yourself, Princess!"
+
+"I! Why, they must have 'countries' everywhere, those creatures! Don't I
+wish I had!"
+
+"No, not the Cambremers; her own people. She was a Legrandin, and used
+to come to Combray. I don't know whether you are aware that you are
+Comtesse de Combray, and that the Chapter owes you a due."
+
+"I don't know what the Chapter owes me, but I do know that I'm 'touched'
+for a hundred francs, every year, by the Cur�, which is a due that I
+could very well do without. But surely these Cambremers have rather a
+startling name. It ends just in time, but it ends badly!" she said with
+a laugh.
+
+"It begins no better." Swann took the point.
+
+"Yes; that double abbreviation!"
+
+"Some one very angry and very proper who didn't dare to finish the first
+word."
+
+"But since he couldn't stop himself beginning the second, he'd have done
+better to finish the first and be done with it. We are indulging in
+the most refined form of humour, my dear Charles, in the very best of
+taste--but how tiresome it is that I never see you now," she went on in
+a coaxing tone, "I do so love talking to you. Just imagine, I could not
+make that idiot Froberville see that there was anything funny about the
+name Cambremer. Do agree that life is a dreadful business. It's only
+when I see you that I stop feeling bored."
+
+Which was probably not true. But Swann and the Princess had the same way
+of looking at the little things of life--the effect, if not the cause of
+which was a close analogy between their modes of expression and even of
+pronunciation. This similarity was not striking because no two things
+could have been more unlike than their voices. But if one took the
+trouble to imagine Swann's utterances divested of the sonority that
+enwrapped them, of the moustache from under which they emerged, one
+found that they were the same phrases, the same inflexions, that they
+had the 'tone' of the Guermantes set. On important matters, Swann and
+the Princess had not an idea in common. But since Swann had become so
+melancholy, and was always in that trembling condition which precedes
+a flood of tears, he had the same need to speak about his grief that
+a murderer has to tell some one about his crime. And when he heard
+the Princess say that life was a dreadful business, he felt as much
+comforted as if she had spoken to him of Odette.
+
+"Yes, life is a dreadful business! We must meet more often, my dear
+friend. What is so nice about you is that you are not cheerful. We could
+spend a most pleasant evening together."
+
+"I'm sure we could; why not come down to Guermantes? My mother-in-law
+would be wild with joy. It's supposed to be very ugly down there, but
+I must say, I find the neighborhood not at all unattractive; I have a
+horror of 'picturesque spots'."
+
+"I know it well, it's delightful!" replied Swann. "It's almost too
+beautiful, too much alive for me just at present; it's a country to
+be happy in. It's perhaps because I have lived there, but things there
+speak to me so. As soon as a breath of wind gets up, and the cornfields
+begin to stir, I feel that some one is going to appear suddenly, that
+I am going to hear some news; and those little houses by the water's
+edge... I should be quite wretched!"
+
+"Oh! my dearest Charles, do take care; there's that appalling Rampillon
+woman; she's seen me; hide me somewhere, do tell me again, quickly, what
+it was that happened to her; I get so mixed up; she's just married off
+her daughter, or her lover (I never can remember),--perhaps both--to
+each other! Oh, no, I remember now, she's been dropped by her Prince...
+Pretend to be talking, so that the poor old Berenice sha'n't come and
+invite me to dinner. Anyhow, I'm going. Listen, my dearest Charles, now
+that I have seen you, once in a blue moon, won't you let me carry you
+off and take you to the Princesse de Parme's, who would be so pleased
+to see you (you know), and Basin too, for that matter; he's meeting me
+there. If one didn't get news of you, sometimes, from M�m�... Remember,
+I never see you at all now!"
+
+Swann declined. Having told M. de Charlus that, on leaving Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte's, he would go straight home, he did not care to run the
+risk, by going on now to the Princesse de Parme's, of missing a message
+which he had, all the time, been hoping to see brought in to him by one
+of the footmen, during the party, and which he was perhaps going to find
+left with his own porter, at home.
+
+"Poor Swann," said Mme. des Laumes that night to her husband; "he is
+always charming, but he does look so dreadfully unhappy. You will see
+for yourself, for he has promised to dine with us one of these days. I
+do feel that it's really absurd that a man of his intelligence should
+let himself be made to suffer by a creature of that kind, who isn't even
+interesting, for they tell me, she's an absolute idiot!" she concluded
+with the wisdom invariably shewn by people who, not being in love
+themselves, feel that a clever man ought to be unhappy only about such
+persons as are worth his while; which is rather like being astonished
+that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so
+insignificant a creature as the common bacillus.
+
+Swann now wished to go home, but, just as he was making his escape,
+General de Froberville caught him and asked for an introduction to Mme.
+de Cambremer, and he was obliged to go back into the room to look for
+her.
+
+"I say, Swann, I'd rather be married to that little woman than killed by
+savages, what do you say?"
+
+The words 'killed by savages' pierced Swann's aching heart; and at once
+he felt the need of continuing the conversation. "Ah!" he began, "some
+fine lives have been lost in that way... There was, you remember, that
+explorer whose remains Dumont d'Urville brought back, La P�rouse..."
+(and he was at once happy again, as though he had named Odette). "He was
+a fine character, and interests me very much, does La P�rouse," he ended
+sadly.
+
+"Oh, yes, of course, La P�rouse," said the General. "It's quite a
+well-known name. There's a street called that."
+
+"Do you know anyone in the Rue La P�rouse?" asked Swann excitedly.
+
+"Only Mme. de Chanlivault, the sister of that good fellow Chaussepierre.
+She gave a most amusing theatre-party the other evening. That's a house
+that will be really smart some day, you'll see!"
+
+"Oh, so she lives in the Rue La P�rouse. It's attractive; I like that
+street; it's so sombre."
+
+"Indeed it isn't. You can't have been in it for a long time; it's not at
+all sombre now; they're beginning to build all round there."
+
+When Swann did finally introduce M. de Froberville to the young Mme. de
+Cambremer, since it was the first time that she had heard the General's
+name, she hastily outlined upon her lips the smile of joy and surprise
+with which she would have greeted him if she had never, in the whole
+of her life, heard anything else; for, as she did not yet know all the
+friends of her new family, whenever anyone was presented to her, she
+assumed that he must be one of them, and thinking that she would shew
+her tact by appearing to have heard 'such a lot about him' since her
+marriage, she would hold out her hand with an air of hesitation which
+was meant as a proof at once of the inculcated reserve which she had to
+overcome and of the spontaneous friendliness which successfully overcame
+it. And so her parents-in-law, whom she still regarded as the most
+eminent pair in France, declared that she was an angel; all the more
+that they preferred to appear, in marrying her to their son, to have
+yielded to the attraction rather of her natural charm than of her
+considerable fortune.
+
+"It's easy to see that you're a musician heart and soul, Madame," said
+the General, alluding to the incident of the candle.
+
+Meanwhile the concert had begun again, and Swann saw that he could not
+now go before the end of the new number. He suffered greatly from being
+shut up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded
+him all the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love, incapable,
+had they known of it, of taking any interest, or of doing more than
+smile at it as at some childish joke, or deplore it as an act of
+insanity, they made it appear to him in the aspect of a subjective
+state which existed for himself alone, whose reality there was nothing
+external to confirm; he suffered overwhelmingly, to the point at which
+even the sound of the instruments made him want to cry, from having to
+prolong his exile in this place to which Odette would never come, in
+which no one, nothing was aware of her existence, from which she was
+entirely absent.
+
+But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition tore
+him with such anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart. What
+had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes,
+on which it rested as though expecting something, an expectancy which
+it prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes, in the exaltation
+with which it already saw the expected object approaching, and with a
+desperate effort to continue until its arrival, to welcome it before
+itself expired, to keep the way open for a moment longer, with all its
+remaining strength, that the stranger might enter in, as one holds a
+door open that would otherwise automatically close. And before Swann had
+had time to understand what was happening, to think: "It is the little
+phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. I mustn't listen!", all his memories of
+the days when Odette had been in love with him, which he had succeeded,
+up till that evening, in keeping invisible in the depths of his being,
+deceived by this sudden reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they
+supposed, had dawned again, had awakened from their slumber, had taken
+wing and risen to sing maddeningly in his ears, without pity for his
+present desolation, the forgotten strains of happiness.
+
+In place of the abstract expressions "the time when I was happy," "the
+time when I was loved," which he had often used until then, and without
+much suffering, for his intelligence had not embodied in them anything
+of the past save fictitious extracts which preserved none of the
+reality, he now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the
+peculiar, volatile essence of that lost happiness; he could see it all;
+the snowy, curled petals of the chrysanthemum which she had tossed
+after him into his carriage, which he had kept pressed to his lips, the
+address 'Maison Dor�e,' embossed on the note-paper on which he had read
+"My hand trembles so as I write to you," the frowning contraction of her
+eyebrows when she said pleadingly: "You won't let it be very long before
+you send for me?"; he could smell the heated iron of the barber whom he
+used to have in to singe his hair while Loredan went to fetch the little
+working girl; could feel the torrents of rain which fell so often that
+spring, the ice-cold homeward drive in his victoria, by moonlight; all
+the network of mental habits, of seasonable impressions, of sensory
+reactions, which had extended over a series of weeks its uniform meshes,
+by which his body now found itself inextricably held. At that time he
+had been satisfying a sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures
+of those people who lived for love alone. He had supposed that he could
+stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also;
+how small a thing the actual charm of Odette was now in comparison with
+that formidable terror which extended it like a cloudy halo all around
+her, that enormous anguish of not knowing at every hour of the day and
+night what she had been doing, of not possessing her wholly, at all
+times and in all places! Alas, he recalled the accents in which she had
+exclaimed: "But I can see you at any time; I am always free!"--she, who
+was never free now; the interest, the curiosity that she had shewn in
+his life, her passionate desire that he should do her the favour--of
+which it was he who, then, had felt suspicious, as of a possibly tedious
+waste of his time and disturbance of his arrangements--of granting her
+access to his study; how she had been obliged to beg that he would let
+her take him to the Verdurins'; and, when he did allow her to come to
+him once a month, how she had first, before he would let himself be
+swayed, had to repeat what a joy it would be to her, that custom of
+their seeing each other daily, for which she had longed at a time when
+to him it had seemed only a tiresome distraction, for which, since that
+time, she had conceived a distaste and had definitely broken herself
+of it, while it had become for him so insatiable, so dolorous a need.
+Little had he suspected how truly he spoke when, on their third meeting,
+as she repeated: "But why don't you let me come to you oftener?" he had
+told her, laughing, and in a vein of gallantry, that it was for fear of
+forming a hopeless passion. Now, alas, it still happened at times that
+she wrote to him from a restaurant or hotel, on paper which bore a
+printed address, but printed in letters of fire that seared his heart.
+"Written from the H�tel Vouillemont. What on earth can she have gone
+there for? With whom? What happened there?" He remembered the gas-jets
+that were being extinguished along the Boulevard des Italiens when he
+had met her, when all hope was gone among the errant shades upon that
+night which had seemed to him almost supernatural and which now (that
+night of a period when he had not even to ask himself whether he would
+be annoying her by looking for her and by finding her, so certain was he
+that she knew no greater happiness than to see him and to let him take
+her home) belonged indeed to a mysterious world to which one never may
+return again once its doors are closed. And Swann could distinguish,
+standing, motionless, before that scene of happiness in which it lived
+again, a wretched figure which filled him with such pity, because he
+did not at first recognise who it was, that he must lower his head,
+lest anyone should observe that his eyes were filled with tears. It was
+himself.
+
+When he had realised this, his pity ceased; he was jealous, now, of that
+other self whom she had loved, he was jealous of those men of whom he
+had so often said, without much suffering: "Perhaps she's in love with
+them," now that he had exchanged the vague idea of loving, in
+which there is no love, for the petals of the chrysanthemum and the
+'letter-heading' of the Maison d'Or; for they were full of love.
+And then, his anguish becoming too keen, he passed his hand over his
+forehead, let the monocle drop from his eye, and wiped its glass. And
+doubtless, if he had caught sight of himself at that moment, he would
+have added to the collection of the monocles which he had already
+identified, this one which he removed, like an importunate, worrying
+thought, from his head, while from its misty surface, with his
+handkerchief, he sought to obliterate his cares.
+
+There are in the music of the violin--if one does not see the instrument
+itself, and so cannot relate what one hears to its form, which modifies
+the fullness of the sound--accents which are so closely akin to those
+of certain contralto voices, that one has the illusion that a singer has
+taken her place amid the orchestra. One raises one's eyes; one sees only
+the wooden case, magical as a Chinese box; but, at moments, one is
+still tricked by the deceiving appeal of the Siren; at times, too, one
+believes that one is listening to a captive spirit, struggling in the
+darkness of its masterful box, a box quivering with enchantment, like a
+devil immersed in a stoup of holy water; sometimes, again, it is in the
+air, at large, like a pure and supernatural creature that reveals to the
+ear, as it passes, its invisible message.
+
+As though the musicians were not nearly so much playing the little
+phrase as performing the rites on which it insisted before it would
+consent to appear, as proceeding to utter the incantations necessary
+to procure, and to prolong for a few moments, the miracle of its
+apparition, Swann, who was no more able now to see it than if it had
+belonged to a world of ultra-violet light, who experienced something
+like the refreshing sense of a metamorphosis in the momentary blindness
+with which he had been struck as he approached it, Swann felt that it
+was present, like a protective goddess, a confidant of his love, who, so
+as to be able to come to him through the crowd, and to draw him aside to
+speak to him, had disguised herself in this sweeping cloak of sound. And
+as she passed him, light, soothing, as softly murmured as the perfume
+of a flower, telling him what she had to say, every word of which
+he closely scanned, sorry to see them fly away so fast, he made
+involuntarily with his lips the motion of kissing, as it went by him,
+the harmonious, fleeting form.
+
+He felt that he was no longer in exile and alone since she, who
+addressed herself to him, spoke to him in a whisper of Odette. For he
+had no longer, as of old, the impression that Odette and he were not
+known to the little phrase. Had it not often been the witness of their
+joys? True that, as often, it had warned him of their frailty. And
+indeed, whereas, in that distant time, he had divined an element of
+suffering in its smile, in its limpid and disillusioned intonation,
+to-night he found there rather the charm of a resignation that was
+almost gay. Of those sorrows, of which the little phrase had spoken
+to him then, which he had seen it--without his being touched by them
+himself--carry past him, smiling, on its sinuous and rapid course, of
+those sorrows which were now become his own, without his having any hope
+of being, ever, delivered from them, it seemed to say to him, as once
+it had said of his happiness: "What does all that matter; it is all
+nothing." And Swann's thoughts were borne for the first time on a wave
+of pity and tenderness towards that Vinteuil, towards that unknown,
+exalted brother who also must have suffered so greatly; what could his
+life have been? From the depths of what well of sorrow could he have
+drawn that god-like strength, that unlimited power of creation?
+
+When it was the little phrase that spoke to him of the vanity of his
+sufferings, Swann found a sweetness in that very wisdom which, but a
+little while back, had seemed to him intolerable when he thought that
+he could read it on the faces of indifferent strangers, who would regard
+his love as a digression that was without importance. 'Twas because the
+little phrase, unlike them, whatever opinion it might hold on the short
+duration of these states of the soul, saw in them something not, as
+everyone else saw, less serious than the events of everyday life, but,
+on the contrary, so far superior to everyday life as to be alone worthy
+of the trouble of expressing it. Those graces of an intimate sorrow,
+'twas them that the phrase endeavoured to imitate, to create anew; and
+even their essence, for all that it consists in being incommunicable and
+in appearing trivial to everyone save him who has experience of them,
+the little phrase had captured, had rendered visible. So much so that it
+made their value be confessed, their divine sweetness be tasted by
+all those same onlookers--provided only that they were in any sense
+musical--who, the next moment, would ignore, would disown them in real
+life, in every individual love that came into being beneath their eyes.
+Doubtless the form in which it had codified those graces could not be
+analysed into any logical elements. But ever since, more than a year
+before, discovering to him many of the riches of his own soul, the love
+of music had been born, and for a time at least had dwelt in him, Swann
+had regarded musical _motifs_ as actual ideas, of another world, of
+another order, ideas veiled in shadows, unknown, impenetrable by
+the human mind, which none the less were perfectly distinct one from
+another, unequal among themselves in value and in significance. When,
+after that first evening at the Verdurins', he had had the little
+phrase played over to him again, and had sought to disentangle from his
+confused impressions how it was that, like a perfume or a caress,
+it swept over and enveloped him, he had observed that it was to the
+closeness of the intervals between the five notes which composed it and
+to the constant repetition of two of them that was due that impression
+of a frigid, a contracted sweetness; but in reality he knew that he
+was basing this conclusion not upon the phrase itself, but merely upon
+certain equivalents, substituted (for his mind's convenience) for the
+mysterious entity of which he had become aware, before ever he knew the
+Verdurins, at that earlier party, when for the first time he had heard
+the sonata played. He knew that his memory of the piano falsified still
+further the perspective in which he saw the music, that the field
+open to the musician is not a miserable stave of seven notes, but an
+immeasurable keyboard (still, almost all of it, unknown), on which,
+here and there only, separated by the gross darkness of its unexplored
+tracts, some few among the millions of keys, keys of tenderness, of
+passion, of courage, of serenity, which compose it, each one differing
+from all the rest as one universe differs from another, have been
+discovered by certain great artists who do us the service, when they
+awaken in us the emotion corresponding to the theme which they have
+found, of shewing us what richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to
+us, in that great black impenetrable night, discouraging exploration,
+of our soul, which we have been content to regard as valueless and
+waste and void. Vinteuil had been one of those musicians. In his little
+phrase, albeit it presented to the mind's eye a clouded surface, there
+was contained, one felt, a matter so consistent, so explicit, to which
+the phrase gave so new, so original a force, that those who had once
+heard it preserved the memory of it in the treasure-chamber of
+their minds. Swann would repair to it as to a conception of love and
+happiness, of which at once he knew as well in what respects it was
+peculiar as he would know of the _Princesse de Cl�ves_, or of _Ren�_,
+should either of those titles occur to him. Even when he was not
+thinking of the little phrase, it existed, latent, in his mind, in the
+same way as certain other conceptions without material equivalent, such
+as our notions of light, of sound, of perspective, of bodily desire, the
+rich possessions wherewith our inner temple is diversified and adorned.
+Perhaps we shall lose them, perhaps they will be obliterated, if we
+return to nothing in the dust. But so long as we are alive, we can no
+more bring ourselves to a state in which we shall not have known
+them than we can with regard to any material object, than we can, for
+example, doubt the luminosity of a lamp that has just been lighted, in
+view of the changed aspect of everything in the room, from which has
+vanished even the memory of the darkness. In that way Vinteuil's phrase,
+like some theme, say, in _Tristan_, which represents to us also a
+certain acquisition of sentiment, has espoused our mortal state, had
+endued a vesture of humanity that was affecting enough. Its destiny was
+linked, for the future, with that of the human soul, of which it was one
+of the special, the most distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being
+that is the true state, and all our dream of life is without existence;
+but, if so, we feel that it must be that these phrases of music, these
+conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either.
+We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who
+shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something
+less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain.
+
+So Swann was not mistaken in believing that the phrase of the sonata
+did, really, exist. Human as it was from this point of view, it
+belonged, none the less, to an order of supernatural creatures whom we
+have never seen, but whom, in spite of that, we recognise and acclaim
+with rapture when some explorer of the unseen contrives to coax one
+forth, to bring it down from that divine world to which he has access
+to shine for a brief moment in the firmament of ours. This was what
+Vinteuil had done for the little phrase. Swann felt that the composer
+had been content (with the musical instruments at his disposal) to
+draw aside its veil, to make it visible, following and respecting its
+outlines with a hand so loving, so prudent, so delicate and so sure,
+that the sound altered at every moment, blunting itself to indicate a
+shadow, springing back into life when it must follow the curve of some
+more bold projection. And one proof that Swann was not mistaken when he
+believed in the real existence of this phrase, was that anyone with an
+ear at all delicate for music would at once have detected the imposture
+had Vinteuil, endowed with less power to see and to render its forms,
+sought to dissemble (by adding a line, here and there, of his own
+invention) the dimness of his vision or the feebleness of his hand.
+
+The phrase had disappeared. Swann knew that it would come again at the
+end of the last movement, after a long passage which Mme. Verdurin's
+pianist always 'skipped.' There were in this passage some admirable
+ideas which Swann had not distinguished on first hearing the sonata, and
+which he now perceived, as if they had, in the cloakroom of his memory,
+divested themselves of their uniform disguise of novelty. Swann listened
+to all the scattered themes which entered into the composition of
+the phrase, as its premises enter into the inevitable conclusion of a
+syllogism; he was assisting at the mystery of its birth. "Audacity,"
+he exclaimed to himself, "as inspired, perhaps, as a Lavoisier's or an
+Ampere's, the audacity of a Vinteuil making experiment, discovering
+the secret laws that govern an unknown force, driving across a region
+unexplored towards the one possible goal the invisible team in which he
+has placed his trust and which he never may discern!" How charming
+the dialogue which Swann now heard between piano and violin, at the
+beginning of the last passage. The suppression of human speech, so far
+from letting fancy reign there uncontrolled (as one might have thought),
+had eliminated it altogether. Never was spoken language of such
+inflexible necessity, never had it known questions so pertinent, such
+obvious replies. At first the piano complained alone, like a bird
+deserted by its mate; the violin heard and answered it, as from a
+neighbouring tree. It was as at the first beginning of the world, as
+if there were not yet but these twain upon the earth, or rather in this
+world closed against all the rest, so fashioned by the logic of its
+creator that in it there should never be any but themselves; the world
+of this sonata. Was it a bird, was it the soul, not yet made perfect, of
+the little phrase, was it a fairy, invisibly somewhere lamenting, whose
+plaint the piano heard and tenderly repeated? Its cries were so sudden
+that the violinist must snatch up his bow and race to catch them as they
+came. Marvellous bird! The violinist seemed to wish to charm, to tame,
+to woo, to win it. Already it had passed into his soul, already the
+little phrase which it evoked shook like a medium's the body of the
+violinist, 'possessed' indeed. Swann knew that the phrase was going to
+speak to him once again. And his personality was now so divided that
+the strain of waiting for the imminent moment when he would find himself
+face to face, once more, with the phrase, convulsed him in one of those
+sobs which a fine line of poetry or a piece of alarming news will wring
+from us, not when we are alone, but when we repeat one or the other to
+a friend, in whom we see ourselves reflected, like a third person, whose
+probable emotion softens him. It reappeared, but this time to remain
+poised in the air, and to sport there for a moment only, as though
+immobile, and shortly to expire. And so Swann lost nothing of the
+precious time for which it lingered. It was still there, like an
+iridescent bubble that floats for a while unbroken. As a rainbow, when
+its brightness fades, seems to subside, then soars again and, before it
+is extinguished, is glorified with greater splendour than it has ever
+shewn; so to the two colours which the phrase had hitherto allowed to
+appear it added others now, chords shot with every hue in the prism, and
+made them sing. Swann dared not move, and would have liked to compel all
+the other people in the room to remain still also, as if the slightest
+movement might embarrass the magic presence, supernatural, delicious,
+frail, that would so easily vanish. But no one, as it happened, dreamed
+of speaking. The ineffable utterance of one solitary man, absent,
+perhaps dead (Swann did not know whether Vinteuil were still alive),
+breathed out above the rites of those two hierophants, sufficed to
+arrest the attention of three hundred minds, and made of that stage on
+which a soul was thus called into being one of the noblest altars on
+which a supernatural ceremony could be performed. It followed that, when
+the phrase at last was finished, and only its fragmentary echoes floated
+among the subsequent themes which had already taken its place, if Swann
+at first was annoyed to see the Comtesse de Monteriender, famed for her
+imbecilities, lean over towards him to confide in him her impressions,
+before even the sonata had come to an end; he could not refrain from
+smiling, and perhaps also found an underlying sense, which she was
+incapable of perceiving, in the words that she used. Dazzled by the
+virtuosity of the performers, the Comtesse exclaimed to Swann: "It's
+astonishing! I have never seen anything to beat it..." But a scrupulous
+regard for accuracy making her correct her first assertion, she added
+the reservation: "anything to beat it... since the table-turning!"
+
+From that evening, Swann understood that the feeling which Odette had
+once had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would
+not be realised now. And the days on which, by a lucky chance, she had
+once more shewn herself kind and loving to him, or if she had paid him
+any attention, he recorded those apparent and misleading signs of
+a slight movement on her part towards him with the same tender and
+sceptical solicitude, the desperate joy that people reveal who, when
+they are nursing a friend in the last days of an incurable malady,
+relate, as significant facts of infinite value: "Yesterday he went
+through his accounts himself, and actually corrected a mistake that we
+had made in adding them up; he ate an egg to-day and seemed quite to
+enjoy it, if he digests it properly we shall try him with a cutlet
+to-morrow,"--although they themselves know that these things are
+meaningless on the eve of an inevitable death. No doubt Swann was
+assured that if he had now been living at a distance from Odette he
+would gradually have lost all interest in her, so that he would have
+been glad to learn that she was leaving Paris for ever; he would have
+had the courage to remain there; but he had not the courage to go.
+
+He had often thought of going. Now that he was once again at work upon
+his essay on Vermeer, he wanted to return, for a few days at least, to
+The Hague, to Dresden, to Brunswick. He was certain that a 'Toilet of
+Diana' which had been acquired by the Mauritshuis at the Goldschmidt
+sale as a Nicholas Maes was in reality a Vermeer. And he would have
+liked to be able to examine the picture on the spot, so as to strengthen
+his conviction. But to leave Paris while Odette was there, and even when
+she was not there--for in strange places where our sensations have not
+been numbed by habit, we refresh, we revive an old pain--was for him so
+cruel a project that he felt himself to be capable of entertaining it
+incessantly in his mind only because he knew himself to be resolute in
+his determination never to put it into effect. But it would happen
+that, while he was asleep, the intention to travel would reawaken in him
+(without his remembering that this particular tour was impossible) and
+would be realised. One night he dreamed that he was going away for a
+year; leaning from the window of the train towards a young man on the
+platform who wept as he bade him farewell, he was seeking to persuade
+this young man to come away also. The train began to move; he awoke
+in alarm, and remembered that he was not going away, that he would see
+Odette that evening, and next day and almost every day. And then, being
+still deeply moved by his dream, he would thank heaven for those special
+circumstances which made him independent, thanks to which he could
+remain in Odette's vicinity, and could even succeed in making her allow
+him to see her sometimes; and, counting over the list of his advantages:
+his social position--his fortune, from which she stood too often in
+need of assistance not to shrink from the prospect of a definite rupture
+(having even, so people said, an ulterior plan of getting him to marry
+her)--his friendship with M. de Charlus, which, it must be confessed,
+had never won him any very great favour from Odette, but which gave him
+the pleasant feeling that she was always hearing complimentary things
+said about him by this common friend for whom she had so great an
+esteem--and even his own intelligence, the whole of which he employed in
+weaving, every day, a fresh plot which would make his presence, if not
+agreeable, at any rate necessary to Odette--he thought of what might
+have happened to him if all these advantages had been lacking, he
+thought that, if he had been, like so many other men, poor and humble,
+without resources, forced to undertake any task that might be offered to
+him, or tied down by parents or by a wife, he might have been obliged
+to part from Odette, that that dream, the terror of which was still so
+recent, might well have been true; and he said to himself: "People don't
+know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they
+are." But he reflected that this existence had lasted already for
+several years, that all that he could now hope for was that it should
+last for ever, that he would sacrifice his work, his pleasures, his
+friends, in fact the whole of his life to the daily expectation of a
+meeting which, when it occurred, would bring him no happiness; and he
+asked himself whether he was not mistaken, whether the circumstances
+that had favoured their relations and had prevented a final rupture had
+not done a disservice to his career, whether the outcome to be
+desired was not that as to which he rejoiced that it happened only in
+dreams--his own departure; and he said to himself that people did not
+know when they were unhappy, that they were never so happy as they
+supposed.
+
+Sometimes he hoped that she would die, painlessly, in some accident, she
+who was out of doors in the streets, crossing busy thoroughfares,
+from morning to night. And as she always returned safe and sound, he
+marvelled at the strength, at the suppleness of the human body, which
+was able continually to hold in check, to outwit all the perils that
+environed it (which to Swann seemed innumerable, since his own secret
+desire had strewn them in her path), and so allowed its occupant, the
+soul, to abandon itself, day after day, and almost with impunity, to its
+career of mendacity, to the pursuit of pleasure. And Swann felt a very
+cordial sympathy with that Mahomet II whose portrait by Bellini he
+admired, who, on finding that he had fallen madly in love with one of
+his wives, stabbed her, in order, as his Venetian biographer artlessly
+relates, to recover his spiritual freedom. Then he would be ashamed
+of thinking thus only of himself, and his own sufferings would seem to
+deserve no pity now that he himself was disposing so cheaply of Odette's
+very life.
+
+Since he was unable to separate himself from her without a subsequent
+return, if at least he had seen her continuously and without separations
+his grief would ultimately have been assuaged, and his love would,
+perhaps, have died. And from the moment when she did not wish to leave
+Paris for ever he had hoped that she would never go. As he knew that her
+one prolonged absence, every year, was in August and September, he had
+abundant opportunity, several months in advance, to dissociate from it
+the grim picture of her absence throughout Eternity which was lodged in
+him by anticipation, and which, consisting of days closely akin to the
+days through which he was then passing, floated in a cold transparency
+in his mind, which it saddened and depressed, though without causing him
+any intolerable pain. But that conception of the future, that flowing
+stream, colourless and unconfined, a single word from Odette sufficed
+to penetrate through all Swann's defences, and like a block of ice
+immobilised it, congealed its fluidity, made it freeze altogether; and
+Swann felt himself suddenly filled with an enormous and unbreakable mass
+which pressed on the inner walls of his consciousness until he was fain
+to burst asunder; for Odette had said casually, watching him with a
+malicious smile: "Forcheville is going for a fine trip at Whitsuntide.
+He's going to Egypt!" and Swann had at once understood that this meant:
+"I am going to Egypt at Whitsuntide with Forcheville." And, in fact,
+if, a few days later, Swann began: "About that trip that you told me you
+were going to take with Forcheville," she would answer carelessly: "Yes,
+my dear boy, we're starting on the 19th; we'll send you a 'view' of the
+Pyramids." Then he was determined to know whether she was Forcheville's
+mistress, to ask her point-blank, to insist upon her telling him. He
+knew that there were some perjuries which, being so superstitious, she
+would not commit, and besides, the fear, which had hitherto restrained
+his curiosity, of making Odette angry if he questioned her, of making
+himself odious, had ceased to exist now that he had lost all hope of
+ever being loved by her.
+
+One day he received an anonymous letter which told him that Odette had
+been the mistress of countless men (several of whom it named, among
+them Forcheville, M. de Br�aut� and the painter) and women, and that she
+frequented houses of ill-fame. He was tormented by the discovery that
+there was to be numbered among his friends a creature capable of
+sending him such a letter (for certain details betrayed in the writer a
+familiarity with his private life). He wondered who it could be. But he
+had never had any suspicion with regard to the unknown actions of other
+people, those which had no visible connection with what they said.
+And when he wanted to know whether it was rather beneath the apparent
+character of M. de Charlus, or of M. des Laumes, or of M. d'Orsan that
+he must place the untravelled region in which this ignoble action might
+have had its birth; as none of these men had ever, in conversation
+with Swann, suggested that he approved of anonymous letters, and as
+everything that they had ever said to him implied that they strongly
+disapproved, he saw no further reason for associating this infamy with
+the character of any one of them more than with the rest. M. de Charlus
+was somewhat inclined to eccentricity, but he was fundamentally good and
+kind; M. des Laumes was a trifle dry, but wholesome and straight. As for
+M. d'Orsan, Swann had never met anyone who, even in the most depressing
+circumstances, would come to him with a more heartfelt utterance, would
+act more properly or with more discretion. So much so that he was unable
+to understand the rather indelicate part commonly attributed to M.
+d'Orsan in his relations with a certain wealthy woman, and that whenever
+he thought of him he was obliged to set that evil reputation on one
+side, as irreconcilable with so many unmistakable proofs of his genuine
+sincerity and refinement. For a moment Swann felt that his mind was
+becoming clouded, and he thought of something else so as to recover
+a little light; until he had the courage to return to those other
+reflections. But then, after not having been able to suspect anyone, he
+was forced to suspect everyone that he knew. After all, M. de Charlus
+might be most fond of him, might be most good-natured; but he was a
+neuropath; to-morrow, perhaps, he would burst into tears on hearing that
+Swann was ill; and to-day, from jealousy, or in anger, or carried away
+by some sudden idea, he might have wished to do him a deliberate injury.
+Really, that kind of man was the worst of all. The Prince des Laumes
+was, certainly, far less devoted to Swann than was M. de Charlus. But
+for that very reason he had not the same susceptibility with regard to
+him; and besides, his was a nature which, though, no doubt, it was cold,
+was as incapable of a base as of a magnanimous action. Swann regretted
+that he had formed no attachments in his life except to such people.
+Then he reflected that what prevents men from doing harm to their
+neighbours is fellow-feeling, that he could not, in the last resort,
+answer for any but men whose natures were analogous to his own, as was,
+so far as the heart went, that of M. de Charlus. The mere thought of
+causing Swann so much distress would have been revolting to him. But
+with a man who was insensible, of another order of humanity, as was the
+Prince des Laumes, how was one to foresee the actions to which he might
+be led by the promptings of a different nature? To have a good heart was
+everything, and M. de Charlus had one. But M. d'Orsan was not lacking
+in that either, and his relations with Swann--cordial, but scarcely
+intimate, arising from the pleasure which, as they held the same views
+about everything, they found in talking together--were more quiescent
+than the enthusiastic affection of M. de Charlus, who was apt to be
+led into passionate activity, good or evil. If there was anyone by
+whom Swann felt that he had always been understood, and (with delicacy)
+loved, it was M. d'Orsan. Yes, but the life he led; it could hardly be
+called honourable. Swann regretted that he had never taken any notice
+of those rumours, that he himself had admitted, jestingly, that he had
+never felt so keen a sense of sympathy, or of respect, as when he was
+in thoroughly 'detrimental' society. "It is not for nothing," he now
+assured himself, "that when people pass judgment upon their neighbour,
+their finding is based upon his actions. It is those alone that are
+significant, and not at all what we say or what we think. Charlus and
+des Laumes may have this or that fault, but they are men of honour.
+Orsan, perhaps, has not the same faults, but he is not a man of honour.
+He may have acted dishonourably once again." Then he suspected R�mi,
+who, it was true, could only have inspired the letter, but he now felt
+himself, for a moment, to be on the right track. To begin with, Loredan
+had his own reasons for wishing harm to Odette. And then, how were we
+not to suppose that our servants, living in a situation inferior to our
+own, adding to our fortunes and to our frailties imaginary riches and
+vices for which they at once envied and despised us, should not find
+themselves led by fate to act in a manner abhorrent to people of our own
+class? He also suspected my grandfather. On every occasion when Swann
+had asked him to do him any service, had he not invariably declined?
+Besides, with his ideas of middle-class respectability, he might have
+thought that he was acting for Swann's good. He suspected, in turn,
+Bergotte, the painter, the Verdurins; paused for a moment to admire
+once again the wisdom of people in society, who refused to mix in the
+artistic circles in which such things were possible, were, perhaps, even
+openly avowed, as excellent jokes; but then he recalled the marks of
+honesty that were to be observed in those Bohemians, and contrasted them
+with the life of expedients, often bordering on fraudulence, to which
+the want of money, the craving for luxury, the corrupting influence of
+their pleasures often drove members of the aristocracy. In a word, this
+anonymous letter proved that he himself knew a human being capable of
+the most infamous conduct, but he could see no reason why that infamy
+should lurk in the depths--which no strange eye might explore--of
+the warm heart rather than the cold, the artist's rather than the
+business-man's, the noble's rather than the flunkey's. What criterion
+ought one to adopt, in order to judge one's fellows? After all, there
+was not a single one of the people whom he knew who might not, in
+certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful action. Must he then
+cease to see them all? His mind grew clouded; he passed his hands two
+or three times across his brow, wiped his glasses with his handkerchief,
+and remembering that, after all, men who were as good as himself
+frequented the society of M. de Charlus, the Prince des Laumes and
+the rest, he persuaded himself that this meant, if not that they were
+incapable of shameful actions, at least that it was a necessity in human
+life, to which everyone must submit, to frequent the society of people
+who were, perhaps, not incapable of such actions. And he continued to
+shake hands with all the friends whom he had suspected, with the purely
+formal reservation that each one of them had, possibly, been seeking to
+drive him to despair. As for the actual contents of the letter, they
+did not disturb him; for in not one of the charges which it formulated
+against Odette could he see the least vestige of fact. Like many other
+men, Swann had a naturally lazy mind, and was slow in invention. He knew
+quite well as a general truth, that human life is full of contrasts, but
+in the case of any one human being he imagined all that part of his or
+her life with which he was not familiar as being identical with the
+part with which he was. He imagined what was kept secret from him in the
+light of what was revealed. At such times as he spent with Odette,
+if their conversation turned upon an indelicate act committed, or
+an indelicate sentiment expressed by some third person, she would
+ruthlessly condemn the culprit by virtue of the same moral principles
+which Swann had always heard expressed by his own parents, and to which
+he himself had remained loyal; and then, she would arrange her flowers,
+would sip her tea, would shew an interest in his work. So Swann extended
+those habits to fill the rest of her life, he reconstructed those
+actions when he wished to form a picture of the moments in which he and
+she were apart. If anyone had portrayed her to him as she was, or rather
+as she had been for so long with himself, but had substituted some
+other man, he would have been distressed, for such a portrait would have
+struck him as lifelike. But to suppose that she went to bad houses,
+that she abandoned herself to orgies with other women, that she led
+the crapulous existence of the most abject, the most contemptible of
+mortals--would be an insane wandering of the mind, for the realisation
+of which, thank heaven, the chrysanthemums that he could imagine, the
+daily cups of tea, the virtuous indignation left neither time nor
+place. Only, now and again, he gave Odette to understand that people
+maliciously kept him informed of everything that she did; and making
+opportune use of some detail--insignificant but true--which he had
+accidentally learned, as though it were the sole fragment which he would
+allow, in spite of himself, to pass his lips, out of the numberless
+other fragments of that complete reconstruction of her daily life which
+he carried secretly in his mind, he led her to suppose that he was
+perfectly informed upon matters, which, in reality, he neither knew nor
+suspected, for if he often adjured Odette never to swerve from or make
+alteration of the truth, that was only, whether he realised it or no, in
+order that Odette should tell him everything that she did. No doubt, as
+he used to assure Odette, he loved sincerity, but only as he might
+love a pander who could keep him in touch with the daily life of his
+mistress. Moreover, his love of sincerity, not being disinterested, had
+not improved his character. The truth which he cherished was that which
+Odette would tell him; but he himself, in order to extract that truth
+from her, was not afraid to have recourse to falsehood, that very
+falsehood which he never ceased to depict to Odette as leading every
+human creature down to utter degradation. In a word, he lied as much
+as did Odette, because, while more unhappy than she, he was no less
+egotistical. And she, when she heard him repeating thus to her the
+things that she had done, would stare at him with a look of distrust
+and, at all hazards, of indignation, so as not to appear to be
+humiliated, and to be blushing for her actions. One day, after the
+longest period of calm through which he had yet been able to exist
+without being overtaken by an attack of jealousy, he had accepted an
+invitation to spend the evening at the theatre with the Princesse des
+Laumes. Having opened his newspaper to find out what was being
+played, the sight of the title--_Les Filles de Marbre_, by Th�odore
+Barri�re,--struck him so cruel a blow that he recoiled instinctively
+from it and turned his head away. Illuminated, as though by a row of
+footlights, in the new surroundings in which it now appeared, that word
+'marble,' which he had lost the power to distinguish, so often had it
+passed, in print, beneath his eyes, had suddenly become visible once
+again, and had at once brought back to his mind the story which Odette
+had told him, long ago, of a visit which she had paid to the Salon at
+the Palais d'Industrie with Mme. Verdurin, who had said to her, "Take
+care, now! I know how to melt you, all right. You're not made of
+marble." Odette had assured him that it was only a joke, and he had
+not attached any importance to it at the time. But he had had more
+confidence in her then than he had now. And the anonymous letter
+referred explicitly to relations of that sort. Without daring to lift
+his eyes to the newspaper, he opened it, turned the page so as not to
+see again the words, _Filles de Marbre_, and began to read mechanically
+the news from the provinces. There had been a storm in the Channel,
+and damage was reported from Dieppe, Cabourg, Beuzeval.... Suddenly he
+recoiled again in horror.
+
+The name of Beuzeval had suggested to him that of another place in the
+same district, Beuzeville, which carried also, bound to it by a hyphen,
+a second name, to wit Br�aut�, which he had often seen on maps, but
+without ever previously remarking that it was the same name as that
+borne by his friend M. de Br�aut�, whom the anonymous letter accused of
+having been Odette's lover. After all, when it came to M. de Br�aut�,
+there was nothing improbable in the charge; but so far as Mme. Verdurin
+was concerned, it was a sheer impossibility. From the fact that Odette
+did occasionally tell a lie, it was not fair to conclude that she never,
+by any chance, told the truth, and in these bantering conversations
+with Mme. Verdurin which she herself had repeated to Swann, he could
+recognize those meaningless and dangerous pleasantries which, in their
+inexperience of life and ignorance of vice, women often utter (thereby
+certifying their own innocence), who--as, for instance, Odette,--would
+be the last people in the world to feel any undue affection for one
+another. Whereas, on the other hand, the indignation with which she
+had scattered the suspicions which she had unintentionally brought into
+being, for a moment, in his mind by her story, fitted in with everything
+that he knew of the tastes, the temperament of his mistress. But at
+that moment, by an inspiration of jealousy, analogous to the inspiration
+which reveals to a poet or a philosopher, who has nothing, so far, but
+an odd pair of rhymes or a detached observation, the idea or the natural
+law which will give power, mastery to his work, Swann recalled for the
+first time a remark which Odette had made to him, at least two years
+before: "Oh, Mme. Verdurin, she won't hear of anything just now but me.
+I'm a 'love,' if you please, and she kisses me, and wants me to go with
+her everywhere, and call her by her Christian name." So far from seeing
+in these expressions any connection with the absurd insinuations,
+intended to create an atmosphere of vice, which Odette had since
+repeated to him, he had welcomed them as a proof of Mme. Verdurin's
+warm-hearted and generous friendship. But now this old memory of her
+affection for Odette had coalesced suddenly with his more recent memory
+of her unseemly conversation. He could no longer separate them in his
+mind, and he saw them blended in reality, the affection imparting a
+certain seriousness and importance to the pleasantries which, in return,
+spoiled the affection of its innocence. He went to see Odette. He sat
+down, keeping at a distance from her. He did not dare to embrace her,
+not knowing whether in her, in himself, it would be affection or anger
+that a kiss would provoke. He sat there silent, watching their love
+expire. Suddenly he made up his mind.
+
+"Odette, my darling," he began, "I know, I am being simply odious, but I
+must ask you a few questions. You remember what I once thought about you
+and Mme. Verdurin? Tell me, was it true? Have you, with her or anyone
+else, ever?"
+
+She shook her head, pursing her lips together; a sign which people
+commonly employ to signify that they are not going, because it would
+bore them to go, when some one has asked, "Are you coming to watch the
+procession go by?", or "Will you be at the review?". But this shake of
+the head, which is thus commonly used to decline participation in
+an event that has yet to come, imparts for that reason an element of
+uncertainty to the denial of participation in an event that is past.
+Furthermore, it suggests reasons of personal convenience, rather than
+any definite repudiation, any moral impossibility. When he saw Odette
+thus make him a sign that the insinuation was false, he realised that it
+was quite possibly true.
+
+"I have told you, I never did; you know quite well," she added, seeming
+angry and uncomfortable.
+
+"Yes, I know all that; but are you quite sure? Don't say to me, 'You
+know quite well'; say, 'I have never done anything of that sort with any
+woman.'"
+
+She repeated his words like a lesson learned by rote, and as though she
+hoped, thereby, to be rid of him: "I have never done anything of that
+sort with any woman."
+
+"Can you swear it to me on your Laghetto medal?"
+
+Swann knew that Odette would never perjure herself on that.
+
+"Oh, you do make me so miserable," she cried, with a jerk of her body
+as though to shake herself free of the constraint of his question. "Have
+you nearly done? What is the matter with you to-day? You seem to have
+made up your mind that I am to be forced to hate you, to curse you!
+Look, I was anxious to be friends with you again, for us to have a nice
+time together, like the old days; and this is all the thanks I get!"
+
+However, he would not let her go, but sat there like a surgeon who waits
+for a spasm to subside that has interrupted his operation but need not
+make him abandon it.
+
+"You are quite wrong in supposing that I bear you the least ill-will in
+the world, Odette," he began with a persuasive and deceitful gentleness.
+"I never speak to you except of what I already know, and I always know a
+great deal more than I say. But you alone can mollify by your confession
+what makes me hate you so long as it has been reported to me only by
+other people. My anger with you is never due to your actions--I can
+and do forgive you everything because I love you--but to your
+untruthfulness, the ridiculous untruthfulness which makes you persist in
+denying things which I know to be true. How can you expect that I shall
+continue to love you, when I see you maintain, when I hear you swear to
+me a thing which I know to be false? Odette, do not prolong this moment
+which is torturing us both. If you are willing to end it at once, you
+shall be free of it for ever. Tell me, upon your medal, yes or no,
+whether you have ever done those things."
+
+"How on earth can I tell?" she was furious. "Perhaps I have, ever so
+long ago, when I didn't know what I was doing, perhaps two or three
+times."
+
+Swann had prepared himself for all possibilities. Reality must,
+therefore, be something which bears no relation to possibilities,
+any more than the stab of a knife in one's body bears to the gradual
+movement of the clouds overhead, since those words "two or three times"
+carved, as it were, a cross upon the living tissues of his heart. A
+strange thing, indeed, that those words, "two or three times," nothing
+more than a few words, words uttered in the air, at a distance, could so
+lacerate a man's heart, as if they had actually pierced it, could sicken
+a man, like a poison that he had drunk. Instinctively Swann thought of
+the remark that he had heard at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's: "I have never
+seen anything to beat it since the table-turning." The agony that he now
+suffered in no way resembled what he had supposed. Not only because, in
+the hours when he most entirely mistrusted her, he had rarely imagined
+such a culmination of evil, but because, even when he did imagine that
+offence, it remained vague, uncertain, was not clothed in the particular
+horror which had escaped with the words "perhaps two or three times,"
+was not armed with that specific cruelty, as different from anything
+that he had known as a new malady by which one is attacked for the first
+time. And yet this Odette, from whom all this evil sprang, was no less
+dear to him, was, on the contrary, more precious, as if, in proportion
+as his sufferings increased, there increased at the same time the price
+of the sedative, of the antidote which this woman alone possessed. He
+wished to pay her more attention, as one attends to a disease which
+one discovers, suddenly, to have grown more serious. He wished that
+the horrible thing which, she had told him, she had done "two or three
+times" might be prevented from occurring again. To ensure that, he must
+watch over Odette. People often say that, by pointing out to a man the
+faults of his mistress, you succeed only in strengthening his attachment
+to her, because he does not believe you; yet how much more so if he
+does! But, Swann asked himself, how could he manage to protect her? He
+might perhaps be able to preserve her from the contamination of any
+one woman, but there were hundreds of other women; and he realised how
+insane had been his ambition when he had begun (on the evening when
+he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins') to desire the
+possession--as if that were ever possible--of another person. Happily
+for Swann, beneath the mass of suffering which had invaded his soul like
+a conquering horde of barbarians, there lay a natural foundation, older,
+more placid, and silently laborious, like the cells of an injured organ
+which at once set to work to repair the damaged tissues, or the muscles
+of a paralysed limb which tend to recover their former movements. These
+older, these autochthonous in-dwellers in his soul absorbed all Swann's
+strength, for a while, in that obscure task of reparation which gives
+one an illusory sense of repose during convalescence, or after an
+operation. This time it was not so much--as it ordinarily was--in
+Swann's brain that the slackening of tension due to exhaustion took
+effect, it was rather in his heart. But all the things in life that have
+once existed tend to recur, and, like a dying animal that is once more
+stirred by the throes of a convulsion which was, apparently, ended, upon
+Swann's heart, spared for a moment only, the same agony returned of its
+own accord to trace the same cross again. He remembered those moonlit
+evenings, when, leaning back in the victoria that was taking him to
+the Rue La P�rouse, he would cultivate with voluptuous enjoyment the
+emotions of a man in love, ignorant of the poisoned fruit that such
+emotions must inevitably bear. But all those thoughts lasted for no more
+than a second, the time that it took him to raise his hand to his heart,
+to draw breath again and to contrive to smile, so as to dissemble
+his torment. Already he had begun to put further questions. For his
+jealousy, which had taken an amount of trouble, such as no enemy would
+have incurred, to strike him this mortal blow, to make him forcibly
+acquainted with the most cruel pain that he had ever known, his jealousy
+was not satisfied that he had yet suffered enough, and sought to expose
+his bosom to an even deeper wound. Like an evil deity, his jealousy was
+inspiring Swann, was thrusting him on towards destruction. It was not
+his fault, but Odette's alone, if at first his punishment was not more
+severe.
+
+"My darling," he began again, "it's all over now; was it with anyone I
+know?"
+
+"No, I swear it wasn't; besides, I think I exaggerated, I never really
+went as far as that."
+
+He smiled, and resumed with: "Just as you like. It doesn't really
+matter, but it's unfortunate that you can't give me any name. If I were
+able to form an idea of the person that would prevent my ever thinking
+of her again. I say it for your own sake, because then I shouldn't
+bother you any more about it. It's so soothing to be able to form a
+clear picture of things in one's mind. What is really terrible is what
+one cannot imagine. But you've been so sweet to me; I don't want to tire
+you. I do thank you, with all my heart, for all the good that you have
+done me. I've quite finished now. Only one word more: how many times?"
+
+"Oh, Charles! can't you see, you're killing me? It's all ever so long
+ago. I've never given it a thought. Anyone would say that you were
+positively trying to put those ideas into my head again. And then you'd
+be a lot better off!" she concluded, with unconscious stupidity but with
+intentional malice.
+
+"I only wished to know whether it had been since I knew you. It's only
+natural. Did it happen here, ever? You can't give me any particular
+evening, so that I can remind myself what I was doing at the time? You
+understand, surely, that it's not possible that you don't remember with
+whom, Odette, my love."
+
+"But I don't know; really, I don't. I think it was in the Bois, one
+evening when you came to meet us on the Island. You had been dining with
+the Princesse des Laumes," she added, happy to be able to furnish him
+with an exact detail, which testified to her veracity. "At the next
+table there was a woman whom I hadn't seen for ever so long. She said to
+me, 'Come along round behind the rock, there, and look at the moonlight
+on the water!' At first I just yawned, and said, 'No, I'm too tired,
+and I'm quite happy where I am, thank you.' She swore there'd never been
+anything like it in the way of moonlight. 'I've heard that tale before,'
+I said to her; you see, I knew quite well what she was after." Odette
+narrated this episode almost as if it were a joke, either because it
+appeared to her to be quite natural, or because she thought that she was
+thereby minimising its importance, or else so as not to appear ashamed.
+But, catching sight of Swann's face, she changed her tone, and:
+
+"You are a fiend!" she flung at him, "you enjoy tormenting me, making me
+tell you lies, just so that you'll leave me in peace."
+
+This second blow struck at Swann was even more excruciating than the
+first. Never had he supposed it to have been so recent an affair, hidden
+from his eyes that had been too innocent to discern it, not in a past
+which he had never known, but in evenings which he so well remembered,
+which he had lived through with Odette, of which he had supposed himself
+to have such an intimate, such an exhaustive knowledge, and which now
+assumed, retrospectively, an aspect of cunning and deceit and cruelty.
+In the midst of them parted, suddenly, a gaping chasm, that moment on
+the Island in the Bois de Boulogne. Without being intelligent, Odette
+had the charm of being natural. She had recounted, she had acted the
+little scene with so much simplicity that Swann, as he gasped for
+breath, could vividly see it: Odette yawning, the "rock there,"... He
+could hear her answer--alas, how lightheartedly--"I've heard that tale
+before!" He felt that she would tell him nothing more that evening, that
+no further revelation was to be expected for the present. He was silent
+for a time, then said to her:
+
+"My poor darling, you must forgive me; I know, I am hurting you
+dreadfully, but it's all over now; I shall never think of it again."
+
+But she saw that his eyes remained fixed upon the things that he did not
+know, and on that past era of their love, monotonous and soothing in his
+memory because it was vague, and now rent, as with a sword-wound, by the
+news of that minute on the Island in the Bois, by moonlight, while he
+was dining with the Princesse des Laumes. But he had so far acquired
+the habit of finding life interesting--of marvelling at the strange
+discoveries that there were to be made in it--that even while he was
+suffering so acutely that he did not believe it possible to endure such
+agony for any length of time, he was saying to himself: "Life is indeed
+astonishing, and holds some fine surprises; it appears that vice is far
+more common than one has been led to believe. Here is a woman in whom
+I had absolute confidence, who looks so simple, so honest, who, in any
+case, even allowing that her morals are not strict, seemed quite normal
+and healthy in her tastes and inclinations. I receive a most improbable
+accusation, I question her, and the little that she admits reveals far
+more than I could ever have suspected." But he could not confine himself
+to these detached observations. He sought to form an exact estimate of
+the importance of what she had just told him, so as to know whether he
+might conclude that she had done these things often, and was likely to
+do them again. He repeated her words to himself: "I knew quite well what
+she was after." "Two or three times." "I've heard that tale before." But
+they did not reappear in his memory unarmed; each of them held a knife
+with which it stabbed him afresh. For a long time, like a sick man
+who cannot restrain himself from attempting, every minute, to make the
+movement that, he knows, will hurt him, he kept on murmuring to himself:
+"I'm quite happy where I am, thank you," "I've heard that tale before,"
+but the pain was so intense that he was obliged to stop. He was amazed
+to find that actions which he had always, hitherto, judged so lightly,
+had dismissed, indeed, with a laugh, should have become as serious to
+him as a disease which might easily prove fatal. He knew any number
+of women whom he could ask to keep an eye on Odette, but how was he to
+expect them to adjust themselves to his new point of view, and not to
+remain at that which for so long had been his own, which had always
+guided him in his voluptuous existence; not to say to him with a smile:
+"You jealous monster, wanting to rob other people of their pleasure!"
+By what trap-door, suddenly lowered, had he (who had never found, in the
+old days, in his love for Odette, any but the most refined of pleasures)
+been precipitated into this new circle of hell from which he could not
+see how he was ever to escape. Poor Odette! He wished her no harm. She
+was but half to blame. Had he not been told that it was her own mother
+who had sold her, when she was still little more than a child, at Nice,
+to a wealthy Englishman? But what an agonising truth was now contained
+for him in those lines of Alfred de Vigny's _Journal d'un Po�te_ which
+he had previously read without emotion: "When one feels oneself smitten
+by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself, 'What are 'her
+surroundings? What has been her life?' All one's future happiness lies
+in the answer." Swann was astonished that such simple phrases, spelt
+over in his mind as, "I've heard that tale before," or "I knew quite
+well what she was after," could cause him so much pain. But he realised
+that what he had mistaken for simple phrases were indeed parts of the
+panoply which held and could inflict on him the anguish that he had felt
+while Odette was telling her story. For it was the same anguish that he
+now was feeling afresh. It was no good, his knowing now,--indeed, it
+was no good, as time went on, his having partly forgotten and altogether
+forgiven the offence--whenever he repeated her words his old anguish
+refashioned him as he had been before Odette began to speak: ignorant,
+trustful; his merciless jealousy placed him once again, so that he might
+be effectively wounded by Odette's admission, in the position of a man
+who does not yet know the truth; and after several months this old story
+would still dumbfounder him, like a sudden revelation. He marvelled
+at the terrible recreative power of his memory. It was only by the
+weakening of that generative force, whose fecundity diminishes as age
+creeps over one, that he could hope for a relaxation of his torments.
+But, as soon as the power that any one of Odette's sentences had to make
+Swann suffer seemed to be nearly exhausted, lo and behold another, one
+of those to which he had hitherto paid least attention, almost a
+new sentence, came to relieve the first, and to strike at him with
+undiminished force. The memory of the evening on which he had dined with
+the Princesse des Laumes was painful to him, but it was no more than
+the centre, the core of his pain. That radiated vaguely round about it,
+overflowing into all the preceding and following days. And on whatever
+point in it he might intend his memory to rest, it was the whole of that
+season, during which the Verdurins had so often gone to dine upon the
+Island in the Bois, that sprang back to hurt him. So violently, that by
+slow degrees the curiosity which his jealousy was ever exciting in him
+was neutralised by his fear of the fresh tortures which he would be
+inflicting upon himself were he to satisfy it. He recognised that all
+the period of Odette's life which had elapsed before she first met him,
+a period of which he had never sought to form any picture in his mind,
+was not the featureless abstraction which he could vaguely see, but had
+consisted of so many definite, dated years, each crowded with concrete
+incidents. But were he to learn more of them, he feared lest her past,
+now colourless, fluid and supportable, might assume a tangible, an
+obscene form, with individual and diabolical features. And he continued
+to refrain from seeking a conception of it, not any longer now from
+laziness of mind, but from fear of suffering. He hoped that, some day,
+he might be able to hear the Island in the Bois, or the Princesse des
+Laumes mentioned without feeling any twinge of that old rending pain;
+meanwhile he thought it imprudent to provoke Odette into furnishing him
+with fresh sentences, with the names of more places and people and of
+different events, which, when his malady was still scarcely healed,
+would make it break out again in another form.
+
+But, often enough, the things that he did not know, that he dreaded,
+now, to learn, it was Odette herself who, spontaneously and without
+thought of what she did, revealed them to him; for the gap which her
+vices made between her actual life and the comparatively innocent life
+which Swann had believed, and often still believed his mistress to lead,
+was far wider than she knew. A vicious person, always affecting the same
+air of virtue before people whom he is anxious to keep from having any
+suspicion of his vices, has no register, no gauge at hand from which
+he may ascertain how far those vices (their continuous growth being
+imperceptible by himself) have gradually segregated him from the normal
+ways of life. In the course of their cohabitation, in Odette's mind,
+with the memory of those of her actions which she concealed from Swann,
+her other, her innocuous actions were gradually coloured, infected
+by these, without her being able to detect anything strange in them,
+without their causing any explosion in the particular region of herself
+in which she made them live, but when she related them to Swann, he was
+overwhelmed by the revelation of the duplicity to which they pointed.
+One day, he was trying--without hurting Odette--to discover from her
+whether she had ever had any dealings with procuresses. He was, as a
+matter of fact, convinced that she had not; the anonymous letter had
+put the idea into his mind, but in a purely mechanical way; it had been
+received there with no credulity, but it had, for all that, remained
+there, and Swann, wishing to be rid of the burden--a dead weight, but
+none the less disturbing--of this suspicion, hoped that Odette would now
+extirpate it for ever.
+
+"Oh dear, no! Not that they don't simply persecute me to go to them,"
+her smile revealed a gratified vanity which she no longer saw that it
+was impossible should appear legitimate to Swann. "There was one of them
+waited more than two hours for me yesterday, said she would give me any
+money I asked. It seems, there's an Ambassador who said to her, 'I'll
+kill myself if you don't bring her to me'--meaning me! They told her I'd
+gone out, but she waited and waited, and in the end I had to go myself
+and speak to her, before she'd go away. I do wish you could have seen
+the way I tackled her; my maid was in the next room, listening, and told
+me I shouted fit to bring the house down:--'But when you hear me say
+that I don't want to! The idea of such a thing, I don't like it at all!
+I should hope I'm still free to do as I please and when I please and
+where I please! If I needed the money, I could understand...' The porter
+has orders not to let her in again; he will tell her that I am out of
+town. Oh, I do wish I could have had you hidden somewhere in the room
+while I was talking to her. I know, you'd have been pleased, my dear.
+There's some good in your little Odette, you see, after all, though
+people do say such dreadful things about her."
+
+Besides, her very admissions--when she made any--of faults which she
+supposed him to have discovered, rather served Swann as a starting-point
+for fresh doubts than they put an end to the old. For her admissions
+never exactly coincided with his doubts. In vain might Odette expurgate
+her confession of all its essential part, there would remain in the
+accessories something which Swann had never yet imagined, which crushed
+him anew, and was to enable him to alter the terms of the problem of his
+jealousy. And these admissions he could never forget. His spirit carried
+them along, cast them aside, then cradled them again in its bosom, like
+corpses in a river. And they poisoned it.
+
+She spoke to him once of a visit that Forcheville had paid her on the
+day of the Paris-Murcie F�te. "What! you knew him as long ago as that?
+Oh, yes, of course you did," he corrected himself, so as not to shew
+that he had been ignorant of the fact. And suddenly he began to tremble
+at the thought that, on the day of the Paris-Murcie F�te, when he had
+received that letter which he had so carefully preserved, she had been
+having luncheon, perhaps, with Forcheville at the Maison d'Or. She swore
+that she had not. "Still, the Maison d'Or reminds me of something or
+other which, I knew at the time, wasn't true," he pursued, hoping to
+frighten her. "Yes that I hadn't been there at all that evening when I
+told you I had just come from there, and you had been looking for me
+at Pr�vost's," she replied (judging by his manner that he knew) with a
+firmness that was based not so much upon cynicism as upon timidity, a
+fear of crossing Swann, which her own self-respect made her anxious to
+conceal, and a desire to shew him that she could be perfectly frank if
+she chose. And so she struck him with all the sharpness and force of a
+headsman wielding his axe, and yet could not be charged with cruelty,
+since she was quite unconscious of hurting him; she even began to laugh,
+though this may perhaps, it is true, have been chiefly to keep him from
+thinking that she was ashamed, at all, or confused. "It's quite true, I
+hadn't been to the Maison Dor�e. I was coming away from Forcheville's. I
+had, really, been to Pr�vost's--that wasn't a story--and he met me there
+and asked me to come in and look at his prints. But some one else came
+to see him. I told you that I was coming from the Maison d'Or because I
+was afraid you might be angry with me. It was rather nice of me, really,
+don't you see? I admit, I did wrong, but at least I'm telling you all
+about it now, a'n't I? What have I to gain by not telling you, straight,
+that I lunched with him on the day of the Paris-Murcie F�te, if it were
+true? Especially as at that time we didn't know one another quite so
+well as we do now, did we, dear?"
+
+He smiled back at her with the sudden, craven weakness of the utterly
+spiritless creature which these crushing words had made of him. And so,
+even in the months of which he had never dared to think again, because
+they had been too happy, in those months when she had loved him, she was
+already lying to him! Besides that moment (that first evening on which
+they had "done a cattleya") when she had told him that she was coming
+from the Maison Dor�e, how many others must there have been, each
+of them covering a falsehood of which Swann had had no suspicion. He
+recalled how she had said to him once: "I need only tell Mme. Verdurin
+that my dress wasn't ready, or that my cab came late. There is always
+some excuse." From himself too, probably, many times when she had glibly
+uttered such words as explain a delay or justify an alteration of the
+hour fixed for a meeting, those moments must have hidden, without his
+having the least inkling of it at the time, an engagement that she had
+had with some other man, some man to whom she had said: "I need only
+tell Swann that my dress wasn't ready, or that my cab came late. There
+is always some excuse." And beneath all his most pleasant memories,
+beneath the simplest words that Odette had ever spoken to him in those
+old days, words which he had believed as though they were the words of
+a Gospel, beneath her daily actions which she had recounted to him,
+beneath the most ordinary places, her dressmaker's flat, the Avenue du
+Bois, the Hippodrome, he could feel (dissembled there, by virtue of that
+temporal superfluity which, after the most detailed account of how a day
+has been spent, always leaves something over, that may serve as a hiding
+place for certain unconfessed actions), he could feel the insinuation of
+a possible undercurrent of falsehood which debased for him all that
+had remained most precious, his happiest evenings, the Rue La P�rouse
+itself, which Odette must constantly have been leaving at other hours
+than those of which she told him; extending the power of the dark horror
+that had gripped him when he had heard her admission with regard to
+the Maison Dor�e, and, like the obscene creatures in the 'Desolation of
+Nineveh,' shattering, stone by stone, the whole edifice of his past....
+If, now, he turned aside whenever his memory repeated the cruel name of
+the Maison Dor�e it was because that name recalled to him, no longer,
+as, such a little time since, at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's party, the good
+fortune which he long had lost, but a misfortune of which he was now
+first aware. Then it befell the Maison Dor�e, as it had befallen the
+Island in the Bois, that gradually its name ceased to trouble him.
+For what we suppose to be our love, our jealousy are, neither of them,
+single, continuous and individual passions. They are composed of an
+infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each of which is
+ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multitude they give us the
+impression of continuity, the illusion of unity. The life of Swann's
+love, the fidelity of his jealousy, were formed out of death, of
+infidelity, of innumerable desires, innumerable doubts, all of which
+had Odette for their object. If he had remained for any length of time
+without seeing her, those that died would not have been replaced by
+others. But the presence of Odette continued to sow in Swann's heart
+alternate seeds of love and suspicion.
+
+On certain evenings she would suddenly resume towards him a kindness of
+which she would warn him sternly that he must take immediate advantage,
+under penalty of not seeing it repeated for years to come; he must
+instantly accompany her home, to "do a cattleya," and the desire
+which she pretended to have for him was so sudden, so inexplicable, so
+imperious, the kisses which she lavished on him were so demonstrative
+and so unfamiliar, that this brutal and unnatural fondness made Swann
+just as unhappy as any lie or unkind action. One evening when he had
+thus, in obedience to her command, gone home with her, and while she was
+interspersing her kisses with passionate words, in strange contrast to
+her habitual coldness, he thought suddenly that he heard a sound; he
+rose, searched everywhere and found nobody, but he had not the courage
+to return to his place by her side; whereupon she, in a towering
+rage, broke a vase, with "I never can do anything right with you,
+you impossible person!" And he was left uncertain whether she had not
+actually had some man concealed in the room, whose jealousy she had
+wished to wound, or else to inflame his senses.
+
+Sometimes he repaired to 'gay' houses, hoping to learn something about
+Odette, although he dared not mention her name. "I have a little thing
+here, you're sure to like," the 'manageress' would greet him, and he
+would stay for an hour or so, talking dolefully to some poor girl who
+sat there astonished that he went no further. One of them, who was still
+quite young and attractive, said to him once, "Of course, what I should
+like would be to find a real friend, then he might be quite certain,
+I should never go with any other men again." "Indeed, do you think it
+possible for a woman really to be touched by a man's being in love with
+her, and never to be unfaithful to him?" asked Swann anxiously. "Why,
+surely! It all depends on their characters!" Swann could not help making
+the same remarks to these girls as would have delighted the Princesse
+des Laumes. To the one who was in search of a friend he said, with a
+smile: "But how nice of you, you've put on blue eyes, to go with
+your sash." "And you too, you've got blue cuffs on." "What a charming
+conversation we are having, for a place of this sort! I'm not boring
+you, am I; or keeping you?" "No, I've nothing to do, thank you. If you
+bored me I should say so. But I love hearing you talk." "I am highly
+flattered.... Aren't we behaving prettily?" he asked the 'manageress,'
+who had just looked in. "Why, yes, that's just what I was saying to
+myself, how sensibly they're behaving! But that's how it is! People come
+to my house now, just to talk. The Prince was telling me, only the other
+day, that he's far more comfortable here than with his wife. It seems
+that, nowadays, all the society ladies are like that; a perfect scandal,
+I call it. But I'll leave you in peace now, I know when I'm not wanted,"
+she ended discreetly, and left Swann with the girl who had the blue
+eyes. But presently he rose and said good-bye to her. She had ceased to
+interest him. She did not know Odette.
+
+The painter having been ill, Dr. Cottard recommended a sea-voyage;
+several of the 'faithful' spoke of accompanying him; the Verdurins could
+not face the prospect of being left alone in Paris, so first of all
+hired, and finally purchased a yacht; thus Odette was constantly going
+on a cruise. Whenever she had been away for any length of time, Swann
+would feel that he was beginning to detach himself from her, but, as
+though this moral distance were proportionate to the physical distance
+between them, whenever he heard that Odette had returned to Paris, he
+could not rest without seeing her. Once, when they had gone away, as
+everyone thought, for a month only, either they succumbed to a series
+of temptations, or else M. Verdurin had cunningly arranged everything
+beforehand, to please his wife, and disclosed his plans to the
+'faithful' only as time went on; anyhow, from Algiers they flitted to
+Tunis; then to Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor. They had been
+absent for nearly a year, and Swann felt perfectly at ease and almost
+happy. Albeit M. Verdurin had endeavoured to persuade the pianist and
+Dr. Cottard that their respective aunt and patients had no need of them,
+and that, in any event, it was most rash to allow Mme. Cottard to return
+to Paris, where, Mme. Verdurin assured him, a revolution had just broken
+out, he was obliged to grant them their liberty at Constantinople. And
+the painter came home with them. One day, shortly after the return of
+these four travellers, Swann, seeing an omnibus approach him, labelled
+'Luxembourg,' and having some business there, had jumped on to it and
+had found himself sitting opposite Mme. Cottard, who was paying a round
+of visits to people whose 'day' it was, in full review order, with a
+plume in her hat, a silk dress, a muff, an umbrella (which do for a
+parasol if the rain kept off), a card-case, and a pair of white gloves
+fresh from the cleaners. Wearing these badges of rank, she would,
+in fine weather, go on foot from one house to another in the same
+neighbourhood, but when she had to proceed to another district, would
+make use of a transfer-ticket on the omnibus. For the first minute or
+two, until the natural courtesy of the woman broke through the starched
+surface of the doctor's-wife, not being certain, either, whether
+she ought to mention the Verdurins before Swann, she produced, quite
+naturally, in her slow and awkward, but not unattractive voice, which,
+every now and then, was completely drowned by the rattling of the
+omnibus, topics selected from those which she had picked up and would
+repeat in each of the score of houses up the stairs of which she
+clambered in the course of an afternoon.
+
+"I needn't ask you, M. Swann, whether a man so much in the movement as
+yourself has been to the Mirlitons, to see the portrait by Machard that
+the whole of Paris is running after. Well, and what do you think of it?
+Whose camp are you in, those who bless or those who curse? It's the
+same in every house in Paris now, no one will speak of anything else but
+Machard's portrait; you aren't smart, you aren't really cultured, you
+aren't up-to-date unless you give an opinion on Machard's portrait."
+
+Swann having replied that he had not seen this portrait, Mme. Cottard
+was afraid that she might have hurt his feelings by obliging him to
+confess the omission.
+
+"Oh, that's quite all right! At least you have the courage to be quite
+frank about it. You don't consider yourself disgraced because you
+haven't seen Machard's portrait. I do think that so nice of you. Well
+now, I have seen it; opinion is divided, you know, there are some people
+who find it rather laboured, like whipped cream, they say; but I think
+it's just ideal. Of course, she's not a bit like the blue and yellow
+ladies that our friend Biche paints. That's quite clear. But I must tell
+you, perfectly frankly (you'll think me dreadfully old-fashioned, but I
+always say just what I think), that I don't understand his work. I can
+quite see the good points there are in his portrait of my husband; oh,
+dear me, yes; and it's certainly less odd than most of what he does,
+but even then he had to give the poor man a blue moustache! But Machard!
+Just listen to this now, the husband of my friend, I am on my way to see
+at this very moment (which has given me the very great pleasure of your
+company), has promised her that, if he is elected to the Academy (he
+is one of the Doctor's colleagues), he will get Machard to paint her
+portrait. So she's got something to look forward to! I have another
+friend who insists that she'd rather have Leloir. I'm only a wretched
+Philistine, and I've no doubt Leloir has perhaps more knowledge of
+painting even than Machard. But I do think that the most important
+thing about a portrait, especially when it's going to cost ten thousand
+francs, is that it should be like, and a pleasant likeness, if you know
+what I mean."
+
+Having exhausted this topic, to which she had been inspired by the
+loftiness of her plume, the monogram on her card-case, the little number
+inked inside each of her gloves by the cleaner, and the difficulty of
+speaking to Swann about the Verdurins, Mme. Cottard, seeing that they
+had still a long way to go before they would reach the corner of the
+Rue Bonaparte, where the conductor was to set her down, listened to the
+promptings of her heart, which counselled other words than these.
+
+"Your ears must have been burning," she ventured, "while we were on the
+yacht with Mme. Verdurin. We were talking about you all the time."
+
+Swann was genuinely astonished, for he supposed that his name was never
+uttered in the Verdurins' presence.
+
+"You see," Mme. Cottard went on, "Mme. de Cr�cy was there; need I say
+more? When Odette is anywhere it's never long before she begins talking
+about you. And you know quite well, it isn't nasty things she says.
+What! you don't believe me!" she went on, noticing that Svrann looked
+sceptical. And, carried away by the sincerity of her conviction, without
+putting any evil meaning into the word, which she used purely in the
+sense in which one employs it to speak of the affection that unites a
+pair of friends: "Why, she _adores_ you! No, indeed; I'm sure it would
+never do to say anything against you when she was about; one would soon
+be taught one's place! Whatever we might be doing, if we were looking at
+a picture, for instance, she would say, 'If only we had him here, he's
+the man who could tell us whether it's genuine or not. There's no one
+like him for that.' And all day long she would be saying, 'What can
+he be doing just now? I do hope, he's doing a little work! It's too
+dreadful that a fellow with such gifts as he has should be so lazy.'
+(Forgive me, won't you.) 'I can see him this very moment; he's thinking
+of us, he's wondering where we are.' Indeed, she used an expression
+which I thought very pretty at the time. M. Verdurin asked her, 'How in
+the world can you see what he's doing, when he's a thousand miles away?'
+And Odette answered, 'Nothing is impossible to the eye of a friend.'
+
+"No, I assure you, I'm not saying it just to flatter you; you have a
+true friend in her, such as one doesn't often find. I can tell you,
+besides, in case you don't know it, that you're the only one. Mme.
+Verdurin told me as much herself on our last day with them (one talks
+more freely, don't you know, before a parting), 'I don't say that Odette
+isn't fond of us, but anything that we may say to her counts for very
+little beside what Swann might say.' Oh, mercy, there's the conductor
+stopping for me; here have I been chatting away to you, and would have
+gone right past the Rue Bonaparte, and never noticed... Will you be so
+very kind as to tell me whether my plume is straight?"
+
+And Mme. Cottard withdrew from her muff, to offer it to Swann, a
+white-gloved hand from which there floated, with a transier-ticket, an
+atmosphere of fashionable life that pervaded the omnibus, blended with
+the harsher fragrance of newly cleaned kid. And Swann felt himself
+overflowing with gratitude to her, as well as to Mme. Verdurin (and
+almost to Odette, for the feeling that he now entertained for her was
+no longer tinged with pain, was scarcely even to be described, now,
+as love), while from the platform of the omnibus he followed her with
+loving eyes, as she gallantly threaded her way along the Rue Bonaparte,
+her plume erect, her skirt held up in one hand, while in the other she
+clasped her umbrella and her card-case, so that its monogram could be
+seen, her muff dancing in the air before her as she went.
+
+To compete with and so to stimulate the moribund feelings that Swann had
+for Odette, Mme. Cottard, a wiser physician, in this case, than ever
+her husband would have been, had grafted among them others more normal,
+feelings of gratitude, of friendship, which in Swann's mind were to make
+Odette seem again more human (more like other women, since other women
+could inspire the same feelings in him), were to hasten her final
+transformation back into that Odette, loved with an undisturbed
+affection, who had taken him home one evening after a revel at the
+painter's, to drink orangeade with Forcheville, that Odette with whom
+Swann had calculated that he might live in happiness.
+
+In former times, having often thought with terror that a day must come
+when he would cease to be in love with Odette, he had determined to
+keep a sharp look-out, and as soon as he felt that love was beginning to
+escape him, to cling tightly to it and to hold it back. But now, to the
+faintness of his love there corresponded a simultaneous faintness in
+his desire to remain her lover. For a man cannot change, that is to say
+become another person, while he continues to obey the dictates of the
+self which he has ceased to be. Occasionally the name, if it caught
+his eye in a newspaper, of one of the men whom he supposed to have been
+Odette's lovers, reawakened his jealousy. But it was very slight, and,
+inasmuch as it proved to him that he had not completely emerged from
+that period in which he had so keenly suffered--though in it he had also
+known a way of feeling so intensely happy--and that the accidents of his
+course might still enable him to catch an occasional glimpse, stealthily
+and at a distance, of its beauties, this jealousy gave him, if anything,
+an agreeable thrill, as to the sad Parisian, when he has left Venice
+behind him and must return to France, a last mosquito proves that
+Italy and summer are still not too remote. But, as a rule, with this
+particular period of his life from which he was emerging, when he made
+an effort, if not to remain in it, at least to obtain, while still he
+might, an uninterrupted view of it, he discovered that already it was
+too late; he would have looked back to distinguish, as it might be
+a landscape that was about to disappear, that love from which he had
+departed, but it is so difficult to enter into a state of complete
+duality and to present to oneself the lifelike spectacle of a feeling
+which one has ceased to possess, that very soon, the clouds gathering
+in his brain, he could see nothing, he would abandon the attempt, would
+take the glasses from his nose and wipe them; and he told himself that
+he would do better to rest for a little, that there would be time enough
+later on, and settled back into his corner with as little curiosity,
+with as much torpor as the drowsy traveller who pulls his cap down over
+his eyes so as to get some sleep in the railway-carriage that is drawing
+him, he feels, faster and faster, out of the country in which he has
+lived for so long, and which he vowed that he would not allow to slip
+away from him without looking out to bid it a last farewell. Indeed,
+like the same traveller, if he does not awake until he has crossed the
+frontier and is again in France, when Swann happened to alight, close
+at hand, upon something which proved that Forcheville had been Odette's
+lover, he discovered that it caused him no pain, that love was now
+utterly remote, and he regretted that he had had no warning of the
+moment in which he had emerged from it for ever. And just as, before
+kissing Odette for the first time, he had sought to imprint upon his
+memory the face that for so long had been familiar, before it was
+altered by the additional memory of their kiss, so he could have
+wished--in thought at least--to have been in a position to bid farewell,
+while she still existed, to that Odette who had inspired love in him and
+jealousy, to that Odette who had caused him so to suffer, and whom now
+he would never see again. He was mistaken. He was destined to see
+her once again, a few weeks later. It was while he was asleep, in the
+twilight of a dream. He was walking with Mme. Verdurin, Dr. Cottard,
+a young man in a fez whom he failed to identify, the painter, Odette,
+Napoleon III and my grandfather, along a path which followed the line
+of the coast, and overhung the sea, now at a great height, now by a few
+feet only, so that they were continually going up and down; those of the
+party who had reached the downward slope were no longer visible to those
+who were still climbing; what little daylight yet remained was failing,
+and it seemed as though a black night was immediately to fall on them.
+Now and then the waves dashed against the cliff, and Swann could feel on
+his cheek a shower of freezing spray. Odette told him to wipe this off,
+but he could not, and felt confused and helpless in her company, as well
+as because he was in his nightshirt. He hoped that, in the darkness,
+this might pass unnoticed; Mme. Verdurin, however, fixed her astonished
+gaze upon him for an endless moment, in which he saw her face change
+its shape, her nose grow longer, while beneath it there sprouted a heavy
+moustache. He turned away to examine Odette; her cheeks were pale, with
+little fiery spots, her features drawn and ringed with shadows; but she
+looked back at him with eyes welling with affection, ready to detach
+themselves like tears and to fall upon his face, and he felt that he
+loved her so much that he would have liked to carry her off with him
+at once. Suddenly Odette turned her wrist, glanced at a tiny watch,
+and said: "I must go." She took leave of everyone, in the same formal
+manner, without taking Swann aside, without telling him where they were
+to meet that evening, or next day. He dared not ask, he would have liked
+to follow her, he was obliged, without turning back in her direction,
+to answer with a smile some question by Mme. Verdurin; but his heart was
+frantically beating, he felt that he now hated Odette, he would gladly
+have crushed those eyes which, a moment ago, he had loved so dearly,
+have torn the blood into those lifeless cheeks. He continued to climb
+with Mme. Verdurin, that is to say that each step took him farther from
+Odette, who was going downhill, and in the other direction. A second
+passed and it was many hours since she had left him. The painter
+remarked to Swann that Napoleon III had eclipsed himself immediately
+after Odette. "They had obviously arranged it between them," he added;
+"they must have agreed to meet at the foot of the cliff, but they
+wouldn't say good-bye together; it might have looked odd. She is his
+mistress." The strange young man burst into tears. Swann endeavoured to
+console him. "After all, she is quite right," he said to the young man,
+drying his eyes for him and taking off the fez to make him feel more
+at ease. "I've advised her to do that, myself, a dozen times. Why be
+so distressed? He was obviously the man to understand her." So Swann
+reasoned with himself, for the young man whom he had failed, at
+first, to identify, was himself also; like certain novelists, he had
+distributed his own personality between two characters, him who was the
+'first person' in the dream, and another whom he saw before him, capped
+with a fez.
+
+As for Napoleon III, it was to Forcheville that some vague association
+of ideas, then a certain modification of the Baron's usual physiognomy,
+and lastly the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honour across his breast,
+had made Swann give that name; but actually, and in everything that the
+person who appeared in his dream represented and recalled to him, it was
+indeed Forcheville. For, from an incomplete and changing set of images,
+Swann in his sleep drew false deductions, enjoying, at the same time,
+such creative power that he was able to reproduce himself by a simple
+act of division, like certain lower organisms; with the warmth that he
+felt in his own palm he modelled the hollow of a strange hand which he
+thought that he was clasping, and out of feelings and impressions of
+which he was not yet conscious, he brought about sudden vicissitudes
+which, by a chain of logical sequences, would produce, at definite
+points in his dream, the person required to receive his love or to
+startle him awake. In an instant night grew black about him; an alarum
+rang, the inhabitants ran past him, escaping from their blazing houses;
+he could hear the thunder of the surging waves, and also of his own
+heart, which, with equal violence, was anxiously beating in his breast.
+Suddenly the speed of these palpitations redoubled, he felt a pain, a
+nausea that were inexplicable; a peasant, dreadfully burned, flung at
+him as he passed: "Come and ask Charlus where Odette spent the night
+with her friend. He used to go about with her, and she tells him
+everything. It was they that started the fire." It was his valet, come
+to awaken him, and saying:--
+
+"Sir, it is eight o'clock, and the barber is here. I have told him to
+call again in an hour."
+
+But these words, as they dived down through the waves of sleep in which
+Swann was submerged, did not reach his consciousness without undergoing
+that refraction which turns a ray of light, at the bottom of a bowl of
+water, into another sun; just as, a moment earlier, the sound of
+the door-bell, swelling in the depths of his abyss of sleep into the
+clangour of an alarum, had engendered the episode of the fire. Meanwhile
+the scenery of his dream-stage scattered in dust, he opened his eyes,
+heard for the last time the boom of a wave in the sea, grown very
+distant. He touched his cheek. It was dry. And yet he could feel the
+sting of the cold spray, and the taste of salt on his lips. He rose,
+and dressed himself. He had made the barber come early because he had
+written, the day before, to my grandfather, to say that he was going,
+that afternoon, to Combray, having learned that Mme. de Cambremer--Mlle.
+Legrandin that had been--was spending a few days there. The association
+in his memory of her young and charming face with a place in the country
+which he had not visited for so long, offered him a combined attraction
+which had made him decide at last to leave Paris for a while. As the
+different changes and chances that bring us into the company of certain
+other people in this life do not coincide with the periods in which we
+are in love with those people, but, overlapping them, may occur before
+love has begun, and may be repeated after love is ended, the earliest
+appearances, in our life, of a creature who is destined to afford us
+pleasure later on, assume retrospectively in our eyes a certain value as
+an indication, a warning, a presage. It was in this fashion that Swann
+had often carried back his mind to the image of Odette, encountered in
+the theatre, on that first evening when he had no thought of ever
+seeing her again--and that he now recalled the party at Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte's, at which he had introduced General de Frober-ville to
+Mme. de Cambremer. So manifold are our interests in life that it is
+not uncommon that, on a single occasion, the foundations of a happiness
+which does not yet exist are laid down simultaneously with aggravations
+of a grief from which we are still suffering. And, no doubt, that might
+have occurred to Swann elsewhere than at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's. Who,
+indeed, can say whether, in the event of his having gone, that evening,
+somewhere else, other happinesses, other griefs would not have come to
+him, which, later, would have appeared to have been inevitable? But what
+did seem to him to have been inevitable was what had indeed taken place,
+and he was not far short of seeing something providential in the fact
+that he had at last decided to go to Mme. de Saint-Euverte's that
+evening, because his mind, anxious to admire the richness of invention
+that life shews, and incapable of facing a difficult problem for any
+length of time, such as to discover what, actually, had been most to be
+wished for, came to the conclusion that the sufferings through which he
+had passed that evening, and the pleasures, at that time unsuspected,
+which were already being brought to birth,--the exact balance between
+which was too difficult to establish--were linked by a sort of
+concatenation of necessity.
+
+But while, an hour after his awakening, he was giving instructions
+to the barber, so that his stiffly brushed hair should not become
+disarranged on the journey, he thought once again of his dream; he
+saw once again, as he had felt them close beside him, Odette's pallid
+complexion, her too thin cheeks, her drawn features, her tired eyes, all
+the things which--in the course of those successive bursts of affection
+which had made of his enduring love for Odette a long oblivion of the
+first impression that he had formed of her--he had ceased to observe
+after the first few days of their intimacy, days to which, doubtless,
+while he slept, his memory had returned to seek the exact sensation of
+those things. And with that old, intermittent fatuity, which reappeared
+in him now that he was no longer unhappy, and lowered, at the same time,
+the average level of his morality, he cried out in his heart: "To think
+that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that
+the greatest love that I have ever known has been for a woman who did
+not please me, who was not in my style!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PLACE-NAMES: THE NAME
+
+Among the rooms which used most commonly to take shape in my mind during
+my long nights of sleeplessness, there was none that differed more
+utterly from the rooms at Combray, thickly powdered with the motes of an
+atmosphere granular, pollenous, edible and instinct with piety, than
+my room in the Grand H�tel de la Plage, at Balbec, the walls of which,
+washed with ripolin, contained, like the polished sides of a basin in
+which the water glows with a blue, lurking fire, a finer air, pure,
+azure-tinted, saline. The Bavarian upholsterer who had been entrusted
+with the furnishing of this hotel had varied his scheme of decoration
+in different rooms, and in that which I found myself occupying had set
+against the walls, on three sides of it, a series of low book-cases
+with glass fronts, in which, according to where they stood, by a law
+of nature which he had, perhaps, forgotten to take into account, was
+reflected this or that section of the ever-changing view of the sea, so
+that the walls were lined with a frieze of seascapes, interrupted only
+by the polished mahogany of the actual shelves. And so effective was
+this that the whole room had the appearance of one of those model
+bedrooms which you see nowadays in Housing Exhibitions, decorated with
+works of art which are calculated by their designer to refresh the eyes
+of whoever may ultimately have to sleep in the rooms, the subjects being
+kept in some degree of harmony with the locality and surroundings of the
+houses for which the rooms are planned.
+
+And yet nothing could have differed more utterly, either, from the real
+Balbec than that other Balbec of which I had often dreamed, on stormy
+days, when the wind was so strong that Fran�oise, as she took me to
+the Champs-Elys�es, would warn me not to walk too near the side of the
+street, or I might have my head knocked off by a falling slate, and
+would recount to me, with many lamentations, the terrible disasters and
+shipwrecks that were reported in the newspaper. I longed for nothing
+more than to behold a storm at sea, less as a mighty spectacle than as
+a momentary revelation of the true life of nature; or rather there
+were for me no mighty spectacles save those which I knew to be
+not artificially composed for my entertainment, but necessary and
+unalterable,--the beauty of landscapes or of great works of art. I was
+not curious, I did not thirst to know anything save what I believed
+to be more genuine than myself, what had for me the supreme merit of
+shewing me a fragment of the mind of a great genius, or of the force
+or the grace of nature as she appeared when left entirely to herself,
+without human interference. Just as the lovely sound of her voice,
+reproduced, all by itself, upon the phonograph, could never console a
+man for the loss of his mother, so a mechanical imitation of a storm
+would have left me as cold as did the illuminated fountains at the
+Exhibition. I required also, if the storm was to be absolutely genuine,
+that the shore from which I watched it should be a natural shore, not an
+embankment recently constructed by a municipality. Besides, nature, by
+all the feelings that she aroused in me, seemed to me the most opposite
+thing in the world to the mechanical inventions of mankind The less she
+bore their imprint, the more room she offered for the expansion of my
+heart. And, as it happened, I had preserved the name of Balbec, which
+Legrandin had cited to us, as that of a sea-side place in the very midst
+of "that funereal coast, famed for the number of its wrecks, swathed,
+for six months in the year, in a shroud of fog and flying foam from the
+waves.
+
+"You feel, there, below your feet still," he had told me, "far more even
+than at Finist�re (and even though hotels are now being superimposed
+upon it, without power, however, to modify that oldest bone in the
+earth's skeleton) you feel there that you are actually at the land's
+end of France, of Europe, of the Old World. And it is the ultimate
+encampment of the fishermen, precisely like the fishermen who have
+lived since the world's beginning, facing the everlasting kingdom of
+the sea-fogs and shadows of the night." One day when, at Combray, I had
+spoken of this coast, this Balbec, before M. Swann, hoping to learn from
+him whether it was the best point to select for seeing the most violent
+storms, he had replied: "I should think I did know Balbec! The church
+at Balbec, built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and still
+half romanesque, is perhaps the most curious example to be found of our
+Norman gothic, and so exceptional that one is tempted to describe it
+as Persian in its inspiration." And that region, which, until then, had
+seemed to me to be nothing else than a part of immemorial nature, that
+had remained contemporaneous with the great phenomena of geology--and as
+remote from human history as the Ocean itself, or the Great Bear, with
+its wild race of fishermen for whom, no more than for their whales,
+had there been any Middle Ages--it had been a great joy to me to see
+it suddenly take its place in the order of the centuries, with a stored
+consciousness of the romanesque epoch, and to know that the gothic
+trefoil had come to diversify those wild rocks also, at the appointed
+hour, like those frail but hardy plants which, in the Polar regions,
+when the spring returns, scatter their stars about the eternal snows.
+And if gothic art brought to those places and people a classification
+which, otherwise, they lacked, they too conferred one upon it in return.
+I tried to form a picture in my mind of how those fishermen had lived,
+the timid and unsuspected essay towards social intercourse which they
+had attempted there, clustered upon a promontory of the shores of Hell,
+at the foot of the cliffs of death; and gothic art seemed to me a more
+living thing now that, detaching it from the towns in which, until then,
+I had always imagined it, I could see how, in a particular instance,
+upon a reef of savage rocks, it had taken root and grown until it
+flowered in a tapering spire. I was taken to see reproductions of the
+most famous of the statues at Balbec,--shaggy, blunt-faced Apostles,
+the Virgin from the porch,--and I could scarcely breathe for joy at the
+thought that I might myself, one day, see them take a solid form against
+their eternal background of salt fog. Thereafter, on dear, tempestuous
+February nights, the wind--breathing into my heart, which it shook no
+less violently than the chimney of my bedroom, the project of a visit to
+Balbec--blended in me the desire for gothic architecture with that for a
+storm upon the sea.
+
+I should have liked to take, the very next day, the good, the generous
+train at one twenty-two, of which never without a palpitating heart
+could I read, in the railway company's bills or in advertisements of
+circular tours, the hour of departure: it seemed to me to cut, at
+a precise point in every afternoon, a most fascinating groove, a
+mysterious mark, from which the diverted hours still led one on, of
+course, towards evening, towards to-morrow morning, but to an evening
+and morning which one would behold, not in Paris but in one of those
+towns through which the train passed and among which it allowed one
+to choose; for it stopped at Bayeux, at Coutances, at Vitr�, at
+Questambert, at Pontorson, at Balbec, at Lannion, at Lamballe, at
+Benodet, at Pont-Aven, at Quimperle, and progressed magnificently
+surcharged with names which it offered me, so that, among them all, I
+did not know which to choose, so impossible was it to sacrifice any.
+But even without waiting for the train next day, I could, by rising and
+dressing myself with all speed, leave Paris that very evening, should
+my parents permit, and arrive at Balbec as dawn spread westward over the
+raging sea, from whose driven foam I would seek shelter in that church
+in the Persian manner. But at the approach of the Easter holidays, when
+my parents had promised to let me spend them, for once, in the North
+of Italy, lo! in place of those dreams of tempests, by which I had been
+entirely possessed, not wishing to see anything but waves dashing in
+from all sides, mounting always higher, upon the wildest of coasts,
+beside churches as rugged and precipitous as cliffs, in whose towers
+the sea-birds would be wailing; suddenly, effacing them, taking away
+all their charm, excluding them because they were its opposite and could
+only have weakened its effect, was substituted in me the converse dream
+of the most variegated of springs, not the spring of Combray, still
+pricking with all the needle-points of the winter's frost, but that
+which already covered with lilies and anemones the meadows of Fiesole,
+and gave Florence a dazzling golden background, like those in Fra
+Angelico's pictures. From that moment, only sunlight, perfumes, colours,
+seemed to me to have any value; for this alternation of images had
+effected a change of front in my desire, and--as abrupt as those that
+occur sometimes in music,--a complete change of tone in my sensibility.
+Thus it came about that a mere atmospheric variation would be sufficient
+to provoke in me that modulation, without there being any need for me to
+await the return of a season. For often we find a day, in one, that has
+strayed from another season, and makes us live in that other, summons at
+once into our presence and makes us long for its peculiar pleasures, and
+interrupts the dreams that we were in process of weaving, by inserting,
+out of its turn, too early or too late, this leaf, torn from another
+chapter, in the interpolated calendar of Happiness. But soon it happened
+that, like those natural phenomena from which our comfort or our health
+can derive but an accidental and all too modest benefit, until the day
+when science takes control of them, and, producing them at will, places
+in our hands the power to order their appearance, withdrawn from
+the tutelage and independent of the consent of chance; similarly the
+production of these dreams of the Atlantic and of Italy ceased to depend
+entirely upon the changes of the seasons and of the weather. I need
+only, to make them reappear, pronounce the names: Balbec, Venice,
+Florence, within whose syllables had gradually accumulated all the
+longing inspired in me by the places for which they stood. Even in
+spring, to come in a book upon the name of Balbec sufficed to awaken
+in me the desire for storms at sea and for the Norman gothic; even on a
+stormy day the name of Florence or of Venice would awaken the desire for
+sunshine, for lilies, for the Palace of the Doges and for Santa Maria
+del Fiore.
+
+But if their names thus permanently absorbed the image that I had formed
+of these towns, it was only by transforming that image, by subordinating
+its reappearance in me to their own special laws; and in consequence of
+this they made it more beautiful, but at the same time more different
+from anything that the towns of Normandy or Tuscany could in reality be,
+and, by increasing the arbitrary delights of my imagination, aggravated
+the disenchantment that was in store for me when I set out upon my
+travels. They magnified the idea that I formed of certain points on the
+earth's surface, making them more special, and in consequence more
+real. I did not then represent to myself towns, landscapes, historic
+buildings, as pictures more or less attractive, cut out here and there
+of a substance that was common to them all, but looked on each of them
+as on an unknown thing, different from all the rest, a thing for which
+my soul was athirst, by the knowledge of which it would benefit. How
+much more individual still was the character that they assumed from
+being designated by names, names that were only for themselves, proper
+names such as people have. Words present to us little pictures of
+things, lucid and normal, like the pictures that are hung on the walls
+of schoolrooms to give children an illustration of what is meant by
+a carpenter's bench, a bird, an ant-hill; things chosen as typical of
+everything else of the same sort. But names present to us--of persons
+and of towns which they accustom us to regard as individual, as unique,
+like persons--a confused picture, which draws from the names, from
+the brightness or darkness of their sound, the colour in which it is
+uniformly painted, like one of those posters, entirely blue or entirely
+red, in which, on account of the limitations imposed by the process used
+in their reproduction, or by a whim on the designer's part, are blue or
+red not only the sky and the sea, but the ships and the church and the
+people in the streets. The name of Parma, one of the towns that I most
+longed to visit, after reading the _Chartreuse_, seeming to me compact
+and glossy, violet-tinted, soft, if anyone were to speak of such or
+such a house in Parma, in which I should be lodged, he would give me the
+pleasure of thinking that I was to inhabit a dwelling that was compact
+and glossy, violet-tinted, soft, and that bore no relation to the houses
+in any other town in Italy, since I could imagine it only by the aid
+of that heavy syllable of the name of Parma, in which no breath of air
+stirred, and of all that I had made it assume of Stendhalian sweetness
+and the reflected hue of violets. And when I thought of Florence, it was
+of a town miraculously embalmed, and flower-like, since it was called
+the City of the Lilies, and its Cathedral, Our Lady of the Flower. As
+for Balbec, it was one of those names in which, as on an old piece of
+Norman pottery that still keeps the colour of the earth from which
+it was fashioned, one sees depicted still the representation of some
+long-abolished custom, of some feudal right, of the former condition of
+some place, of an obsolete way of pronouncing the language, which had
+shaped and wedded its incongruous syllables and which I never doubted
+that I should find spoken there at once, even by the inn-keeper who
+would pour me out coffee and milk on my arrival, taking me down to watch
+the turbulent sea, unchained, before the church; to whom I lent the
+aspect, disputatious, solemn and mediaeval, of some character in one of
+the old romances.
+
+Had my health definitely improved, had my parents allowed me, if not
+actually to go down to stay at Balbec, at least to take, just once, so
+as to become acquainted with the architecture and landscapes of Normandy
+or of Brittany, that one twenty-two train into which I had so often
+clambered in imagination, I should have preferred to stop, and to alight
+from it, at the most beautiful of its towns; but in vain might I
+compare and contrast them; how was one to choose, any more than between
+individual people, who are not interchangeable, between Bayeux, so lofty
+in its noble coronet of rusty lace, whose highest point caught the light
+of the old gold of its second syllable; Vitr�, whose acute accent barred
+its ancient glass with wooden lozenges; gentle Lamballe, whose whiteness
+ranged from egg-shell yellow to a pearly grey; Coutances, a Norman
+Cathedral, which its final consonants, rich and yellowing, crowned with
+a tower of butter; Lannion with the rumble and buzz, in the silence of
+its village street, of the fly on the wheel of the coach; Questambert,
+Pontorson, ridiculously silly and simple, white feathers and yellow
+beaks strewn along the road to those well-watered and poetic spots;
+Benodet, a name scarcely moored that seemed to be striving to draw the
+river down into the tangle of its seaweeds; Pont-Aven, the snowy, rosy
+flight of the wing of a lightly poised coif, tremulously reflected in
+the greenish waters of a canal; Quimperl�, more firmly attached, this,
+and since the Middle Ages, among the rivulets with which it babbled,
+threading their pearls upon a grey background, like the pattern made,
+through the cobwebs upon a window, by rays of sunlight changed into
+blunt points of tarnished silver?
+
+These images were false for another reason also; namely, that they
+were necessarily much simplified; doubtless the object to which my
+imagination aspired, which my senses took in but incompletely and
+without any immediate pleasure, I had committed to the safe custody
+of names; doubtless because I had accumulated there a store of dreams,
+those names now magnetised my desires; but names themselves are not very
+comprehensive; the most that I could do was to include in each of them
+two or three of the principal curiosities of the town, which would
+lie there side by side, without interval or partition; in the name of
+Balbec, as in the magnifying glasses set in those penholders which
+one buys at sea-side places, I could distinguish waves surging round
+a church built in the Persian manner. Perhaps, indeed, the enforced
+simplicity of these images was one of the reasons for the hold that they
+had over me. When my father had decided, one year, that we should go
+for the Easter holidays to Florence and Venice, not finding room
+to introduce into the name of Florence the elements that ordinarily
+constitute a town, I was obliged to let a supernatural city emerge from
+the impregnation by certain vernal scenes of what I supposed to be,
+in its essentials, the genius of Giotto. All the more--and because one
+cannot make a name extend much further in time than in space--like some
+of Giotto's paintings themselves which shew us at two separate moments
+the same person engaged in different actions, here lying on his bed,
+there just about to mount his horse, the name of Florence was divided
+into two compartments. In one, beneath an architectural dais, I gazed
+upon a fresco over which was partly drawn a curtain of morning sunlight,
+dusty, aslant, and gradually spreading; in the other (for, since
+I thought of names not as an inaccessible ideal but as a real and
+enveloping substance into which I was about to plunge, the life not yet
+lived, the life intact and pure which I enclosed in them, gave to the
+most material pleasures, to the simplest scenes, the same attraction
+that they have in the works of the Primitives), I moved swiftly--so as
+to arrive, as soon as might be, at the table that was spread for me,
+with fruit and a flask of Chianti--across a Ponte Vecchio heaped with
+jonquils, narcissi and anemones. That (for all that I was still in
+Paris) was what I saw, and not what was actually round about me. Even
+from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries for
+which we long occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our
+true life than the country in which we may happen to be. Doubtless, if,
+at that time, I had paid more attention to what was in my mind when I
+pronounced the words "going to Florence, to Parma, to Pisa, to Venice,"
+I should have realised that what I saw was in no sense a town, but
+something as different from anything that I knew, something as delicious
+as might be for a human race whose whole existence had passed in a
+series of late winter afternoons, that inconceivable marvel, a morning
+in spring. These images, unreal, fixed, always alike, filling all my
+nights and days, differentiated this period in my life from those which
+had gone before it (and might easily have been confused with it by
+an observer who saw things only from without, that is to say, who saw
+nothing), as in an opera a fresh melody introduces a novel atmosphere
+which one could never have suspected if one had done no more than
+read the libretto, still less if one had remained outside the theatre,
+counting only the minutes as they passed. And besides, even from the
+point of view of mere quantity, in our life the days are not all equal.
+To reach the end of a day, natures that are slightly nervous, as
+mine was, make use, like motor-cars, of different 'speeds.' There are
+mountainous, uncomfortable days, up which one takes an infinite time to
+pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can go at full tilt,
+singing as one goes. During this month--in which I went laboriously
+over, as over a tune, though never to my satisfaction, these visions of
+Florence, Venice, Pisa, from which the desire that they excited in me
+drew and kept something as profoundly personal as if it had been
+love, love for another person--I never ceased to believe that they
+corresponded to a reality independent of myself, and they made me
+conscious of as glorious a hope as could have been cherished by a
+Christian in the primitive age of faith, on the eve of his entry into
+Paradise. Moreover, without my paying any heed to the contradiction that
+there was in my wishing to look at and to touch with my organs of sense
+what had been elaborated by the spell of my dreams and not perceived by
+my senses at all--though all the more tempting to them, in consequence,
+more different from anything that they knew--it was that which recalled
+to me the reality of these visions, which inflamed my desire all the
+more by seeming to hint a promise that my desire should be satisfied.
+And for all that the motive force of my exaltation was a longing for
+aesthetic enjoyments, the guide-books ministered even more to it than
+books on aesthetics, and, more again than the guide-books, the railway
+time-tables. What moved me was the thought that this Florence which I
+could see, so near and yet inaccessible, in my imagination, if the tract
+which separated it from me, in myself, was not one that I might cross,
+could yet be reached by a circuit, by a digression, were I to take
+the plain, terrestrial path. When I repeated to myself, giving thus a
+special value to what I was going to see, that Venice was the "School of
+Giorgione, the home of Titian, the most complete museum of the domestic
+architecture of the Middle Ages," I felt happy indeed. As I was even
+more when, on one of my walks, as I stepped out briskly on account
+of the weather, which, after several days of a precocious spring, had
+relapsed into winter (like the weather that we had invariably found
+awaiting us at Combray, in Holy Week),--seeing upon the boulevards that
+the chestnut-trees, though plunged in a glacial atmosphere that soaked
+through them like a stream of water, were none the less beginning,
+punctual guests, arrayed already for the party, and admitting no
+discouragement, to shape and chisel and curve in its frozen lumps the
+irrepressible verdure whose steady growth the abortive power of the
+cold might hinder but could not succeed in restraining--I reflected that
+already the Ponte Vecchio was heaped high with an abundance of hyacinths
+and anemones, and that the spring sunshine was already tinging the waves
+of the Grand Canal with so dusky an azure, with emeralds so splendid
+that when they washed and were broken against the foot of one of
+Titian's paintings they could vie with it in the richness of their
+colouring. I could no longer contain my joy when my father, in the
+intervals of tapping the barometer and complaining of the cold, began
+to look out which were the best trains, and when I understood that by
+making one's way, after luncheon, into the coal-grimed laboratory, the
+wizard's cell that undertook to contrive a complete transmutation of its
+surroundings, one could awaken, next morning, in the city of marble
+and gold, in which "the building of the wall was of jasper and the
+foundation of the wall an emerald." So that it and the City of the
+Lilies were not just artificial scenes which I could set up at my
+pleasure in front of my imagination, but did actually exist at a certain
+distance from Paris which must inevitably be traversed if I wished to
+see them, at their appointed place on the earth's surface, and at no
+other; in a word they were entirely real. They became even more real
+to me when my father, by saying: "Well, you can stay in Venice from the
+20th to the 29th, and reach Florence on Easter morning," made them both
+emerge, no longer only from the abstraction of Space, but from that
+imaginary Time in which we place not one, merely, but several of
+our travels at once, which do not greatly tax us since they are but
+possibilities,--that Time which reconstructs itself so effectively that
+one can spend it again in one town after one has already spent it in
+another--and consecrated to them some of those actual, calendar days
+which are certificates of the genuineness of what one does on them, for
+those unique days are consumed by being used, they do not return, one
+cannot live them again here when one has lived them elsewhere; I felt
+that it was towards the week that would begin with the Monday on which
+the laundress was to bring back the white waistcoat that I had stained
+with ink, that they were hastening to busy themselves with the duty
+of emerging from that ideal Time in which they did not, as yet, exist,
+those two Queen Cities of which I was soon to be able, by the most
+absorbing kind of geometry, to inscribe the domes and towers on a
+page of my own life. But I was still on the way, only, to the supreme
+pinnacle of happiness; I reached it finally (for not until then did the
+revelation burst upon me that on the clattering streets, reddened by the
+light reflected from Giorgione's frescoes, it was not, as I had, despite
+so many promptings, continued to imagine, the men "majestic and terrible
+as the sea, bearing armour that gleamed with bronze beneath the folds
+of their blood-red cloaks," who would be walking in Venice next week, on
+the Easter vigil; but that I myself might be the minute personage whom,
+in an enlarged photograph of St. Mark's that had been lent to me, the
+operator had portrayed, in a bowler hat, in front of the portico), when
+I heard my father say: "It must be pretty cold, still, on the Grand
+Canal; whatever you do, don't forget to pack your winter greatcoat and
+your thick suit." At these words I was raised to a sort of ecstasy;
+a thing that I had until then deemed impossible, I felt myself to be
+penetrating indeed between those "rocks of amethyst, like a reef in the
+Indian Ocean"; by a supreme muscular effort, a long way in excess of my
+real strength, stripping myself, as of a shell that served no purpose,
+of the air in my own room which surrounded me, I replaced it by an equal
+quantity of Venetian air, that marine atmosphere, indescribable and
+peculiar as the atmosphere of the dreams which my imagination had
+secreted in the name of Venice; I could feel at work within me a
+miraculous disincarnation; it was at once accompanied by that vague
+desire to vomit which one feels when one has a very sore throat; and
+they had to put me to bed with a fever so persistent that the doctor
+not only assured my parents that a visit, that spring, to Florence and
+Venice was absolutely out of the question, but warned their that, even
+when I should have completely recovered, I must, for at least a year,
+give up all idea of travelling, and be kept from anything that was
+liable to excite me.
+
+And, alas, he forbade also, most categorically, my being allowed to go
+to the theatre, to hear Berma; the sublime artist, whose genius Bergotte
+had proclaimed, might, by introducing me to something else that was,
+perhaps, as important and as beautiful, have consoled me for not having
+been to Florence and Venice, for not going to Balbec. My parents had
+to be content with sending me, every day, to the Champs-Elys�es, in
+the custody of a person who would see that I did not tire myself; this
+person was none other than Fran�oise, who had entered our service
+after the death of my aunt L�onie. Going to the Champs-Elys�es I found
+unendurable. If only Bergotte had described the place in one of his
+books, I should, no doubt, have longed to see and to know it, like so
+many things else of which a simulacrum had first found its way into
+my imagination. That kept things warm, made them live, gave them
+personality, and I sought then to find their counterpart in reality,
+but in this public garden there was nothing that attached itself to my
+dreams.
+
+* * *
+
+One day, as I was weary of our usual place, beside the wooden horses,
+Fran�oise had taken me for an excursion--across the frontier guarded at
+regular intervals by the little bastions of the barley-sugar women--into
+those neighbouring but foreign regions, where the faces of the
+passers-by were strange, where the goat-carriage went past; then she had
+gone away to lay down her things on a chair that stood with its back to
+a shrubbery of laurels; while I waited for her I was pacing the broad
+lawn, of meagre close-cropped grass already faded by the sun, dominated,
+at its far end, by a statue rising from a fountain, in front of which a
+little girl with reddish hair was playing with a shuttlecock; when, from
+the path, another little girl, who was putting on her cloak and covering
+up her battledore, called out sharply: "Good-bye, Gilberte, I'm going
+home now; don't forget, we're coming to you this evening, after dinner."
+The name Gilberte passed close by me, evoking all the more forcibly her
+whom it labelled in that it did not merely refer to her, as one speaks
+of a man in his absence, but was directly addressed to her; it passed
+thus close by me, in action, so to speak, with a force that
+increased with the curve of its trajectory and as it drew near to
+its target;--carrying in its wake, I could feel, the knowledge, the
+impression of her to whom it was addressed that belonged not to me but
+to the friend who called to her, everything that, while she uttered the
+words, she more or less vividly reviewed, possessed in her memory, of
+their daily intimacy, of the visits that they paid to each other, of
+that unknown existence which was all the more inaccessible, all the more
+painful to me from being, conversely, so familiar, so tractable to this
+happy girl who let her message brush past me without my being able to
+penetrate its surface, who flung it on the air with a light-hearted cry:
+letting float in the atmosphere the delicious attar which that message
+had distilled, by touching them with precision, from certain invisible
+points in Mlle. Swann's life, from the evening to come, as it would be,
+after dinner, at her home,--forming, on its celestial passage through
+the midst of the children and their nursemaids, a little cloud,
+exquisitely coloured, like the cloud that, curling over one of Poussin's
+gardens, reflects minutely, like a cloud in the opera, teeming with
+chariots and horses, some apparition of the life of the gods; casting,
+finally, on that ragged grass, at the spot on which she stood (at once a
+scrap of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the fair player,
+who continued to beat up and catch her shuttlecock until a governess,
+with a blue feather in her hat, had called her away) a marvellous little
+band of light, of the colour of heliotrope, spread over the lawn like a
+carpet on which I could not tire of treading to and fro with lingering
+feet, nostalgic and profane, while Fran�oise shouted: "Come on, button
+up your coat, look, and let's get away!" and I remarked for the first
+time how common her speech was, and that she had, alas, no blue feather
+in her hat.
+
+Only, would _she_ come again to the Champs-Elys�es? Next day she was
+not there; but I saw her on the following days; I spent all my time
+revolving round the spot where she was at play with her friends, to such
+effect that once, when, they found, they were not enough to make up a
+prisoner's base, she sent one of them to ask me if I cared to complete
+their side, and from that day I played with her whenever she came.
+But this did not happen every day; there were days when she had
+been prevented from coming by her lessons, by her catechism, by a
+luncheon-party, by the whole of that life, separated from my own, which
+twice only, condensed into the name of Gilberte, I had felt pass so
+painfully close to me, in the hawthorn lane near Combray and on the
+grass of the Champs-Elys�es. On such days she would have told us
+beforehand that we should not see her; if it were because of her
+lessons, she would say: "It is too tiresome, I sha'n't be able to come
+to-morrow; you will all be enjoying yourselves here without me," with an
+air of regret which to some extent consoled me; if, on the other hand,
+she had been invited to a party, and I, not knowing this, asked her
+whether she was coming to play with us, she would reply: "Indeed I hope
+not! Indeed I hope Mamma will let me go to my friend's." But on these
+days I did at least know that I should not see her, whereas on others,
+without any warning, her mother would take her for a drive, or some such
+thing, and next day she would say: "Oh, yes! I went out with Mamma,"
+as though it had been the most natural thing in the world, and not the
+greatest possible misfortune for some one else. There were also the days
+of bad weather on which her governess, afraid, on her own account, of
+the rain, would not bring Gilberte to the Champs-Elys�es.
+
+And so, if the heavens were doubtful, from early morning I would not
+cease to interrogate them, observing all the omens. If I saw the lady
+opposite, just inside her window, putting on her hat, I would say to
+myself: "That lady is going out; it must, therefore, be weather in which
+one can go out. Why should not Gilberte do the same as that lady?" But
+the day grew dark. My mother said that it might clear again, that one
+burst of sunshine would be enough, but that more probably it would rain;
+and if it rained, of what use would it be to go to the Champs-Elys�es?
+And so, from breakfast-time, my anxious eyes never left the uncertain,
+clouded sky. It remained dark: Outside the window, the balcony was grey.
+Suddenly, on its sullen stone, I did not indeed see a less negative
+colour, but I felt as it were an effort towards a less negative colour,
+the pulsation of a hesitating ray that struggled to discharge its light.
+A moment later the balcony was as pale and luminous as a standing water
+at dawn, and a thousand shadows from the iron-work of its balustrade had
+come to rest on it. A breath of wind dispersed them; the stone grew
+dark again, but, like tamed creatures, they returned; they began,
+imperceptibly, to grow lighter, and by one of those continuous
+crescendos, such as, in music, at the end of an overture, carry a single
+note to the extreme fortissimo, making it pass rapidly through all the
+intermediate stages, I saw it attain to that fixed, unalterable gold of
+fine days, on which the sharply cut shadows of the wrought iron of the
+balustrade were outlined in black like a capricious vegetation, with a
+fineness in the delineation of their smallest details which seemed to
+indicate a deliberate application, an artist's satisfaction, and with so
+much relief, so velvety a bloom in the restfulness of their sombre
+and happy mass that in truth those large and leafy shadows which lay
+reflected on that lake of sunshine seemed aware that they were pledges
+of happiness and peace of mind.
+
+Brief, fading ivy, climbing, fugitive flora, the most colourless, the
+most depressing, to many minds, of all that creep on walls or decorate
+windows; to me the dearest of them all, from the day when it appeared
+upon our balcony, like the very shadow of the presence of Gilberte,
+who was perhaps already in the Champs-Elys�es, and as soon as I arrived
+there would greet me with: "Let's begin at once. You are on my side."
+Frail, swept away by a breath, but at the same time in harmony, not with
+the season, with the hour; a promise of that immediate pleasure which
+the day will deny or fulfil, and thereby of the one paramount immediate
+pleasure, the pleasure of loving and of being loved; more soft,
+more warm upon the stone than even moss is; alive, a ray of sunshine
+sufficing for its birth, and for the birth of joy, even in the heart of
+winter.
+
+And on those days when all other vegetation had disappeared, when the
+fine jerkins of green leather which covered the trunks of the old trees
+were hidden beneath the snow; after the snow had ceased to fall, but
+when the sky was still too much overcast for me to hope that Gilberte
+would venture out, then suddenly--inspiring my mother to say: "Look,
+it's quite fine now; I think you might perhaps try going to the
+Champs-Elys�es after all."--On the mantle of snow that swathed the
+balcony, the sun had appeared and was stitching seams of gold, with
+embroidered patches of dark shadow. That day we found no one there, or
+else a solitary girl, on the point of departure, who assured me that
+Gilberte was not coming. The chairs, deserted by the imposing but
+uninspiring company of governesses, stood empty. Only, near the grass,
+was sitting a lady of uncertain age who came in all weathers, dressed
+always in an identical style, splendid and sombre, to make whose
+acquaintance I would have, at that period, sacrificed, had it lain in my
+power, all the greatest opportunities in my life to come. For Gilberte
+went up every day to speak to her; she used to ask Gilberte for news of
+her "dearest mother" and it struck me that, if I had known her, I should
+have been for Gilberte some one wholly different, some one who knew
+people in her parents' world. While her grandchildren played together at
+a little distance, she would sit and read the D�bats, which she called
+"My old _D�bats_!" as, with an aristocratic familiarity, she would say,
+speaking of the police-sergeant or the woman who let the chairs, "My
+old friend the police-sergeant," or "The chair-keeper and I, who are old
+friends."
+
+Fran�oise found it too cold to stand about, so we walked to the Pont
+de la Concorde to see the Seine frozen over, on to which everyone, even
+children, walked fearlessly, as though upon an enormous whale, stranded,
+defenceless, and about to be cut up. We returned to the Champs-Elys�es;
+I was growing sick with misery between the motionless wooden horses and
+the white lawn, caught in a net of black paths from which the snow had
+been cleared, while the statue that surmounted it held in its hand a
+long pendent icicle which seemed to explain its gesture. The old lady
+herself, having folded up her _D�bats_, asked a passing nursemaid
+the time, thanking her with "How very good of you!" then begged the
+road-sweeper to tell her grandchildren to come, as she felt cold, adding
+"A thousand thanks. I am sorry to give you so much trouble!" Suddenly
+the sky was rent in two: between the punch-and-judy and the horses,
+against the opening horizon, I had just seen, like a miraculous sign,
+Mademoiselle's blue feather. And now Gilberte was running at full speed
+towards me, sparkling and rosy beneath a cap trimmed with fur, enlivened
+by the cold, by being late, by her anxiety for a game; shortly before
+she reached me, she slipped on a piece of ice and, either to regain her
+balance, or because it appeared to her graceful, or else pretending
+that she was on skates, it was with outstretched arms that she smilingly
+advanced, as though to embrace me. "Bravo! bravo! that's splendid;
+'topping,' I should say, like you--'sporting,' I suppose I ought to say,
+only I'm a hundred-and-one, a woman of the old school," exclaimed the
+lady, uttering, on behalf of the voiceless Champs-Elys�es, their thanks
+to Gilberte for having come, without letting herself be frightened
+away by the weather. "You are like me, faithful at all costs to our old
+Champs-Elys�es; we are two brave souls! You wouldn't believe me, I dare
+say, if I told you that I love them, even like this. This snow (I know,
+you'll laugh at me), it makes me think of ermine!" And the old lady
+began to laugh herself.
+
+The first of these days--to which the snow, a symbol of the powers that
+were able to deprive me of the sight of Gilberte, imparted the sadness
+of a day of separation, almost the aspect of a day of departure, because
+it changed the outward form and almost forbade the use of the customary
+scene of our only encounters, now altered, covered, as it were, in
+dust-sheets--that day, none the less, marked a stage in the progress of
+my love, for it was, in a sense, the first sorrow that she was to share
+with me. There were only our two selves of our little company, and to
+be thus alone with her was not merely like a beginning of intimacy, but
+also on her part--as though she had come there solely to please me, and
+in such weather--it seemed to me as touching as if, on one of those days
+on which she had been invited to a party, she had given it up in order
+to come to me in the Champs-Elys�es; I acquired more confidence in the
+vitality, in the future of a friendship which could remain so much alive
+amid the torpor, the solitude, the decay of our surroundings; and while
+she dropped pellets of snow down my neck, I smiled lovingly at what
+seemed to me at once a predilection that she shewed for me in thus
+tolerating me as her travelling companion in this new, this wintry land,
+and a sort of loyalty to me which she preserved through evil times.
+Presently, one after another, like shyly hopping sparrows, her friends
+arrived, black against the snow. We got ready to play and, since this
+day which had begun so sadly was destined to end in joy, as I went up,
+before the game started, to the friend with the sharp voice whom I had
+heard, that first day, calling Gilberte by name, she said to me: "No,
+no, I'm sure you'd much rather be in Gilberte's camp; besides, look,
+she's signalling to you." She was in fact summoning me to cross the
+snowy lawn to her camp, to 'take the field,' which the sun, by casting
+over it a rosy gleam, the metallic lustre of old and worn brocades, had
+turned into a Field of the Cloth of Gold.
+
+This day, which I had begun with so many misgivings, was, as it
+happened, one of the few on which I was not unduly wretched.
+
+For, although I no longer thought, now, of anything save not to let a
+single day pass without seeing Gilberte (so much so that once, when my
+grandmother had not come home by dinner-time, I could not resist the
+instinctive reflection that, if she had been run over in the street
+and killed, I should not for some time be allowed to play in the
+Champs-Elys�es; when one is in love one has no love left for anyone),
+yet those moments which I spent in her company, for which I had waited
+with so much impatience all night and morning, for which I had quivered
+with excitement, to which I would have sacrificed everything else in the
+world, were by no means happy moments; well did I know it, for they
+were the only moments in my life on which I concentrated a scrupulous,
+undistracted attention, and yet I could not discover in them one atom
+of pleasure. All the time that I was away from Gilberte, I wanted to see
+her, because, having incessantly sought to form a mental picture of her,
+I was unable, in the end, to do so, and did not know exactly to what my
+love corresponded. Besides, she had never yet told me that she loved me.
+Far from it, she had often boasted that she knew other little boys whom
+she preferred to myself, that I was a good companion, with whom she was
+always willing to play, although I was too absent-minded, not attentive
+enough to the game. Moreover, she had often shewn signs of apparent
+coldness towards me, which might have shaken my faith that I was for her
+a creature different from the rest, had that faith been founded upon a
+love that Gilberte had felt for me, and not, as was the case, upon
+the love that I felt for her, which strengthened its resistance to the
+assaults of doubt by making it depend entirely upon the manner in which
+I was obliged, by an internal compulsion, to think of Gilberte. But my
+feelings with regard to her I had never yet ventured to express to her
+in words. Of course, on every page of my exercise-books, I wrote out,
+in endless repetition, her name and address, but at the sight of those
+vague lines which I might trace, without her having to think, on that
+account, of me, I felt discouraged, because they spoke to me, not of
+Gilberte, who would never so much as see them, but of my own desire,
+which they seemed to shew me in its true colours, as something purely
+personal, unreal, tedious and ineffective. The most important thing
+was that we should see each other, Gilberte and I, and should have an
+opportunity of making a mutual confession of our love which, until then,
+would not officially (so to speak) have begun. Doubtless the various
+reasons which made me so impatient to see her would have appeared less
+urgent to a grown man. As life goes on, we acquire such adroitness in
+the culture of our pleasures, that we content ourselves with that which
+we derive from thinking of a woman, as I was thinking of Gilberte,
+without troubling ourselves to ascertain whether the image corresponds
+to the reality,--and with the pleasure of loving her, without needing to
+be sure, also, that she loves us; or again that we renounce the pleasure
+of confessing our passion for her, so as to preserve and enhance the
+passion that she has for us, like those Japanese gardeners who, to
+obtain one perfect blossom, will sacrifice the rest. But at the period
+when I was in love with Gilberte, I still believed that Love did really
+exist, apart from ourselves; that, allowing us, at the most, to surmount
+the obstacles in our way, it offered us its blessings in an order in
+which we were not free to make the least alteration; it seemed to me
+that if I had, on my own initiative, substituted for the sweetness of
+a confession a pretence of indifference, I should not only have been
+depriving myself of one of the joys of which I had most often dreamed,
+I should have been fabricating, of my own free will, a love that was
+artificial and without value, that bore no relation to the truth, whose
+mysterious and foreordained ways I should thus have been declining to
+follow.
+
+But when I arrived at the Champs-Elys�es,--and, as at first sight
+it appeared, was in a position to confront my love, so as to make it
+undergo the necessary modifications, with its living and independent
+cause--as soon as I was in the presence of that Gilberte Swann on the
+sight of whom I had counted to revive the images that my tired memory
+had lost and could not find again, of that Gilberte Swann with whom I
+had been playing the day before, and whom I had just been prompted to
+greet, and then to recognise, by a blind instinct like that which, when
+we are walking, sets one foot before the other, without giving us time
+to think what we are doing, then at once it became as though she and the
+little girl who had inspired my dreams had been two different people.
+If, for instance, I had retained in my memory overnight two fiery eyes
+above plump and rosy cheeks, Gilberte's face would now offer me (and
+with emphasis) something that I distinctly had not remembered, a
+certain sharpening and prolongation of the nose which, instantaneously
+associating itself with certain others of her features, assumed the
+importance of those characteristics which, in natural history, are used
+to define a species, and transformed her into a little girl of the kind
+that have sharpened profiles. While I was making myself ready to take
+advantage of this long expected moment, and to surrender myself to the
+impression of Gilberte which I had prepared beforehand but could no
+longer find in my head, to an extent which would enable me, during the
+long hours which I must spend alone, to be certain that it was indeed
+herself whom I had in mind, that it was indeed my love for her that I
+was gradually making grow, as a book grows when one is writing it, she
+threw me a ball; and, like the idealist philosopher whose body takes
+account of the external world in the reality of which his intellect
+declines to believe, the same self which had made me salute her before I
+had identified her now urged me to catch the ball that she tossed to me
+(as though she had been a companion, with whom I had come to play, and
+not a sister-soul with whom my soul had come to be united), made me,
+out of politeness, until the time came when she had to I go, address
+a thousand polite and trivial remarks to her, and so prevented me both
+from keeping a silence in which I might at last have laid my hand upon
+the indispensable, escaped idea, and from uttering the words which might
+have made that definite progress in the course of our love on which I
+was always obliged to count only for the following afternoon. There was,
+however, an occasional development. One day, we had gone with Gilberte
+to the stall of our own special vendor, who was always particularly
+nice to us, since it was to her that M. Swann used to send for his
+gingerbread, of which, for reasons of health (he suffered from a racial
+eczema, and from the constipation of the prophets), he consumed a great
+quantity,--Gilberte pointed out to me with a laugh two little boys who
+were like the little artist and the little naturalist in the children's
+storybooks. For one of them would not have a red stick of rock because
+he preferred the purple, while the other, with tears in his eyes,
+refused a plum which his nurse was buying for him, because, as he
+finally explained in passionate tones: "I want the other plum; it's got
+a worm in it!" I purchased two ha'penny marbles. With admiring eyes I
+saw, luminous and imprisoned in a bowl by themselves, the agate marbles
+which seemed precious to me because they were as fair and smiling as
+little girls, and because they cost five-pence each. Gilberte, who was
+given a great deal more pocket money than I ever had, asked me which I
+thought the prettiest. They were as transparent, as liquid-seeming as
+life itself. I would not have had her sacrifice a single one of them.
+I should have liked her to be able to buy them, to liberate them all.
+Still, I pointed out one that had the same colour as her eyes. Gilberte
+took it, turned it about until it shone with a ray of gold, fondled it,
+paid its ransom, but at once handed me her captive, saying: "Take it; it
+is for you, I give it to you, keep it to remind yourself of me."
+
+Another time, being still obsessed by the desire to hear Berma in
+classic drama, I had asked her whether she had not a copy of a pamphlet
+in which Bergotte spoke of Racine, and which was now out of print. She
+had told me to let her know the exact title of it, and that evening
+I had sent her a little telegram, writing on its envelope the name,
+Gilberte Swann, which I had so often, traced in my exercise-books. Next
+day she brought me in a parcel tied with pink bows and sealed with white
+wax, the pamphlet, a copy of which she had managed to find. "You see, it
+is what you asked me for," she said, taking from her muff the telegram
+that I had sent her. But in the address on the pneumatic message--which,
+only yesterday, was nothing, was merely a 'little blue' that I had
+written, and, after a messenger had delivered it to Gilberte's porter
+and a servant had taken it to her in her room, had become a thing
+without value or distinction, one of the 'little blues' that she had
+received in the course of the day--I had difficulty in recognising
+the futile, straggling lines of my own handwriting beneath the circles
+stamped on it at the post-office, the inscriptions added in pencil by
+a postman, signs of effectual realisation, seals of the external world,
+violet bands symbolical of life itself, which for the first time came to
+espouse, to maintain, to raise, to rejoice my dream.
+
+And there was another day on which she said to me: "You know, you may
+call me 'Gilberte'; in any case, I'm going to call you by your first
+name. It's too silly not to." Yet she continued for a while to address
+me by the more formal '_vous_,' and, when I drew her attention to this,
+smiled, and composing, constructing a phrase like those that are put
+into the grammar-books of foreign languages with no other object than to
+teach us to make use of a new word, ended it with my Christian name. And
+when I recalled, later, what I had felt at the time, I could distinguish
+the impression of having been held, for a moment, in her mouth, myself,
+naked, without, any longer, any of the social qualifications which
+belonged equally to her other companions and, when she used my surname,
+to my parents, accessories of which her lips--by the effort that she
+made, a little after her father's manner, to articulate the words to
+which she wished to give a special value--had the air of stripping, of
+divesting me, as one peels the skin from a fruit of which one is going
+to put only the pulp into one's mouth, while her glance, adapting itself
+to the same new degree of intimacy as her speech, fell on me also more
+directly, not without testifying to the consciousness, the pleasure,
+even the gratitude that it felt, accompanying itself with a smile.
+
+But at that actual moment, I was not able to appreciate the worth of
+these new pleasures. They were given, not by the little girl whom I
+loved, to me who loved her, but by the other, her with whom I used to
+play, to my other self, who possessed neither the memory of the true
+Gilberte, nor the fixed heart which alone could have known the value
+of a happiness for which it alone had longed. Even after I had returned
+home I did not taste them, since, every day, the necessity which made
+me hope that on the morrow I should arrive at the clear, calm, happy
+contemplation of Gilberte, that she would at last confess her love
+for me, explaining to me the reasons by which she had been obliged,
+hitherto, to conceal it, that same necessity forced me to regard the
+past as of no account, to look ahead of me only, to consider the little
+advantages that she had given me not in themselves and as if they were
+self-sufficient, but like fresh rungs of the ladder on which I might
+set my feet, which were going to allow me to advance a step further and
+finally to attain the happiness which I had not yet encountered.
+
+If, at times, she shewed me these marks of her affection, she troubled
+me also by seeming not to be pleased to see me, and this happened often
+on the very days on which I had most counted for the realisation of my
+hopes. I was sure that Gilberte was coming to the Champs-Elys�es, and
+I felt an elation which seemed merely the anticipation of a great
+happiness when--going into the drawing-room in the morning to kiss
+Mamma, who was already dressed to go out, the coils of her black hair
+elaborately built up, and her beautiful hands, plump and white, fragrant
+still with soap--I had been apprised, by seeing a column of dust
+standing by itself in the air above the piano, and by hearing a
+barrel-organ playing, beneath the window, _En revenant de la revue_,
+that the winter had received, until nightfall, an unexpected, radiant
+visit from a day of spring. While we sat at luncheon, by opening her
+window, the lady opposite had sent packing, in the twinkling of an eye,
+from beside my chair--to sweep in a single stride over the whole width
+of our dining-room--a sunbeam which had lain down there for its midday
+rest and returned to continue it there a moment later. At school, during
+the one o'clock lesson, the sun made me sick with impatience and boredom
+as it let fall a golden stream that crept to the edge of my desk, like
+an invitation to the feast at which I could not myself arrive before
+three o'clock, until the moment when Fran�oise came to fetch me at the
+school-gate, and we made our way towards the Champs-Elys�es through
+streets decorated with sunlight, dense with people, over which the
+balconies, detached by the sun and made vaporous, seemed to float in
+front of the houses like clouds of gold. Alas! in the Champs-Elys�es
+I found no Gilberte; she had not yet arrived. Motionless, on the lawn
+nurtured by the invisible sun which, here and there, kindled to a flame
+the point of a blade of grass, while the pigeons that had alighted upon
+it had the appearance of ancient sculptures which the gardener's pick
+had heaved to the surface of a hallowed soil, I stood with my eyes fixed
+on the horizon, expecting at every moment to see appear the form of
+Gilberte following that of her governess, behind the statue that
+seemed to be holding out the child, which it had in its arms, and which
+glistened in the stream of light, to receive benediction from the
+sun. The old lady who read the D�bats was sitting on her chair, in her
+invariable place, and had just accosted a park-keeper, with a friendly
+wave of her hands towards him as she exclaimed "What a lovely day!" And
+when the chair-woman came up to collect her penny, with an infinity of
+smirks and affectations she folded the ticket away inside her glove,
+as though it had been a posy of flowers, for which she had sought, in
+gratitude to the donor, the most becoming place upon her person. When
+she had found it, she performed a circular movement with her neck,
+straightened her boa, and fastened upon the collector, as she shewed
+her the end of yellow paper that stuck out over her bare wrist, the
+bewitching smile with which a woman says to a young man, pointing to her
+bosom: "You see, I'm wearing your roses!"
+
+I dragged Fran�oise, on the way towards Gilberte, as far as the Arc
+de Triomphe; we did not meet her, and I was returning towards the lawn
+convinced, now, that she was not coming, when, in front of the wooden
+horses, the little girl with the sharp voice flung herself upon me:
+"Quick, quick, Gilberte's been here a quarter of an hour. She's just
+going. We've been waiting for you, to make up a prisoner's base."
+
+While I had been going up the Avenue des Champs-Elys�es, Gilberte had
+arrived by the Rue Boissy-d'Anglas, Mademoiselle having taken advantage
+of the fine weather to go on some errand of her own; and M. Swann was
+coming to fetch his daughter. And so it was my fault; I ought not to
+have strayed from the lawn; for one never knew for certain from what
+direction Gilberte would appear, whether she would be early or late, and
+this perpetual tension succeeded in making more impressive not only the
+Champs-Elys�es in their entirety, and the whole span of the afternoon,
+like a vast expanse of space and time, on every point and at every
+moment of which it was possible that the form of Gilberte might appear,
+but also that form itself, since behind its appearance I felt that there
+lay concealed the reason for which it had shot its arrow into my heart
+at four o'clock instead of at half-past two; crowned with a smart hat,
+for paying calls, instead of the plain cap, for games; in front of the
+Ambassadeurs and not between the two puppet-shows; I divined one of
+those occupations in which I might not follow Gilberte, occupations
+that forced her to go out or to stay at home, I was in contact with the
+mystery of her unknown life. It was this mystery, too, which troubled
+me when, running at the sharp-voiced girl's bidding, so as to begin our
+game without more delay, I saw Gilberte, so quick and informal with
+us, make a ceremonious bow to the old lady with the _D�bats_ (who
+acknowledged it with "What a lovely sun! You'd think there was a fire
+burning.") speaking to her with a shy smile, with an air of constraint
+which called to my mind the other little girl that Gilberte must be when
+at home with her parents, or with friends of her parents, paying
+visits, in all the rest, that escaped me, of her existence. But of that
+existence no one gave me so strong an impression as did M. Swann, who
+came a little later to fetch his daughter. That was because he and Mme.
+Swann--inasmuch as their daughter lived with them, as her lessons,
+her games, her friendships depended upon them--contained for me, like
+Gilberte, perhaps even more than Gilberte, as befitted subjects that had
+an all-powerful control over her in whom it must have had its source, an
+undefined, an inaccessible quality of melancholy charm. Everything that
+concerned them was on my part the object of so constant a preoccupation
+that the days on which, as on this day, M. Swann (whom I had seen so
+often, long ago, without his having aroused my curiosity, when he
+was still on good terms with my parents) came for Gilberte to the
+Champs-Elys�es, once the pulsations to which my heart had been excited
+by the appearance of his grey hat and hooded cape had subsided, the
+sight of him still impressed me as might that of an historic personage,
+upon whom one had just been studying a series of books, and the smallest
+details of whose life one learned with enthusiasm. His relations with
+the Comte de Paris, which, when I heard them discussed at Combray,
+seemed to me unimportant, became now in my eyes something marvellous,
+as if no one else had ever known the House of Orleans; they set him
+in vivid detachment against the vulgar background of pedestrians
+of different classes, who encumbered that particular path in the
+Champs-Elys�es, in the midst of whom I admired his condescending to
+figure without claiming any special deference, which as it happened none
+of them dreamed of paying him, so profound was the incognito in which he
+was wrapped.
+
+He responded politely to the salutations of Gilberte's companions, even
+to mine, for all that he was no longer on good terms with my family,
+but without appearing to know who I was. (This reminded me that he had
+constantly seen me in the country; a memory which I had retained, but
+kept out of sight, because, since I had seen Gilberte again, Swann had
+become to me pre-eminently her father, and no longer the Combray Swann;
+as the ideas which, nowadays, I made his name connote were different
+from the ideas in the system of which it was formerly comprised, which
+I utilised not at all now when I had occasion to think of him, he had
+become a new, another person; still I attached him by an artificial
+thread, secondary and transversal, to our former guest; and as nothing
+had any longer any value for me save in the extent to which my love
+might profit by it, it was with a spasm of shame and of regret at not
+being able to erase them from my memory that I recaptured the years in
+which, in the eyes of this same Swann who was at this moment before me
+in the Champs-Elys�es, and to whom, fortunately, Gilberte had perhaps
+not mentioned my name, I had so often, in the evenings, made myself
+ridiculous by sending to ask Mamma to come upstairs to my room to say
+good-night to me, while she was drinking coffee with him and my father
+and my grandparents at the table in the garden.) He told Gilberte that
+she might play one game; he could wait for a quarter of an hour; and,
+sitting down, just like anyone else, on an iron chair, paid for his
+ticket with that hand which Philippe VII had so often held in his own,
+while we began our game upon the lawn, scattering the pigeons, whose
+beautiful, iridescent bodies (shaped like hearts and, surely, the lilacs
+of the feathered kingdom) took refuge as in so many sanctuaries, one on
+the great basin of stone, on which its beak, as it disappeared below the
+rim, conferred the part, assigned the purpose of offering to the bird in
+abundance the fruit or grain at which it appeared to be pecking, another
+on the head of the statue, which it seemed to crown with one of those
+enamelled objects whose polychrome varies in certain classical works
+the monotony of the stone, and with an attribute which, when the goddess
+bears it, entitles her to a particular epithet and makes of her, as a
+different Christian name makes of a mortal, a fresh divinity.
+
+On one of these sunny days which had not realised my hopes, I had not
+the courage to conceal my disappointment from Gilberte.
+
+"I had ever so many things to ask you," I said to her; "I thought that
+to-day was going to mean so much in our friendship. And no sooner have
+you come than you go away! Try to come early to-morrow, so that I can
+talk to you."
+
+Her face lighted up and she jumped for joy as she answered: "Tomorrow,
+you may make up your mind, my dear friend, I sha'n't come!
+
+"First of all I've a big luncheon-party; then in the afternoon I
+am going to a friend's house to see King Theodosius arrive from her
+windows; won't that be splendid?--and then, next day, I'm going to
+_Michel Strogoff_, and after that it will soon be Christmas, and the New
+Year holidays! Perhaps they'll take me south, to the Riviera; won't that
+be nice? Though I should miss the Christmas-tree here; anyhow, if I do
+stay in Paris, I sha'n't be coming here, because I shall be out paying
+calls with Mamma. Good-bye--there's Papa calling me."
+
+I returned home with Fran�oise through streets that were still gay with
+sunshine, as on the evening of a holiday when the merriment is over. I
+could scarcely drag my legs along.
+
+"I'm not surprised;" said Fran�oise, "it's not the right weather for the
+time of year; it's much too warm. Oh dear, oh dear, to think of all
+the poor sick people there must be everywhere; you would think that up
+there, too, everything's got out of order."
+
+I repeated to myself, stifling my sobs, the words in which Gilberte had
+given utterance to her joy at the prospect of not coming back, for a
+long time, to the Champs-Elys�es. But already the charm with which, by
+the mere act of thinking, my mind was filled as soon as it thought of
+her, the privileged position, unique even if it were painful, in which
+I was inevitably placed in relation to Gilberte by the contraction of a
+scar in my mind, had begun to add to that very mark of her indifference
+something romantic, and in the midst of my tears my lips would shape
+themselves in a smile which was indeed the timid outline of a kiss. And
+when the time came for the postman I said to myself, that evening as on
+every other: "I am going to have a letter from Gilberte, she is going to
+tell me, at last, that she has never ceased to love me, and to explain
+to me the mysterious reason by which she has been forced to conceal her
+love from me until now, to put on the appearance of being able to be
+happy without seeing me; the reason for which she has assumed the form
+of the other Gilberte, who is simply a companion."
+
+Every evening I would beguile myself into imagining this letter,
+believing that I was actually reading it, reciting each of its sentences
+in turn. Suddenly I would stop, in alarm. I had realised that, if I was
+to receive a letter from Gilberte, it could not, in any case, be this
+letter, since it was I myself who had just composed it. And from that
+moment I would strive to keep my thoughts clear of the words which I
+should have liked her to write to me, from fear lest, by first selecting
+them myself, I should be excluding just those identical words,--the
+dearest, the most desired--from the field of possible events. Even if,
+by an almost impossible coincidence, it had been precisely the letter
+of my invention that Gilberte had addressed to me of her own accord,
+recognising my own work in it I should not have had the impression that
+I was receiving something that had not originated in myself, something
+real, something new, a happiness external to my mind, independent of my
+will, a gift indeed from love.
+
+While I waited I read over again a page which, although it had not been
+written to me by Gilberte, came to me, none the less, from her, that
+page by Bergotte upon the beauty of the old myths from which Racine
+drew his inspiration, which (with the agate marble) I always kept within
+reach. I was touched by my friend's kindness in having procured the book
+for me; and as everyone is obliged to find some reason for his passion,
+so much so that he is glad to find in the creature whom he loves
+qualities which (he has learned by reading or in conversation) are
+worthy to excite a man's love, that he assimilates them by imitation
+and makes out of them fresh reasons for his love, even although these
+qualities be diametrically opposed to those for which his love would
+have sought, so long as it was spontaneous--as Swann, before my day, had
+sought to establish the aesthetic basis of Odette's beauty--I, who had
+at first loved Gilberte, in Combray days, on account of all the unknown
+element in her life into which I would fain have plunged headlong, have
+undergone reincarnation, discarding my own separate existence as a thing
+that no longer mattered, I thought now, as of an inestimable advantage,
+that of this, my own, my too familiar, my contemptible existence
+Gilberte might one day become the humble servant, the kindly, the
+comforting collaborator, who in the evenings, helping me in my work,
+would collate for me the texts of rare pamphlets. As for Bergotte, that
+infinitely wise, almost divine old man, because of whom I had first,
+before I had even seen her, loved Gilberte, now it was for Gilberte's
+sake, chiefly, that I loved him. With as much pleasure as the pages that
+he had written about Racine, I studied the wrapper, folded under great
+seals of white wax and tied with billows of pink ribbon, in which she
+had brought those pages to me. I kissed the agate marble, which was
+the better part of my love's heart, the part that was not frivolous but
+faithful, and, for all that it was adorned with the mysterious charm of
+Gilberte's life, dwelt close beside me, inhabited my chamber, shared my
+bed. But the beauty of that stone, and the beauty also of those pages
+of Bergotte which I was glad to associate with the idea of my love for
+Gilberte, as if, in the moments when my love seemed no longer to have
+any existence, they gave it a kind of consistency, were, I perceived,
+anterior to that love, which they in no way resembled; their elements
+had been determined by the writer's talent, or by geological laws,
+before ever Gilberte had known me, nothing in book or stone would have
+been different if Gilberte had not loved me, and there was nothing,
+consequently, that authorised me to read in them a message of happiness.
+And while my love, incessantly waiting for the morrow to bring a
+confession of Gilberte's love for me, destroyed, unravelled every
+evening, the ill-done work of the day, in some shadowed part of my being
+was an unknown weaver who would not leave where they lay the severed
+threads, but collected and rearranged them, without any thought of
+pleasing me, or of toiling for my advantage, in the different order
+which she gave to all her handiwork. Without any special interest in my
+love, not beginning by deciding that I was loved, she placed, side by
+side, those of Gilberte's actions that had seemed to me inexplicable and
+her faults which I had excused. Then, one with another, they took on
+a meaning. It seemed to tell me, this new arrangement, that when I saw
+Gilberte, instead of coming to me in the Champs-Elys�es, going to a
+party, or on errands with her governess, when I saw her prepared for
+an absence that would extend over the New Year holidays, I was wrong in
+thinking, in saying: "It is because she is frivolous," or "easily lead."
+For she would have ceased to be either if she had loved me, and if she
+had been forced to obey it would have been with the same despair in
+her heart that I felt on the days when I did not see her. It shewed me
+further, this new arrangement, that I ought, after all, to know what
+it was to love, since I loved Gilberte; it drew my attention to the
+constant anxiety that I had to 'shew off' before her, by reason of which
+I tried to persuade my mother to get for Fran�oise a waterproof coat and
+a hat with a blue feather, or, better still, to stop sending with me to
+the Champs-Elys�es an attendant with whom I blushed to be seen (to all
+of which my mother replied that I was not fair to Fran�oise, that
+she was an excellent woman and devoted to us all) and also that sole,
+exclusive need to see Gilberte, the result of which was that, months in
+advance, I could think of nothing but how to find out at what date she
+would be leaving Paris and where she was going, feeling that the most
+attractive country in the world would be but a place of exile if she
+were not to be there, and asking only to be allowed to stay for ever
+in Paris, so long as I might see her in the Champs-Elys�es; and it had
+little difficulty in making me see that neither my anxiety nor my
+need could be justified by anything in Gilberte's conduct. She, on the
+contrary, was genuinely fond of her governess, without troubling herself
+over what I might choose to think about it. It seemed quite natural to
+her not to come to the Champs-Elys�es if she had to go shopping with
+Mademoiselle, delightful if she had to go out somewhere with her mother.
+And even supposing that she would ever have allowed me to spend my
+holidays in the same place as herself, when it came to choosing
+that place she considered her parents' wishes, a thousand different
+amusements of which she had been told, and not at all that it should be
+the place to which my family were proposing to send me. When she assured
+me (as sometimes happened) that she liked me less than some other of
+her friends, less than she had liked me the day before, because by my
+clumsiness I had made her side lose a game, I would beg her pardon, I
+would beg her to tell me what I must do in order that she should begin
+again to like me as much as, or more than the rest; I hoped to hear her
+say that that was already my position; I besought her; as though she had
+been able to modify her affection for me as she or I chose, to give me
+pleasure, merely by the words that she would utter, as my good or bad
+conduct should deserve. Was I, then, not yet aware that what I felt,
+myself, for her, depended neither upon her actions nor upon my desires?
+
+It shewed me finally, the new arrangement planned by my unseen weaver,
+that, if we find ourselves hoping that the actions of a person who has
+hitherto caused us anxiety may prove not to have been sincere, they shed
+in their wake a light which our hopes are powerless to extinguish, a
+light to which, rather than to our hopes, we must put the question, what
+will be that person's actions on the morrow.
+
+These new counsels, my love listened and heard them; they persuaded it
+that the morrow would not be different from all the days that had gone
+before; that Gilberte's feeling for me, too long established now to
+be capable of alteration, was indifference; that in my friendship with
+Gilberte, it was I alone who loved. "That is true," my love responded,
+"there is nothing more to be made of that friendship. It will not alter
+now." And so the very next day (unless I were to wait for a public
+holiday, if there was one approaching, some anniversary, the New Year,
+perhaps, one of those days which are not like other days, on which time
+starts afresh, casting aside the heritage of the past, declining its
+legacy of sorrows) I would appeal to Gilberte to terminate our old and
+to join me in laying the foundations of a new friendship.
+
+* * *
+
+I had always, within reach, a plan of Paris, which, because I could see
+drawn on it the street in which M. and Mme. Swann lived, seemed to me to
+contain a secret treasure. And to please myself, as well as by a sort
+of chivalrous loyalty, in any connection or with no relevance at all, I
+would repeat the name of that street until my father, not being, like
+my mother and grandmother, in the secret of my love, would ask: "But
+why are you always talking about that street? There's nothing wonderful
+about it. It is an admirable street to live in because it's only a few
+minutes' walk from the Bois, but there are a dozen other streets just
+the same."
+
+I made every effort to introduce the name of Swann into my conversation
+with my parents; in my own mind, of course, I never ceased to murmur it;
+but I needed also to hear its exquisite sound, and to make myself
+play that chord, the voiceless rendering of which did not suffice
+me. Moreover, that name of Swann, with which I had for so long been
+familiar, was to me now (as happens at times to people suffering from
+aphasia, in the case of the most ordinary words) the name of something
+new. It was for ever present in my mind, which could not, however, grow
+accustomed to it. I analysed it, I spelt it; its orthography came to me
+as a surprise. And with its familiarity it had simultaneously lost its
+innocence. The pleasure that I derived from the sound of it I felt to
+be so guilty, that it seemed to me as though the others must read my
+thoughts, and would change the conversation if I endeavoured to guide it
+in that direction. I fell back upon subjects which still brought me into
+touch with Gilberte, I eternally repeated the same words, and it was no
+use my knowing that they were but words--words uttered in her absence,
+which she could not hear, words without virtue in themselves, repeating
+what were, indeed, facts, but powerless to modify them--for still
+it seemed to me that by dint of handling, of stirring in this way
+everything that had reference to Gilberte, I might perhaps make emerge
+from it something that would bring me happiness. I told my parents again
+that Gilberte was very fond of her governess, as if the statement, when
+repeated for the hundredth time, would at last have the effect of making
+Gilberte suddenly burst into the room, come to live with us for ever.
+I had already sung the praises of the old lady who read the _D�bats_
+(I had hinted to my parents that she must at least be an Ambassador's
+widow, if not actually a Highness) and I continued to descant on her
+beauty, her splendour, her nobility, until the day on which I mentioned
+that, by what I had heard Gilberte call her, she appeared to be a Mme.
+Blatin.
+
+"Oh, now I know whom you mean," cried my mother, while I felt myself
+grow red all over with shame. "On guard! on guard!--as your grandfather
+says. And so it's she that you think so wonderful? Why, she's perfectly
+horrible, and always has been. She's the widow of a bailiff. You can't
+remember, when you were little, all the trouble I used to have to avoid
+her at your gymnastic lessons, where she was always trying to get hold
+of me--I didn't know the woman, of course--to tell me that you were
+'much too nice-looking for a boy.' She has always had an insane desire
+to get to know people, and she must be quite insane, as I have always
+thought, if she really does know Mme. Swann. For even if she does come
+of very common people, I have never heard anything said against her
+character. But she must always be forcing herself upon strangers. She
+is, really, a horrible woman, frightfully vulgar, and besides, she is
+always creating awkward situations."
+
+As for Swann, in my attempts to resemble him, I spent the whole time,
+when I was at table, in drawing my finger along my nose and in rubbing
+my eyes. My father would exclaim: "The child's a perfect idiot, he's
+becoming quite impossible." More than all else I should have liked to
+be as bald as Swann. He appeared to me to be a creature so extraordinary
+that I found it impossible to believe that people whom I knew and often
+saw knew him also, and that in the course of the day anyone might run
+against him. And once my mother, while she was telling us, as she did
+every evening at dinner, where she had been and what she had done that
+afternoon, merely by the words: "By the way, guess whom I saw at the
+Trois Quartiers--at the umbrella counter--Swann!" caused to burst open
+in the midst of her narrative (an arid desert to me) a mystic blossom.
+What a melancholy satisfaction to learn that, that very afternoon,
+threading through the crowd his supernatural form, Swann had gone to
+buy an umbrella. Among the events of the day, great and small, but
+all equally unimportant, that one alone aroused in me those peculiar
+vibrations by which my love for Gilberte was invariably stirred. My
+father complained that I took no interest in anything, because I did not
+listen while he was speaking of the political developments that might
+follow the visit of King Theodosius, at that moment in France as
+the nation's guest and (it was hinted) ally. And yet how intensely
+interested I was to know whether Swann had been wearing his hooded cape!
+
+"Did you speak to him?" I asked.
+
+"Why, of course I did," answered my mother, who always seemed afraid
+lest, were she to admit that we were not on the warmest of terms with
+Swann, people would seek to reconcile us more than she cared for, in
+view of the existence of Mme. Swann, whom she did not wish to know. "It
+was he who came up and spoke to me. I hadn't seen him."
+
+"Then you haven't quarrelled?"
+
+"Quarrelled? What on earth made you think that we had quarrelled?"
+she briskly parried, as though I had cast doubt on the fiction of her
+friendly relations with Swann, and was planning an attempt to 'bring
+them together.'
+
+"He might be cross with you for never asking him here."
+
+"One isn't obliged to ask everyone to one's house, you know; has he ever
+asked me to his? I don't know his wife."
+
+"But he used often to come, at Combray."
+
+"I should think he did! He used to come at Combray, and now, in Paris,
+he has something better to do, and so have I. But I can promise you, we
+didn't look in the least like people who had quarrelled. We were kept
+waiting there for some time, while they brought him his parcel. He
+asked after you; he told me you had been playing with his daughter--"
+my mother went on, amazing me with the portentous revelation of my own
+existence in Swann's mind; far more than that, of my existence in so
+complete, so material a form that when I stood before him, trembling
+with love, in the Champs-Elys�es, he had known my name, and who my
+mother was, and had been able to blend with my quality as his daughter's
+playmate certain facts with regard to my grandparents and their
+connections, the place in which we lived, certain details of our past
+life, all of which I myself perhaps did not know. But my mother did not
+seem to have noticed anything particularly attractive in that counter at
+the Trois Quartiers where she had represented to Swann, at the moment
+in which he caught sight of her, a definite person with whom he had
+sufficient memories in common to impel him to come up to her and to
+speak.
+
+Nor did either she or my father seem to find any occasion now to mention
+Swann's family, the grandparents of Gilberte, nor to use the title of
+stockbroker, topics than which nothing else gave me so keen a pleasure.
+My imagination had isolated and consecrated in the social Paris a
+certain family, just as it had set apart in the structural Paris a
+certain house, on whose porch it had fashioned sculptures and made its
+windows precious. But these ornaments I alone had eyes to see. Just as
+my father and mother looked upon the house in which Swann lived as one
+that closely resembled the other houses built at the same period in the
+neighbourhood of the Bois, so Swann's family seemed to them to be in the
+same category as many other families of stockbrokers. Their judgment was
+more or less favourable according to the extent to which the family in
+question shared in merits that were common to the rest of the universe,
+and there was about it nothing that they could call unique. What, on the
+other hand, they did appreciate in the Swanns they found in equal, if
+not in greater measure elsewhere. And so, after admitting that the house
+was in a good position, they would go on to speak of some other house
+that was in a better, but had nothing to do with Gilberte, or of
+financiers on a larger scale than her grandfather had been; and if they
+had appeared, for a moment, to be of my opinion, that was a mistake
+which was very soon corrected. For in order to distinguish in all
+Gilberte's surroundings an indefinable quality analogous, in the scale
+of emotions, to what in the scale of colours is called infra-red, a
+supplementary sense of perception was required, with which love, for the
+time being, had endowed me; and this my parents lacked.
+
+On the days when Gilberte had warned me that she would not be coming to
+the Champs-Elys�es, I would try to arrange my walks so that I should
+be brought into some kind of contact with her. Sometimes I would lead
+Fran�oise on a pilgrimage to the house in which the Swanns lived, making
+her repeat to me unendingly all that she had learned from the governess
+with regard to Mme. Swann. "It seems, she puts great faith in medals.
+She would never think of starting on a journey if she had heard an
+owl hoot, or the death-watch in the wall, or if she had seen a cat
+at midnight, or if the furniture had creaked. Oh yes! she's a most
+religious lady, she is!" I was so madly in love with Gilberte that if,
+on our way, I caught sight of their old butler taking the dog out, my
+emotion would bring me to a standstill, I would fasten on his white
+whiskers eyes that melted with passion. And Fran�oise would rouse me
+with: "What's wrong with you now, child?" and we would continue on our
+way until we reached their gate, where a porter, different from every
+other porter in the world, and saturated, even to the braid on his
+livery, with the same melancholy charm that I had felt to be latent in
+the name of Gilberte, looked at me as though he knew that I was one
+of those whose natural unworthiness would for ever prevent them from
+penetrating into the mysteries of the life inside, which it was his duty
+to guard, and over which the ground-floor windows appeared conscious of
+being protectingly closed, with far less resemblance, between the nobly
+sweeping arches of their muslin curtains, to any other windows in the
+world than to Gilberte's glancing eyes. On other days we would go along
+the boulevards, and I would post myself at the corner of the Rue Duphot;
+I had heard that Swann was often to be seen passing there, on his way
+to the dentist's; and my imagination so far differentiated Gilberte's
+father from the rest of humanity, his presence in the midst of a crowd
+of real people introduced among them so miraculous an element, that even
+before we reached the Madeleine I would be trembling with emotion at
+the thought that I was approaching a street from which that supernatural
+apparition might at any moment burst upon me unawares.
+
+But most often of all, on days when I was not to see Gilberte, as I
+had heard that Mme. Swann walked almost every day along the All�e des
+Acacias, round the big lake, and in the All�e de la Reine Marguerite, I
+would guide Fran�oise in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne. It was
+to me like one of those zoological gardens in which one sees assembled
+together a variety of flora, and contrasted effects in landscape; where
+from a hill one passes to a grotto, a meadow, rocks, a stream, a trench,
+another hill, a marsh, but knows that they are there only to enable
+the hippopotamus, zebra, crocodile, rabbit, bear and heron to disport
+themselves in a natural or a picturesque setting; this, the Bois,
+equally complex, uniting a multitude of little worlds, distinct and
+separate--placing a stage set with red trees, American oaks, like an
+experimental forest in Virginia, next to a fir-wood by the edge of the
+lake, or to a forest grove from which would suddenly emerge, in her
+lissom covering of furs, with the large, appealing eyes of a dumb
+animal, a hastening walker--was the Garden of Woman; and like the
+myrtle-alley in the Aeneid, planted for their delight with trees of one
+kind only, the All�e des Acacias was thronged by the famous Beauties
+of the day. As, from a long way off, the sight of the jutting crag from
+which it dives into the pool thrills with joy the children who know
+that they are going to behold the seal, long before I reached the
+acacia-alley, their fragrance, scattered abroad, would make me feel that
+I was approaching the incomparable presence of a vegetable personality,
+strong and tender; then, as I drew near, the sight of their topmost
+branches, their lightly tossing foliage, in its easy grace, its
+coquettish outline, its delicate fabric, over which hundreds of flowers
+were laid, like winged and throbbing colonies of precious insects; and
+finally their name itself, feminine, indolent and seductive, made my
+heart beat, but with a social longing, like those waltzes which remind
+us only of the names of the fair dancers, called aloud as they entered
+the ball-room. I had been told that I should see in the alley certain
+women of fashion, who, in spite of their not all having husbands, were
+constantly mentioned in conjunction with Mme. Swann, but most often by
+their professional names;--their new names, when they had any, being
+but a sort of incognito, a veil which those who would speak of them were
+careful to draw aside, so as to make themselves understood. Thinking
+that Beauty--in the order of feminine elegance--was governed by occult
+laws into the knowledge of which they had been initiated, and that they
+had the power to realise it, I accepted before seeing them, like the
+truth of a coming revelation, the appearance of their clothes, of their
+carriages and horses, of a thousand details among which I placed my
+faith as in an inner soul which gave the cohesion of a work of art to
+that ephemeral and changing pageant. But it was Mme. Swann whom I wished
+to see, and I waited for her to go past, as deeply moved as though
+she were Gilberte, whose parents, saturated, like everything in her
+environment, with her own special charm, excited in me as keen a passion
+as she did herself, indeed a still more painful disturbance (since their
+point of contact with her was that intimate, that internal part of
+her life which was hidden from me), and furthermore, for I very soon
+learned, as we shall see in due course, that they did not like my
+playing with her, that feeling of veneration which we always have for
+those who hold, and exercise without restraint, the power to do us an
+injury.
+
+I assigned the first place, in the order of aesthetic merit and of
+social grandeur, to simplicity, when I saw Mme. Swann on foot, in a
+'polonaise' of plain cloth, a little toque on her head trimmed with a
+pheasant's wing, a bunch of violets in her bosom, hastening along the
+All�e des Acacias as if it had been merely the shortest way back to her
+own house, and acknowledging with a rapid glance the courtesy of the
+gentlemen in carriages, who, recognising her figure at a distance, were
+raising their hats to her and saying to one another that there was never
+anyone so well turned out as she. But instead of simplicity it was to
+ostentation that I must assign the first place if, after I had compelled
+Fran�oise, who could hold out no longer, and complained that her legs
+were 'giving' beneath her, to stroll up and down with me for another
+hour, I saw at length, emerging from the Porte Dauphine, figuring for
+me a royal dignity, the passage of a sovereign, an impression such as
+no real Queen has ever since been able to give me, because my notion of
+their power has been less vague, and more founded upon experience--borne
+along by the flight of a pair of fiery horses, slender and shapely as
+one sees them in the drawings of Constantin Guys, carrying on its box an
+enormous coachman, furred like a cossack, and by his side a diminutive
+groom, like Toby, "the late Beaudenord's tiger," I saw--or rather I
+felt its outlines engraved upon my heart by a clean and killing stab--a
+matchless victoria, built rather high, and hinting, through the extreme
+modernity of its appointments, at the forms of an earlier day, deep down
+in which lay negligently back Mme. Swann, her hair, now quite pale with
+one grey lock, girt with a narrow band of flowers, usually violets, from
+which floated down long veils, a lilac parasol in her hand, on her lips
+an ambiguous smile in which I read only the benign condescension
+of Majesty, though it was pre-eminently the enticing smile of the
+courtesan, which she graciously bestowed upon the men who bowed to her.
+That smile was, in reality, saying to one: "Oh yes, I do remember, quite
+well; it was wonderful!" to another: "How I should have loved to! We
+were unfortunate!", to a third: "Yes, if you like! I must just keep in
+the line for a minute, then as soon as I can I will break away." When
+strangers passed she still allowed to linger about her lips a lazy
+smile, as though she expected or remembered some friend, which made them
+say: "What a lovely woman!". 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 a viper, that you can't keep quiet for a
+moment. But do you suppose that I care what you say?" Coquelin passed,
+talking, in a group of listening friends, and with a sweeping wave of
+his hand bade a theatrical good day to the people in the carriages. But
+I thought only of Mme. Swann, and pretended to have not yet seen her,
+for I knew that, when she reached the pigeon-shooting ground, she would
+tell her coachman to 'break away' and to stop the carriage, so that she
+might come back on foot. And on days when I felt that I had the courage
+to pass close by her I would drag Fran�oise off in that direction; until
+the moment came when I saw Mme. Swann, letting trail behind her the long
+train of her lilac skirt, dressed, as the populace imagine queens to be
+dressed, in rich attire such as no other woman might wear, lowering
+her eyes now and then to study the handle of her parasol, paying scant
+attention to the passers-by, as though the important thing for her, her
+one object in being there, was to take exercise, without thinking that
+she was seen, and that every head was turned towards her. Sometimes,
+however, when she had looked back to call her dog to her, she would
+cast, almost imperceptibly, a sweeping glance round about.
+
+Those even who did not know her were warned by something exceptional,
+something beyond the normal in her--or perhaps by a telepathic
+suggestion such as would move an ignorant audience to a frenzy of
+applause when Berma was 'sublime'--that she must be some one well-known.
+They would ask one another, "Who is she?", or sometimes would
+interrogate a passing stranger, or would make a mental note of how she
+was dressed so as to fix her identity, later, in the mind of a friend
+better informed than themselves, who would at once enlighten them.
+Another pair, half-stopping in their walk, would exchange:
+
+"You know who that is? Mme. Swann! That conveys nothing to you? Odette
+de Cr�cy, then?"
+
+"Odette de Cr�cy! Why, I thought as much. Those great, sad eyes... But I
+say, you know, she can't be as young as she was once, eh? I remember, I
+had her on the day that MacMahon went."
+
+"I shouldn't remind her of it, if I were you. She is now Mme. Swann, the
+wife of a gentleman in the Jockey Club, a friend of the Prince of Wales.
+Apart from that, though, she is wonderful still."
+
+"Oh, but you ought to have known her then; Gad, she was lovely!
+She lived in a very odd little house with a lot of Chinese stuff.
+I remember, we were bothered all the time by the newsboys, shouting
+outside; in the end she made me get up and go."
+
+Without listening to these memories, I could feel all about her the
+indistinct murmur of fame. My heart leaped with impatience when I
+thought that a few seconds must still elapse before all these people,
+among whom I was dismayed not to find a certain mulatto banker who (or
+so I felt) had a contempt for me, were to see the unknown youth, to
+whom they had not, so far, been paying the slightest attention, salute
+(without knowing her, it was true, but I thought that I had sufficient
+authority since my parents knew her husband and I was her daughter's
+playmate) this woman whose reputation for beauty, for misconduct, and
+for elegance was universal. But I was now close to Mme. Swann; I pulled
+off my hat 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, like 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 a
+theatre, of her daily walks abroad.
+
+On certain days when I had missed her in the All�e des Acacias I would
+be so fortunate as to meet her in the All�e de la Reine Marguerite,
+where women went who wished to be alone, or to appear to be wishing to
+be alone; she would not be alone for long, being soon overtaken by some
+man or other, often in a grey 'tile' hat, whom I did not know, and
+who would talk to her for some time, while their two carriages crawled
+behind.
+
+* * *
+
+That sense of the complexity of the Bois de Boulogne which made it an
+artificial place and, in the zoological or mythological sense of the
+word, a Garden, I captured again, this year, as I crossed it on my way
+to Trianon, on one of those mornings, early in November, when in Paris,
+if we stay indoors, being so near and yet prevented from witnessing the
+transformation scene of autumn, which is drawing so rapidly to a close
+without our assistance, we feel a regret for the fallen leaves that
+becomes a fever, and may even keep us awake at night. Into my closed
+room they had been drifting already for a month, summoned there by
+my desire to see them, slipping between my thoughts and the object,
+whatever it might be, upon which I was trying to concentrate them,
+whirling in front of me like those brown spots that sometimes, whatever
+we may be looking at, will seem to be dancing or swimming before our
+eyes. And on that morning, not hearing the splash of the rain as on the
+previous days, seeing the smile of fine weather at the corners of my
+drawn curtains, as from the corners of closed lips may escape the secret
+of their happiness, I had felt that I could actually see those yellow
+leaves, with the light shining through them, in their supreme beauty;
+and being no more able to restrain myself from going to look at the
+trees than, in my childhood's days, when the wind howled in the chimney,
+I had been able to resist the longing to visit the sea, I had risen and
+left the house to go to Trianon, passing through the Bois de Boulogne.
+It was the hour and the season in which the Bois seems, perhaps, most
+multiform, not only because it is then most divided, but because it
+is divided in a different way. Even in the unwooded parts, where the
+horizon is large, here and there against the background of a dark
+and distant mass of trees, now leafless or still keeping their summer
+foliage unchanged, a double row of orange-red chestnuts seemed, as in a
+picture just begun, to be the only thing painted, so far, by an artist
+who had not yet laid any colour on the rest, and to be offering their
+cloister, in full daylight, for the casual exercise of the human figures
+that would be added to the picture later on.
+
+Farther off, at a place where the trees were still all green, one alone,
+small, stunted, lopped, but stubborn in its resistance, was tossing
+in the breeze an ugly mane of red. Elsewhere, again, might be seen
+the first awakening of this Maytime of the leaves, and those of an
+ampelopsis, a smiling miracle, like a red hawthorn flowering in winter,
+had that very morning all 'come out,' so to speak, in blossom. And the
+Bois had the temporary, unfinished, artificial look of a nursery garden
+or a park in which, either for some botanic purpose or in preparation
+for a festival, there have been embedded among the trees of commoner
+growth, which have not yet been uprooted and transplanted elsewhere, a
+few rare specimens, with fantastic foliage, which seem to be clearing
+all round themselves an empty space, making room, giving air, diffusing
+light. Thus it was the time of year at which the Bois de Boulogne
+displays more separate characteristics, assembles more distinct elements
+in a composite whole than at any other. It was also the time of day.
+In places where the trees still kept their leaves, they seemed to have
+undergone an alteration of their substance from the point at which they
+were touched by the sun's light, still, at this hour in the morning,
+almost horizontal, as it would be again, a few hours later, at the
+moment when, just as dusk began, it would flame up like a lamp, project
+afar over the leaves a warm and artificial glow, and set ablaze the few
+topmost boughs of a tree that would itself remain unchanged, a sombre
+incombustible candelabrum beneath its flaming crest. At one spot the
+light grew solid as a brick wall, and like a piece of yellow Persian
+masonry, patterned in blue, daubed coarsely upon the sky the leaves of
+the chestnuts; at another, it cut them off from the sky towards which
+they stretched out their curling, golden fingers. Half-way up the trunk
+of a tree draped with wild vine, the light had grafted and brought to
+blossom, too dazzling to be clearly distinguished, an enormous posy,
+of red flowers apparently, perhaps of a new variety of carnation. The
+different parts of the Bois, so easily confounded in summer in the
+density and monotony of their universal green, were now clearly divided.
+A patch of brightness indicated the approach to almost every one of
+them, or else a splendid mass of foliage stood out before it like an
+oriflamme. I could make out, as on a coloured map, Armenonville, the
+Pr� Catalan, Madrid, the Race Course and the shore of the lake. Here and
+there would appear some meaningless erection, a sham grotto, a mill, for
+which the trees made room by drawing away from it, or which was borne
+upon the soft green platform of a grassy lawn. I could feel that the
+Bois was not really a wood, that it existed for a purpose alien to the
+life of its trees; my sense of exaltation was due not only to admiration
+of the autumn tints but to a bodily desire. Ample source of a joy which
+the heart feels at first without being conscious of its cause, without
+understanding that it results from no external impulse! Thus I gazed
+at the trees with an unsatisfied longing which went beyond them and,
+without my knowledge, directed itself towards that masterpiece of
+beautiful strolling women which the trees enframed for a few hours every
+day. I walked towards the All�e des Acacias. I passed through forest
+groves in which the morning light, breaking them into new sections,
+lopped and trimmed the trees, united different trunks in marriage, made
+nosegays of their branches. It would skilfully draw towards it a pair of
+trees; making deft use of the sharp chisel of light and shade, it would
+cut away from each of them half of its trunk and branches, and, weaving
+together the two halves that remained, would make of them either a
+single pillar of shade, defined by the surrounding light, or a single
+luminous phantom whose artificial, quivering contour was encompassed
+in a network of inky shadows. When a ray of sunshine gilded the highest
+branches, they seemed, soaked and still dripping with a sparkling
+moisture, to have emerged alone from the liquid, emerald-green
+atmosphere in which the whole grove was plunged as though beneath the
+sea. For the trees continued to live by their own vitality, and when
+they had no longer any leaves, that vitality gleamed more brightly still
+from the nap of green velvet that carpeted their trunks, or in the white
+enamel of the globes of mistletoe that were scattered all the way up to
+the topmost branches of the poplars, rounded as are the sun and moon in
+Michelangelo's 'Creation.' But, forced for so many years now, by a sort
+of grafting process, to share the life of feminine humanity, they called
+to my mind the figure of the dryad, the fair worldling, swiftly walking,
+brightly coloured, whom they sheltered with their branches as she
+passed beneath them, and obliged to acknowledge, as they themselves
+acknowledged, the power of the season; they recalled to me the happy
+days when I was young and had faith, when I would hasten eagerly to the
+spots where masterpieces of female elegance would be incarnate for a few
+moments beneath the unconscious, accommodating boughs. But the beauty
+for which the firs and acacias of the Bois de Boulogne made me long,
+more disquieting in that respect than the chestnuts and lilacs of
+Trianon which I was going to see, was not fixed somewhere outside myself
+in the relics of an historical period, in works of art, in a little
+temple of love at whose door was piled an oblation of autumn leaves
+ribbed with gold. I reached the shore of the lake; I walked on as far as
+the pigeon-shooting ground. The idea of perfection which I had within me
+I had bestowed, in that other time, upon the height of a victoria, upon
+the raking thinness of those horses, frenzied and light as wasps upon
+the wing, with bloodshot eyes like the cruel steeds of Diomed, which
+now, smitten by a desire to see again what I had once loved, as ardent
+as the desire that had driven me, many years before, along the same
+paths, I wished to see renewed before my eyes at the moment when Mme.
+Swann's enormous coachman, supervised by a groom no bigger than his
+fist, and as infantile as Saint George in the picture, endeavoured to
+curb the ardour of the flying, steel-tipped pinions with which they
+thundered along the ground. Alas! there was nothing now but motor-cars
+driven each by a moustached mechanic, with a tall footman towering by
+his side. I wished to hold before my bodily eyes, that I might know
+whether they were indeed as charming as they appeared to the eyes of
+memory, little hats, so low-crowned as to seem no more than garlands
+about the brows of women. All the hats now were immense; covered with
+fruits and flowers and all manner of birds. In place of the lovely gowns
+in which Mme. Swann walked like a Queen, appeared Greco-Saxon tunics,
+with Tanagra folds, or sometimes, in the Directoire style, 'Liberty
+chiffons' sprinkled with flowers like sheets of wallpaper. On the heads
+of the gentlemen who might have been eligible to stroll with Mme. Swann
+in the All�e de la Reine Marguerite, I found not the grey 'tile' hats
+of old, nor any other kind. They walked the Bois bare-headed. And seeing
+all these new elements of the spectacle, I had no longer the faith
+which, applied to them, would have given them consistency, unity,
+life; they passed in a scattered sequence before me, at random, without
+reality, containing in themselves no beauty that my eyes might have
+endeavoured as in the old days, to extract from them and to compose in
+a picture. They were just women, in whose elegance I had no belief,
+and whose clothes seemed to me unimportant. But when a belief vanishes,
+there survives it--more and more ardently, so as to cloak the absence
+of the power, now lost to us, of imparting reality to new phenomena--an
+idolatrous attachment to the old things which our belief in them did
+once animate, as if it was in that belief and not in ourselves that the
+divine spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent
+cause--the death of the gods.
+
+"Oh, horrible!" I exclaimed to myself: "Does anyone really imagine that
+these motor-cars are as smart as the old carriage-and-pair? I dare say.
+I am too old now--but I was not intended for a world in which women
+shackle themselves in garments that are not even made of cloth. To what
+purpose shall I walk among these trees if there is nothing left now of
+the assembly that used to meet beneath the delicate tracery of reddening
+leaves, if vulgarity and fatuity have supplanted the exquisite thing
+that once their branches framed? Oh, horrible! My consolation is to
+think of the women whom I have known, in the past, now that there is
+no standard left of elegance. But how can the people who watch these
+dreadful creatures hobble by, beneath hats on which have been heaped
+the spoils of aviary or garden-bed,--how can they imagine the charm that
+there was in the sight of Mme. Swann, crowned with a close-fitting lilac
+bonnet, or with a tiny hat from which rose stiffly above her head a
+single iris?" Could I ever have made them understand the emotion that
+I used to feel on winter mornings, when I met Mme. Swann on foot, in an
+otter-skin coat, with a woollen cap from which stuck out two blade-like
+partridge-feathers, but enveloped also in the deliberate, artificial
+warmth of her own house, which was suggested by nothing more than the
+bunch of violets crushed into her bosom, whose flowering, vivid and blue
+against the grey sky, the freezing air, the naked boughs, had the same
+charming effect of using the season and the weather merely as a setting,
+and of living actually in a human atmosphere, in the atmosphere of this
+woman, as had in the vases and beaupots of her drawing-room, beside the
+blazing fire, in front of the silk-covered sofa, the flowers that looked
+out through closed windows at the falling snow? But it would not have
+sufficed me that the costumes alone should still have been the same as
+in those distant years. Because of the solidarity that binds together
+the different parts of a general impression, parts that our memory keeps
+in a balanced whole, of which we are not permitted to subtract or to
+decline any fraction, I should have liked to be able to pass the rest
+of the day with one of those women, over a cup of tea, in a little house
+with dark-painted walls (as Mme. Swann's were still in the year after
+that in which the first part of this story ends) against which would
+glow the orange flame, the red combustion, the pink and white flickering
+of her chrysanthemums in the twilight of a November evening, in moments
+similar to those in which (as we shall see) I had not managed to
+discover the pleasures for which I longed. But now, albeit they had led
+to nothing, those moments struck me as having been charming enough in
+themselves. I sought to find them again as I remembered them. Alas!
+there was nothing now but flats decorated in the Louis XVI style, all
+white paint, with hortensias in blue enamel. Moreover, people did not
+return to Paris, now, until much later. Mme. Swann would have written to
+me, from a country house, that she would not be in town before February,
+had I asked her to reconstruct for me the elements of that memory which
+I felt to belong to a distant era, to a date in time towards which it
+was forbidden me to ascend again the fatal slope, the elements of that
+longing which had become, itself, as inaccessible as the pleasure that
+it had once vainly pursued. And I should have required also that they
+be the same women, those whose costume interested me because, at a time
+when I still had faith, my imagination had individualised them and had
+provided each of them with a legend. Alas! in the acacia-avenue--the
+myrtle-alley--I did see some of them again, grown old, no more now
+than grim spectres of what once they had been, wandering to and fro, in
+desperate search of heaven knew what, through the Virgilian groves. They
+had long fled, and still I stood vainly questioning the deserted paths.
+The sun's face was hidden. Nature began again to reign over the Bois,
+from which had vanished all trace of the idea that it was the Elysian
+Garden of Woman; above the gimcrack windmill the real sky was grey; the
+wind wrinkled the surface of the Grand Lac in little wavelets, like
+a real lake; large birds passed swiftly over the Bois, as over a real
+wood, and with shrill cries perched, one after another, on the great
+oaks which, beneath their Druidical crown, and with Dodonaic majesty,
+seemed to proclaim the unpeopled vacancy of this estranged forest, and
+helped me to understand how paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the
+pictures that are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose
+the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not
+being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer
+existed. It sufficed that Mme. Swann did not appear, in the same attire
+and at the same moment, for the whole avenue to be altered. The places
+that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which
+we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a
+thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our
+life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a
+particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as
+the years.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust
+#5 in our series by Marcel Proust
+
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+
+
+Title: Swann's Way
+       (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past)
+
+Author: Marcel Proust
+
+Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7178]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 22, 2003]
+[Date last updated: April 21, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWANN'S WAY ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Eric Eldred
+
+
+
+
+
+SWANN'S WAY
+
+by
+
+MARCEL PROUST
+
+[Vol. 1 of REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST]
+
+Translated from the French by
+C. K. SCOTT MONCRIEFF
+
+NEW YORK
+HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+1922
+
+CONTENTS
+
+OVERTURE
+COMBRAY
+SWANN IN LOVE
+PLACE-NAMES: THE NAME
+
+
+
+
+OVERTURE
+
+
+For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out
+my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say
+"I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time
+to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I
+imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been
+thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been
+reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I
+myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a
+quartet, the rivalry between Fran�ois I and Charles V. This impression
+would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my
+mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from
+registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would
+begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must
+be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself
+from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no;
+and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to
+find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the
+eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared
+incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed.
+
+I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling of
+trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance
+like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted
+countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the
+nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his
+memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing
+unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged
+beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence
+of the night; and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home.
+
+I would lay my cheeks gently against the comfortable cheeks of my pillow,
+as plump and blooming as the cheeks of babyhood. Or I would strike a match
+to look at my watch. Nearly midnight. The hour when an invalid, who has
+been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a strange hotel,
+awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief a streak of
+daylight shewing under his bedroom door. Oh, joy of joys! it is morning.
+The servants will be about in a minute: he can ring, and some one will
+come to look after him. The thought of being made comfortable gives him
+strength to endure his pain. He is certain he heard footsteps: they come
+nearer, and then die away. The ray of light beneath his door is
+extinguished. It is midnight; some one has turned out the gas; the last
+servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night in agony with no one to
+bring him any help.
+
+I would fall asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches
+only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or to
+open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness, to
+savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay heavy
+upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I formed but
+an insignificant part and whose unconsciousness I should very soon return
+to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned without the least
+effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever outgrown; and had come
+under the thrall of one of my childish terrors, such as that old terror of
+my great-uncle's pulling my curls, which was effectually dispelled on the
+day--the dawn of a new era to me--on which they were finally cropped from
+my head. I had forgotten that event during my sleep; I remembered it again
+immediately I had succeeded in making myself wake up to escape my
+great-uncle's fingers; still, as a measure of precaution, I would bury the
+whole of my head in the pillow before returning to the world of dreams.
+
+Sometimes, too, just as Eve was created from a rib of Adam, so a woman
+would come into existence while I was sleeping, conceived from some strain
+in the position of my limbs. Formed by the appetite that I was on the
+point of gratifying, she it was, I imagined, who offered me that
+gratification. My body, conscious that its own warmth was permeating hers,
+would strive to become one with her, and I would awake. The rest of
+humanity seemed very remote in comparison with this woman whose company I
+had left but a moment ago: my cheek was still warm with her kiss, my body
+bent beneath the weight of hers. If, as would sometimes happen, she had
+the appearance of some woman whom I had known in waking hours, I would
+abandon myself altogether to the sole quest of her, like people who set
+out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city that they have
+always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste in reality what
+has charmed their fancy. And then, gradually, the memory of her would
+dissolve and vanish, until I had forgotten the maiden of my dream.
+
+When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours,
+the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively,
+when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own
+position on the earth's surface and the amount of time that has elapsed
+during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused,
+and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning, after a night of
+insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading, in quite a
+different position from that in which he normally goes to sleep, he has
+only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back in its course,
+and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, but will
+conclude that he has just gone to bed. Or suppose that he gets drowsy in
+some even more abnormal position; sitting in an armchair, say, after
+dinner: then the world will fall topsy-turvy from its orbit, the magic
+chair will carry him at full speed through time and space, and when he
+opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to sleep months earlier
+and in some far distant country. But for me it was enough if, in my own
+bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for
+then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when
+I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first
+who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may
+lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal's consciousness; I was more
+destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory,
+not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I
+had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down
+from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I
+could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and
+surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised
+succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars,
+would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego.
+
+Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them
+by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by
+the immobility of our conceptions of them. For it always happened that
+when I awoke like this, and my mind struggled in an unsuccessful attempt
+to discover where I was, everything would be moving round me through the
+darkness: things, places, years. My body, still too heavy with sleep to
+move, would make an effort to construe the form which its tiredness took
+as an orientation of its various members, so as to induce from that where
+the wall lay and the furniture stood, to piece together and to give a name
+to the house in which it must be living. Its memory, the composite memory
+of its ribs, knees, and shoulder-blades offered it a whole series of rooms
+in which it had at one time or another slept; while the unseen walls kept
+changing, adapting themselves to the shape of each successive room that it
+remembered, whirling madly through the darkness. And even before my brain,
+lingering in consideration of when things had happened and of what they
+had looked like, had collected sufficient impressions to enable it to
+identify the room, it, my body, would recall from each room in succession
+what the bed was like, where the doors were, how daylight came in at the
+windows, whether there was a passage outside, what I had had in my mind
+when I went to sleep, and had found there when I awoke. The stiffened side
+underneath my body would, for instance, in trying to fix its position,
+imagine itself to be lying, face to the wall, in a big bed with a canopy;
+and at once I would say to myself, "Why, I must have gone to sleep after
+all, and Mamma never came to say good night!" for I was in the country
+with my grandfather, who died years ago; and my body, the side upon which
+I was lying, loyally preserving from the past an impression which my mind
+should never have forgotten, brought back before my eyes the glimmering
+flame of the night-light in its bowl of Bohemian glass, shaped like an urn
+and hung by chains from the ceiling, and the chimney-piece of Siena marble
+in my bedroom at Combray, in my great-aunt's house, in those far distant
+days which, at the moment of waking, seemed present without being clearly
+denned, but would become plainer in a little while when I was properly
+awake.
+
+Then would come up the memory of a fresh position; the wall slid away in
+another direction; I was in my room in Mme. de Saint-Loup's house in the
+country; good heavens, it must be ten o'clock, they will have finished
+dinner! I must have overslept myself, in the little nap which I always
+take when I come in from my walk with Mme. de Saint-Loup, before dressing
+for the evening. For many years have now elapsed since the Combray days,
+when, coming in from the longest and latest walks, I would still be in
+time to see the reflection of the sunset glowing in the panes of my
+bedroom window. It is a very different kind of existence at Tansonville
+now with Mme. de Saint-Loup, and a different kind of pleasure that I now
+derive from taking walks only in the evenings, from visiting by moonlight
+the roads on which I used to play, as a child, in the sunshine; while the
+bedroom, in which I shall presently fall asleep instead of dressing for
+dinner, from afar off I can see it, as we return from our walk, with its
+lamp shining through the window, a solitary beacon in the night.
+
+These shifting and confused gusts of memory never lasted for more than a
+few seconds; it often happened that, in my spell of uncertainty as to
+where I was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of which that
+uncertainty was composed any more than, when we watch a horse running, we
+isolate the successive positions of its body as they appear upon a
+bioscope.  But I had seen first one and then another of the rooms in which
+I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them all in the
+long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on going to bed I
+would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the most diverse
+materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets, a piece of a
+shawl, the edge of my bed, and a copy of an evening paper, all of which
+things I would contrive, with the infinite patience of birds building
+their nests, to cement into one whole; rooms where, in a keen frost, I
+would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world (like
+the sea-swallow which builds at the end of a dark tunnel and is kept warm
+by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire keeping in all night, I
+would sleep wrapped up, as it were, in a great cloak of snug and savoury
+air, shot with the glow of the logs which would break out again in flame:
+in a sort of alcove without walls, a cave of warmth dug out of the heart
+of the room itself, a zone of heat whose boundaries were constantly
+shifting and altering in temperature as gusts of air ran across them to
+strike freshly upon my face, from the corners of the room, or from parts
+near the window or far from the fireplace which had therefore remained
+cold--or rooms in summer, where I would delight to feel myself a part of
+the warm evening, where the moonlight striking upon the half-opened
+shutters would throw down to the foot of my bed its enchanted ladder;
+where I would fall asleep, as it might be in the open air, like a titmouse
+which the breeze keeps poised in the focus of a sunbeam--or sometimes the
+Louis XVI room, so cheerful that I could never feel really unhappy, even
+on my first night in it: that room where the slender columns which lightly
+supported its ceiling would part, ever so gracefully, to indicate where
+the bed was and to keep it separate; sometimes again that little room with
+the high ceiling, hollowed in the form of a pyramid out of two separate
+storeys, and partly walled with mahogany, in which from the first moment
+my mind was drugged by the unfamiliar scent of flowering grasses,
+convinced of the hostility of the violet curtains and of the insolent
+indifference of a clock that chattered on at the top of its voice as
+though I were not there; while a strange and pitiless mirror with square
+feet, which stood across one corner of the room, cleared for itself a site
+I had not looked to find tenanted in the quiet surroundings of my normal
+field of vision: that room in which my mind, forcing itself for hours on
+end to leave its moorings, to elongate itself upwards so as to take on the
+exact shape of the room, and to reach to the summit of that monstrous
+funnel, had passed so many anxious nights while my body lay stretched out
+in bed, my eyes staring upwards, my ears straining, my nostrils sniffing
+uneasily, and my heart beating; until custom had changed the colour of the
+curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought an expression of pity to the
+cruel, slanting face of the glass, disguised or even completely dispelled
+the scent of flowering grasses, and distinctly reduced the apparent
+loftiness of the ceiling. Custom! that skilful but unhurrying manager who
+begins by torturing the mind for weeks on end with her provisional
+arrangements; whom the mind, for all that, is fortunate in discovering,
+for without the help of custom it would never contrive, by its own
+efforts, to make any room seem habitable.
+
+Certainly I was now well awake; my body had turned about for the last time
+and the good angel of certainty had made all the surrounding objects stand
+still, had set me down under my bedclothes, in my bedroom, and had fixed,
+approximately in their right places in the uncertain light, my chest of
+drawers, my writing-table, my fireplace, the window overlooking the
+street, and both the doors. But it was no good my knowing that I was not
+in any of those houses of which, in the stupid moment of waking, if I had
+not caught sight exactly, I could still believe in their possible
+presence; for memory was now set in motion; as a rule I did not attempt to
+go to sleep again at once, but used to spend the greater part of the night
+recalling our life in the old days at Combray with my great-aunt, at
+Balbec, Paris, Donci�res, Venice, and the rest; remembering again all the
+places and people that I had known, what I had actually seen of them, and
+what others had told me.
+
+At Combray, as every afternoon ended, long before the time when I should
+have to go up to bed, and to lie there, unsleeping, far from my mother and
+grandmother, my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and
+anxious thoughts were centred. Some one had had the happy idea of giving
+me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally wretched, a magic
+lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while we waited for
+dinner-time to come: in the manner of the master-builders and
+glass-painters of gothic days it substituted for the opaqueness of my
+walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many colours,
+in which legends were depicted, as on a shifting and transitory window.
+But my sorrows were only increased, because this change of lighting
+destroyed, as nothing else could have done, the customary impression I had
+formed of my room, thanks to which the room itself, but for the torture of
+having to go to bed in it, had become quite endurable. For now I no longer
+recognised it, and I became uneasy, as though I were in a room in some
+hotel or furnished lodging, in a place where I had just arrived, by train,
+for the first time.
+
+Riding at a jerky trot, Golo, his mind filled with an infamous design,
+issued from the little three-cornered forest which dyed dark-green the
+slope of a convenient hill, and advanced by leaps and bounds towards the
+castle of poor Genevi�ve de Brabant. This castle was cut off short by a
+curved line which was in fact the circumference of one of the transparent
+ovals in the slides which were pushed into position through a slot in the
+lantern. It was only the wing of a castle, and in front of it stretched a
+moor on which Genevi�ve stood, lost in contemplation, wearing a blue
+girdle. The castle and the moor were yellow, but I could tell their colour
+without waiting to see them, for before the slides made their appearance
+the old-gold sonorous name of Brabant had given me an unmistakable clue.
+Golo stopped for a moment and listened sadly to the little speech read
+aloud by my great-aunt, which he seemed perfectly to understand, for he
+modified his attitude with a docility not devoid of a degree of majesty,
+so as to conform to the indications given in the text; then he rode away
+at the same jerky trot. And nothing could arrest his slow progress. If the
+lantern were moved I could still distinguish Golo's horse advancing across
+the window-curtains, swelling out with their curves and diving into their
+folds. The body of Golo himself, being of the same supernatural substance
+as his steed's, overcame all material obstacles--everything that seemed to
+bar his way--by taking each as it might be a skeleton and embodying it in
+himself: the door-handle, for instance, over which, adapting itself at
+once, would float invincibly his red cloak or his pale face, never losing
+its nobility or its melancholy, never shewing any sign of trouble at such
+a transubstantiation.
+
+And, indeed, I found plenty of charm in these bright projections, which
+seemed to have come straight out of a Merovingian past, and to shed around
+me the reflections of such ancient history. But I cannot express the
+discomfort I felt at such an intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room
+which I had succeeded in filling with my own personality until I thought
+no more of the room than of myself. The anaesthetic effect of custom being
+destroyed, I would begin to think and to feel very melancholy things. The
+door-handle of my room, which was different to me from all the other
+doorhandles in the world, inasmuch as it seemed to open of its own accord
+and without my having to turn it, so unconscious had its manipulation
+become; lo and behold, it was now an astral body for Golo. And as soon as
+the dinner-bell rang I would run down to the dining-room, where the big
+hanging lamp, ignorant of Golo and Bluebeard but well acquainted with my
+family and the dish of stewed beef, shed the same light as on every other
+evening; and I would fall into the arms of my mother, whom the misfortunes
+of Genevi�ve de Brabant had made all the dearer to me, just as the crimes
+of Golo had driven me to a more than ordinarily scrupulous examination of
+my own conscience.
+
+But after dinner, alas, I was soon obliged to leave Mamma, who stayed
+talking with the others, in the garden if it was fine, or in the little
+parlour where everyone took shelter when it was wet. Everyone except my
+grandmother, who held that "It is a pity to shut oneself indoors in the
+country," and used to carry on endless discussions with my father on the
+very wettest days, because he would send me up to my room with a book
+instead of letting me stay out of doors. "That is not the way to make him
+strong and active," she would say sadly, "especially this little man, who
+needs all the strength and character that he can get." My father would
+shrug his shoulders and study the barometer, for he took an interest in
+meteorology, while my mother, keeping very quiet so as not to disturb him,
+looked at him with tender respect, but not too hard, not wishing to
+penetrate the mysteries of his superior mind. But my grandmother, in all
+weathers, even when the rain was coming down in torrents and Fran�oise had
+rushed indoors with the precious wicker armchairs, so that they should not
+get soaked--you would see my grandmother pacing the deserted garden,
+lashed by the storm, pushing back her grey hair in disorder so that her
+brows might be more free to imbibe the life-giving draughts of wind and
+rain.  She would say, "At last one can breathe!" and would run up and down
+the soaking paths--too straight and symmetrical for her liking, owing to
+the want of any feeling for nature in the new gardener, whom my father had
+been asking all morning if the weather were going to improve--with her
+keen, jerky little step regulated by the various effects wrought upon her
+soul by the intoxication of the storm, the force of hygiene, the stupidity
+of my education and of symmetry in gardens, rather than by any anxiety
+(for that was quite unknown to her) to save her plum-coloured skirt from
+the spots of mud under which it would gradually disappear to a depth which
+always provided her maid with a fresh problem and filled her with fresh
+despair.
+
+When these walks of my grandmother's took place after dinner there was one
+thing which never failed to bring her back to the house: that was if (at
+one of those points when the revolutions of her course brought her,
+moth-like, in sight of the lamp in the little parlour where the liqueurs
+were set out on the card-table) my great-aunt called out to her:
+"Bathilde!  Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!" For,
+simply to tease her (she had brought so foreign a type of mind into my
+father's family that everyone made a joke of it), my great-aunt used to
+make my grandfather, who was forbidden liqueurs, take just a few drops. My
+poor grandmother would come in and beg and implore her husband not to
+taste the brandy; and he would become annoyed and swallow his few drops
+all the same, and she would go out again sad and discouraged, but still
+smiling, for she was so humble and so sweet that her gentleness towards
+others, and her continual subordination of herself and of her own
+troubles, appeared on her face blended in a smile which, unlike those seen
+on the majority of human faces, had no trace in it of irony, save for
+herself, while for all of us kisses seemed to spring from her eyes, which
+could not look upon those she loved without yearning to bestow upon them
+passionate caresses. The torments inflicted on her by my great-aunt, the
+sight of my grandmother's vain entreaties, of her in her weakness
+conquered before she began, but still making the futile endeavour to wean
+my grandfather from his liqueur-glass--all these were things of the sort
+to which, in later years, one can grow so well accustomed as to smile at
+them, to take the tormentor's side with a. happy determination which
+deludes one into the belief that it is not, really, tormenting; but in
+those days they filled me with such horror that I longed to strike my
+great-aunt. And yet, as soon as I heard her "Bathilde!  Come in and stop
+your husband from drinking brandy!" in my cowardice I became at once a
+man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and
+injustice; I preferred not to see them; I ran up to the top of the house
+to cry by myself in a little room beside the schoolroom and beneath the
+roof, which smelt of orris-root, and was scented also by a wild
+currant-bush which had climbed up between the stones of the outer wall and
+thrust a flowering branch in through the half-opened window.  Intended for
+a more special and a baser use, this room, from which, in the daytime, I
+could see as far as the keep of Roussainville-le-Pin, was for a long time
+my place of refuge, doubtless because it was the only room whose door �
+was allowed to lock, whenever my occupation was such as required an
+inviolable solitude; reading or dreaming, secret tears or paroxysms of
+desire. Alas! I little knew that my own lack of will-power, my delicate
+health, and the consequent uncertainty as to my future weighed far more
+heavily on my grandmother's mind than any little breach of the rules by
+her husband, during those endless perambulations, afternoon and evening,
+in which we used to see passing up and down, obliquely raised towards the
+heavens, her handsome face with its brown and wrinkled cheeks, which with
+age had acquired almost the purple hue of tilled fields in autumn,
+covered, if she were walking abroad, by a half-lifted veil, while upon
+them either the cold or some sad reflection invariably left the drying
+traces of an involuntary tear.
+
+My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma
+would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted
+for so short a time: she went down again so soon that the moment in which
+I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her garden
+dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited straw,
+rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment of the
+keenest sorrow. So much did I love that good night that I reached the
+stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as to prolong
+the time of respite during which Mamma would not yet have appeared.
+Sometimes when, after kissing me, she opened the door to go, I longed to
+call her back, to say to her "Kiss me just once again," but I knew that
+then she would at once look displeased, for the concession which she made
+to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to me with this kiss of
+peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies absurd, and
+she would have liked to try to induce me to outgrow the need, the custom
+of having her there at all, which was a very different thing from letting
+the custom grow up of my asking her for an additional kiss when she was
+already crossing the threshold. And to see her look displeased destroyed
+all the sense of tranquillity she had brought me a moment before, when she
+bent her loving face down over my bed, and held it out to me like a Host,
+for an act of Communion in which my lips might drink deeply the sense of
+her real presence, and with it the power to sleep. But those evenings on
+which Mamma stayed so short a time in my room were sweet indeed compared
+to those on which we had guests to dinner, and therefore she did not come
+at all. Our 'guests' were practically limited to M. Swann, who, apart from
+a few passing strangers, was almost the only person who ever came to the
+house at Combray, sometimes to a neighbourly dinner (but less frequently
+since his unfortunate marriage, as my family did not care to receive his
+wife) and sometimes after dinner, uninvited. On those evenings when, as we
+sat in front of the house beneath the big chestnut-tree and round the iron
+table, we heard, from the far end of the garden, not the large and noisy
+rattle which heralded and deafened as he approached with its ferruginous,
+interminable, frozen sound any member of the household who had put it out
+of action by coming in 'without ringing,' but the double peal--timid,
+oval, gilded--of the visitors' bell, everyone would at once exclaim "A
+visitor! Who in the world can it be?" but they knew quite well that it
+could only be M. Swann. My great-aunt, speaking in a loud voice, to set an
+example, in a tone which she endeavoured to make sound natural, would tell
+the others not to whisper so; that nothing could be more unpleasant for a
+stranger coming in, who would be led to think that people were saying
+things about him which he was not meant to hear; and then my grandmother
+would be sent out as a scout, always happy to find an excuse for an
+additional turn in the garden, which she would utilise to remove
+surreptitiously, as she passed, the stakes of a rose-tree or two, so as to
+make the roses look a little more natural, as a mother might run her hand
+through her boy's hair, after the barber had smoothed it down, to make it
+stick out properly round his head.
+
+And there we would all stay, hanging on the words which would fall from my
+grandmother's lips when she brought us back her report of the enemy, as
+though there had been some uncertainty among a vast number of possible
+invaders, and then, soon after, my grandfather would say: "I can hear
+Swann's voice." And, indeed, one could tell him only by his voice, for it
+was difficult to make out his face with its arched nose and green eyes,
+under a high forehead fringed with fair, almost red hair, dressed in the
+Bressant style, because in the garden we used as little light as possible,
+so as not to attract mosquitoes: and I would slip away as though not going
+for anything in particular, to tell them to bring out the syrups; for my
+grandmother made a great point, thinking it 'nicer/ of their not being
+allowed to seem anything out of the ordinary, which we kept for visitors
+only. Although a far younger man, M. Swann was very much attached to my
+grandfather, who had been an intimate friend, in his time, of Swann's
+father, an excellent but an eccentric man in whom the least little thing
+would, it seemed, often check the flow of his spirits and divert the
+current of his thoughts. Several times in the course of a year I would
+hear my grandfather tell at table the story, which never varied, of the
+behaviour of M. Swann the elder upon the death of his wife, by whose
+bedside he had watched day and night. My grandfather, who had not seen him
+for a long time, hastened to join him at the Swanns' family property on
+the outskirts of Combray, and managed to entice him for a moment, weeping
+profusely, out of the death-chamber, so that he should not be present when
+the body was laid in its coffin. They took a turn or two in the park,
+where there was a little sunshine. Suddenly M. Swann seized my grandfather
+by the arm and cried, "Oh, my dear old friend, how fortunate we are to be
+walking here together on such a charming day! Don't you see how pretty
+they are, all these trees--my hawthorns, and my new pond, on which you
+have never congratulated me? You look as glum as a night-cap. Don't you
+feel this little breeze? Ah! whatever you may say, it's good to be alive
+all the same, my dear Am�d�e!" And then, abruptly, the memory of his dead
+wife returned to him, and probably thinking it too complicated to inquire
+into how, at such a time, he could have allowed himself to be carried away
+by an impulse of happiness, he confined himself to a gesture which he
+habitually employed whenever any perplexing question came into his mind:
+that is, he passed his hand across his forehead, dried his eyes, and wiped
+his glasses. And he could never be consoled for the loss of his wife, but
+used to say to my grandfather, during the two years for which he survived
+her, "It's a funny thing, now; I very often think of my poor wife, but I
+cannot think of her very much at any one time." "Often, but a little at a
+time, like poor old Swann," became one of my grandfather's favourite
+phrases, which he would apply to all kinds of things. And I should have
+assumed that this father of Swann's had been a monster if my grandfather,
+whom I regarded as a better judge than myself, and whose word was my law
+and often led me in the long run to pardon offences which I should have
+been inclined to condemn, had not gone on to exclaim, "But, after all, he
+had a heart of gold."
+
+For many years, albeit--and especially before his marriage--M. Swann the
+younger came often to see them at Combray, my great-aunt and grandparents
+never suspected that he had entirely ceased to live in the kind of society
+which his family had frequented, or that, under the sort of incognito
+which the name of Swann gave him among us, they were harbouring--with the
+complete innocence of a family of honest innkeepers who have in their
+midst some distinguished highwayman and never know it--one of the smartest
+members of the Jockey Club, a particular friend of the Comte de Paris and
+of the Prince of Wales, and one of the men most sought after in the
+aristocratic world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+Our utter ignorance of the brilliant part which Swann was playing in the
+world of fashion was, of course, due in part to his own reserve and
+discretion, but also to the fact that middle-class people in those days
+took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist
+of sharply defined castes, so that everyone at his birth found himself
+called to that station in life which his parents already occupied, and
+nothing, except the chance of a brilliant career or of a 'good' marriage,
+could extract you from that station or admit you to a superior caste. M.
+Swann, the father, had been a stockbroker; and so 'young Swann' found
+himself immured for life in a caste where one's fortune, as in a list of
+taxpayers, varied between such and such limits of income. We knew the
+people with whom his father had associated, and so we knew his own
+associates, the people with whom he was 'in a position to mix.' If he knew
+other people besides, those were youthful acquaintances on whom the old
+friends of the family, like my relatives, shut their eyes all the more
+good-naturedly that Swann himself, after he was left an orphan, still came
+most faithfully to see us; but we would have been ready to wager that the
+people outside our acquaintance whom Swann knew were of the sort to whom
+he would not have dared to raise his hat, had he met them while he was
+walking with ourselves. Had there been such a thing as a determination to
+apply to Swann a social coefficient peculiar to himself, as distinct from
+all the other sons of other stockbrokers in his father's position, his
+coefficient would have been rather lower than theirs, because, leading a
+very simple life, and having always had a craze for 'antiques' and
+pictures, he now lived and piled up his collections in an old house which
+my grandmother longed to visit, but which stood on the Quai d'Orl�ans, a
+neighbourhood in which my great-aunt thought it most degrading to be
+quartered. "Are you really a connoisseur, now?" she would say to him; "I
+ask for your own sake, as you are likely to have 'fakes' palmed off on you
+by the dealers," for she did not, in fact, endow him with any critical
+faculty, and had no great opinion of the intelligence of a man who, in
+conversation, would avoid serious topics and shewed a very dull
+preciseness, not only when he gave us kitchen recipes, going into the most
+minute details, but even when my grandmother's sisters were talking to him
+about art. When challenged by them to give an opinion, or to express his
+admiration for some picture, he would remain almost impolitely silent, and
+would then make amends by furnishing (if he could) some fact or other
+about the gallery in which the picture was hung, or the date at which it
+had been painted. But as a rule he would content himself with trying to
+amuse us by telling us the story of his latest adventure--and he would
+have a fresh story for us on every occasion--with some one whom we
+ourselves knew, such as the Combray chemist, or our cook, or our coachman.
+These stories certainly used to make my great-aunt laugh, but she could
+never tell whether that was on account of the absurd parts which Swann
+invariably made himself play in the adventures, or of the wit that he
+shewed in telling us of them. "It is easy to see that you are a regular
+'character,' M. Swann!"
+
+As she was the only member of our family who could be described as a
+trifle 'common,' she would always take care to remark to strangers, when
+Swann was mentioned, that he could easily, if he had wished to, have lived
+in the Boulevard Haussmann or the Avenue de l'Op�ra, and that he was the
+son of old M. Swann who must have left four or five million francs, but
+that it was a fad of his. A fad which, moreover, she thought was bound to
+amuse other people so much that in Paris, when M. Swann called on New
+Year's Day bringing her a little packet of _marrons glac�s_, she never
+failed, if there were strangers in the room, to say to him: "Well, M.
+Swann, and do you still live next door to the Bonded Vaults, so as to be
+sure of not missing your train when you go to Lyons?" and she would peep
+out of the corner of her eye, over her glasses, at the other visitors.
+
+But if anyone had suggested to my aunt that this Swann, who, in his
+capacity as the son of old M. Swann, was 'fully qualified' to be received
+by any of the 'upper middle class,' the most respected barristers and
+solicitors of Paris (though he was perhaps a trifle inclined to let this
+hereditary privilege go into abeyance), had another almost secret
+existence of a wholly different kind: that when he left our house in
+Paris, saying that he must go home to bed, he would no sooner have turned
+the corner than he would stop, retrace his steps, and be off to some
+drawing-room on whose like no stockbroker or associate of stockbrokers had
+ever set eyes--that would have seemed to my aunt as extraordinary as, to a
+woman of wider reading, the thought of being herself on terms of intimacy
+with Aristaeus, of knowing that he would, when he had finished his
+conversation with her, plunge deep into the realms of Thetis, into an
+empire veiled from mortal eyes, in which Virgil depicts him as being
+received with open arms; or--to be content with an image more likely to
+have occurred to her, for she had seen it painted on the plates we used
+for biscuits at Combray--as the thought of having had to dinner Ali Baba,
+who, as soon as he found himself alone and unobserved, would make his way
+into the cave, resplendent with its unsuspected treasures.
+
+One day when he had come to see us after dinner in Paris, and had begged
+pardon for being in evening clothes, Fran�oise, when he had gone, told us
+that she had got it from his coachman that he had been dining "with a
+princess." "A pretty sort of princess," drawled my aunt; "I know them,"
+and she shrugged her shoulders without raising her eyes from her knitting,
+serenely ironical.
+
+Altogether, my aunt used to treat him with scant ceremony. Since she was
+of the opinion that he ought to feel flattered by our invitations, she
+thought it only right and proper that he should never come to see us in
+summer without a basket of peaches or raspberries from his garden, and
+that from each of his visits to Italy he should bring back some
+photographs of old masters for me.
+
+It seemed quite natural, therefore, to send to him whenever we wanted a
+recipe for some special sauce or for a pineapple salad for one of our big
+dinner-parties, to which he himself would not be invited, not seeming of
+sufficient importance to be served up to new friends who might be in our
+house for the first time. If the conversation turned upon the Princes of
+the House of France, "Gentlemen, you and I will never know, will we, and
+don't want to, do we?" my great-aunt would say tartly to Swann, who had,
+perhaps, a letter from Twickenham in his pocket; she would make him play
+accompaniments and turn over music on evenings when my grandmother's
+sister sang; manipulating this creature, so rare and refined at other
+times and in other places, with the rough simplicity of a child who will
+play with some curio from the cabinet no more carefully than if it were a
+penny toy.  Certainly the Swann who was a familiar figure in all the clubs
+of those days differed hugely from, the Swann created in my great-aunt's
+mind when, of an evening, in our little garden at Combray, after the two
+shy peals had sounded from the gate, she would vitalise, by injecting into
+it everything she had ever heard about the Swann family, the vague and
+unrecognisable shape which began to appear, with my grandmother in its
+wake, against a background of shadows, and could at last be identified by
+the sound of its voice. But then, even in the most insignificant details
+of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole,
+which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in
+an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created
+by the thoughts of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as
+"seeing some one we know" is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We
+pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we
+have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we
+compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In
+the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to
+follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the
+sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent
+envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our
+own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen. And so, no
+doubt, from the Swann they had built up for their own purposes my family
+had left out, in their ignorance, a whole crowd of the details of his
+daily life in the world of fashion, details by means of which other
+people, when they met him, saw all the Graces enthroned in his face and
+stopping at the line of his arched nose as at a natural frontier; but they
+contrived also to put into a face from which its distinction had been
+evicted, a face vacant and roomy as an untenanted house, to plant in the
+depths of its unvalued eyes a lingering sense, uncertain but not
+unpleasing, half-memory and half-oblivion, of idle hours spent together
+after our weekly dinners, round the card-table or in the garden, during
+our companionable country life. Our friend's bodily frame had been so well
+lined with this sense, and with various earlier memories of his family,
+that their own special Swann had become to my people a complete and living
+creature; so that even now I have the feeling of leaving some one I know
+for another quite different person when, going back in memory, I pass from
+the Swann whom I knew later and more intimately to this early Swann--this
+early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my
+childhood, and who, incidentally, is less like his successor than he is
+like the other people I knew at that time, as though one's life were a
+series of galleries in which all the portraits of any one period had a
+marked family likeness, the same (so to speak) tonality--this early Swann
+abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent of the great chestnut-tree,
+of baskets of raspberries and of a sprig of tarragon.
+
+And yet one day, when my grandmother had gone to ask some favour of a lady
+whom she had known at the Sacr� Coeur (and with whom, because of our caste
+theory, she had not cared to keep up any degree of intimacy in spite of
+several common interests), the Marquise de Villeparisis, of the famous
+house of Bouillon, this lady had said to her:
+
+"I think you know M. Swann very well; he is a great friend of my nephews,
+the des Laumes."
+
+My grandmother had returned from the call full of praise for the house,
+which overlooked some gardens, and in which Mme. de Villeparisis had
+advised her to rent a flat; and also for a repairing tailor and his
+daughter, who kept a little shop in the courtyard, into which she had gone
+to ask them to put a stitch in her skirt, which she had torn on the
+staircase. My grandmother had found these people perfectly charming: the
+girl, she said, was a jewel, and the tailor a most distinguished man, the
+finest she had ever seen. For in her eyes distinction was a thing wholly
+independent of social position. She was in ecstasies over some answer the
+tailor had made, saying to Mamma:
+
+"S�vign� would not have said it better!" and, by way of contrast, of a
+nephew of Mme. de Villeparisis whom she had met at the house:
+
+"My dear, he is so common!"
+
+Now, the effect of that remark about Swann had been, not to raise him in
+my great-aunt's estimation, but to lower Mme. de Villeparisis. It appeared
+that the deference which, on my grandmother's authority, we owed to Mme.
+de Villeparisis imposed on her the reciprocal obligation to do nothing
+that would render her less worthy of our regard, and that she had failed
+in her duty in becoming aware of Swann's existence and in allowing members
+of her family to associate with him. "How should she know Swann? A lady
+who, you always made out, was related to Marshal MacMahon!" This view of
+Swann's social atmosphere which prevailed in my family seemed to be
+confirmed later on by his marriage with a woman of the worst class, you
+might almost say a 'fast' woman, whom, to do him justice, he never
+attempted to introduce to us, for he continued to come to us alone, though
+he came more and more seldom; but from whom they thought they could
+establish, on the assumption that he had found her there, the circle,
+unknown to them, in which he ordinarily moved.
+
+But on one occasion my grandfather read in a newspaper that M. Swann was
+one of the most faithful attendants at the Sunday luncheons given by the
+Duc de X----, whose father and uncle had been among our most prominent
+statesmen in the reign of Louis Philippe. Now my grandfather was curious
+to learn all the little details which might help him to take a mental
+share in the private lives of men like Mole, the Due Pasquier, or the Duc
+de Broglie. He was delighted to find that Swann associated with people who
+had known them. My great-aunt, however, interpreted this piece of news in
+a sense discreditable to Swann; for anyone who chose his associates
+outside the caste in which he had been born and bred, outside his 'proper
+station,' was condemned to utter degradation in her eyes. It seemed to her
+that such a one abdicated all claim to enjoy the fruits of those friendly
+relations with people of good position which prudent parents cultivate and
+store up for their children's benefit, for my great-aunt had actually
+ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer we had known because he had married a
+'Highness' and had thereby stepped down--in her eyes--from the respectable
+position of a lawyer's son to that of those adventurers, upstart footmen
+or stable-boys mostly, to whom we read that queens have sometimes shewn
+their favours. She objected, therefore, to my grandfather's plan of
+questioning Swann, when next he came to dine with us, about these people
+whose friendship with him we had discovered. On the other hand, my
+grandmother's two sisters, elderly spinsters who shared her nobility of
+character but lacked her intelligence, declared that they could not
+conceive what pleasure their brother-in-law could find in talking about
+such trifles. They were ladies of lofty ambition, who for that reason were
+incapable of taking the least interest in what might be called the
+'pinchbeck' things of life, even when they had an historic value, or,
+generally speaking, in anything that was not directly associated with some
+object aesthetically precious. So complete was their negation of interest
+in anything which seemed directly or indirectly a part of our everyday
+life that their sense of hearing--which had gradually come to understand
+its own futility when the tone of the conversation, at the dinner-table,
+became frivolous or merely mundane, without the two old ladies' being able
+to guide it back to the topic dear to themselves--would leave its
+receptive channels unemployed, so effectively that they were actually
+becoming atrophied. So that if my grandfather wished to attract the
+attention of the two sisters, he would have to make use of some such alarm
+signals as mad-doctors adopt in dealing with their distracted patients; as
+by beating several times on a glass with the blade of a knife, fixing them
+at the same time with a sharp word and a compelling glance, violent
+methods which the said doctors are apt to bring with them into their
+everyday life among the sane, either from force of professional habit or
+because they think the whole world a trifle mad.
+
+Their interest grew, however, when, the day before Swann was to dine with
+us, and when he had made them a special present of a case of Asti, my
+great-aunt, who had in her hand a copy of the _Figaro_ in which to the
+name of a picture then on view in a Corot exhibition were added the words,
+"from the collection of M. Charles Swann," asked: "Did you see that Swann
+is 'mentioned' in the _Figaro_?"
+
+"But I have always told you," said my grandmother, "that he had plenty of
+taste."
+
+"You would, of course," retorted my great-aunt, "say anything just to seem
+different from _us_." For, knowing that my grandmother never agreed with
+her, and not being quite confident that it was her own opinion which the
+rest of us invariably endorsed, she wished to extort from us a wholesale
+condemnation of my grandmother's views, against which she hoped to force
+us into solidarity with her own.
+
+But we sat silent. My grandmother's sisters having expressed a desire to
+mention to Swann this reference to him in the _Figaro_, my great-aunt
+dissuaded them. Whenever she saw in others an advantage, however trivial,
+which she herself lacked, she would persuade herself that it was no
+advantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to have to envy
+them.
+
+"I don't think that would please him at all; I know very well, I should
+hate to see my name printed like that, as large as life, in the paper, and
+I shouldn't feel at all flattered if anyone spoke to me about it."
+
+She did not, however, put any very great pressure upon my grandmother's
+sisters, for they, in their horror of vulgarity, had brought to such a
+fine art the concealment of a personal allusion in a wealth of ingenious
+circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person to
+whom it was addressed. As for my mother, her only thought was of managing
+to induce my father to consent to speak to Swann, not of his wife, but of
+his daughter, whom he worshipped, and for whose sake it was understood
+that he had ultimately made his unfortunate marriage.
+
+"You need only say a word; just ask him how she is. It must be so very
+hard for him."
+
+My father, however, was annoyed: "No, no; you have the most absurd ideas.
+It would be utterly ridiculous."
+
+But the only one of us in whom the prospect of Swann's arrival gave rise
+to an unhappy foreboding was myself. And that was because on the evenings
+when there were visitors, or just M. Swann in the house, Mamma did not
+come up to my room. I did not, at that time, have dinner with the family:
+I came out to the garden after dinner, and at nine I said good night and
+went to bed. But on these evenings I used to dine earlier than the others,
+and to come in afterwards and sit at table until eight o'clock, when it
+was understood that I must go upstairs; that frail and precious kiss which
+Mamma used always to leave upon my lips when I was in bed and just going
+to sleep I had to take with me from the dining-room to my own, and to keep
+inviolate all the time that it took me to undress, without letting its
+sweet charm be broken, without letting its volatile essence diffuse itself
+and evaporate; and just on those very evenings when I must needs take most
+pains to receive it with due formality, I had to snatch it, to seize it
+instantly and in public, without even having the time or being properly
+free to apply to what I was doing the punctiliousness which madmen use who
+compel themselves to exclude all other thoughts from their minds while
+they are shutting a door, so that when the sickness of uncertainty sweeps
+over them again they can triumphantly face and overcome it with the
+recollection of the precise moment in which the door was shut.
+
+We were all in the garden when the double peal of the gate-bell sounded
+shyly. Everyone knew that it must be Swann, and yet they looked at one
+another inquiringly and sent my grandmother scouting.
+
+"See that you thank him intelligibly for the wine," my grandfather warned
+his two sisters-in-law; "you know how good it is, and it is a huge case."
+
+"Now, don't start whispering!" said my great-aunt. "How would you like to
+come into a house and find everyone muttering to themselves?"
+
+"Ah! There's M. Swann," cried my father. "Let's ask him if he thinks it
+will be fine to-morrow."
+
+My mother fancied that a word from her would wipe out all the
+unpleasantness which my family had contrived to make Swann feel since his
+marriage.  She found an opportunity to draw him aside for a moment. But I
+followed her: I could not bring myself to let her go out of reach of me
+while I felt that in a few minutes I should have to leave her in the
+dining-room and go up to my bed without the consoling thought, as on
+ordinary evenings, that she would come up, later, to kiss me.
+
+"Now, M. Swann," she said, "do tell me about your daughter; I am sure she
+shews a taste already for nice things, like her papa."
+
+"Come along and sit down here with us all on the verandah," said my
+grandfather, coming up to him. My mother had to abandon the quest, but
+managed to extract from the restriction itself a further refinement of
+thought, as great poets do when the tyranny of rhyme forces them into the
+discovery of their finest lines.
+
+"We can talk about her again when we are by ourselves," she said, or
+rather whispered to Swann. "It is only a mother who can understand. I am
+sure that hers would agree with me."
+
+And so we all sat down round the iron table. I should have liked not to
+think of the hours of anguish which I should have to spend, that
+evening, alone in my room, without the possibility of going to sleep: I
+tried to convince myself that they were of no importance, really, since
+I should have forgotten them next morning, and to fix my mind on
+thoughts of the future which would carry me, as on a bridge, across the
+terrifying abyss that yawned at my feet. But my mind, strained by this
+foreboding, distended like the look which I shot at my mother, would not
+allow any other impression to enter. Thoughts did, indeed, enter it, but
+only on the condition that they left behind them every element of
+beauty, or even of quaintness, by which I might have been distracted or
+beguiled. As a surgical patient, by means of a local anaesthetic, can
+look on with a clear consciousness while an operation is being performed
+upon him and yet feel nothing, I could repeat to myself some favourite
+lines, or watch my grandfather attempting to talk to Swann about the Duc
+d'Audriffet-Pasquier, without being able to kindle any emotion from one
+or amusement from the other. Hardly had my grandfather begun to question
+Swann about that orator when one of my grandmother's sisters, in whose
+ears the question echoed like a solemn but untimely silence which her
+natural politeness bade her interrupt, addressed the other with:
+
+"Just fancy, Flora, I met a young Swedish governess to-day who told me
+some most interesting things about the co-operative movement in
+Scandinavia.  We really must have her to dine here one evening."
+
+"To be sure!" said her sister Flora, "but I haven't wasted my time either.
+I met such a clever old gentleman at M. Vinteuil's who knows Maubant quite
+well, and Maubant has told him every little thing about how he gets up his
+parts. It is the most interesting thing I ever heard. He is a neighbour of
+M. Vinteuil's, and I never knew; and he is so nice besides."
+
+"M. Vinteuil is not the only one who has nice neighbours," cried my aunt
+C�line in a voice which seemed loud because she was so timid, and seemed
+forced because she had been planning the little speech for so long;
+darting, as she spoke, what she called a 'significant glance' at Swann.
+And my aunt Flora, who realised that this veiled utterance was C�line's
+way of thanking Swann intelligibly for the Asti, looked at him with a
+blend of congratulation and irony, either just, because she wished to
+underline her sister's little epigram, or because she envied Swann his
+having inspired it, or merely because she imagined that he was
+embarrassed, and could not help having a little fun at his expense.
+
+"I think it would be worth while," Flora went on, "to have this old
+gentleman to dinner. When you get him upon Maubant or Mme. Materna he will
+talk for hours on end."
+
+"That must be delightful," sighed my grandfather, in whose mind nature had
+unfortunately forgotten to include any capacity whatsoever for becoming
+passionately interested in the co-operative movement among the ladies of
+Sweden or in the methods employed by Maubant to get up his parts, just as
+it had forgotten to endow my grandmother's two sisters with a grain of
+that precious salt which one has oneself to 'add to taste' in order to
+extract any savour from a narrative of the private life of Mole or of the
+Comte de Paris.
+
+"I say!" exclaimed Swann to my grandfather, "what I was going to tell you
+has more to do than you might think with what you were asking me just now,
+for in some respects there has been very little change. I came across a
+passage in Saint-Simon this morning which would have amused you. It is in
+the volume which covers his mission to Spain; not one of the best, little
+more in fact than a journal, but at least it is a journal wonderfully well
+written, which fairly distinguishes it from the devastating journalism
+that we feel bound to read in these days, morning, noon and night."
+
+"I do not agree with you: there are some days when I find reading the
+papers very pleasant indeed!" my aunt Flora broke in, to show Swann that
+she had read the note about his Corot in the _Figaro_.
+
+"Yes," aunt C�line went one better. "When they write about things or
+people in whom we are interested."
+
+"I don't deny it," answered Swann in some bewilderment. "The fault I
+find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some
+fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a
+lifetime give us anything that is of real importance. Suppose that, every
+morning, when we tore the wrapper off our paper with fevered hands, a
+transmutation were to take place, and we were to find inside it--oh! I
+don't know; shall we say Pascal's _Pens�es_?" He articulated the title with
+an ironic emphasis so as not to appear pedantic. "And then, in the gilt and
+tooled volumes which we open once in ten years," he went on, shewing that
+contempt for the things of this world which some men of the world like to
+affect, "we should read that the Queen of the Hellenes had arrived at
+Cannes, or that the Princesse de L�on had given a fancy dress ball. In
+that way we should arrive at the right proportion between 'information'
+and 'publicity.'" But at once regretting that he had allowed himself to
+speak, even in jest, of serious matters, he added ironically: "We are
+having a most entertaining conversation; I cannot think why we climb to
+these lofty summits," and then, turning to my grandfather: "Well,
+Saint-Simon tells how Maulevrier had had the audacity to offer his hand to
+his sons. You remember how he says of Maulevrier, 'Never did I find in
+that coarse bottle anything but ill-humour, boorishness, and folly.'"
+
+"Coarse or not, I know bottles in which there is something very
+different!" said Flora briskly, feeling bound to thank Swann as well as
+her sister, since the present of Asti had been addressed to them both.
+C�line began to laugh.
+
+Swann was puzzled, but went on: "'I cannot say whether it was his
+ignorance or a trap,' writes Saint-Simon; 'he wished to give his hand to
+my children. I noticed it in time to prevent him.'"
+
+My grandfather was already in ecstasies over "ignorance or a trap," but
+Miss C�line--the name of Saint-Simon, a 'man of letters,' having arrested
+the complete paralysis of her sense of hearing--had grown angry.
+
+"What! You admire that, do you? Well, it is clever enough! But what is the
+point of it? Does he mean that one man isn't as good as another? What
+difference can it make whether he is a duke or a groom so long as he is
+intelligent and good? He had a fine way of bringing up his children, your
+Saint-Simon, if he didn't teach them to shake hands with all honest men.
+Really and truly, it's abominable. And you dare to quote it!"
+
+And my grandfather, utterly depressed, realising how futile it would be
+for him, against this opposition, to attempt to get Swann to tell him the
+stories which would have amused him, murmured to my mother: "Just tell me
+again that line of yours which always comforts me so much on these
+occasions. Oh, yes:
+
+  What virtues, Lord, Thou makest us abhor!
+
+Good, that is, very good."
+
+I never took my eyes off my mother. I knew that when they were at table I
+should not be permitted to stay there for the whole of dinner-time, and
+that Mamma, for fear of annoying my father, would not allow me to give her
+in public the series of kisses that she would have had in my room.  And so
+I promised myself that in the dining-room, as they began to eat and drink
+and as I felt the hour approach, I would put beforehand into this kiss,
+which was bound to be so brief and stealthy in execution, everything that
+my own efforts could put into it: would look out very carefully first the
+exact spot on her cheek where I would imprint it, and would so prepare my
+thoughts that I might be able, thanks to these mental preliminaries, to
+consecrate the whole of the minute Mamma would allow me to the sensation
+of her cheek against my lips, as a painter who can have his subject for
+short sittings only prepares his palette, and from what he remembers and
+from rough notes does in advance everything which he possibly can do in
+the sitter's absence. But to-night, before the dinner-bell had sounded, my
+grandfather said with unconscious cruelty: "The little man looks tired;
+he'd better go up to bed. Besides, we are dining late to-night."
+
+And my father, who was less scrupulous than my grandmother or mother in
+observing the letter of a treaty, went on: "Yes, run along; to bed with
+you."
+
+I would have kissed Mamma then and there, but at that moment the
+dinner-bell rang.
+
+"No, no, leave your mother alone. You've said good night quite enough.
+These exhibitions are absurd. Go on upstairs."
+
+And so I must set forth without viaticum; must climb each step of the
+staircase 'against my heart,' as the saying is, climbing in opposition to
+my heart's desire, which was to return to my mother, since she had not, by
+her kiss, given my heart leave to accompany me forth. That hateful
+staircase, up which I always passed with such dismay, gave out a smell of
+varnish which had to some extent absorbed, made definite and fixed the
+special quality of sorrow that I felt each evening, and made it perhaps
+even more cruel to my sensibility because, when it assumed this olfactory
+guise, my intellect was powerless to resist it. When we have gone to sleep
+with a maddening toothache and are conscious of it only as a little girl
+whom we attempt, time after time, to pull out of the water, or as a line
+of Moli�re which we repeat incessantly to ourselves, it is a great relief
+to wake up, so that our intelligence can disentangle the idea of toothache
+from any artificial semblance of heroism or rhythmic cadence. It was the
+precise converse of this relief which I felt when my anguish at having to
+go up to my room invaded my consciousness in a manner infinitely more
+rapid, instantaneous almost, a manner at once insidious and brutal as I
+breathed in--a far more poisonous thing than any moral penetration--the
+peculiar smell of the varnish upon that staircase.
+
+Once in my room I had to stop every loophole, to close the shutters, to
+dig my own grave as I turned down the bed-clothes, to wrap myself in the
+shroud of my nightshirt. But before burying myself in the iron bed which
+had been placed there because, on summer nights, I was too hot among the
+rep curtains of the four-poster, I was stirred to revolt, and attempted
+the desperate stratagem of a condemned prisoner. I wrote to my mother
+begging her to come upstairs for an important reason which I could not put
+in writing. My fear was that Fran�oise, my aunt's cook who used to be put
+in charge of me when I was at Combray, might refuse to take my note. I had
+a suspicion that, in her eyes, to carry a message to my mother when there
+was a stranger in the room would appear flatly inconceivable, just as it
+would be for the door-keeper of a theatre to hand a letter to an actor
+upon the stage. For things which might or might not be done she possessed
+a code at once imperious, abundant, subtle, and uncompromising on points
+themselves imperceptible or irrelevant, which gave it a resemblance to
+those ancient laws which combine such cruel ordinances as the massacre of
+infants at the breast with prohibitions, of exaggerated refinement,
+against "seething the kid in his mother's milk," or "eating of the sinew
+which is upon the hollow of the thigh." This code, if one could judge it
+by the sudden obstinacy which she would put into her refusal to carry out
+certain of our instructions, seemed to have foreseen such social
+complications and refinements of fashion as nothing in Fran�oise's
+surroundings or in her career as a servant in a village household could
+have put into her head; and we were obliged to assume that there was
+latent in her some past existence in the ancient history of France, noble
+and little understood, just as there is in those manufacturing towns where
+old mansions still testify to their former courtly days, and chemical
+workers toil among delicately sculptured scenes of the Miracle of
+Theophilus or the Quatre Fils Aymon.
+
+In this particular instance, the article of her code which made it highly
+improbable that--barring an outbreak of fire--Fran�oise would go down and
+disturb Mamma when M. Swann was there for so unimportant a person as
+myself was one embodying the respect she shewed not only for the family
+(as for the dead, for the clergy, or for royalty), but also for the
+stranger within our gates; a respect which I should perhaps have found
+touching in a book, but which never failed to irritate me on her lips,
+because of the solemn and gentle tones in which she would utter it, and
+which irritated me more than usual this evening when the sacred character
+in which she invested the dinner-party might have the effect of making her
+decline to disturb its ceremonial. But to give myself one chance of
+success I lied without hesitation, telling her that it was not in the
+least myself who had wanted to write to Mamma, but Mamma who, on saying
+good night to me, had begged me not to forget to send her an answer about
+something she had asked me to find, and that she would certainly be very
+angry if this note were not taken to her. I think that Fran�oise
+disbelieved me, for, like those primitive men whose senses were so much
+keener than our own, she could immediately detect, by signs imperceptible
+by the rest of us, the truth or falsehood of anything that we might wish
+to conceal from her. She studied the envelope for five minutes as though
+an examination of the paper itself and the look of my handwriting could
+enlighten her as to the nature of the contents, or tell her to which
+article of her code she ought to refer the matter. Then she went out with
+an air of resignation which seemed to imply: "What a dreadful thing for
+parents to have a child like this!"
+
+A moment later she returned to say that they were still at the ice stage
+and that it was impossible for the butler to deliver the note at once, in
+front of everybody; but that when the finger-bowls were put round he would
+find a way of slipping it into Mamma's hand. At once my anxiety subsided;
+it was now no longer (as it had been a moment ago) until to-morrow that I
+had lost my mother, for my little line was going--to annoy her, no doubt,
+and doubly so because this contrivance would make me ridiculous in Swann's
+eyes--but was going all the same to admit me, invisibly and by stealth,
+into the same room as herself, was going to whisper from me into her ear;
+for that forbidden and unfriendly dining-room, where but a moment ago the
+ice itself--with burned nuts in it--and the finger-bowls seemed to me to
+be concealing pleasures that were mischievous and of a mortal sadness
+because Mamma was tasting of them and I was far away, had opened its doors
+to me and, like a ripe fruit which bursts through its skin, was going to
+pour out into my intoxicated heart the gushing sweetness of Mamma's
+attention while she was reading what I had written. Now I was no longer
+separated from her; the barriers were down; an exquisite thread was
+binding us. Besides, that was not all, for surely Mamma would come.
+
+As for the agony through which I had just passed, I imagined that Swann
+would have laughed heartily at it if he had read my letter and had guessed
+its purpose; whereas, on the contrary, as I was to learn in due course, a
+similar anguish had been the bane of his life for many years, and no one
+perhaps could have understood my feelings at that moment so well as
+himself; to him, that anguish which lies in knowing that the creature one
+adores is in some place of enjoyment where oneself is not and cannot
+follow--to him that anguish came through Love, to which it is in a sense
+predestined, by which it must be equipped and adapted; but when, as had
+befallen me, such an anguish possesses one's soul before Love has yet
+entered into one's life, then it must drift, awaiting Love's coming, vague
+and free, without precise attachment, at the disposal of one sentiment
+to-day, of another to-morrow, of filial piety or affection for a comrade.
+And the joy with which I first bound myself apprentice, when Fran�oise
+returned to tell me that my letter would be delivered; Swann, too, had
+known well that false joy which a friend can give us, or some relative of
+the woman we love, when on his arrival at the house or theatre where she
+is to be found, for some ball or party or 'first-night' at which he is to
+meet her, he sees us wandering outside, desperately awaiting some
+opportunity of communicating with her. He recognises us, greets us
+familiarly, and asks what we are doing there. And when we invent a story
+of having some urgent message to give to his relative or friend, he
+assures us that nothing could be more simple, takes us in at the door, and
+promises to send her down to us in five minutes. How much we love him--as
+at that moment I loved Fran�oise--the good-natured intermediary who by a
+single word has made supportable, human, almost propitious the
+inconceivable, infernal scene of gaiety in the thick of which we had been
+imagining swarms of enemies, perverse and seductive, beguiling away from
+us, even making laugh at us, the woman whom we love. If we are to judge of
+them by him, this relative who has accosted us and who is himself an
+initiate in those cruel mysteries, then the other guests cannot be so very
+demoniacal. Those inaccessible and torturing hours into which she had gone
+to taste of unknown pleasures--behold, a breach in the wall, and we are
+through it. Behold, one of the moments whose series will go to make up
+their sum, a moment as genuine as the rest, if not actually more important
+to ourself because our mistress is more intensely a part of it; we picture
+it to ourselves, we possess it, we intervene upon it, almost we have
+created it: namely, the moment in which he goes to tell her that we are
+waiting there below. And very probably the other moments of the party will
+not be essentially different, will contain nothing else so exquisite or so
+well able to make us suffer, since this kind friend has assured us that
+"Of course, she will be delighted to come down! It will be far more
+amusing for her to talk to you than to be bored up there." Alas! Swann had
+learned by experience that the good intentions of a third party are
+powerless to control a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even
+into a ball-room by a man whom she does not love. Too often, the kind
+friend comes down again alone.
+
+My mother did not appear, but with no attempt to safeguard my self-respect
+(which depended upon her keeping up the fiction that she had asked me to
+let her know the result of my search for something or other) made
+Fran�oise tell me, in so many words "There is no answer"--words I have so
+often, since then, heard the hall-porters in 'mansions' and the flunkeys
+in gambling-clubs and the like, repeat to some poor girl, who replies in
+bewilderment: "What! he's said nothing? It's not possible. You did give
+him my letter, didn't you? Very well, I shall wait a little longer." And
+just as she invariably protests that she does not need the extra gas which
+the porter offers to light for her, and sits on there, hearing nothing
+further, except an occasional remark on the weather which the porter
+exchanges with a messenger whom he will send off suddenly, when he notices
+the time, to put some customer's wine on the ice; so, having declined
+Fran�oise's offer to make me some tea or to stay beside me, I let her go
+off again to the servants' hall, and lay down and shut my eyes, and tried
+not to hear the voices of my family who were drinking their coffee in the
+garden.
+
+But after a few seconds I realised that, by writing that line to Mamma, by
+approaching--at the risk of making her angry--so near to her that I felt I
+could reach out and grasp the moment in which I should see her again, I
+had cut myself off from the possibility of going to sleep until I actually
+had seen her, and my heart began to beat more and more painfully as I
+increased my agitation by ordering myself to keep calm and to acquiesce in
+my ill-fortune. Then, suddenly, my anxiety subsided, a feeling of intense
+happiness coursed through me, as when a strong medicine begins to take
+effect and one's pain vanishes: I had formed a resolution to abandon all
+attempts to go to sleep without seeing Mamma, and had decided to kiss her
+at all costs, even with the certainty of being in disgrace with her for
+long afterwards, when she herself came up to bed. The tranquillity which
+followed my anguish made me extremely alert, no less than my sense of
+expectation, my thirst for and my fear of danger.
+
+Noiselessly I opened the window and sat down on the foot of my bed; hardly
+daring to move in case they should hear me from below. Things outside
+seemed also fixed in mute expectation, so as not to disturb the moonlight
+which, duplicating each of them and throwing it back by the extension,
+forwards, of a shadow denser and more concrete than its substance, had
+made the whole landscape seem at once thinner and longer, like a map
+which, after being folded up, is spread out upon the ground.  What had to
+move--a leaf of the chestnut-tree, for instance--moved. But its minute
+shuddering, complete, finished to the least detail and with utmost
+delicacy of gesture, made no discord with the rest of the scene, and yet
+was not merged in it, remaining clearly outlined. Exposed upon this
+surface of silence, which absorbed nothing from them, the most distant
+sounds, those which must have come from gardens at the far end of the
+town, could be distinguished with such exact 'finish' that the impression
+they gave of coming from a distance seemed due only to their 'pianissimo'
+execution, like those movements on muted strings so well performed by the
+orchestra of the Conservatoire that, although one does not lose a single
+note, one thinks all the same that they are being played somewhere
+outside, a long way from the concert hall, so that all the old
+subscribers, and my grandmother's sisters too, when Swann had given them
+his seats, used to strain their ears as if they had caught the distant
+approach of an army on the march, which had not yet rounded the corner of
+the Rue de Tr�vise.
+
+I was well aware that I had placed myself in a position than which none
+could be counted upon to involve me in graver consequences at my parents'
+hands; consequences far graver, indeed, than a stranger would have
+imagined, and such as (he would have thought) could follow only some
+really shameful fault. But in the system of education which they had given
+me faults were not classified in the same order as in that of other
+children, and I had been taught to place at the head of the list
+(doubtless because there was no other class of faults from which I needed
+to be more carefully protected) those in which I can now distinguish the
+common feature that one succumbs to them by yielding to a nervous impulse.
+But such words as these last had never been uttered in my hearing; no one
+had yet accounted for my temptations in a way which might have led me to
+believe that there was some excuse for my giving in to them, or that I was
+actually incapable of holding out against them. Yet I could easily
+recognise this class of transgressions by the anguish of mind which
+preceded, as well as by the rigour of the punishment which followed them;
+and I knew that what I had just done was in the same category as certain
+other sins for which I had been severely chastised, though infinitely more
+serious than they. When I went out to meet my mother as she herself came
+up to bed, and when she saw that I had remained up so as to say good night
+to her again in the passage, I should not be allowed to stay in the house
+a day longer, I should be packed off to school next morning; so much was
+certain.  Very good: had I been obliged, the next moment, to hurl myself
+out of the window, I should still have preferred such a fate. For what I
+wanted now was Mamma, and to say good night to her. I had gone too far
+along the road which led to the realisation of this desire to be able to
+retrace my steps.
+
+I could hear my parents' footsteps as they went with Swann; and, when the
+rattle of the gate assured me that he had really gone, I crept to the
+window. Mamma was asking my father if he had thought the lobster good, and
+whether M. Swann had had some of the coffee-and-pistachio ice. "I thought
+it rather so-so," she was saying; "next time we shall have to try another
+flavour."
+
+"I can't tell you," said my great-aunt, "what a change I find in Swann.
+He is quite antiquated!" She had grown so accustomed to seeing Swann
+always in the same stage of adolescence that it was a shock to her to find
+him suddenly less young than the age she still attributed to him. And the
+others too were beginning to remark in Swann that abnormal, excessive,
+scandalous senescence, meet only in a celibate, in one of that class for
+whom it seems that the great day which knows no morrow must be longer than
+for other men, since for such a one it is void of promise, and from its
+dawn the moments steadily accumulate without any subsequent partition
+among his offspring.
+
+"I fancy he has a lot of trouble with that wretched wife of his, who
+'lives' with a certain Monsieur de Charlus, as all Combray knows. It's the
+talk of the town."
+
+My mother observed that, in spite of this, he had looked much less unhappy
+of late. "And he doesn't nearly so often do that trick of his, so like his
+father, of wiping his eyes and passing his hand across his forehead. I
+think myself that in his heart of hearts he doesn't love his wife any
+more."
+
+"Why, of course he doesn't," answered my grandfather. "He wrote me a
+letter about it, ages ago, to which I took care to pay no attention, but
+it left no doubt as to his feelings, let alone his love for his wife.
+Hullo! you two; you never thanked him for the Asti!" he went on, turning
+to his sisters-in-law.
+
+"What! we never thanked him? I think, between you and me, that I put it to
+him quite neatly," replied my aunt Flora.
+
+"Yes, you managed it very well; I admired you for it," said my aunt
+C�line.
+
+"But you did it very prettily, too."
+
+"Yes; I liked my expression about 'nice neighbours.'"
+
+"What! Do you call that thanking him?" shouted my grandfather. "I heard
+that all right, but devil take me if I guessed it was meant for Swann.
+You may be quite sure he never noticed it."
+
+"Come, come; Swann is not a fool. I am positive he appreciated the
+compliment.  You didn't expect me to tell him the number of bottles, or to
+guess what he paid for them."
+
+My father and mother were left alone and sat down for a moment; then my
+father said: "Well, shall we go up to bed?"
+
+"As you wish, dear, though I don't feel in the least like sleeping. I
+don't know why; it can't be the coffee-ice--it wasn't strong enough to
+keep me awake like this. But I see a light in the servants' hall: poor
+Fran�oise has been sitting up for me, so I will get her to unhook me while
+you go and undress."
+
+My mother opened the latticed door which led from the hall to the
+staircase.  Presently I heard her coming upstairs to close her window. I
+went quietly into the passage; my heart was beating so violently that I
+could hardly move, but at least it was throbbing no longer with anxiety,
+but with terror and with joy. I saw in the well of the stair a light
+coming upwards, from Mamma's candle. Then I saw Mamma herself: I threw
+myself upon her. For an instant she looked at me in astonishment, not
+realising what could have happened. Then her face assumed an expression of
+anger. She said not a single word to me; and, for that matter, I used to
+go for days on end without being spoken to, for far less offences than
+this. A single word from Mamma would have been an admission that further
+intercourse with me was within the bounds of possibility, and that might
+perhaps have appeared to me more terrible still, as indicating that, with
+such a punishment as was in store for me, mere silence, and even anger,
+were relatively puerile.
+
+A word from her then would have implied the false calm in which one
+converses with a servant to whom one has just decided to give notice; the
+kiss one bestows on a son who is being packed off to enlist, which would
+have been denied him if it had merely been a matter of being angry with
+him for a few days. But she heard my father coming from the dressing-room,
+where he had gone to take off his clothes, and, to avoid the 'scene' which
+he would make if he saw me, she said, in a voice half-stifled by her
+anger: "Run away at once. Don't let your father see you standing there
+like a crazy jane!"
+
+But I begged her again to "Come and say good night to me!" terrified as I
+saw the light from my father's candle already creeping up the wall, but
+also making use of his approach as a means of blackmail, in the hope that
+my mother, not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must if she
+continued to hold out, would give in to me, and say: "Go back to your
+room. I will come."
+
+Too late: my father was upon us. Instinctively I murmured, though no one
+heard me, "I am done for!"
+
+I was not, however. My father used constantly to refuse to let me do
+things which were quite clearly allowed by the more liberal charters
+granted me by my mother and grandmother, because he paid no heed to
+'Principles,' and because in his sight there were no such things as
+'Rights of Man.' For some quite irrelevant reason, or for no reason at
+all, he would at the last moment prevent me from taking some particular
+walk, one so regular and so consecrated to my use that to deprive me of it
+was a clear breach of faith; or again, as he had done this evening, long
+before the appointed hour he would snap out: "Run along up to bed now; no
+excuses!" But then again, simply because he was devoid of principles (in
+my grandmother's sense), so he could not, properly speaking, be called
+inexorable. He looked at me for a moment with an air of annoyance and
+surprise, and then when Mamma had told him, not without some
+embarrassment, what had happened, said to her: "Go along with him, then;
+you said just now that you didn't feel like sleep, so stay in his room for
+a little. I don't need anything."
+
+"But dear," my mother answered timidly, "whether or not I feel like sleep
+is not the point; we must not make the child accustomed..."
+
+"There's no question of making him accustomed," said my father, with a
+shrug of the shoulders; "you can see quite well that the child is unhappy.
+After all, we aren't gaolers. You'll end by making him ill, and a lot of
+good that will do. There are two beds in his room; tell Fran�oise to make
+up the big one for you, and stay beside him for the rest of the night. I'm
+off to bed, anyhow; I'm not nervous like you. Good night."
+
+It was impossible for me to thank my father; what he called my
+sentimentality would have exasperated him. I stood there, not daring to
+move; he was still confronting us, an immense figure in his white
+nightshirt, crowned with the pink and violet scarf of Indian cashmere in
+which, since he had begun to suffer from neuralgia, he used to tie up his
+head, standing like Abraham in the engraving after Benozzo Gozzoli which
+M. Swann had given me, telling Sarah that she must tear herself away from
+Isaac. Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase,
+up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb, was long
+ago demolished.  And in myself, too, many things have perished which, I
+imagined, would last for ever, and new structures have arisen, giving
+birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have
+foreseen, just as now the old are difficult of comprehension. It is a long
+time, too, since my father has been able to tell Mamma to "Go with the
+child." Never again will such hours be possible for me. But of late I have
+been increasingly able to catch, if I listen attentively, the sound of the
+sobs which I had the strength to control in my father's presence, and
+which broke out only when I found myself alone with Mamma. Actually, their
+echo has never ceased: it is only because life is now growing more and
+more quiet round about me that I hear them afresh, like those convent
+bells which are so effectively drowned during the day by the noises of the
+streets that one would suppose them to have been stopped for ever, until
+they sound out again through the silent evening air.
+
+Mamma spent that night in my room: when I had just committed a sin so
+deadly that I was waiting to be banished from the household, my parents
+gave me a far greater concession than I should ever have won as the reward
+of a good action. Even at the moment when it manifested itself in this
+crowning mercy, my father's conduct towards me was still somewhat
+arbitrary, and regardless of my deserts, as was characteristic of him and
+due to the fact that his actions were generally dictated by chance
+expediencies rather than based on any formal plan. And perhaps even what I
+called his strictness, when he sent me off to bed, deserved that title
+less, really, than my mother's or grandmother's attitude, for his nature,
+which in some respects differed more than theirs from my own, had probably
+prevented him from guessing, until then, how wretched I was every evening,
+a thing which my mother and grandmother knew well; but they loved me
+enough to be unwilling to spare me that suffering, which they hoped to
+teach me to overcome, so as to reduce my nervous sensibility and to
+strengthen my will. As for my father, whose affection for me was of
+another kind, I doubt if he would have shewn so much courage, for as soon
+as he had grasped the fact that I was unhappy he had said to my mother:
+"Go and comfort him." Mamma stayed all night in my room, and it seemed
+that she did not wish to mar by recrimination those hours, so different
+from anything that I had had a right to expect; for when Fran�oise (who
+guessed that something extraordinary must have happened when she saw Mamma
+sitting by my side, holding my hand and letting me cry unchecked) said to
+her: "But, Madame, what is little Master crying for?" she replied: "Why,
+Fran�oise, he doesn't know himself: it is his nerves. Make up the big bed
+for me quickly and then go off to your own." And thus for the first time
+my unhappiness was regarded no longer as a fault for which I must be
+punished, but as an involuntary evil which had been officially recognised
+a nervous condition for which I was in no way responsible: I had the
+consolation that I need no longer mingle apprehensive scruples with the
+bitterness of my tears; I could weep henceforward without sin. I felt no
+small degree of pride, either, in Franchise's presence at this return to
+humane conditions which, not an hour after Mamma had refused to come up to
+my room and had sent the snubbing message that I was to go to sleep,
+raised me to the dignity of a grown-up person, brought me of a sudden to a
+sort of puberty of sorrow, to emancipation from tears. I ought then to
+have been happy; I was not. It struck me that my mother had just made a
+first concession which must have been painful to her, that it was a first
+step down from the ideal she had formed for me, and that for the first
+time she, with all her courage, had to confess herself beaten. It struck
+me that if I had just scored a victory it was over her; that I had
+succeeded, as sickness or sorrow or age might have succeeded, in relaxing
+her will, in altering her judgment; that this evening opened a new era,
+must remain a black date in the calendar.  And if I had dared now, I
+should have said to Mamma: "No, I don't want you; you mustn't sleep here."
+But I was conscious of the practical wisdom, of what would be called
+nowadays the realism with which she tempered the ardent idealism of my
+grandmother's nature, and I knew that now the mischief was done she would
+prefer to let me enjoy the soothing pleasure of her company, and not to
+disturb my father again. Certainly my mother's beautiful features seemed
+to shine again with youth that evening, as she sat gently holding my hands
+and trying to check my tears; but, just for that reason, it seemed to me
+that this should not have happened; her anger would have been less
+difficult to endure than this new kindness which my childhood had not
+known; I felt that I had with an impious and secret finger traced a first
+wrinkle upon her soul and made the first white hair shew upon her head.
+This thought redoubled my sobs, and then I saw that Mamma, who had never
+allowed herself to go to any length of tenderness with me, was suddenly
+overcome by my tears and had to struggle to keep back her own. Then, as
+she saw that I had noticed this, she said to me, with a smile: "Why, my
+little buttercup, my little canary-boy, he's going to make Mamma as silly
+as himself if this goes on. Look, since you can't sleep, and Mamma can't
+either, we mustn't go on in this stupid way; we must do something; I'll
+get one of your books." But I had none there. "Would you like me to get
+out the books now that your grandmother is going to give you for your
+birthday? Just think it over first, and don't be disappointed if there is
+nothing new for you then."
+
+I was only too delighted, and Mamma went to find a parcel of books in
+which I could not distinguish, through the paper in which it was wrapped,
+any more than its squareness and size, but which, even at this first
+glimpse, brief and obscure as it was, bade fair to eclipse already the
+paint-box of last New Year's Day and the silkworms of the year before. It
+contained _La Mare au Diable_, _Fran�ois le Champi_, _La Petite Fadette_,
+and _Les Ma�tres Sonneurs_. My grandmother, as I learned afterwards, had
+at first chosen Mussel's poems, a volume of Rousseau, and _Indiana_; for
+while she considered light reading as unwholesome as sweets and cakes, she
+did not reflect that the strong breath of genius must have upon the very
+soul of a child an influence at once more dangerous and less quickening
+than those of fresh air and country breezes upon his body. But when my
+father had seemed almost to regard her as insane on learning the names of
+the books she proposed to give me, she had journeyed back by herself to
+Jouy-le-Vicomte to the bookseller's, so that there should be no fear of my
+not having my present in time (it was a burning hot day, and she had come
+home so unwell that the doctor had warned my mother not to allow her again
+to tire herself in that way), and had there fallen back upon the four
+pastoral novels of George Sand.
+
+"My dear," she had said to Mamma, "I could not allow myself to give the
+child anything that was not well written."
+
+The truth was that she could never make up her mind to purchase anything
+from which no intellectual profit was to be derived, and, above all, that
+profit which good things bestowed on us by teaching us to seek our
+pleasures elsewhere than in the barren satisfaction of worldly wealth.
+Even when she had to make some one a present of the kind called 'useful,'
+when she had to give an armchair or some table-silver or a walking-stick,
+she would choose 'antiques,' as though their long desuetude had effaced
+from them any semblance of utility and fitted them rather to instruct us
+in the lives of the men of other days than to serve the common
+requirements of our own. She would have liked me to have in my room
+photographs of ancient buildings or of beautiful places. But at the moment
+of buying them, and for all that the subject of the picture had an
+aesthetic value of its own, she would find that vulgarity and utility had
+too prominent a part in them, through the mechanical nature of their
+reproduction by photography. She attempted by a subterfuge, if not to
+eliminate altogether their commercial banality, at least to minimise it,
+to substitute for the bulk of it what was art still, to introduce, as it
+might be, several 'thicknesses' of art; instead of photographs of Chartres
+Cathedral, of the Fountains of Saint-Cloud, or of Vesuvius she would
+inquire of Swann whether some great painter had not made pictures of them,
+and preferred to give me photographs of 'Chartres Cathedral' after Corot,
+of the 'Fountains of Saint-Cloud' after Hubert Robert, and of 'Vesuvius'
+after Turner, which were a stage higher in the scale of art. But although
+the photographer had been prevented from reproducing directly the
+masterpieces or the beauties of nature, and had there been replaced by a
+great artist, he resumed his odious position when it came to reproducing
+the artist's interpretation.  Accordingly, having to reckon again with
+vulgarity, my grandmother would endeavour to postpone the moment of
+contact still further. She would ask Swann if the picture had not been
+engraved, preferring, when possible, old engravings with some interest of
+association apart from themselves, such, for example, as shew us a
+masterpiece in a state in which we can no longer see it to-day, as
+Morghen's print of the 'Cenacolo' of Leonardo before it was spoiled by
+restoration. It must be admitted that the results of this method of
+interpreting the art of making presents were not always happy.  The idea
+which I formed of Venice, from a drawing by Titian which is supposed to
+have the lagoon in the background, was certainly far less accurate than
+what I have since derived from ordinary photographs. We could no longer
+keep count in the family (when my great-aunt tried to frame an indictment
+of my grandmother) of all the armchairs she had presented to married
+couples, young and old, which on a first attempt to sit down upon them had
+at once collapsed beneath the weight of their recipient. But my
+grandmother would have thought it sordid to concern herself too closely
+with the solidity of any piece of furniture in which could still be
+discerned a flourish, a smile, a brave conceit of the past. And even what
+in such pieces supplied a material need, since it did so in a manner to
+which we are no longer accustomed, was as charming to her as one of those
+old forms of speech in which we can still see traces of a metaphor whose
+fine point has been worn away by the rough usage of our modern tongue. In
+precisely the same way the pastoral novels of George Sand, which she was
+giving me for my birthday, were regular lumber-rooms of antique furniture,
+full of expressions that have fallen out of use and returned as imagery,
+such as one finds now only in country dialects. And my grandmother had
+bought them in preference to other books, just as she would have preferred
+to take a house that had a gothic dovecot, or some other such piece of
+antiquity as would have a pleasant effect on the mind, filling it with a
+nostalgic longing for impossible journeys through the realms of time.
+
+Mamma sat down by my bed; she had chosen _Fran�ois le Champi_, whose
+reddish cover and incomprehensible title gave it a distinct personality in
+my eyes and a mysterious attraction. I had not then read any real novels.
+I had heard it said that George Sand was a typical novelist. That prepared
+me in advance to imagine that _Fran�ois le Champi_ contained something
+inexpressibly delicious. The course of the narrative, where it tended to
+arouse curiosity or melt to pity, certain modes of expression which
+disturb or sadden the reader, and which, with a little experience, he may
+recognise as 'common form' in novels, seemed to me then distinctive--for
+to me a new book was not one of a number of similar objects, but was like
+an individual man, unmatched, and with no cause of existence beyond
+himself--an intoxicating whiff of the peculiar essence of _Fran�ois le
+Champi_. Beneath the everyday incidents, the commonplace thoughts and
+hackneyed words, I could hear, or overhear, an intonation, a rhythmic
+utterance fine and strange. The 'action' began: to me it seemed all the
+more obscure because in those days, when I read to myself, I used often,
+while I turned the pages, to dream of something quite different. And to
+the gaps which this habit made in my knowledge of the story more were
+added by the fact that when it was Mamma who was reading to me aloud she
+left all the love-scenes out. And so all the odd changes which take place
+in the relations between the miller's wife and the boy, changes which only
+the birth and growth of love can explain, seemed to me plunged and steeped
+in a mystery, the key to which (as I could readily believe) lay in that
+strange and pleasant-sounding name of _Champi_, which draped the boy who
+bore it, I knew not why, in its own bright colour, purpurate and charming.
+If my mother was not a faithful reader, she was, none the less, admirable
+when reading a work in which she found the note of true feeling by the
+respectful simplicity of her interpretation and by the sound of her sweet
+and gentle voice. It was the same in her daily life, when it was not works
+of art but men and women whom she was moved to pity or admire: it was
+touching to observe with what deference she would banish from her voice,
+her gestures, from her whole conversation, now the note of joy which might
+have distressed some mother who had long ago lost a child, now the
+recollection of an event or anniversary which might have reminded some old
+gentleman of the burden of his years, now the household topic which might
+have bored some young man of letters. And so, when she read aloud the
+prose of George Sand, prose which is everywhere redolent of that
+generosity and moral distinction which Mamma had learned from my
+grandmother to place above all other qualities in life, and which I was
+not to teach her until much later to refrain from placing, in the same
+way, above all other qualities in literature; taking pains to banish from
+her voice any weakness or affectation which might have blocked its channel
+for that powerful stream of language, she supplied all the natural
+tenderness, all the lavish sweetness which they demanded to phrases which
+seemed to have been composed for her voice, and which were all, so to
+speak, within her compass.  She came to them with the tone that they
+required, with the cordial accent which existed before they were, which
+dictated them, but which is not to be found in the words themselves, and
+by these means she smoothed away, as she read on, any harshness there
+might be or discordance in the tenses of verbs, endowing the imperfect and
+the preterite with all the sweetness which there is in generosity, all the
+melancholy which there is in love; guided the sentence that was drawing to
+an end towards that which was waiting to begin, now hastening, now
+slackening the pace of the syllables so as to bring them, despite their
+difference of quantity, into a uniform rhythm, and breathed into this
+quite ordinary prose a kind of life, continuous and full of feeling.
+
+My agony was soothed; I let myself be borne upon the current of this
+gentle night on which I had my mother by my side. I knew that such a night
+could not be repeated; that the strongest desire I had in the world,
+namely, to keep my mother in my room through the sad hours of darkness,
+ran too much counter to general requirements and to the wishes of others
+for such a concession as had been granted me this evening to be anything
+but a rare and casual exception. To-morrow night I should again be the
+victim of anguish and Mamma would not stay by my side. But when these
+storms of anguish grew calm I could no longer realise their existence;
+besides, tomorrow evening was still a long way off; I reminded myself that
+I should still have time to think about things, albeit that remission of
+time could bring me no access of power, albeit the coming event was in no
+way dependent upon the exercise of my will, and seemed not quite
+inevitable only because it was still separated from me by this short
+interval.
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+And so it was that, for a long time afterwards, when I lay awake at night
+and revived old memories of Combray, I saw no more of it than this sort of
+luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy background,
+like the panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign will illuminate
+and dissect from the front of a building the other parts of which remain
+plunged in darkness: broad enough at its base, the little parlour, the
+dining-room, the alluring shadows of the path along which would come M.
+Swann, the unconscious author of my sufferings, the hall through which I
+would journey to the first step of that staircase, so hard to climb, which
+constituted, all by itself, the tapering 'elevation' of an irregular
+pyramid; and, at the summit, my bedroom, with the little passage through
+whose glazed door Mamma would enter; in a word, seen always at the same
+evening hour, isolated from all its possible surroundings, detached and
+solitary against its shadowy background, the bare minimum of scenery
+necessary (like the setting one sees printed at the head of an old play,
+for its performance in the provinces) to the drama of my undressing, as
+though all Combray had consisted of but two floors joined by a slender
+staircase, and as though there had been no time there but seven o'clock at
+night. I must own that I could have assured any questioner that Combray
+did include other scenes and did exist at other hours than these. But
+since the facts which I should then have recalled would have been prompted
+only by an exercise of the will, by my intellectual memory, and since the
+pictures which that kind of memory shews us of the past preserve nothing
+of the past itself, I should never have had any wish to ponder over this
+residue of Combray. To me it was in reality all dead.
+
+Permanently dead? Very possibly.
+
+There is a large element of hazard in these matters, and a second hazard,
+that of our own death, often prevents us from awaiting for any length of
+time the favours of the first.
+
+I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls
+of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an
+animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to
+us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the
+tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then
+they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have
+recognised their voice the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they
+have overcome death and return to share our life.
+
+And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to
+recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past
+is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in
+some material object (in the sensation which that material object will
+give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on
+chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.
+
+Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was
+comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any
+existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother,
+seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily
+take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my
+mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called
+'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been moulded in the
+fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a
+dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a
+spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner
+had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a
+shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the
+extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had
+invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its
+origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me,
+its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having
+had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence;
+or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to
+feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this
+all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of
+tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not,
+indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it
+signify? How could I seize upon and define it?
+
+I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first,
+a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop;
+the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest,
+the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has called up in me,
+but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely with a
+gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which I, too, cannot
+interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon the tea for it
+again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my
+final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for
+it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever
+the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders;
+when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go
+seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than
+that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far
+exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone
+can bring into the light of day.
+
+And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this
+unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its
+existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a real
+state in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished.
+I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the
+moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I find again the same
+state, illumined by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make one further
+effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensation. And
+that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle,
+every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the
+sounds which come from the next room.  And then, feeling that my mind is
+growing fatigued without having any success to report, I compel it for a
+change to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of
+other things, to rest and refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And
+then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in
+position before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that first
+mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its
+resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like
+an anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel
+it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of
+great spaces traversed.
+
+Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the
+image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to
+follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too
+much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless reflection in which
+are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot
+distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter,
+to translate to me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable
+paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea; cannot ask it to inform me what
+special circumstance is in question, of what period in my past life.
+
+Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this
+memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment
+has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very
+depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has
+stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can
+say whether it will ever rise? Ten times over I must essay the task, must
+lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters
+us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me
+to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the
+worries of to-day and of my hopes for to-morrow, which let themselves be
+pondered over without effort or distress of mind.
+
+And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of
+madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I
+did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in
+her bedroom, my aunt L�onie used to give me, dipping it first in her own
+cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had
+recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so
+often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays
+in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from
+those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps
+because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing
+now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including
+that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its
+severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long
+dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed
+them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a
+long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the
+things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more
+vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell
+and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind
+us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest;
+and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their
+essence, the vast structure of recollection.
+
+And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in
+her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I
+did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory
+made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where
+her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to
+the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out
+behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had
+been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to
+night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon,
+the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took
+when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a
+porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which
+until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet,
+stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become
+flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment
+all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies
+on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings
+and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings,
+taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and
+gardens alike, from my cup of tea.
+
+
+
+
+COMBRAY
+
+
+Combray at a distance, from a twenty-mile radius, as we used to see it
+from the railway when we arrived there every year in Holy Week, was no
+more than a church epitomising the town, representing it, speaking of it
+and for it to the horizon, and as one drew near, gathering close about its
+long, dark cloak, sheltering from the wind, on the open plain, as a
+shepherd gathers his sheep, the woolly grey backs of its flocking houses,
+which a fragment of its mediaeval ramparts enclosed, here and there, in an
+outline as scrupulously circular as that of a little town in a primitive
+painting. To live in, Combray was a trifle depressing, like its streets,
+whose houses, built of the blackened stone of the country, fronted with
+outside steps, capped with gables which projected long shadows downwards,
+were so dark that one had, as soon as the sun began to go down, to draw
+back the curtains in the sitting-room windows; streets with the solemn
+names of Saints, not a few of whom figured in the history of the early
+lords of Combray, such as the Rue Saint-Hilaire, the Rue Saint-Jacques, in
+which my aunt's house stood, the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde, which ran past her
+railings, and the Rue du Saint-Esprit, on to which the little garden gate
+opened; and these Combray streets exist in so remote a quarter of my
+memory, painted in colours so different from those in which the world is
+decked for me to-day, that in fact one and all of them, and the church
+which towered above them in the Square, seem to me now more unsubstantial
+than the projections of my magic-lantern; while at times I feel that to be
+able to cross the Rue Saint-Hilaire again, to engage a room in the Rue de
+l'Oiseau, in the old hostelry of the Oiseau Flesch�, from whose windows in
+the pavement used to rise a smell of cooking which rises still in my mind,
+now and then, in the same warm gusts of comfort, would be to secure a
+contact with the unseen world more marvellously supernatural than it would
+be to make Golo's acquaintance and to chat with Genevi�ve de Brabant.
+
+My grandfather's cousin--by courtesy my great-aunt--with whom we used to
+stay, was the mother of that aunt L�onie who, since her husband's (my
+uncle Octave's) death, had gradually declined to leave, first Combray,
+then her house in Combray, then her bedroom, and finally her bed; and who
+now never 'came down,' but lay perpetually in an indefinite condition of
+grief, physical exhaustion, illness, obsessions, and religious
+observances.  Her own room looked out over the Rue Saint-Jacques, which
+ran a long way further to end in the Grand-Pr� (as distinct from the
+Petit-Pr�, a green space in the centre of the town where three streets
+met) and which, monotonous and grey, with the three high steps of stone
+before almost every one of its doors, seemed like a deep furrow cut by
+some sculptor of gothic images in the very block of stone out of which he
+had fashioned a Calvary or a Crib. My aunt's life was now practically
+confined to two adjoining rooms, in one of which she would rest in the
+afternoon while they, aired the other. They were rooms of that country
+order which (just as in certain climes whole tracts of air or ocean are
+illuminated or scented by myriads of protozoa which we cannot see)
+fascinate our sense of smell with the countless odours springing from
+their own special virtues, wisdom, habits, a whole secret system of life,
+invisible, superabundant and profoundly moral, which their atmosphere
+holds in solution; smells natural enough indeed, and coloured by
+circumstances as are those of the neighbouring countryside, but already
+humanised, domesticated, confined, an exquisite, skilful, limpid jelly,
+blending all the fruits of the season which have left the orchard for the
+store-room, smells changing with the year, but plenishing, domestic
+smells, which compensate for the sharpness of hoar frost with the sweet
+savour of warm bread, smells lazy and punctual as a village clock, roving
+smells, pious smells; rejoicing in a peace which brings only an increase
+of anxiety, and in a prosiness which serves as a deep source of poetry to
+the stranger who passes through their midst without having lived amongst
+them. The air of those rooms was saturated with the fine bouquet of a
+silence so nourishing, so succulent that I could not enter them without a
+sort of greedy enjoyment, particularly on those first mornings, chilly
+still, of the Easter holidays, when I could taste it more fully, because I
+had just arrived then at Combray: before I went in to wish my aunt good
+day I would be kept waiting a little time in the outer room, where the
+sun, a wintry sun still, had crept in to warm itself before the fire,
+lighted already between its two brick sides and plastering all the room
+and everything in it with a smell of soot, making the room like one of
+those great open hearths which one finds in the country, or one of the
+canopied mantelpieces in old castles under which one sits hoping that in
+the world outside it is raining or snowing, hoping almost for a
+catastrophic deluge to add the romance of shelter and security to the
+comfort of a snug retreat; I would turn to and fro between the prayer-desk
+and the stamped velvet armchairs, each one always draped in its crocheted
+antimacassar, while the fire, baking like a pie the appetising smells with
+which the air of the room, was thickly clotted, which the dewy and sunny
+freshness of the morning had already 'raised' and started to 'set,' puffed
+them and glazed them and fluted them and swelled them into an invisible
+though not impalpable country cake, an immense puff-pastry, in which,
+barely waiting to savour the crustier, more delicate, more respectable,
+but also drier smells of the cupboard, the chest-of-drawers, and the
+patterned wall-paper I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to
+bury myself in the nondescript, resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity
+smell of the flowered quilt.
+
+In the next room I could hear my aunt talking quietly to herself. She
+never spoke save in low tones, because she believed that there was
+something broken in her head and floating loose there, which she might
+displace by talking too loud; but she never remained for long, even when
+alone, without saying something, because she believed that it was good for
+her throat, and that by keeping the blood there in circulation it would
+make less frequent the chokings and other pains to which she was liable;
+besides, in the life of complete inertia which she led she attached to the
+least of her sensations an extraordinary importance, endowed them with a
+Protean ubiquity which made it difficult for her to keep them secret, and,
+failing a confidant to whom she might communicate them, she used to
+promulgate them to herself in an unceasing monologue which was her sole
+form of activity. Unfortunately, having formed the habit of thinking
+aloud, she did not always take care to see that there was no one in the
+adjoining room, and I would often hear her saying to herself: "I must not
+forget that I never slept a wink"--for "never sleeping a wink" was her
+great claim to distinction, and one admitted and respected in our
+household vocabulary; in the morning Fran�oise would not 'call' her, but
+would simply 'come to' her; during the day, when my aunt wished to take a
+nap, we used to say just that she wished to 'be quiet' or to 'rest'; and
+when in conversation she so far forgot herself as to say "what made me
+wake up," or "I dreamed that," she would flush and at once correct
+herself.
+
+After waiting a minute, I would go in and kiss her; Fran�oise would be
+making her tea; or, if my aunt were feeling 'upset,' she would ask instead
+for her 'tisane,' and it would be my duty to shake out of the chemist's
+little package on to a plate the amount of lime-blossom required for
+infusion in boiling water. The drying of the stems had twisted them into a
+fantastic trellis, in whose intervals the pale flowers opened, as though a
+painter had arranged them there, grouping them in the most decorative
+poses. The leaves, which had lost or altered their own appearance, assumed
+those instead of the most incongruous things imaginable, as though the
+transparent wings of flies or the blank sides of labels or the petals of
+roses had been collected and pounded, or interwoven as birds weave the
+material for their nests. A thousand trifling little details--the charming
+prodigality of the chemist--details which would have been eliminated from
+an artificial preparation, gave me, like a book in which one is astonished
+to read the name of a person whom one knows, the pleasure of finding that
+these were indeed real lime-blossoms, like those I had seen, when coming
+from the train, in the Avenue de la Gare, altered, but only because they
+were not imitations but the very same blossoms, which had grown old. And
+as each new character is merely a metamorphosis from something older, in
+these little grey balls I recognised green buds plucked before their time;
+but beyond all else the rosy, moony, tender glow which lit up the blossoms
+among the frail forest of stems from which they hung like little golden
+roses--marking, as the radiance upon an old wall still marks the place of
+a vanished fresco, the difference between those parts of the tree which
+had and those which had not been 'in bloom'--shewed me that these were
+petals which, before their flowering-time, the chemist's package had
+embalmed on warm evenings of spring. That rosy candlelight was still their
+colour, but half-extinguished and deadened in the diminished life which
+was now theirs, and which may be called the twilight of a flower.
+Presently my aunt was able to dip in the boiling infusion, in which she
+would relish the savour of dead or faded blossom, a little madeleine, of
+which she would hold out a piece to me when it was sufficiently soft.
+
+At one side of her bed stood a big yellow chest-of-drawers of lemon-wood,
+and a table which served at once as pharmacy and as high altar, on which,
+beneath a statue of Our Lady and a bottle of Vichy-C�lestins, might be
+found her service-books and her medical prescriptions, everything that she
+needed for the performance, in bed, of her duties to soul and body, to
+keep the proper times for pepsin and for vespers. On the other side her
+bed was bounded by the window: she had the street beneath her eyes, and
+would read in it from morning to night to divert the tedium of her life,
+like a Persian prince, the daily but immemorial chronicles of Combray,
+which she would discuss in detail afterwards with Fran�oise.
+
+I would not have been five minutes with my aunt before she would send me
+away in case I made her tired. She would hold out for me to kiss her sad
+brow, pale and lifeless, on which at this early hour she would not yet
+have arranged the false hair and through which the bones shone like the
+points of a crown of thorns--or the beads of a rosary, and she would say to
+me: "Now, my poor child, you must go away; go and get ready for mass; and
+if you see Fran�oise downstairs, tell her not to stay too long amusing
+herself with you; she must come up soon to see if I want anything."
+
+Fran�oise, who had been for many years in my aunt's service and did not at
+that time suspect that she would one day be transferred entirely to ours,
+was a little inclined to desert my aunt during the months which we spent
+in her house. There had been in my infancy, before we first went to
+Combray, and when my aunt L�onie used still to spend the winter in Paris
+with her mother, a time when I knew Fran�oise so little that on New Year's
+Day, before going into my great-aunt's house, my mother put a five-franc
+piece in my hand and said: "Now, be careful. Don't make any mistake. Wait
+until you hear me say 'Good morning, Fran�oise,' and I touch your arm
+before you give it to her." No sooner had we arrived in my aunt's dark
+hall than we saw in the gloom, beneath the frills of a snowy cap as stiff
+and fragile as if it had been made of spun sugar, the concentric waves of
+a smile of anticipatory gratitude. It was Fran�oise, motionless and erect,
+framed in the small doorway of the corridor like the statue of a saint in
+its niche. When we had grown more accustomed to this religious darkness we
+could discern in her features a disinterested love of all humanity,
+blended with a tender respect for the 'upper classes' which raised to the
+most honourable quarter of her heart the hope of receiving her due reward.
+Mamma pinched my arm sharply and said in a loud voice: "Good morning,
+Fran�oise." At this signal my fingers parted and I let fall the coin,
+which found a receptacle in a confused but outstretched hand. But since we
+had begun to go to Combray there was no one I knew better than Fran�oise.
+We were her favourites, and in the first years at least, while she shewed
+the same consideration for us as for my aunt, she enjoyed us with a keener
+relish, because we had, in addition to our dignity as part of 'the family'
+(for she had for those invisible bonds by which community of blood unites
+the members of a family as much respect as any Greek tragedian), the fresh
+charm of not being her customary employers.  And so with what joy would
+she welcome us, with what sorrow complain that the weather was still so
+bad for us, on the day of our arrival, just before Easter, when there was
+often an icy wind; while Mamma inquired after her daughter and her
+nephews, and if her grandson was good-looking, and what they were going to
+make of him, and whether he took after his granny.
+
+Later, when no one else was in the room, Mamma, who knew that Fran�oise
+was still mourning for her parents, who had been dead for years, would
+speak of them kindly, asking her endless little questions about them and
+their lives.
+
+She had guessed that Fran�oise was not over-fond of her son-in-law, and
+that he spoiled the pleasure she found in visiting her daughter, as the
+two could not talk so freely when he was there. And so one day, when
+Fran�oise was going to their house, some miles from Combray, Mamma said to
+her, with a smile: "Tell me, Fran�oise, if Julien has had to go away, and
+you have Marguerite to yourself all day, you will be very sorry, but will
+make the best of it, won't you?"
+
+And Fran�oise answered, laughing: "Madame knows everything; Madame is
+worse than the X-rays" (she pronounced 'x' with an affectation of
+difficulty and with a smile in deprecation of her, an unlettered woman's,
+daring to employ a scientific term) "they brought here for Mme.  Octave,
+which see what is in your heart"--and she went off, disturbed that anyone
+should be caring about her, perhaps anxious that we should not see her in
+tears: Mamma was the first person who had given her the pleasure of
+feeling that her peasant existence, with its simple joys and sorrows,
+might offer some interest, might be a source of grief or pleasure to some
+one other than herself.
+
+My aunt resigned herself to doing without Fran�oise to some extent during
+our visits, knowing how much my mother appreciated the services of so
+active and intelligent a maid, one who looked as smart at five o'clock in
+the morning in her kitchen, under a cap whose stiff and dazzling frills
+seemed to be made of porcelain, as when dressed for churchgoing; who did
+everything in the right way, who toiled like a horse, whether she was well
+or ill, but without noise, without the appearance of doing anything; the
+only one of my aunt's maids who when Mamma asked for hot water or black
+coffee would bring them actually boiling; she was one of those servants
+who in a household seem least satisfactory, at first, to a stranger,
+doubtless because they take no pains to make a conquest of him and shew
+him no special attention, knowing very well that they have no real need of
+him, that he will cease to be invited to the house sooner than they will
+be dismissed from it; who, on the other hand, cling with most fidelity to
+those masters and mistresses who have tested and proved their real
+capacity, and do not look for that superficial responsiveness, that
+slavish affability, which may impress a stranger favourably, but often
+conceals an utter barrenness of spirit in which no amount of training can
+produce the least trace of individuality.
+
+When Fran�oise, having seen that my parents had everything they required,
+first went upstairs again to give my aunt her pepsin and to find out from
+her what she would take for luncheon, very few mornings pased but she was
+called upon to give an opinion, or to furnish an explanation, in regard to
+some important event.
+
+"Just fancy, Fran�oise, Mme. Goupil went by more than a quarter of an hour
+late to fetch her sister: if she loses any more time on the way I should
+not be at all surprised if she got in after the Elevation."
+
+"Well, there'd be nothing wonderful in that," would be the answer. Or:
+
+"Fran�oise, if you had come in five minutes ago, you would have seen Mme.
+Imbert go past with some asparagus twice the size of what mother Callot
+has: do try to find out from her cook where she got them. You know you've
+been putting asparagus in all your sauces this spring; you might be able
+to get some like these for our visitors."
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised if they came from the Cur�'s," Fran�oise would
+say, and:
+
+"I'm sure you wouldn't, my poor Fran�oise," my aunt would reply, raising
+her shoulders. "From the Cur�'s, indeed! You know quite well that he can
+never grow anything but wretched little twigs of asparagus, not asparagus
+at all. I tell you these ones were as thick as my arm. Not your arm, of
+course, but my-poor arm, which has grown so much thinner again this year."
+Or:
+
+"Fran�oise, didn't you hear that bell just now! It split my head."
+
+"No, Mme. Octave."
+
+"Ah, poor girl, your skull must be very thick; you may thank God for that.
+It was Maguelone come to fetch Dr. Piperaud. He came out with her at once
+and they went off along the Rue de l'Oiseau. There must be some child
+ill."
+
+"Oh dear, dear; the poor little creature!" would come with a sigh from
+Fran�oise, who could not hear of any calamity befalling a person unknown
+to her, even in some distant part of the world, without beginning to
+lament. Or:
+
+"Fran�oise, for whom did they toll the passing-bell just now? Oh dear, of
+course, it would be for Mme. Rousseau. And to think that I had forgotten
+that she passed away the other night. Indeed, it is time the Lord called
+me home too; I don't know what has become of my head since I lost my poor
+Octave. But I am wasting your time, my good girl."
+
+"Indeed no, Mme. Octave, my time is not so precious; whoever made our time
+didn't sell it to us. I am just going to see that my fire hasn't gone
+out."
+
+In this way Fran�oise and my aunt made a critical valuation between them,
+in the course of these morning sessions, of the earliest happenings of the
+day. But sometimes these happenings assumed so mysterious or so alarming
+an air that my aunt felt she could not wait until it was time for
+Fran�oise to come upstairs, and then a formidable and quadruple peal would
+resound through the house.
+
+"But, Mme. Octave, it is not time for your pepsin," Fran�oise would begin.
+"Are you feeling faint?"
+
+"No, thank you, Fran�oise," my aunt would reply, "that is to say, yes; for
+you know well that there is very seldom a time when I don't feel faint;
+one day I shall pass away like Mme. Rousseau, before I know where I am;
+but that is not why I rang. Would you believe that I have just seen, as
+plainly as I see you, Mme. Goupil with a little girl I didn't know at all.
+Run and get a pennyworth of salt from Camus. It's not often that Th�odore
+can't tell you who a person is."
+
+"But that must be M. Pupin's daughter," Fran�oise would say, preferring to
+stick to an immediate explanation, since she had been perhaps twice
+already into Camus's shop that morning.
+
+"M. Pupin's daughter! Oh, that's a likely story, my poor Fran�oise.  Do
+you think I should not have recognised M. Pupin's daughter!"
+
+"But I don't mean the big one, Mme. Octave; I mean the little girl, he one
+who goes to school at Jouy. I seem to have seen her once already his
+morning."
+
+"Oh, if that's what it is!" my aunt would say, "she must have come over
+for the holidays. Yes, that is it. No need to ask, she will have come over
+for the holidays. But then we shall soon see Mme. Sazerat come along and
+ring her sister's door-bell, for her luncheon. That will be it! I saw the
+boy from Galopin's go by with a tart. You will see that the tart was for
+Mme. Goupil."
+
+"Once Mme. Goupil has anyone in the house, Mme. Octave, you won't be long
+in seeing all her folk going in to their luncheon there, for it's not so
+early as it was," would be the answer, for Fran�oise, who was anxious to
+retire downstairs to look after our own meal, was not sorry to leave my
+aunt with the prospect of such a distraction.
+
+"Oh! not before midday!" my aunt would reply in a tone of resignation,
+darting an uneasy glance at the clock, but stealthily, so as not to let it
+be seen that she, who had renounced all earthly joys, yet found a keen
+satisfaction in learning that Mme. Goupil was expecting company to
+luncheon, though, alas, she must wait a little more than an hour still
+before enjoying the spectacle. "And it will come in the middle of my
+luncheon!" she would murmur to herself. Her luncheon was such a
+distraction in itself that she did not like any other to come at the same
+time.  "At least, you will not forget to give me my creamed eggs on one of
+the flat plates?" These were the only plates which had pictures on them
+and my aunt used to amuse herself at every meal by reading the description
+on whichever might have been sent up to her. She would put on her
+spectacles and spell out: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," "Aladdin, or
+the Wonderful Lamp," and smile, and say "Very good indeed."
+
+"I may as well go across to Camus..." Fran�oise would hazard, seeing that
+my aunt had no longer any intention of sending her there.
+
+"No, no; it's not worth while now; it's certain to be the Pupin girl.  My
+poor Fran�oise, I am sorry to have made you come upstairs for nothing."
+
+But it was not for nothing, as my aunt well knew, that she had rung for
+Fran�oise, since at Combray a person whom one 'didn't know at all' was as
+incredible a being as any mythological deity, and it was apt to be
+forgotten that after each occasion on which there had appeared in the Rue
+du Saint-Esprit or in the Square one of these bewildering phenomena,
+careful and exhaustive researches had invariably reduced the fabulous
+monster to the proportions of a person whom one 'did know,' either
+personally or in the abstract, in his or her civil status as being more or
+less closely related to some family in Combray. It would turn out to be
+Mme.  Sauton's son discharged from the army, or the Abb� Perdreau's niece
+come home from her convent, or the Cur�'s brother, a tax-collector at
+Ch�teaudun, who had just retired on a pension or had come over to Combray
+for the holidays. On first noticing them you have been impressed by the
+thought that there might be in Combray people whom you 'didn't know at
+all,' simply because, you had failed to recognise or identify them at
+once. And yet long beforehand Mme. Sauton and the Cur� had given warning
+that they expected their 'strangers.' In the evening, when I came in and
+went upstairs to tell my aunt the incidents of our walk, if I was rash
+enough to say to her that we had passed, near the Pont-Vieux, a man whom
+my grandfather didn't know:
+
+"A man grandfather didn't know at all!" she would exclaim. "That's a
+likely story." None the less, she would be a little disturbed by the news,
+she would wish to have the details correctly, and so my grandfather would
+be summoned. "Who can it have been that you passed near the Pont-Vieux,
+uncle? A man you didn't know at all?"
+
+"Why, of course I did," my grandfather would answer; "it was Prosper, Mme.
+Bouilleboeuf's gardener's brother."
+
+"Ah, well!" my aunt would say, calm again but slightly flushed still; "and
+the boy told me that you had passed a man you didn't know at all!" After
+which I would be warned to be more careful of what I said, and not to
+upset my aunt so by thoughtless remarks. Everyone was so well known in
+Combray, animals as well as people, that if my aunt had happened to see a
+dog go by which she 'didn't know at all' she would think about it
+incessantly, devoting to the solution of the incomprehensible problem all
+her inductive talent and her leisure hours.
+
+"That will be Mme. Sazerat's dog," Fran�oise would suggest, without any
+real conviction, but in the hope of peace, and so that my aunt should not
+'split her head.'
+
+"As if I didn't know Mme. Sazerat's dog!"--for my aunt's critical mind
+would not so easily admit any fresh fact.
+
+"Ah, but that will be the new dog M. Galopin has brought her from
+Lisieux."
+
+"Oh, if that's what it is!"
+
+"It seems, it's a most engaging animal," Fran�oise would go on, having got
+the story from Th�odore, "as clever as a Christian, always in a good
+temper, always friendly, always everything that's nice. It's not often you
+see an animal so well-behaved at that age. Mme. Octave, it's high time I
+left you; I can't afford to stay here amusing myself; look, it's nearly
+ten o'clock and my fire not lighted yet, and I've still to dress the
+asparagus."
+
+"What, Fran�oise, more asparagus! It's a regular disease of asparagus you
+have got this year: you will make our Parisians sick of it."
+
+"No, no, Madame Octave, they like it well enough. They'll be coming back
+from church soon as hungry as hunters, and they won't eat it out of the
+back of their spoons, you'll see."
+
+"Church! why, they must be there now; you'd better not lose any time.  Go
+and look after your luncheon."
+
+While my aunt gossiped on in this way with Fran�oise I would have
+accompanied my parents to mass. How I loved it: how clearly I can see it
+still, our church at Combray! The old porch by which we went in, black,
+and full of holes as a cullender, was worn out of shape and deeply
+furrowed at the sides (as also was the holy water stoup to which it led
+us) just as if the gentle grazing touch of the cloaks of peasant-women
+going into the church, and of their fingers dipping into the water, had
+managed by agelong repetition to acquire a destructive force, to impress
+itself on the stone, to carve ruts in it like those made by cart-wheels
+upon stone gate-posts against which they are driven every day. Its
+memorial stones, beneath which the noble dust of the Abbots of Combray,
+who were buried there, furnished the choir with a sort of spiritual
+pavement, were themselves no longer hard and lifeless matter, for time had
+softened and sweetened them, and had made them melt like honey and flow
+beyond their proper margins, either surging out in a milky, frothing wave,
+washing from its place a florid gothic capital, drowning the white violets
+of the marble floor; or else reabsorbed into their limits, contracting
+still further a crabbed Latin inscription, bringing a fresh touch of
+fantasy into the arrangement of its curtailed characters, closing together
+two letters of some word of which the rest were disproportionately
+scattered. Its windows were never so brilliant as on days when the sun
+scarcely shone, so that if it was dull outside you might be certain of
+fine weather in church.  One of them was filled from top to bottom by a
+solitary figure, like the king on a playing-card, who lived up there
+beneath his canopy of stone, between earth and heaven; and in the blue
+light of its slanting shadow, on weekdays sometimes, at noon, when there
+was no service (at one of those rare moments when the airy, empty church,
+more human somehow and more luxurious with the sun shewing off all its
+rich furnishings, seemed to have almost a habitable air, like the
+hall--all sculptured stone and painted glass--of some mediaeval mansion),
+you might see Mme.  Sazerat kneel for an instant, laying down on the chair
+beside her own a neatly corded parcel of little cakes which she had just
+bought at the baker's and was taking home for her luncheon. In another, a
+mountain of rosy snow, at whose foot a battle was being fought, seemed to
+have frozen the window also, which it swelled and distorted with its
+cloudy sleet, like a pane to which snowflakes have drifted and clung, but
+flakes illumined by a sunrise--the same, doubtless, which purpled the
+reredos of the altar with tints so fresh that they seemed rather to be
+thrown on it for a moment by a light shining from outside and shortly to
+be extinguished than painted and permanently fastened on the stone. And
+all of them were so old that you could see, here and there, their silvery
+antiquity sparkling with the dust of centuries and shewing in its
+threadbare brilliance the very cords of their lovely tapestry of glass.
+There was one among them which was a tall panel composed of a hundred
+little rectangular windows, of blue principally, like a great game of
+patience of the kind planned to beguile King Charles VI; but, either
+because a ray of sunlight had gleamed through it or because my own
+shifting vision had drawn across the window, whose colours died away and
+were rekindled by turns, a rare and transient fire--the next instant it
+had taken on all the iridescence of a peacock's tail, then shook and
+wavered in a flaming and fantastic shower, distilled and dropping from the
+groin of the dark and rocky vault down the moist walls, as though it were
+along the bed of some rainbow grotto of sinuous stalactites that I was
+following my parents, who marched before me, their prayer-books clasped in
+their hands; a moment later the little lozenge windows had put on the deep
+transparence, the unbreakable hardness of sapphires clustered on some
+enormous breastplate; but beyond which could be distinguished, dearer than
+all such treasures, a fleeting smile from the sun, which could be seen and
+felt as well here, in the blue and gentle flood in which it washed the
+masonry, as on the pavement of the Square or the straw of the
+market-place; and even on our first Sundays, when we came down before
+Easter, it would console me for the blackness and bareness of the earth
+outside by making burst into blossom, as in some springtime in old history
+among the heirs of Saint Louis, this dazzling and gilded carpet of
+forget-me-nots in glass.
+
+Two tapestries of high warp represented the coronation of Esther (in which
+tradition would have it that the weaver had given to Ahasuerus the
+features of one of the kings of France and to Esther those of a lady of
+Guermantes whose lover he had been); their colours had melted into one
+another, so as to add expression, relief, light to the pictures. A touch
+of red over the lips of Esther had strayed beyond their outline; the
+yellow on her dress was spread with such unctuous plumpness as to have
+acquired a kind of solidity, and stood boldly out from the receding
+atmosphere; while the green of the trees, which was still bright in Silk
+and wool among the lower parts of the panel, but had quite 'gone' at the
+top, separated in a paler scheme, above the dark trunks, the yellowing
+upper branches, tanned and half-obliterated by the sharp though sidelong
+rays of an invisible sun. All these things and, still more than these, the
+treasures which had come to the church from personages who to me were
+almost legendary figures (such as the golden cross wrought, it was said,
+by Saint Eloi and presented by Dagobert, and the tomb of the sons of Louis
+the Germanic in porphyry and enamelled copper), because of which I used to
+go forward into the church when we were making our way to our chairs as
+into a fairy-haunted valley, where the rustic sees with amazement on a
+rock, a tree, a marsh, the tangible proofs of the little people's
+supernatural passage--all these things made of the church for me something
+entirely different from the rest of the town; a building which occupied,
+so to speak, four dimensions of space--the name of the fourth being
+Time--which had sailed the centuries with that old nave, where bay after
+bay, chapel after chapel, seemed to stretch across and hold down and
+conquer not merely a few yards of soil, but each successive epoch from
+which the whole building had emerged triumphant, hiding the rugged
+barbarities of the eleventh century in the thickness of its walls, through
+which nothing could be seen of the heavy arches, long stopped and blinded
+with coarse blocks of ashlar, except where, near the porch, a deep groove
+was furrowed into one wall by the tower-stair; and even there the
+barbarity was veiled by the graceful gothic arcade which pressed
+coquettishly upon it, like a row of grown-up sisters who, to hide him from
+the eyes of strangers, arrange themselves smilingly in front of a
+countrified, unmannerly and ill-dressed younger brother; rearing into the
+sky above the Square a tower which had looked down upon Saint Louis, and
+seemed to behold him still; and thrusting down with its crypt into the
+blackness of a Merovingian night, through which, guiding us with groping
+finger-tips beneath the shadowy vault, ribbed strongly as an immense bat's
+wing of stone, Th�odore or his sister would light up for us with a candle
+the tomb of Sigebert's little daughter, in which a deep hole, like the bed
+of a fossil, had been bored, or so it was said, "by a crystal lamp which,
+on the night when the Frankish princess was murdered, had left, of its own
+accord, the golden chains by which it was suspended where the apse is
+to-day and with neither the crystal broken nor the light extinguished had
+buried itself in the stone, through which it had gently forced its way."
+
+And then the apse of Combray: what am I to say of that? It was so coarse,
+so devoid of artistic beauty, even of the religious spirit. From outside,
+since the street crossing which it commanded was on a lower level, its
+great wall was thrust upwards from a basement of unfaced ashlar, jagged
+with flints, in all of which there was nothing particularly
+ecclesiastical; the windows seemed to have been pierced at an abnormal
+height, and its whole appearance was that of a prison wall rather than of
+a church. And certainly in later years, were I to recall all the glorious
+apses that I had seen, it would never enter my mind to compare with any
+one of them the apse of Combray. Only, one day, turning out of a little
+street in some country town, I came upon three alley-ways that converged,
+and facing them an old wall, rubbed, worn, crumbling, and unusually high;
+with windows pierced in it far overhead and the same asymmetrical
+appearance as the apse of Combray. And at that moment I did not say to
+myself, as at Chartres I might have done or at Rheims, with what strength
+the religious feeling had been expressed in its construction, but
+instinctively I exclaimed "The Church!"
+
+The church! A dear, familiar friend; close pressed in the Rue
+Saint-Hilaire, upon which its north door opened, by its two neighbours,
+Mme.  Loiseau's house and the pharmacy of M. Rapin, against which its
+walls rested without interspace; a simple citizen of Combray, who might
+have had her number in the street had the streets of Combray borne
+numbers, and at whose door one felt that the postman ought to stop on his
+morning rounds, before going into Mme. Loiseau's and after leaving M.
+Rapin's, there existed, for all that, between the church and everything in
+Combray that was not the church a clear line of demarcation which I have
+never succeeded in eliminating from my mind. In vain might Mme. Loiseau
+deck her window-sills with fuchsias, which developed the bad habit of
+letting their branches trail at all times and in all directions, head
+downwards, and whose flowers had no more important business, when they
+were big enough to taste the joys of life, than to go and cool their
+purple, congested cheeks against the dark front of the church; to me such
+conduct sanctified the fuchsias not at all; between the flowers and the
+blackened stones towards which they leaned, if my eyes could discern no
+interval, my mind preserved the impression of an abyss.
+
+From a long way off one could distinguish and identify the steeple of
+Saint-Hilaire inscribing its unforgettable form upon a horizon beneath
+which Combray had not yet appeared; when from the train which brought us
+down from Paris at Easter-time my father caught sight of it, as it slipped
+into every fold of the sky in turn, its little iron cock veering
+continually in all directions, he would say: "Come, get your wraps
+together, we are there." And on one of the longest walks we ever took from
+Combray there was a spot where the narrow road emerged suddenly on to an
+immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose
+and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple, but so
+sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched on the
+sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a landscape,
+to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this single
+indication of human existence. As one drew near it and could make out the
+remains of the square tower, half in ruins, which still stood by its side,
+though without rivalling it in height, one was struck, first of all, by
+the tone, reddish and sombre, of its stones; and on a misty morning in
+autumn one would have called it, to see it rising above the violet
+thunder-cloud of the vineyards, a ruin of purple, almost the colour of the
+wild vine.
+
+Often in the Square, as we came home, my grandmother would make me stop to
+look up at it. From the tower windows, placed two and two, one pair above
+another, with that right and original proportion in their spacing to which
+not only human faces owe their beauty and dignity, it released, it let
+fall at regular intervals flights of jackdaws which for a little while
+would wheel and caw, as though the ancient stones which allowed them to
+sport thus and never seemed to see them, becoming of a sudden
+uninhabitable and discharging some infinitely disturbing element, had
+struck them and driven them forth. Then after patterning everywhere the
+violet velvet of the evening air, abruptly soothed, they would return and
+be absorbed in the tower, deadly no longer but benignant, some perching
+here and there (not seeming to move, but snapping, perhaps, and swallowing
+some passing insect) on the points of turrets, as a seagull perches, with
+an angler's immobility, on the crest of a wave. Without quite knowing why,
+my grandmother found in the steeple of Saint-Hilaire that absence of
+vulgarity, pretension, and meanness which made her love--and deem rich in
+beneficent influences--nature itself, when the hand of man had not, as did
+my great-aunt's gardener, trimmed it, and the works of genius. And
+certainly every part one saw of the church served to distinguish the whole
+from any other building by a kind of general feeling which pervaded it,
+but it was in the steeple that the church seemed to display a
+consciousness of itself, to affirm its individual and responsible
+existence.  It was the steeple which spoke for the church. I think, too,
+that in a confused way my grandmother found in the steeple of Combray what
+she prized above anything else in the world, namely, a natural air and an
+air of distinction. Ignorant of architecture, she would say:
+
+"My dears, laugh at me if you like; it is not conventionally beautiful,
+but there is something in its quaint old face which pleases me. If it
+could play the piano, I am sure it would really _play_." And when she
+gazed on it, when her eyes followed the gentle tension, the fervent
+inclination of its stony slopes which drew together as they rose, like
+hands joined in prayer, she would absorb herself so utterly in the
+outpouring of the spire that her gaze seemed to leap upwards with it; her
+lips at the same time curving in a friendly smile for the worn old stones
+of which the setting sun now illumined no more than the topmost pinnacles,
+which, at the point where they entered that zone of sunlight and were
+softened and sweetened by it, seemed to have mounted suddenly far higher,
+to have become truly remote, like a song whose singer breaks into
+falsetto, an octave above the accompanying air.
+
+It was the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which shaped and crowned and
+consecrated every occupation, every hour of the day, every point of view
+in the town. From my bedroom window I could discern no more than its base,
+which had been freshly covered with slates; but when on Sundays I saw
+these, in the hot light of a summer morning, blaze like a black sun I
+would say to myself: "Good heavens! nine o'clock! I must get ready for
+mass at once if I am to have time to go in and kiss aunt L�onie first,"
+and I would know exactly what was the colour of the sunlight upon the
+Square, I could feel the heat and dust of the market, the shade behind the
+blinds of the shop into which Mamma would perhaps go on her way to mass,
+penetrating its odour of unbleached calico, to purchase a handkerchief or
+something, of which the draper himself would let her see what he had,
+bowing from the waist: who, having made everything ready for shutting up,
+had just gone into the back shop to put on his Sunday coat and to wash his
+hands, which it was his habit, every few minutes and even on the saddest
+occasions, to rub one against the other with an air of enterprise,
+cunning, and success.
+
+And again, after mass, when we looked in to tell Th�odore to bring a
+larger loaf than usual because our cousins had taken advantage of the fine
+weather to come over from Thiberzy for luncheon, we had in front of us the
+steeple, which, baked and brown itself like a larger loaf still of 'holy
+bread,' with flakes and sticky drops on it of sunlight, pricked its sharp
+point into the blue sky. And in the evening, as I came in from my walk and
+thought of the approaching moment when I must say good night to my mother
+and see her no more, the steeple was by contrast so kindly, there at the
+close of day, that I would imagine it as being laid, like a brown velvet
+cushion, against--as being thrust into the pallid sky which had yielded
+beneath its pressure, had sunk slightly so as to make room for it, and had
+correspondingly risen on either side; while the cries of the birds
+wheeling to and fro about it seemed to intensify its silence, to elongate
+its spire still further, and to invest it with some quality beyond the
+power of words.
+
+Even when our errands lay in places behind the church, from which it could
+not be seen, the view seemed always to have been composed with reference
+to the steeple, which would stand up, now here, now there, among the
+houses, and was perhaps even more affecting when it appeared thus without
+the church. And, indeed, there are many others which look best when seen
+in this way, and I can call to mind vignettes of housetops with
+surmounting steeples in quite another category of art than those formed by
+the dreary streets of Combray. I shall never forget, in a quaint Norman
+town not far from Balbec, two charming eighteenth-century houses, dear to
+me and venerable for many reasons, between which, when one looks up at
+them from a fine garden which descends in terraces to the river, the
+gothic spire of a church (itself hidden by the houses) soars into the sky
+with the effect of crowning and completing their fronts, but in a material
+so different, so precious, so beringed, so rosy, so polished, that it is
+at once seen to be no more a part of them than would be a part of two
+pretty pebbles lying side by side, between which it had been washed on the
+beach, the purple, crinkled spire of some sea-shell spun out into a turret
+and gay with glossy colour. Even in Paris, in one of the ugliest parts of
+the town, I know a window from which one can see across a first, a second,
+and even a third layer of jumbled roofs, street beyond street, a violet
+bell, sometimes ruddy, sometimes too, in the finest 'prints' which the
+atmosphere makes of it, of an ashy solution of black; which is, in fact,
+nothing else than the dome of Saint-Augustin, and which imparts to this
+view of Paris the character of some of the Piranesi views of Rome. But
+since into none of these little etchings, whatever the taste my memory may
+have been able to bring to their execution, was it able to contribute an
+element I have long lost, the feeling which makes us not merely regard a
+thing as a spectacle, but believe in it as in a creature without parallel,
+so none of them keeps in dependence on it a whole section of my inmost
+life as does the memory of those aspects of the steeple of Combray from
+the streets behind the church. Whether one saw it at five o'clock when
+going to call for letters at the post-office, some doors away from one, on
+the left, raising abruptly with its isolated peak the ridge of housetops;
+or again, when one had to go in and ask for news of Mme. Sazerat, one's
+eyes followed the line where it ran low again beyond the farther,
+descending slope, and one knew that it would be the second turning after
+the steeple; or yet again, if pressing further afield one went to the
+station, one saw it obliquely, shewing in profile fresh angles and
+surfaces, like a solid body surprised at some unknown point in its
+revolution; or, from the banks of the Vivonne, the apse, drawn muscularly
+together and heightened in perspective, seemed to spring upwards with the
+effort which the steeple made to hurl its spire-point into the heart of
+heaven: it was always to the steeple that one must return, always it which
+dominated everything else, summing up the houses with an unexpected
+pinnacle, raised before me like the Finger of God, Whose Body might have
+been concealed below among the crowd of human bodies without fear of my
+confounding It, for that reason, with them. And so even to-day in any
+large provincial town, or in a quarter of Paris which I do not know well,
+if a passer-by who is 'putting me on the right road' shews me from afar,
+as a point to aim at, some belfry of a hospital, or a convent steeple
+lifting the peak of its ecclesiastical cap at the corner of the street
+which I am to take, my memory need only find in it some dim resemblance to
+that dear and vanished outline, and the passer-by, should he turn round to
+make sure that I have not gone astray, would see me, to his astonishment,
+oblivious of the walk that I had planned to take or the place where I was
+obliged to call, standing still on the spot, before that steeple, for
+hours on end, motionless, trying to remember, feeling deep within myself a
+tract of soil reclaimed from the waters of Lethe slowly drying until the
+buildings rise on it again; and then no doubt, and then more uneasily than
+when, just now, I asked him for a direction, I will seek my way again, I
+will turn a corner... but... the goal is in my heart...
+
+On our way home from mass we would often meet M. Legrandin, who, detained
+in Paris by his professional duties as an engineer, could only (except in
+the regular holiday seasons) visit his home at Combray between Saturday
+evenings and Monday mornings. He was one of that class of men who, apart
+from a scientific career in which they may well have proved brilliantly
+successful, have acquired an entirely different kind of culture, literary
+or artistic, of which they make no use in the specialised work of their
+profession, but by which their conversation profits. More 'literary' than
+many 'men of letters' (we were not aware at this period that M. Legrandin
+had a distinct reputation as a writer, and so were greatly astonished to
+find that a well-known composer had set some verses of his to music),
+endowed with a greater ease in execution than many painters, they imagine
+that the life they are obliged to lead is not that for which they are
+really fitted, and they bring to their regular occupations either a
+fantastic indifference or a sustained and lofty application, scornful,
+bitter, and conscientious. Tall, with a good figure, a fine, thoughtful
+face, drooping fair moustaches, a look of disillusionment in his blue
+eyes, an almost exaggerated refinement of courtesy; a talker such as we
+had never heard; he was in the sight of my family, who never ceased to
+quote him as an example, the very pattern of a gentleman, who took life in
+the noblest and most delicate manner. My grandmother alone found fault
+with him for speaking a little too well, a little too much like a book,
+for not using a vocabulary as natural as his loosely knotted Lavalli�re
+neckties, his short, straight, almost schoolboyish coat. She was
+astonished, too, at the furious invective which he was always launching at
+the aristocracy, at fashionable life, and 'snobbishness'--"undoubtedly,"
+he would say, "the sin of which Saint Paul is thinking when he speaks of
+the sin for which there is no forgiveness."
+
+Worldly ambition was a thing which my grandmother was so little capable of
+feeling, or indeed of understanding, that it seemed to her futile to apply
+so much heat to its condemnation. Besides, she thought it in not very good
+taste that M. Legrandin, whose sister was married to a country gentleman
+of Lower Normandy near Balbec, should deliver himself of such violent
+attacks upon the nobles, going so far as to blame the Revolution for not
+having guillotined them all.
+
+"Well met, my friends!" he would say as he came towards us. "You are lucky
+to spend so much time here; to-morrow I have to go back to Paris, to
+squeeze back into my niche.
+
+"Oh, I admit," he went on, with his own peculiar smile, gently ironical,
+disillusioned and vague, "I have every useless thing in the world in my
+house there. The only thing wanting is the necessary thing, a great patch
+of open sky like this. Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life,
+little boy," he added, turning to me. "You have a soul in you of rare
+quality, an artist's nature; never let it starve for lack of what it
+needs."
+
+When, on our reaching the house, my aunt would send to ask us whether Mme.
+Goupil had indeed arrived late for mass, not one of us could inform her.
+Instead, we increased her anxiety by telling her that there was a painter
+at work in the church copying the window of Gilbert the Bad.  Fran�oise
+was at once dispatched to the grocer's, but returned empty-handed owing to
+the absence of Th�odore, whose dual profession of choirman, with a part in
+the maintenance of the fabric, and of grocer's assistant gave him not only
+relations with all sections of society, but an encyclopaedic knowledge of
+their affairs.
+
+"Ah!" my aunt would sigh, "I wish it were time for Eulalie to come.  She
+is really the only person who will be able to tell me."
+
+Eulalie was a limping, energetic, deaf spinster who had 'retired' after
+the death of Mme. de la Bretonnerie, with whom she had been in service
+from her childhood, and had then taken a room beside the church, from
+which she would incessantly emerge, either to attend some service, or,
+when there was no service, to say a prayer by herself or to give Th�odore
+a hand; the rest of her time she spent in visiting sick persons like my
+aunt L�onie, to whom she would relate everything that had occurred at mass
+or vespers. She was not above adding occasional pocket-money to the little
+income which was found for her by the family of her old employers by going
+from time to time to look after the Cur�'s linen, or that of some other
+person of note in the clerical world of Combray. Above a mantle of black
+cloth she wore a little white coif that seemed almost to attach her to
+some Order, and an infirmity of the skin had stained part of her cheeks
+and her crooked nose the bright red colour of balsam. Her visits were the
+one great distraction in the life of my aunt L�onie, who now saw hardly
+anyone else, except the reverend Cur�. My aunt had by degrees erased every
+other visitor's name from her list, because they all committed the fatal
+error, in her eyes, of falling into one or other of the two categories of
+people she most detested. One group, the worse of the two, and the one of
+which she rid herself first, consisted of those who advised her not to
+take so much care of herself, and preached (even if only negatively and
+with no outward signs beyond an occasional disapproving silence or
+doubting smile) the subversive doctrine that a sharp walk in the sun and a
+good red beefsteak would do her more good (her, who had had two dreadful
+sips of Vichy water on her stomach for fourteen hours!) than all her
+medicine bottles and her bed. The other category was composed of people
+who appeared to believe that she was more seriously ill than she thought,
+in fact that she was as seriously ill as she said. And so none of those
+whom she had allowed upstairs to her room, after considerable
+hesitation and at Franchise's urgent request, and who in the course of
+their visit had shewn how unworthy they were of the honour which had been
+done them by venturing a timid: "Don't you think that if you were just to
+stir out a little on really fine days...?" or who, on the other hand, when
+she said to them: "I am very low, very low; nearing the end, dear
+friends!" had replied: "Ah, yes, when one has no strength left! Still, you
+may last a while yet"; each party alike might be certain that her doors
+would never open to them again. And if Fran�oise was amused by the look of
+consternation on my aunt's face whenever she saw, from her bed, any of
+these people in the Rue du Saint-Esprit, who looked as if they were coming
+to see her, or heard her own door-bell ring, she would laugh far more
+heartily, as at a clever trick, at my aunt's devices (which never failed)
+for having them sent away, and at their look of discomfiture when they had
+to turn back without having seen her; and would be filled with secret
+admiration for her mistress, whom she felt to be superior to all these
+other people, inasmuch as she could and did contrive not to see them. In
+short, my aunt stipulated, at one and the same time, that whoever came to
+see her must approve of her way of life, commiserate with her in her
+sufferings, and assure her of an ultimate recovery.
+
+In all this Eulalie excelled. My aunt might say to her twenty times in a
+minute: "The end is come at last, my poor Eulalie!", twenty times Eulalie
+would retort with: "Knowing your illness as you do, Mme. Octave, you will
+live to be a hundred, as Mme. Sazerin said to me only yesterday." For one
+of Eulalie's most rooted beliefs, and one that the formidable list of
+corrections which her experience must have compiled was powerless to
+eradicate, was that Mme. Sazerat's name was really Mme. Sazerin.
+
+"I do not ask to live to a hundred," my aunt would say, for she preferred
+to have no definite limit fixed to the number of her days.
+
+And since, besides this, Eulalie knew, as no one else knew, how to
+distract my aunt without tiring her, her visits, which took place
+regularly every Sunday, unless something unforeseen occurred to prevent
+them, were for my aunt a pleasure the prospect of which kept her on those
+days in a state of expectation, appetising enough to begin with, but at
+once changing to the agony of a hunger too long unsatisfied if Eulalie
+were a minute late in coming. For, if unduly prolonged, the rapture of
+waiting for Eulalie became a torture, and my aunt would never cease from
+looking at the time, and yawning, and complaining of each of her symptoms
+in turn. Eulalie's ring, if it sounded from the front door at the very end
+of the day, when she was no longer expecting it, would almost make her
+ill.  For the fact was that on Sundays she thought of nothing else than
+this visit, and the moment that our luncheon was ended Fran�oise would
+become impatient for us to leave the dining-room so that she might go
+upstairs to 'occupy' my aunt. But--and this more than ever from the day on
+which fine weather definitely set in at Combray--the proud hour �f noon,
+descending from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which it blazoned for a
+moment with the twelve points of its sonorous crown, would long have
+echoed about our table, beside the 'holy bread,' which too had come in,
+after church, in its familiar way; and we would still be found seated in
+front of our Arabian Nights plates, weighed down by the heat of the day,
+and even more by our heavy meal. For upon the permanent foundation of
+eggs, cutlets, potatoes, preserves, and biscuits, whose appearance on the
+table she no longer announced to us, Fran�oise would add--as the labour of
+fields and orchards, the harvest of the tides, the luck of the markets,
+the kindness of neighbours, and her own genius might provide; and so
+effectively that our bill of fare, like the quatrefoils that were carved
+on the porches of cathedrals in the thirteenth century, reflected to some
+extent the march of the seasons and the incidents of human life--a brill,
+because the fish-woman had guaranteed its freshness; a turkey, because she
+had seen a beauty in the market at Roussainville-le-Pin; cardoons with
+marrow, because she had never done them for us in that way before; a roast
+leg of mutton, because the fresh air made one hungry and there would be
+plenty of time for it to 'settle down' in the seven hours before dinner;
+spinach, by way of a change; apricots, because they were still hard to
+get; gooseberries, because in another fortnight there would be none left;
+raspberries, which M. Swann had brought specially; cherries, the first to
+come from the cherry-tree, which had yielded none for the last two years;
+a cream cheese, of which in those days I was extremely fond; an almond
+cake, because she had ordered one the evening before; a fancy loaf,
+because it was our turn to 'offer' the holy bread. And when all these had
+been eaten, a work composed expressly for ourselves, but dedicated more
+particularly to my father, who had a fondness for such things, a cream of
+chocolate, inspired in the mind, created by the hand of Fran�oise, would
+be laid before us, light and fleeting as an 'occasional piece' of music,
+into which she had poured the whole of her talent. Anyone who refused to
+partake of it, saying: "No, thank you, I have finished; I am not hungry,"
+would at once have been lowered to the level of the Philistines who, when
+an artist makes them a present of one of his works, examine its weight and
+material, whereas what is of value is the creator's intention and his
+signature. To have left even the tiniest morsel in the dish would have
+shewn as much discourtesy as to rise and leave a concert hall while the
+'piece' was still being played, and under the composer's-very eyes.
+
+At length my mother would say to me: "Now, don't stay here all day; you
+can go up to your room if you are too hot outside, but get a little fresh
+air first; don't start reading immediately after your food."
+
+And I would go and sit down beside the pump and its trough, ornamented
+here and there, like a gothic font, with a salamander, which modelled upon
+a background of crumbling stone the quick relief of its slender,
+allegorical body; on the bench without a back, in the shade of a
+lilac-tree, in that little corner of the garden which communicated, by a
+service door, with the Rue du Saint-Esprit, and from whose neglected soil
+rose, in two stages, an outcrop from the house itself and apparently a
+separate building, my aunt's back-kitchen. One could see its red-tiled
+floor gleaming like porphyry.  It seemed not so much the cave of
+Fran�oise as a little temple of Venus. It would be overflowing with the
+offerings of the milkman, the fruiterer, the greengrocer, come sometimes
+from distant villages to dedicate here the first-fruits of their fields.
+And its roof was always surmounted by the cooing of a dove.
+
+In earlier days I would not have lingered in the sacred grove which
+surrounded this temple, for, before going upstairs to read, I would steal
+into the little sitting-room which my uncle Adolphe, a brother of my
+grandfather and an old soldier who had retired from the service as a
+major, used to occupy on the ground floor, a room which, even when its
+opened windows let in the heat, if not actually the rays of the sun which
+seldom penetrated so far, would never fail to emit that vague and yet
+fresh odour, suggesting at once an open-air and an old-fashioned kind of
+existence, which sets and keeps the nostrils dreaming when one goes into a
+disused gun-room. But for some years now I had not gone into my uncle
+Adolphe's room, since he no longer came to Combray on account of a quarrel
+which had arisen between him and my family, by my fault, and in the
+following circumstances: Once or twice every month, in Paris, I used to be
+sent to pay him a. visit, as he was finishing his luncheon, wearing a
+plain alpaca coat, and waited upon by his servant in a working-jacket of
+striped linen, purple and white.  He would complain that I had not been to
+see him for a long time; that he was being neglected; he would offer me a
+marchpane or a tangerine, and we would cross a room in which no one ever
+sat, whose fire was never lighted, whose walls were picked out with gilded
+mouldings, its ceiling painted blue in imitation of the sky, and its
+furniture upholstered in satin, as at my grandparents', only yellow; then
+we would enter what he called his 'study,' a room whose walls were hung
+with prints which shewed, against a dark background, a plump and rosy
+goddess driving a car, or standing upon a globe, or wearing a star on her
+brow; pictures which were popular under the Second Empire because there
+was thought to be something about them that suggested Pompeii, which were
+then generally despised, and which now people are beginning to collect
+again for one single and consistent reason (despite any others which they
+may advance), namely, that they suggest the Second Empire. And there I
+would stay with my uncle until his man came, with a message from the
+coachman, to ask him at what time he would like the carriage. My uncle
+would then be lost in meditation, while his astonished servant stood
+there, not daring to disturb him by the least movement, wondering and
+waiting for his answer, which never varied.  For in the end, after a
+supreme crisis of hesitation, my uncle would utter, infallibly, the words:
+"A quarter past two," which the servant would echo with amazement, but
+without disputing them: "A quarter past two! Very good, sir... I will go
+and tell him...."
+
+At this date I was a lover of the theatre: a Platonic lover, of necessity,
+since my parents had not yet allowed me to enter one, and so incorrect was
+the picture I drew for myself of the pleasures to be enjoyed there that I
+almost believed that each of the spectators looked, as into a stereoscope,
+upon a stage and scenery which existed for himself alone, though closely
+resembling the thousand other spectacles presented to the rest of the
+audience individually.
+
+Every morning I would hasten to the Moriss column to see what new plays it
+announced. Nothing could be more disinterested or happier than the dreams
+with which these announcements filled my mind, dreams which took their
+form from the inevitable associations of the words forming the title of
+the play, and also from the colour of the bills, still damp and wrinkled
+with paste, on which those words stood out. Nothing, unless it were such
+strange titles as the _Testament de C�sar Girodot, or Oedipe-Roi_,
+inscribed not on the green bills of the Op�ra-Comique, but on the
+wine-coloured bills of the Com�die-Fran�aise, nothing seemed to me to
+differ more profoundly from the sparkling white plume of the _Diamants de
+la Couronne_ than the sleek, mysterious satin of the _Domino Noir_; and
+since my parents had told me that, for my first visit to the theatre, I
+should have to choose between these two pieces, I would study exhaustively
+and in turn the title of one and the title of the other (for those were
+all that I knew of either), attempting to snatch from each a foretaste of
+the pleasure which it offered me, and to compare this pleasure with that
+latent in the other title, until in the end I had shewn myself such vivid,
+such compelling pictures of, on the one hand, a play of dazzling
+arrogance, and on the other a gentle, velvety play, that I was as little
+capable of deciding which play I should prefer to see as if, at the
+dinner-table, they had obliged me to choose between _rice � l'Imp�ratrice_
+and the famous cream of chocolate.
+
+All my conversations with my playfellows bore upon actors, whose art,
+although as yet I had no experience of it, was the first of all its
+numberless forms in which Art itself allowed me to anticipate its
+enjoyment. Between one actor's tricks of intonation and inflection and
+another's, the most trifling differences would strike me as being of an
+incalculable importance.  And from what I had been told of them I would
+arrange them in the order of their talent in lists which I used to murmur
+to myself all day long: lists which in the end became petrified in my
+brain and were a source of annoyance to it, being irremovable.
+
+And later, in my schooldays, whenever I ventured in class, when the
+master's head was turned, to communicate with some new friend, I would
+always begin by asking him whether he had begun yet to go to theatres, and
+if he agreed that our greatest actor was undoubtedly Got, our second
+Delaunay, and so on. And if, in his judgment, Febvre came below Thiron, or
+Delaunay below Coquelin, the sudden volatility which the name of Coquelin,
+forsaking its stony rigidity, would engender in my mind, in which it moved
+upwards to the second place, the rich vitality with which the name of
+Delaunay would suddenly be furnished, to enable it to slip down to fourth,
+would stimulate and fertilise my brain with a sense of bradding and
+blossoming life.
+
+But if the thought of actors weighed so upon me, if the sight of Maubant,
+coming out one afternoon from the Th��tre-Fran�ais, had plunged me in the
+throes and sufferings of hopeless love, how much more did the name of a
+'star,' blazing outside the doors of a theatre, how much more, seen
+through the window of a brougham which passed me in the street, the hair
+over her forehead abloom with roses, did the face of a woman who, I would
+think, was perhaps an actress, leave with me a lasting disturbance, a
+futile and painful effort to form a picture of her private life.
+
+I classified, in order of talent, the most distinguished: Sarah Bernhardt,
+Berma, Bartet, Madeleine Brohan, Jeanne Samary; but I was interested in
+them all. Now my uncle knew many of them personally, and also ladies of
+another class, not clearly distinguished from actresses in my mind. He
+used to entertain them at his house. And if we went to see him on certain
+days only, that was because on the other days ladies might come whom his
+family could not very well have met. So we at least thought; as for my
+uncle, his fatal readiness to pay pretty widows (who had perhaps never
+been married) and countesses (whose high-sounding titles were probably no
+more than _noms de guerre_) the compliment of presenting them to my
+grandmother or even of presenting to them some of our family jewels, had
+already embroiled him more than once with my grandfather. Often, if the
+name of some actress were mentioned in conversation, I would hear my
+father say, with a smile, to my mother: "One of your uncle's friends," and
+I would think of the weary novitiate through which, perhaps for years on
+end, a grown man, even a man of real importance, might have to pass,
+waiting on the doorstep of some such lady, while she refused to answer his
+letters and made her hall-porter drive him away; and imagine that my uncle
+was able to dispense a little jackanapes like myself from all these
+sufferings by introducing me in his own home to the actress,
+unapproachable by all the world, but for him an intimate friend.
+
+And so--on the pretext that some lesson, the hour of which had been
+altered, now came at such an awkward time that it had already more than
+once prevented me, and would continue to prevent me, from seeing my
+uncle--one day, not one of the days which he set apart for our visits, I
+took advantage of the fact that my parents had had luncheon earlier than
+usual; I slipped out and, instead of going to read the playbills on their
+column, for which purpose I was allowed to go out unaccompanied, I ran all
+the way to his house. I noticed before his door a carriage and pair, with
+red carnations on the horses' blinkers and in the coachman's buttonhole.
+As I climbed the staircase I could hear laughter and a woman's voice, and,
+as soon as I had rung, silence and the sound of shutting doors.  The
+man-servant who let me in appeared embarrassed, and said that my uncle was
+extremely busy and probably could not see me; he went in, however, to
+announce my arrival, and the same voice I had heard before said: "Oh, yes!
+Do let him come in; just for a moment; it will be so amusing.  Is that his
+photograph there, on your desk? And his mother (your niece, isn't she?)
+beside it? The image of her, isn't he? I should so like to see the little
+chap, just for a second."
+
+I could hear my uncle grumbling and growing angry; finally the manservant
+told me to come in.
+
+On the table was the same plate of marchpanes that was always there; my
+uncle wore the same alpaca coat as on other days; but opposite to him, in
+a pink silk dress with a great necklace of pearls about her throat, sat a
+young woman who was just finishing a tangerine. My uncertainty whether I
+ought to address her as Madame or Mademoiselle made me blush, and not
+daring to look too much in her direction, in case I should be obliged to
+speak to her, I hurried across to kiss my uncle. She looked at me and
+smiled; my uncle said "My nephew!" without telling her my name or telling
+me hers, doubtless because, since his difficulties with my grandfather, he
+had endeavoured as far as possible to avoid any association of his family
+with this other class of acquaintance.
+
+"How like his mother he is," said the lady.
+
+"But you have never seen my niece, except in photographs," my uncle broke
+in quickly, with a note of anger.
+
+"I beg your pardon, dear friend, I passed her on the staircase last year
+when you were so ill. It is true I only saw her for a moment, and your
+staircase is rather dark; but I saw well enough to see how lovely she was.
+This young gentleman has her beautiful eyes, and also this," she went on,
+tracing a line with one finger across the lower part of her forehead.
+"Tell me," she asked my uncle, "is your niece Mme.----; is her name the
+same as yours?"
+
+"He takes most after his father," muttered my uncle, who was no more
+anxious to effect an introduction by proxy, in repeating Mamma's name
+aloud, than to bring the two together in the flesh. "He's his father all
+over, and also like my poor mother."
+
+"I have not met his father, dear," said the lady in pink, bowing her head
+slightly, "and I never saw your poor mother. You will remember it was just
+after your great sorrow that we got to know one another."
+
+I felt somewhat disillusioned, for this young lady was in no way different
+from other pretty women whom I had seen from time to time at home,
+especially the daughter of one of our cousins, to whose house I went every
+New Year's Day. Only better dressed; otherwise my uncle's friend had the
+same quick and kindly glance, the same frank and friendly manner.  I could
+find no trace in her of the theatrical appearance which I admired in
+photographs of actresses, nothing of the diabolical expression which would
+have been in keeping with the life she must lead. I had difficulty in
+believing that this was one of 'those women,' and certainly I should never
+have believed her one of the 'smart ones' had I not seen the carriage and
+pair, the pink dress, the pearly necklace, had I not been aware, too, that
+my uncle knew only the very best of them. But I asked myself how the
+millionaire who gave her her carriage and her flat and her jewels could
+find any pleasure in flinging his money away upon a woman who had so
+simple and respectable an appearance. And yet, when I thought of what her
+life must be like, its immorality disturbed me more, perhaps, than if it
+had stood before me in some concrete and recognisable form, by its secrecy
+and invisibility, like the plot of a novel, the hidden truth of a scandal
+which had driven out of the home of her middle-class parents and dedicated
+to the service of all mankind which had brought to the flowering-point of
+her beauty, had raised to fame or notoriety this woman, the play of whose
+features, the intonations of whose voice, like so many others I already
+knew, made me regard her, in spite of myself, as a young lady of good
+family, her who was no longer of a family at all.
+
+We had gone by this time into the 'study,' and my uncle, who seemed a
+trifle embarrassed by my presence, offered her a cigarette.
+
+"No, thank you, dear friend," she said. "You know I only smoke the ones
+the Grand Duke sends me. I tell him that they make you jealous." And she
+drew from a case cigarettes covered with inscriptions in gold, in a
+foreign language. "Why, yes," she began again suddenly. "Of course I have
+met this young man's father with you. Isn't he your nephew? How on earth
+could I have forgotten? He was so nice, so charming to me," she went on,
+modestly and with feeling. But when I thought to myself what must actually
+have been the rude greeting (which, she made out, had been so charming),
+I, who knew my father's coldness and reserve, was shocked, as though at
+some indelicacy on his part, at the contrast between the excessive
+recognition bestowed on it and his never adequate geniality.  It has since
+struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life
+by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity,
+all their talent, their transferable dreams of sentimental beauty (for,
+like all artists, they never seek to realise the value of those dreams, or
+to enclose them in the four-square frame of everyday life), and their
+gold, which counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious
+setting for the rubbed and scratched and ill-polished lives of men. And
+just as this one filled the smoking-room, where my uncle was entertaining
+her in his alpaca coat, with her charming person, her dress of pink silk,
+her pearls, and the refinement suggested by intimacy with a Grand Duke,
+so, in the same way, she had taken some casual remark by my father, had
+worked it up delicately, given it a 'turn,' a precious title, set in it
+the gem of a glance from her own eyes, a gem of the first water, blended
+of humility and gratitude; and so had given it back transformed into a
+jewel, a work of art, into something altogether charming.
+
+"Look here, my boy, it is time you went away," said my uncle.
+
+I rose; I could scarcely resist a desire to kiss the hand of the lady in
+pink, but I felt that to do so would require as much audacity as a
+forcible abduction of her. My heart beat loud while I counted out to
+myself "Shall I do it, shall I not?" and then I ceased to ask myself what
+I ought to do so as at least to do something. Blindly, hotly, madly,
+flinging aside all the reasons I had just found to support such action, I
+seized and raised to my lips the hand she held out to me.
+
+"Isn't he delicious! Quite a ladies' man already; he takes after his
+uncle.  He'll be a perfect 'gentleman,'" she went on, setting her teeth so
+as to give the word a kind of English accentuation. "Couldn't he come to
+me some day for 'a cup of tea,' as our friends across the channel say; he
+need only send me a 'blue' in the morning?"
+
+I had not the least idea of what a 'blue' might be. I did not understand
+half the words which the lady used, but my fear lest there should be
+concealed in them some question which it would be impolite in me not to
+answer kept me from withdrawing my close attention from them, and I was
+beginning to feel extremely tired.
+
+"No, no; it is impossible," said my uncle, shrugging his shoulders. "He is
+kept busy at home all day; he has plenty of work to do. He brings back all
+the prizes from his school," he added in a lower tone, so that I should
+not hear this falsehood and interrupt with a contradiction. "You can't
+tell; he may turn out a little Victor Hugo, a kind of Vaulabelle, don't
+you know."
+
+"Oh, I love artistic people," replied the lady in pink; "there is no one
+like them for understanding women. Them, and really nice men like
+yourself.  But please forgive my ignorance. Who, what is Vaulabelle? Is it
+those gilt books in the little glass case in your drawing-room? You know
+you promised to lend them to me; I will take great care of them."
+
+My uncle, who hated lending people books, said nothing, and ushered me out
+into the hall. Madly in love with the lady in pink, I covered my old
+uncle's tobacco-stained cheeks with passionate kisses, and while he,
+awkwardly enough, gave me to understand (without actually saying) that he
+would rather I did not tell my parents about this visit, I assured him,
+with tears in my eyes, that his kindness had made so strong an impression
+upon me that some day I would most certainly find a way of expressing my
+gratitude. So strong an impression had it made upon me that two hours
+later, after a string of mysterious utterances which did not strike me as
+giving my parents a sufficiently clear idea of the new importance with
+which I had been invested, I found it simpler to let them have a full
+account, omitting no detail, of the visit I had paid that afternoon. In
+doing this I had no thought of causing my uncle any unpleasantness. How
+could I have thought such a thing, since I did not wish it? And I could
+not suppose that my parents would see any harm in a visit in which I
+myself saw none. Every day of our lives does not some friend or other ask
+us to make his apologies, without fail, to some woman to whom he has been
+prevented from writing; and do not we forget to do so, feeling that this
+woman cannot attach much importance to a silence which has none for
+ourselves? I imagined, like everyone else, that the brains of other people
+were lifeless and submissive receptacles with no power of specific
+reaction to any stimulus which might be applied to them; and I had not the
+least doubt that when I deposited in the minds of my parents the news of
+the acquaintance I had made at my uncle's I should at the same time
+transmit to them the kindly judgment I myself had based on the
+introduction. Unfortunately my parents had recourse to principles entirely
+different from those which I suggested they should adopt when they came to
+form their estimate of my uncle's conduct. My father and grandfather had
+'words' with him of a violent order; as I learned indirectly. A few days
+later, passing my uncle in the street as he drove by in an open carriage,
+� felt at once all the grief, the gratitude, the remorse which I should
+have liked to convey to him. Beside the immensity of these emotions I
+considered that merely to raise my hat to him would be incongruous and
+petty, and might make him think that I regarded myself as bound to shew
+him no more than the commonest form of courtesy. I decided to abstain from
+so inadequate a gesture, and turned my head away. My uncle thought that,
+in doing so I was obeying my parents' orders; he never forgave them; and
+though he did not die until many years later, not one of us ever set eyes
+on him again.
+
+And so I no longer used to go into the little sitting-room (now kept shut)
+of my uncle Adolphe; instead, after hanging about on the outskirts of the
+back-kitchen until Fran�oise appeared on its threshold and announced: "I
+am going to let the kitchen-maid serve the coffee and take up the hot
+water; it is time I went off to Mme. Octave," I would then decide to go
+indoors, and would go straight upstairs to my room to read.  The
+kitchen-maid was an abstract personality, a permanent institution to which
+an invariable set of attributes assured a sort of fixity and continuity
+and identity throughout the long series of transitory human shapes in
+which that personality was incarnate; for we never found the same girl
+there two years running. In the year in which we ate such quantities of
+asparagus, the kitchen-maid whose duty it was to dress them was a poor
+sickly creature, some way 'gone' in pregnancy when we arrived at Combray
+for Easter, and it was indeed surprising that Fran�oise allowed her to run
+so many errands in the town and to do so much work in the house, for she
+was beginning to find a difficulty in bearing before her the mysterious
+casket, fuller and larger every day, whose splendid outline could be
+detected through the folds of her ample smocks. These last recalled the
+cloaks in which Giotto shrouds some of the allegorical figures in his
+paintings, of which M. Swann had given me photographs. He it was who
+pointed out the resemblance, and when he inquired after the kitchen-maid
+he would say: "Well, how goes it with Giotto's Charity?" And indeed the
+poor girl, whose pregnancy had swelled and stoutened every part of her,
+even to her face, and the vertical, squared outlines of her cheeks, did
+distinctly suggest those virgins, so strong and mannish as to seem matrons
+rather, in whom the Virtues are personified in the Arena Chapel. And I can
+see now that those Virtues and Vices of Padua resembled her in another
+respect as well. For just as the figure of this girl had been enlarged by
+the additional symbol which she carried in her body, without appearing to
+understand what it meant, without any rendering in her facial expression
+of all its beauty and spiritual significance, but carried as if it were an
+ordinary and rather heavy burden, so it is without any apparent suspicion
+of what she is about that the powerfully built housewife who is portrayed
+in the Arena beneath the label 'Caritas,' and a reproduction of whose
+portrait hung upon the wall of my schoolroom at Combray, incarnates that
+virtue, for it seems impossible, that any thought of charity can ever have
+found expression in her vulgar and energetic face. By a fine stroke of the
+painter's invention she is tumbling all the treasures of the earth at her
+feet, but exactly as if she were treading grapes in a wine-press to
+extract their juice, or, still more, as if she had climbed on a heap of
+sacks to raise herself higher; and she is holding out her flaming heart to
+God, or shall we say 'handing' it to Him, exactly as a cook might hand up
+a corkscrew through the skylight of her underground kitchen to some one
+who had called down to ask her for it from the ground-level above. The
+'Invidia,' again, should have had some look on her face of envy. But in
+this fresco, too, the symbol occupies so large a place and is represented
+with such realism; the serpent hissing between the lips of Envy is so
+huge, and so completely fills her wide-opened mouth that the muscles of
+her face are strained and contorted, like a child's who is filling a
+balloon with his breath, and that Envy, and we ourselves for that matter,
+when we look at her, since all her attention and ours are concentrated on
+the action of her lips, have no time, almost, to spare for envious
+thoughts.
+
+Despite all the admiration that M. Swann might profess for these figures
+of Giotto, it was a long time before I could find any pleasure in seeing
+in our schoolroom (where the copies he had brought me were hung) that
+Charity devoid of charity, that Envy who looked like nothing so much as a
+plate in some medical book, illustrating the compression of the glottis or
+uvula by a tumour in the tongue, or by the introduction of the operator's
+instrument, a Justice whose greyish and meanly regular features were the
+very same as those which adorned the faces of certain good and pious and
+slightly withered ladies of Combray whom I used to see at mass, many of
+whom had long been enrolled in the reserve forces of Injustice. But in
+later years I understood that the arresting strangeness, the special
+beauty of these frescoes lay in the great part played in each of them by
+its symbols, while the fact that these were depicted, not as symbols (for
+the thought symbolised was nowhere expressed), but as real things,
+actually felt or materially handled, added something more precise and more
+literal to their meaning, something more concrete and more striking to the
+lesson they imparted. And even in the case of the poor kitchen-maid, was
+not our attention incessantly drawn to her belly by the load which filled
+it; and in the same way, again, are not the thoughts of men and women in
+the agony of death often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure,
+internal, intestinal aspect, towards that 'seamy side' of death which is,
+as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces
+them to feel, a side which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a
+difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to
+which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?
+
+There must have been a strong element of reality in those Virtues and
+Vices of Padua, since they appeared to me to be as much alive as the
+pregnant servant-girl, while she herself appeared scarcely less
+allegorical than they. And, quite possibly, this lack (or seeming lack) of
+participation by a person's soul in the significant marks of its own
+special virtue has, apart from its aesthetic meaning, a reality which, if
+not strictly psychological, may at least be called physiognomical. Later
+on, when, in the course of my life, I have had occasion to meet with, in
+convents for instance, literally saintly examples of practical charity,
+they have generally had the brisk, decided, undisturbed, and slightly
+brutal air of a busy surgeon, the face in which one can discern no
+commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suffering humanity, and no
+fear of hurting it, the face devoid of gentleness or sympathy, the sublime
+face of true goodness.
+
+Then while the kitchen-maid--who, all unawares, made the superior
+qualities of Fran�oise shine with added lustre, just as Error, by force of
+contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth--took in coffee which (according
+to Mamma) was nothing more than hot water, and then carried up to our
+rooms hot water which was barely tepid, I would be lying stretched out on
+my bed, a book in my hand, in my room which trembled with the effort to
+defend its frail, transparent coolness against the afternoon sun, behind
+its almost closed shutters through which, however, a reflection of the
+sunlight had contrived to slip in on its golden wings, remaining
+motionless, between glass and woodwork, in a corner, like a butterfly
+poised upon a flower. It was hardly light enough for me to read, and my
+feeling of the day's brightness and splendour was derived solely from the
+blows struck down below, in the Rue de la Cur�, by Camus (whom Fran�oise
+had assured that my aunt was not 'resting' and that he might therefore
+make a noise), upon some old packing-cases from which nothing would really
+be sent flying but the dust, though the din of them, in the resonant
+atmosphere that accompanies hot weather, seemed to scatter broadcast a
+rain of blood-red stars; and from the flies who performed for my benefit,
+in their small concert, as it might be the chamber music of summer;
+evoking heat and light quite differently from an air of human music which,
+if you happen to have heard it during a fine summer, will always bring
+that summer back to your mind, the flies' music is bound to the season by
+a closer, a more vital tie--born of sunny days, and not to be reborn but
+with them, containing something of their essential nature, it not merely
+calls up their image in our memory, but gives us a guarantee that they do
+really exist, that they are close around us, immediately accessible.
+
+This dim freshness of my room was to the broad daylight of the street what
+the shadow is to the sunbeam, that is to say, equally luminous, and
+presented to my imagination the entire panorama of summer, which my
+senses, if I had been out walking, could have tasted and enjoyed in
+fragments only; and so was quite in harmony with my state of repose, which
+(thanks to the adventures related in my books, which had just excited it)
+bore, like a hand reposing motionless in a stream of running water, the
+shock and animation of a torrent of activity and life.
+
+But my grandmother, even if the weather, after growing too hot, had
+broken, and a storm, or just a shower, had burst over us, would come up
+and beg me to go outside. And as I did not wish to leave off my book, I
+would go on with it in the garden, under the chestnut-tree, in a little
+sentry-box of canvas and matting, in the farthest recesses of which I used
+to sit and feel that I was hidden from the eyes of anyone who might be
+coming to call upon the family.
+
+And then my thoughts, did not they form a similar sort of hiding-hole, in
+the depths of which I felt that I could bury myself and remain invisible
+even when I was looking at what went on outside? When I saw any external
+object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and
+it, enclosing it in a slender, incorporeal outline which prevented me from
+ever coming directly in contact with the material form; for it would
+volatilise itself in some way before I could touch it, just as an
+incandescent body which is moved towards something wet never actually
+touches moisture, since it is always preceded, itself, by a zone of
+evaporation. Upon the sort of screen, patterned with different states and
+impressions, which my consciousness would quietly unfold while I was
+reading, and which ranged from the most deeply hidden aspirations of my
+heart to the wholly external view of the horizon spread out before my eyes
+at the foot of the garden, what was from the first the most permanent and
+the most intimate part of me, the lever whose incessant movements
+controlled all the rest, was my belief in the philosophic richness and
+beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire to appropriate these to
+myself, whatever the book might be. For even if I had purchased it at
+Combray, having seen it outside Borange's, whose grocery lay too far from
+our house for Fran�oise to be able to deal there, as she did with Camus,
+but who enjoyed better custom as a stationer and bookseller; even if I had
+seen it, tied with string to keep it in its place in the mosaic of monthly
+parts and pamphlets which adorned either side of his doorway, a doorway
+more mysterious, more teeming with suggestion than that of a cathedral, I
+should have noticed and bought it there simply because I had recognised it
+as a book which had been well spoken of, in my hearing, by the
+school-master or the school-friend who, at that particular time, seemed to
+me to be entrusted with the secret of Truth and Beauty, things half-felt
+by me, half-incomprehensible, the full understanding of which was the
+vague but permanent object of my thoughts.
+
+Next to this central belief, which, while I was reading, would be
+constantly a motion from my inner self to the outer world, towards the
+discovery of Truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which
+I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more
+dramatic and sensational events than occur, often, in a whole lifetime.
+These were the events which took place in the book I was reading. It is
+true that the people concerned in them were not what Fran�oise would have
+called 'real people.' But none of the feelings which the joys or
+misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be awakened except through
+a mental picture of those joys or misfortunes; and the ingenuity of the
+first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the picture was the one
+essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that
+simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple,
+of 'real' people would be a decided improvement. A 'real' person,
+profoundly as we may sympathise with him, is in a great measure
+perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, he remains opaque,
+offers a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to
+lift. If some misfortune comes to him, it is only in one small section of
+the complete idea we have of him that we are capable of feeling any
+emotion; indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he
+has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either. The
+novelist's happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque
+sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial
+sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself.
+After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings of this new
+order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made
+them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening, that they
+are holding in thrall, while we turn over, feverishly, the pages of the
+book, our quickened breath and staring eyes. And once the novelist has
+brought us to that state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every
+emotion is multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes to disturb us as
+might a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression
+than those which come to us in sleep; why, then, for the space of an hour
+he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of
+which, only, we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting
+to know, and the keenest, the most intense of which would never have been
+revealed to us because the slow course of their development stops our
+perception of them. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is
+our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by
+imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural
+phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish,
+successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual
+sensation of change.
+
+Next to, but distinctly less intimate a part of myself than this human
+element, would come the view, more or less projected before my eyes, of
+the country in which the action of the story was taking place, which made
+a far stronger impression on my mind than the other, the actual landscape
+which would meet my eyes when I raised them from my book. In this way, for
+two consecutive summers I used to sit in the heat of our Combray garden,
+sick with a longing inspired by the book I was then reading for a land of
+mountains and rivers, where I could see an endless vista of sawmills,
+where beneath the limpid currents fragments of wood lay mouldering in beds
+of watercress; and nearby, rambling and clustering along low walls, purple
+flowers and red. And since there was always lurking in my mind the dream
+of a woman who would enrich me with her love, that dream in those two
+summers used to be quickened with the freshness and coolness of running
+water; and whoever she might be, the woman whose image I called to mind,
+purple flowers and red would at once spring up on either side of her like
+complementary colours.
+
+This was not only because an image of which we dream remains for ever
+distinguished, is adorned and enriched by the association of colours not
+its own which may happen to surround it in our mental picture; for the
+scenes in the books I read were to me not merely scenery more vividly
+portrayed by my imagination than any which Combray could spread before my
+eyes but otherwise of the same kind. Because of the selection that the
+author had made of them, because of the spirit of faith in which my mind
+would exceed and anticipate his printed word, as it might be interpreting
+a revelation, these scenes used to give me the impression--one which I
+hardly ever derived from any place in which I might happen to be, and
+never from our garden, that undistinguished product of the strictly
+conventional fantasy of the gardener whom my grandmother so despised--of
+their being actually part of Nature herself, and worthy to be studied and
+explored.
+
+Had my parents allowed me, when I read a book, to pay a visit to the
+country it described, I should have felt that I was making an enormous
+advance towards the ultimate conquest of truth. For even if we have the
+sensation of being always enveloped in, surrounded by our own soul, still
+it does not seem a fixed and immovable prison; rather do we seem to be
+borne away with it, and perpetually struggling to pass beyond it, to break
+out into the world, with a perpetual discouragement as we hear endlessly,
+all around us, that unvarying sound which is no echo from without, but the
+resonance of a vibration from within. We try to discover in things,
+endeared to us on that account, the spiritual glamour which we ourselves
+have cast upon them; we are disillusioned, and learn that they are in
+themselves barren and devoid of the charm which they owed, in our minds,
+to the association of certain ideas; sometimes we mobilise all our
+spiritual forces in a glittering array so as to influence and subjugate
+other human beings who, as we very well know, are situated outside
+ourselves, where we can never reach them. And so, if I always imagined the
+woman I loved as in a setting of whatever places I most longed, at the
+time, to visit; if in my secret longings it was she who attracted me to
+them, who opened to me the gate of an unknown world, that was not by the
+mere hazard of a simple association of thoughts; no, it was because my
+dreams of travel and of love were only moments--which I isolate
+artificially to-day as though I were cutting sections, at different
+heights, in a jet of water, rainbow-flashing but seemingly without flow or
+motion--were only drops in a single, undeviating, irresistible outrush of
+all the forces of my life.
+
+And then, as I continue to trace the outward course of these impressions
+from their close-packed intimate source in my consciousness, and before I
+come to the horizon of reality which envelops them, I discover pleasures
+of another kind, those of being comfortably seated, of tasting the good
+scent on the air, of not being disturbed by any visitor; and, when an hour
+chimed from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire, of watching what was already
+spent of the afternoon fall drop by drop until I heard the last stroke
+which enabled me to add up the total sum, after which the silence that
+followed seemed to herald the beginning, in the blue sky above me, of that
+long part of the day still allowed me for reading, until the good dinner
+which Fran�oise was even now preparing should come to strengthen and
+refresh me after the strenuous pursuit of its hero through the pages of my
+book. And, as each hour struck, it would seem to me that a few seconds
+only had passed since the hour before; the latest would inscribe itself,
+close to its predecessor, on the sky's surface, and I would be unable to
+believe that sixty minutes could be squeezed into the tiny arc of blue
+which was comprised between their two golden figures. Sometimes it would
+even happen that this precocious hour would sound two strokes more than
+the last; there must then have been an hour which I had not heard strike;
+something which had taken place had not taken place for me; the
+fascination of my book, a magic as potent as the deepest slumber, had
+stopped my enchanted ears and had obliterated the sound of that golden
+bell from the azure surface of the enveloping silence. Sweet Sunday
+afternoons beneath the chestnut-tree in our Combray garden, from which I
+was careful to eliminate every commonplace incident of my actual life,
+replacing them by a career of strange adventures and ambitions in a land
+watered by living streams, you still recall those adventures and ambitions
+to my mind when I think of you, and you embody and preserve them by virtue
+of having little by little drawn round and enclosed them (while I went on
+with my book and the heat of the day declined) in the gradual
+crystallisation, slowly altering in form and dappled with a pattern of
+chestnut-leaves, of your silent, sonorous, fragrant, limpid hours.
+
+Sometimes I would be torn from my book, in the middle of the afternoon, by
+the gardener's daughter, who came running like a mad thing, overturning an
+orange-tree in its tub, cutting a finger, breaking a tooth, and screaming
+out "They're coming, they're coming!" so that Fran�oise and I should run
+too and not miss anything of the show. That was on days when the cavalry
+stationed in Combray went out for some military exercise, going as a rule
+by the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde. While our servants, sitting in a row on
+their chairs outside the garden railings, stared at the people of Combray
+taking their Sunday walks and were stared at in return, the gardener's
+daughter, through the gap which there was between two houses far away in
+the Avenue de la Gare, would have spied the glitter of helmets. The
+servants then hurried in with their chairs, for when the troopers filed
+through the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde they filled it from side to side, and
+their jostling horses scraped against the walls of the houses, covering
+and drowning the pavements like banks which present too narrow a channel
+to a river in flood.
+
+"Poor children," Fran�oise would exclaim, in tears almost before she had
+reached the railings; "poor boys, to be mown down like grass in a meadow.
+It's just shocking to think of," she would go on, laying a hand over her
+heart, where presumably she had felt the shock.
+
+"A fine sight, isn't it, Mme. Fran�oise, all these young fellows not
+caring two straws for their lives?" the gardener would ask, just to 'draw'
+her. And he would not have spoken in vain.
+
+"Not caring for their lives, is it? Why, what in the world is there that
+we should care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never
+offers us a second time? Oh dear, oh dear; you're right all the same; it's
+quite true, they don't care! I can remember them in '70; in those wretched
+wars they've no fear of death left in them; they're nothing more nor less
+than madmen; and then they aren't worth the price of a rope to hang them
+with; they're not men any more, they're lions." For by her way of
+thinking, to compare a man with a lion, which she used to pronounce
+'lie-on,' was not at all complimentary to the man.
+
+The Rue Sainte-Hildegarde turned too sharply for us to be able to see
+people approaching at any distance, and it was only through the gap
+between those two houses in the Avenue de la Gare that we could still make
+out fresh helmets racing along towards us, and flashing in the sunlight.
+The gardener wanted to know whether there were still many to come, and he
+was thirsty besides, with the sun beating down upon his head. So then,
+suddenly, his daughter would leap out, as though from a beleaguered city,
+would make a sortie, turn the street corner, and, having risked her life a
+hundred times over, reappear and bring us, with a jug of liquorice-water,
+the news that there were still at least a thousand of them, pouring along
+without a break from the direction of Thiberzy and M�s�glise. Fran�oise
+and the gardener, having 'made up' their difference, would discuss the
+line to be followed in case of war.
+
+"Don't you see, Fran�oise," he would say. "Revolution would be better,
+because then no one would need to join in unless he liked."
+
+"Oh, yes, I can see that, certainly; it's more straightforward."
+
+The gardener believed that, as soon as war was declared, they would stop
+all the railways.
+
+"Yes, to be sure; so that we sha'n't get away," said Fran�oise.
+
+And the gardener would assent, with "Ay, they're the cunning ones," for he
+would not allow that war was anything but a kind of trick which the state
+attempted to play on the people, or that there was a man in the world who
+would not run away from it if he had the chance to do so.
+
+But Fran�oise would hasten back to my aunt, and I would return to my book,
+and the servants would take their places again outside the gate to watch
+the dust settle on the pavement, and the excitement caused by the passage
+of the soldiers subside. Long after order had been restored, an abnormal
+tide of humanity would continue to darken the streets of Corn-bray.  And
+in front of every house, even of those where it was not, as a rule,
+'done,' the servants, and sometimes even the masters would sit and stare,
+festooning their doorsteps with a dark, irregular fringe, like the border
+of shells and sea-weed which a stronger tide than usual leaves on the
+beach, as though trimming it with embroidered crape, when the sea itself
+has retreated.
+
+Except on such days as these, however, I would as a rule be left to read
+in peace. But the interruption which a visit from Swann once made, and the
+commentary which he then supplied to the course of my reading, which had
+brought me to the work of an author quite new to me, called Bergotte, had
+this definite result that for a long time afterwards it was not against a
+wall gay with spikes of purple blossom, but on a wholly different
+background, the porch of a gothic cathedral, that I would see outlined the
+figure of one of the women of whom I dreamed.
+
+I had heard Bergotte spoken of, for the first time, by a friend older than
+myself, for whom I had a strong admiration, a precious youth of the name
+of Bloch. Hearing me confess my love of the _Nuit d'Octobre_, he had burst
+out in a bray of laughter, like a bugle-call, and told me, by way of
+warning: "You must conquer your vile taste for A. de Musset, Esquire. He
+is a bad egg, one of the very worst, a pretty detestable specimen. I am
+bound to admit, natheless," he added graciously, "that he, and even the
+man Racine, did, each of them, once in his life, compose a line which is
+not only fairly rhythmical, but has also what is in my eyes the supreme
+merit of meaning absolutely nothing. One is
+
+  _La blanche Oloossone et la blanche Camire_,
+
+and the other
+
+  _La fille de Minos et de Pasipha�_."
+
+They were submitted to my judgment, as evidence for the defence of the two
+runagates, in an article by my very dear master Father Lecomte, who is
+found pleasing in the sight of the immortal gods. By which token, here is
+a book which I have not the time, just now, to read, a book recommended,
+it would seem, by that colossal fellow. He regards, or so they tell me,
+its author, one Bergotte, Esquire, as a subtle scribe, more subtle,
+indeed, than any beast of the field; and, albeit he exhibits on occasion a
+critical pacifism, a tenderness in suffering fools, for which it is
+impossible to account, and hard to make allowance, still his word has
+weight with me as it were the Delphic Oracle. Read you then this lyrical
+prose, and, if the Titanic master-builder of rhythm who composed
+_Bhagavat_ and the _L�vrier de Magnus_ speaks not falsely, then, by
+Apollo, you may taste, even you, my master, the ambrosial joys of
+Olympus." It was in an ostensible vein of sarcasm that he had asked me to
+call him, and that he himself called me, "my master." But, as a matter of
+fact, we each derived a certain amount of satisfaction from the mannerism,
+being still at the age in which one believes that one gives a thing real
+existence by giving it a name.
+
+Unfortunately I was not able to set at rest, by further talks with Bloch,
+in which I might have insisted upon an explanation, the doubts he had
+engendered in me when he told me that fine lines of poetry (from which I,
+if you please, expected nothing less than the revelation of truth itself)
+were all the finer if they meant absolutely nothing. For, as it happened,
+Bloch was not invited to the house again. At first, he had been well
+received there. It is true that my grandfather made out that, whenever I
+formed a strong attachment to any one of my friends and brought him home
+with me, that friend was invariably a Jew; to which he would not have
+objected on principle--indeed his own friend Swann was of Jewish
+extraction--had he not found that the Jews whom I chose as friends were
+not usually of the best type. And so I was hardly ever able to bring a new
+friend home without my grandfather's humming the "O, God of our fathers"
+from _La Juive_, or else "Israel, break thy chain," singing the tune
+alone, of course, to an "um-ti-tum-ti-tum, tra-la"; but I used to be
+afraid of my friend's recognising the sound, and so being able to
+reconstruct the words.
+
+Before seeing them, merely on hearing their names, about which, as often
+as not, there was nothing particularly Hebraic, he would divine not only
+the Jewish origin of such of my friends as might indeed be of the chosen
+people, but even some dark secret which was hidden in their family.
+
+"And what do they call your friend who is coming this evening?"
+
+"Dumont, grandpapa."
+
+"Dumont! Oh, I'm frightened of Dumont."
+
+And he would sing:
+
+  Archers, be on your guard!
+  Watch without rest, without sound,
+
+and then, after a few adroit questions on points of detail, he would call
+out "On guard! on guard," or, if it were the victim himself who had
+already arrived, and had been obliged, unconsciously, by my grandfather's
+subtle examination, to admit his origin, then my grandfather, to shew us
+that he had no longer any doubts, would merely look at us, humming almost
+inaudibly the air of
+
+  What! do you hither guide the feet
+  Of this timid Israelite?
+
+or of
+
+  Sweet vale of Hebron, dear paternal fields,
+
+or, perhaps, of
+
+  Yes, I am of the chosen race.
+
+These little eccentricities on my grandfather's part implied no ill-will
+whatsoever towards my friends. But Bloch had displeased my family for
+other reasons. He had begun by annoying my father, who, seeing him come in
+with wet clothes, had asked him with keen interest:
+
+"Why, M. Bloch, is there a change in the weather; has it been raining?  I
+can't understand it; the barometer has been 'set fair.'"
+
+Which drew from Bloch nothing more instructive than "Sir, I am absolutely
+incapable of telling you whether it has rained. I live so resolutely apart
+from physical contingencies that my senses no longer trouble to inform me
+of them."
+
+"My poor boy," said my father after Bloch had gone, "your friend is out of
+his mind. Why, he couldn't even tell me what the weather was like.  As if
+there could be anything more interesting! He is an imbecile."
+
+Next, Bloch had displeased my grandmother because, after luncheon, when
+she complained of not feeling very well, he had stifled a sob and wiped
+the tears from his eyes.
+
+"You cannot imagine that he is sincere," she observed to me. "Why he
+doesn't know me. Unless he's mad, of course."
+
+And finally he had upset the whole household when he arrived an hour and a
+half late for luncheon and covered with mud from head to foot, and made
+not the least apology, saying merely: "I never allow myself to be
+influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or by
+the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time. I would willingly
+reintroduce to society the opium pipe of China or the Malayan kriss, but I
+am wholly and entirely without instruction in those infinitely more
+pernicious (besides being quite bleakly bourgeois) implements, the
+umbrella and the watch."
+
+In spite of all this he would still have been received at Combray. He was,
+of course, hardly the friend my parents would have chosen for me; they
+had, in the end, decided that the tears which he had shed on hearing of my
+grandmother's illness were genuine enough; but they knew, either
+instinctively or from their own experience, that our early impulsive
+emotions have but little influence over our later actions and the conduct
+of our lives; and that regard for moral obligations, loyalty to our
+friends, patience in finishing our work, obedience to a rule of life, have
+a surer foundation in habits solidly formed and blindly followed than in
+these momentary transports, ardent but sterile. They would have preferred
+to Bloch, as companions for myself, boys who would have given me no more
+than it is proper, by all the laws of middle-class morality, for boys to
+give one another, who would not unexpectedly send me a basket of fruit
+because they happened, that morning, to have thought of me with affection,
+but who, since they were incapable of inclining in my favour, by any
+single impulse of their imagination and emotions, the exact balance of the
+duties and claims of friendship, were as incapable of loading the scales
+to my prejudice. Even the injuries we do them will not easily divert from
+the path of their duty towards us those conventional natures of which my
+great-aunt furnished a type: who, after quarrelling for years with a
+niece, to whom she never spoke again, yet made no change in the will in
+which she had left that niece the whole of her fortune, because she was
+her next-of-kin, and it was the 'proper thing' to do.
+
+But I was fond of Bloch; my parents wished me to be happy; and the
+insoluble problems which I set myself on such texts as the 'absolutely
+meaningless' beauty of _La fille de Minos et de Pasipha�_ tired me more
+and made me more unwell than I should have been after further talks with
+him, unwholesome as those talks might seem to my mother's mind. And he
+would still have been received at Combray but for one thing. That same
+night, after dinner, having informed me (a piece of news which had a great
+influence on my later life, making it happier at one time and then more
+unhappy) that no woman ever thought of anything but love, and that there
+was not one of them whose resistance a man could not overcome, he had gone
+on to assure me that he had heard it said on unimpeachable authority that
+my great-aunt herself had led a 'gay' life in her younger days, and had
+been notoriously 'kept.' I could not refrain from passing on so important
+a piece of information to my parents; the next time Bloch called he was
+not admitted, and afterwards, when I met him in the street, he greeted me
+with extreme coldness.
+
+But in the matter of Bergotte he had spoken truly.
+
+For the first few days, like a tune which will be running in one's head
+and maddening one soon enough, but of which one has not for the moment
+'got hold,' the things I was to love so passionately in Bergotte's style
+had not yet caught my eye. I could not, it is true, lay down the novel of
+his which I was reading, but I fancied that I was interested in the story
+alone, as in the first dawn of love, when we go every day to meet a woman
+at some party or entertainment by the charm of which we imagine it is that
+we are attracted. Then I observed the rare, almost archaic phrases which
+he liked to employ at certain points, where a hidden flow of harmony, a
+prelude contained and concealed in the work itself would animate and
+elevate his style; and it was at such points as these, too, that he would
+begin to speak of the "vain dream of life," of the "inexhaustible torrent
+of fair forms," of the "sterile, splendid torture of understanding and
+loving," of the "moving effigies which ennoble for all time the charming
+and venerable fronts of our cathedrals"; that he would express a whole
+system of philosophy, new to me, by the use of marvellous imagery, to the
+inspiration of which I would naturally have ascribed that sound of harping
+which began to chime and echo in my ears, an accompaniment to which that
+imagery added something ethereal and sublime. One of these passages of
+Bergotte, the third or fourth which I had detached from the rest, filled
+me with a joy to which the meagre joy I had tasted in the first passage
+bore no comparison, a joy which I felt myself to have experienced in some
+innermost chamber of my soul, deep, undivided, vast, from which all
+obstructions and partitions seemed to have been swept away. For what
+had happened was that, while I recognised in this passage the same taste
+for uncommon phrases, the same bursts of music, the same idealist
+philosophy which had been present in the earlier passages without my
+having taken them into account as the source of my pleasure, I now no
+longer had the impression of being confronted by a particular passage in
+one of Bergotte's works, which traced a purely bi-dimensional figure in
+outline upon the surface of my mind, but rather of the 'ideal passage' of
+Bergotte, common to every one of his books, and to which all the earlier,
+similar passages, now becoming merged in it, had added a kind of density
+and volume, by which my own understanding seemed to be enlarged.
+
+I was by no means Bergotte's sole admirer; he was the favourite writer
+also of a friend of my mother's, a highly literary lady; while Dr. du,
+Boulbon had kept all his patients waiting until he finished Bergotte's
+latest volume; and it was from his consulting room, and from a house in a
+park near Combray that some of the first seeds were scattered of that
+taste for Bergotte, a rare-growth in those days, but now so universally
+acclimatised that one finds it flowering everywhere throughout Europe and
+America, and even in the tiniest villages, rare still in its refinement,
+but in that alone. What my mother's friend, and, it would seem, what Dr.
+du Boulbon liked above all in the writings of Bergotte was just what I
+liked, the same flow of melody, the same old-fashioned phrases, and
+certain others, quite simple and familiar, but so placed by him, in such
+prominence, as to hint at a particular quality of taste on his part; and
+also, in the sad parts of his books, a sort of roughness, a tone that was
+almost harsh. And he himself, no doubt, realised that these were his
+principal attractions. For in his later books, if he had hit upon some
+great truth, or upon the name of an historic cathedral, he would break off
+his narrative, and in an invocation, an apostrophe, a lengthy prayer,
+would give a free outlet to that effluence which, in the earlier volumes,
+remained buried beneath the form of his prose, discernible only in a
+rippling of its surface, and perhaps even more delightful, more harmonious
+when it was thus veiled from the eye, when the reader could give no
+precise indication of where the murmur of the current began, or of where
+it died away. These passages in which he delighted were our favourites
+also. For my own part I knew all of them by heart. I felt even
+disappointed when he resumed the thread of his narrative. Whenever he
+spoke of something whose beauty had until then remained hidden from me, of
+pine-forests or of hailstorms, of _Notre-Dame de Paris_, of _Athalie_, or
+of _Ph�dre_, by some piece of imagery he would make their beauty explode
+and drench me with its essence. And so, dimly realising that the universe
+contained innumerable elements which my feeble senses would be powerless
+to discern, did he not bring them within my reach, I wished that I might
+have his opinion, some metaphor of his, upon everything in the world, and
+especially upon such things as I might have an opportunity, some day, of
+seeing for myself; and among such things, more particularly still upon
+some of the historic buildings of France, upon certain views of the sea,
+because the emphasis with which, in his books, he referred to these shewed
+that he regarded them as rich in significance and beauty. But, alas, upon
+almost everything in the world his opinion was unknown to me. I had no
+doubt that it would differ entirely from my own, since his came down from
+an unknown sphere towards which I was striving to raise myself; convinced
+that my thoughts would have seemed pure foolishness to that perfected
+spirit, I had so completely obliterated them all that, if I happened to
+find in one of his books something which had already occurred to my own
+mind, my heart would swell with gratitude and pride as though some deity
+had, in his infinite bounty, restored it to me, had pronounced it to be
+beautiful and right. It happened now and then that a page of Bergotte
+would express precisely those ideas which I used often at night, when I
+was unable to sleep, to write to my grandmother and mother, and so
+concisely and well that his page had the appearance of a collection of
+mottoes for me to set at the head of my letters. And so too, in later
+years, when I began to compose a book of my own, and the quality of some
+of my sentences seemed so inadequate that I could not make up my mind to
+go on with the undertaking, I would find the equivalent of my sentences in
+Bergotte's.  But it was only then, when I read them in his pages, that I
+could enjoy them; when it was I myself who composed them, in my anxiety
+that they should exactly reproduce what I seemed to have detected in my
+mind, and in my fear of their not turning out 'true to life,' I had no
+time to ask myself whether what I was writing would be pleasant to read!
+But indeed there was no kind of language, no kind of ideas which I really
+liked, except these. My feverish and unsatisfactory attempts were
+themselves a token of my love, a love which brought me no pleasure, but
+was, for all that, intense and deep. And so, when I came suddenly upon
+similar phrases in the writings of another, that is to say stripped of
+their familiar accompaniment of scruples and repressions and
+self-tormentings, I was free to indulge to the full my own appetite for
+such things, just as a cook who, once in a while, has no dinner to prepare
+for other people, can then find time to gormandise himself. And so, when I
+had found, one day, in a book by Bergotte, some joke about an old family
+servant, to which his solemn and magnificent style added a great deal of
+irony, but which was in principle what I had often said to my grandmother
+about Fran�oise, and when, another time, I had discovered that he thought
+not unworthy of reflection in one of those mirrors of absolute Truth which
+were his writings, a remark similar to one which I had had occasion to
+make on our friend M. Legrandin (and, moreover, my remarks on Fran�oise
+and M. Legrandin were among those which I would most resolutely have
+sacrificed for Bergotte's sake, in the belief that he would find them
+quite without interest); then it was suddenly revealed to me that my own
+humble existence and the Realms of Truth were less widely separated than I
+had supposed, that at certain points they were actually in contact; and in
+my new-found confidence and joy I wept upon his printed page, as in the
+arms of a long-lost father.
+
+From his books I had formed an impression of Bergotte as a frail and
+disappointed old man, who had lost his children, and had never found any
+consolation. And so I would read, or rather sing his sentences in my
+brain, with rather more _dolce_, rather more _lento_ than he himself had,
+perhaps, intended, and his simplest phrase would strike my ears with
+something peculiarly gentle and loving in its intonation. More than
+anything else in the world I cherished his philosophy, and had pledged
+myself to it in lifelong devotion. It made me impatient to reach the age
+when I should be eligible to attend the class at school called
+'Philosophy.' I did not wish to learn or do anything else there, but
+simply to exist and be guided entirely by the mind of Bergotte, and, if I
+had been told then that the metaphysicians whom I was actually to follow
+there resembled him in nothing, I should have been struck down by the
+despair a young lover feels who has sworn lifelong fidelity, when a friend
+speaks to him of the other mistresses he will have in time to come.
+
+One Sunday, while I was reading in the garden, I was interrupted by Swann,
+who had come to call upon my parents.
+
+"What are you reading? May I look? Why, it's Bergotte! Who has been
+telling you about him?"
+
+I replied that Bloch was responsible.
+
+"Oh, yes, that boy I saw here once, who looks so like the Bellini portrait
+of Mahomet II. It's an astonishing likeness; he has the same arched
+eyebrows and hooked nose and prominent cheekbones. When his beard comes
+he'll be Mahomet himself. Anyhow he has good taste, for Bergotte is a
+charming creature." And seeing how much I seemed to admire Bergotte,
+Swann, who never spoke at all about the people he knew, made an exception
+in my favour and said: "I know him well; if you would like him to write a
+few words on the title-page of your book I could ask him for you."
+
+I dared not accept such an offer, but bombarded Swann with questions about
+his friend. "Can you tell me, please, who is his favourite actor?"
+
+"Actor? No, I can't say. But I do know this: there's not a man on the
+stage whom he thinks equal to Berma; he puts her above everyone. Have you
+seen her?"
+
+"No, sir, my parents do not allow me to go to the theatre."
+
+"That is a pity. You should insist. Berma in _Ph�dre_, in the _Cid_; well,
+she's only an actress, if you like, but you know that I don't believe very
+much in the 'hierarchy' of the arts." As he spoke I noticed, what had
+often struck me before in his conversations with my grandmother's sisters,
+that whenever he spoke of serious matters, whenever he used an expression
+which seemed to imply a definite opinion upon some important subject, he
+would take care to isolate, to sterilise it by using a special intonation,
+mechanical and ironic, as though he had put the phrase or word between
+inverted commas, and was anxious to disclaim any personal responsibility
+for it; as who should say "the 'hierarchy,' don't you know, as silly
+people call it." But then, if it was so absurd, why did he say the
+'hierarchy'? A moment later he went on: "Her acting will give you as noble
+an inspiration as any masterpiece of art in the world, as--oh, I don't
+know--" and he began to laugh, "shall we say the Queens of Chartres?"
+Until then I had supposed that his horror of having to give a serious
+opinion was something Parisian and refined, in contrast to the provincial
+dogmatism of my grandmother's sisters; and I had imagined also that it was
+characteristic of the mental attitude towards life of the circle in which
+Swann moved, where, by a natural reaction from the 'lyrical' enthusiasms
+of earlier generations, an excessive importance was given to small and
+precise facts, formerly regarded as vulgar, and anything in the nature of
+'phrase-making' was banned. But now I found myself slightly shocked by
+this attitude which Swann invariably adopted when face to face with
+generalities. He appeared unwilling to risk even having an opinion, and to
+be at his ease only when he could furnish, with meticulous accuracy, some
+precise but unimportant detail. But in so doing he did not take into
+account that even here he was giving an opinion, holding a brief (as they
+say) for something, that the accuracy of his details had an importance of
+its own.  I thought again of the dinner that night, when I had been so
+unhappy because Mamma would not be coming up to my room, and when he had
+dismissed the balls given by the Princesse de L�on as being of no
+importance.  And yet it was to just that sort of amusement that he was
+devoting his life. For what other kind of existence did he reserve the
+duties of saying in all seriousness what he thought about things, of
+formulating judgments which he would not put between inverted commas; and
+when would he cease to give himself up to occupations of which at the
+same, time he made out that they were absurd? I noticed, too, in the
+manner in which Swann spoke to me of Bergotte, something which, to do him
+justice, was not peculiar to himself, but was shared by all that writer's
+admirers at that time, at least by my mother's friend and by Dr. du
+Boulbon. Like Swann, they would say of Bergotte: "He has a charming mind,
+so individual, he has a way of his own of saying things, which is a little
+far-fetched, but so pleasant. You never need to look for his name on the
+title-page, you can tell his work at once." But none of them had yet gone
+so far as to say "He is a great writer, he has great talent." They did not
+even credit him with talent at all. They did not speak, because they were
+not aware of it. We are very slow in recognising in the peculiar
+physiognomy of a new writer the type which is labelled 'great talent' in
+our museum of general ideas. Simply because that physiognomy is new and
+strange, we can find in it no resemblance to what we are accustomed to
+call talent. We say rather originality, charm, delicacy, strength; and
+then one day we add up the sum of these, and find that it amounts simply
+to talent.
+
+"Are there any books in which Bergotte has written about Berma?" I asked
+M. Swann.
+
+"I think he has, in that little essay on Racine, but it must be out of
+print. Still, there has perhaps been a second impression. I will find out.
+Anyhow, I can ask Bergotte himself all that you want to know next time he
+comes to dine with us. He never misses a week, from one year's end to
+another. He is my daughter's greatest friend. They go about together, and
+look at old towns and cathedrals and castles."
+
+As I was still completely ignorant of the different grades in the social
+hierarchy, the fact that my father found it impossible for us to see
+anything of Swann's wife and daughter had, for a long time, had the
+contrary effect of making me imagine them as separated from us by an
+enormous gulf, which greatly enhanced their dignity and importance in my
+eyes. I was sorry that my mother did not dye her hair and redden her lips,
+as I had heard our neighbour, Mme. Sazerat, say that Mme. Swann did, to
+gratify not her husband but M. de Charlus; and I felt that, to her, we
+must be an object of scorn, which distressed me particularly on account of
+the daughter, such a pretty little girl, as I had heard, and one of whom I
+used often to dream, always imagining her with the same features and
+appearance, which I bestowed upon her quite arbitrarily, but with a
+charming effect. But from this afternoon, when I had learned that Mile.
+Swann was a creature living in such rare and fortunate circumstances,
+bathed, as in her natural element, in such a sea of privilege that, if she
+should ask her parents whether anyone were coming to dinner, she would be
+answered in those two syllables, radiant with celestial light, would hear
+the name of that golden guest who was to her no more than an old friend of
+her family, Bergotte; that for her the intimate conversation at table,
+corresponding to what my great-aunt's conversation was for me, would be
+the words of Bergotte upon all those subjects which he had not been able
+to take up in his writings, and on which I would fain have heard him utter
+oracles; and that, above all, when she went to visit other towns, he would
+be walking by her side, unrecognised and glorious, like the gods who came
+down, of old, from heaven to dwell among mortal men: then I realised both
+the rare worth of a creature such as Mile. Swann, and, at the same time,
+how coarse and ignorant I should appear to her; and I felt so keenly how
+pleasant and yet how impossible it would be for me to become her friend
+that I was filled at once with longing and with despair. And usually, from
+this time forth, when I thought of her, I would see her standing before
+the porch of a cathedral, explaining to me what each of the statues meant,
+and, with a smile which was my highest commendation, presenting me, as her
+friend, to Bergotte.  And invariably the charm of all the fancies which
+the thought of cathedrals used to inspire in me, the charm of the hills
+and valleys of the He de France and of the plains of Normandy, would
+radiate brightness and beauty over the picture I had formed in my mind of
+Mile. Swann; nothing more remained but to know and to love her. Once we
+believe that a fellow-creature has a share in some unknown existence to
+which that creature's love for ourselves can win us admission, that is, of
+all the preliminary conditions which Love exacts, the one to which he
+attaches most importance, the one which makes him generous or indifferent
+as to the rest. Even those women who pretend that they judge a man by his
+exterior only, see in that exterior an emanation from some special way of
+life. And that is why they fall in love with a soldier or a fireman, whose
+uniform makes them less particular about his face; they kiss and believe
+that beneath the crushing breastplate there beats a heart different from
+the rest, more gallant, more adventurous, more tender; and so it is that a
+young king or a crown prince may travel in foreign countries and make the
+most gratifying conquests, and yet lack entirely that regular and classic
+profile which would be indispensable, I dare say, in an outside-broker.
+
+While I was reading in the garden, a thing my great-aunt would never have
+understood my doing save on a Sunday, that being the day on which it was
+unlawful to indulge in any serious occupation, and on which she herself
+would lay aside her sewing (on a week-day she would have said, "How you
+can go on amusing yourself with a book; it isn't Sunday, you know!"
+putting into the word 'amusing' an implication of childishness and waste
+of time), my aunt L�onie would be gossiping with Fran�oise until it was
+time for Eulalie to arrive. She would tell her that she had just seen Mme.
+Goupil go by "without an umbrella, in the silk dress she had made for her
+the other day at Ch�teaudun. If she has far to go before vespers, she may
+get it properly soaked."
+
+"Very likely" (which meant also "very likely not") was the answer, for
+Fran�oise did not wish definitely to exclude the possibility of a happier
+alternative.
+
+"There, now," went on my aunt, beating her brow, "that reminds me that I
+never heard if she got to church this morning before the Elevation.  I
+must remember to ask Eulalie... Fran�oise, just look at that black cloud
+behind the steeple, and how poor the light is on the slates, you may be
+certain it will rain before the day is out. It couldn't possibly keep on
+like this, it's been too hot. And the sooner the better, for until the
+storm breaks my Vichy water won't 'go down,'" she concluded, since, in her
+mind, the desire to accelerate the digestion of her Vichy water was of
+infinitely greater importance than her fear of seeing Mme. Goupil's new
+dress ruined.
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"And you know that when it rains in the Square there's none too much
+shelter." Suddenly my aunt turned pale. "What, three o'clock!" she
+exclaimed.  "But vespers will have begun already, and I've forgotten my
+pepsin!  Now I know why that Vichy water has been lying on my stomach."
+And falling precipitately upon a prayer-book bound in purple velvet, with
+gilt clasps, out of which in her haste she let fall a shower of the little
+pictures, each in a lace fringe of yellowish paper, which she used to mark
+the places of the greater feasts of the church, my aunt, while she
+swallowed her drops, began at full speed to mutter the words of the sacred
+text, its meaning being slightly clouded in her brain by the uncertainty
+whether the pepsin, when taken so long after the Vichy, would still be
+able to overtake it and to 'send it down.' "Three o'clock! It's
+unbelievable how time flies."
+
+A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed
+by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand
+were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on
+an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming, musical, innumerable,
+universal. It was the rain.
+
+"There, Fran�oise, what did I tell you? How it's coming down! But I think
+I heard the bell at the garden gate: go along and see who can be outside
+in this weather."
+
+Fran�oise went and returned. "It's Mme. Am�d�e" (my grandmother).  "She
+said she was going for a walk. It's raining hard, all the same."
+
+"I'm not at all surprised," said my aunt, looking up towards the sky.
+"I've always said that she was not in the least like other people. Well,
+I'm glad it's she and not myself who's outside in all this."
+
+"Mme. Am�d�e is always the exact opposite of the rest," said Fran�oise,
+not unkindly, refraining until she should be alone with the other servants
+from stating her belief that my grandmother was 'a bit off her head.'
+
+"There's Benediction over! Eulalie will never come now," sighed my aunt.
+"It will be the weather that's frightened her away."
+
+"But it's not five o'clock yet, Mme. Octave, it's only half-past four."
+
+"Only half-past four! And here am I, obliged to draw back the small
+curtains, just to get a tiny streak of daylight. At half-past four! Only a
+week before the Rogation-days. Ah, my poor Fran�oise, the dear Lord must
+be sorely vexed with us. The world is going too far in these days. As my
+poor Octave used to say, we have forgotten God too often, and He is taking
+vengeance upon us."
+
+A bright flush animated my aunt's cheeks; it was Eulalie. As ill luck
+would have it, scarcely had she been admitted to the presence when
+Fran�oise reappeared and, with a smile which was meant to indicate her
+full participation in the pleasure which, she had no doubt, her tidings
+would give my aunt, articulating each syllable so as to shew that, in
+spite of her having to translate them into indirect speech, she was
+repeating, as a good servant should, the very words which the new visitor
+had condescended to use, said: "His reverence the Cur� would be delighted,
+enchanted, if Mme. Octave is not resting just now, and could see him. His
+reverence does not wish to disturb Mme. Octave. His reverence is
+downstairs; I told him to go into the parlour."
+
+Had the truth been known, the Cur�'s visits gave my aunt no such ecstatic
+pleasure as Fran�oise supposed, and the air of jubilation with which she
+felt bound to illuminate her face whenever she had to announce his
+arrival, did not altogether correspond to what was felt by her invalid.
+The Cur� (an excellent man, with whom I am sorry now that I did not
+converse more often, for, even if he cared nothing for the arts, he knew a
+great many etymologies), being in the habit of shewing distinguished
+visitors over his church (he had even planned to compile a history of the
+Parish of Com-bray), used to weary her with his endless explanations,
+which, incidentally, never varied in the least degree. But when his visit
+synchronized exactly with Eulalie's it became frankly distasteful to my
+aunt. She would have preferred to make the most of Eulalie, and not to
+have had the whole of her circle about her at one time. But she dared not
+send the Cur� away, and had to content herself with making a sign to
+Eulalie not to leave when he did, so that she might have her to herself
+for a little after he had gone.
+
+"What is this I have been hearing, Father, that a painter has set up his
+easel in your church, and is copying one of the windows? Old as I am, I
+can safely say that I have never even heard of such a thing in all my
+life!  What is the world coming to next, I wonder! And the ugliest thing
+in the whole church, too."
+
+"I will not go so far as to say that it is quite the ugliest, for,
+although there are certain things in Saint-Hilaire which are well worth a
+visit, there are others that are very old now, in my poor basilica, the
+only one in all the diocese that has never even been restored. The Lord
+knows, our porch is dirty and out of date; still, it is of a majestic
+character; take, for instance, the Esther tapestries, though personally I
+would not give a brass farthing for the pair of them, but experts put them
+next after the ones at Sens. I can quite see, too, that apart from certain
+details which are--well, a trifle realistic, they shew features which
+testify to a genuine power of observation.  But don't talk to me about the
+windows. Is it common sense, I ask you, to leave up windows which shut out
+all the daylight, and even confuse the eyes by throwing patches of colour,
+to which I should be hard put to it to give a name, on a floor in which
+there are not two slabs on the same level? And yet they refuse to renew
+the floor for me because, if you please, those are the tombstones of the
+Abbots of Combray and the Lords of Guermantes, the old Counts, you know,
+of Brabant, direct ancestors of the present Duc de Guermantes, and of his
+Duchesse also, since she was a lady of the Guermantes family, and married
+her cousin." (My grandmother, whose steady refusal to take any interest in
+'persons' had ended in her confusing all their names and titles, whenever
+anyone mentioned the Duchesse de Guermantes used to make out that she must
+be related to Mme. de Villeparisis. The whole family would then burst out
+laughing; and she would attempt to justify herself by harking back to some
+invitation to a christening or funeral: "I feel sure that there was a
+Guermantes in it somewhere." And for once I would side with the others,
+and against her, refusing to admit that there could be any connection
+between her school-friend and the descendant of Genevi�ve de Brabant.)
+
+"Look at Roussainville," the Cur� went on. "It is nothing more nowadays
+than a parish of farmers, though in olden times the place must have had a
+considerable importance from its trade in felt hats and clocks. (I am not
+certain, by the way, of the etymology of Roussainville. I should dearly
+like to think that the name was originally Rouville, from _Radulfi villa_,
+analogous, don't you see, to Ch�teauroux, _Castrum Radulfi_, but we will
+talk about that some other time.) Very well; the church there has superb
+windows, almost all quite modern, including that most imposing 'Entry of
+Louis-Philippe into Combray' which would be more in keeping, surely, at
+Combray itself, and which is every bit as good, I understand, as the
+famous^windows at Chartres. Only yesterday I met Dr. Percepied's brother,
+who goes in for these things, and he told me that he looked upon it as a
+most beautiful piece of work. But, as I said to this artist, who, by the
+way, seems to be a most civil fellow, and is a regular virtuoso, it
+appears, with his brush; what on earth, I said to him, do you find so
+extraordinary in this window, which is, if anything, a little dingier than
+the rest?"
+
+"I am sure that if you were to ask his Lordship," said my aunt in a
+resigned tone, for she had begun to feel that she was going to be 'tired,'
+"he would never refuse you a new window."
+
+"You may depend upon it, Mme. Octave," replied the Cur�. "Why, it was just
+his Lordship himself who started the outcry about the window, by proving
+that it represented Gilbert the Bad, a Lord of Guermantes and a direct
+descendant of Genevi�ve de Brabant, who was a daughter of the House of
+Guermantes, receiving absolution from Saint Hilaire."
+
+"But I don't see where Saint Hilaire comes in."
+
+"Why yes, have you never noticed, in the corner of the window, a lady in a
+yellow robe? Very well, that is Saint Hilaire, who is also known, you will
+remember, in certain parts of the country as Saint Illiers, Saint H�lier,
+and even, in the Jura, Saint Ylie. But these various corruptions of
+_Sanctus Hilarius_ are by no means the most curious that have occurred in
+the names of the blessed Saints. Take, for example, my good Eulalie, the
+case of your own patron, _Sancta Eulalia_; do you know what she has become
+in Burgundy?  Saint Eloi, nothing more nor less! The lady has become a
+gentleman.  Do you hear that, Eulalie, after you are dead they will make a
+man of you!"
+
+"Father will always have his joke."
+
+"Gilbert's brother, Charles the Stammerer, was a pious prince, but, having
+early in life lost his father, Pepin the Mad, who died as a result of his
+mental infirmity, he wielded the supreme power with all the arrogance of a
+man who has not been subjected to discipline in his youth, so much so
+that, whenever he saw a man in a town whose face he did not remember, he
+would massacre the whole place, to the last inhabitant. Gilbert, wishing
+to be avenged on Charles, caused the church at Combray to be burned down,
+the original church, that was, which Th�odebert, when he and his court
+left the country residence he had near here, at Thiberzy (which is, of
+course, _Theodeberiacus_), to go out and fight the Burgundians, had
+promised to build over the tomb of Saint Hilaire if the Saint brought him;
+victory. Nothing remains of it now but the crypt, into which Th�odore has
+probably taken you, for Gilbert burned all the rest. Finally, he defeated
+the unlucky Charles with the aid of William" which the Cur� pronounced
+"Will'am" "the Conqueror, which is why so many English still come to visit
+the place. But he does not appear to have managed to win the affection of
+the people of Combray, for they fell upon him as he was coming out from
+mass, and cut off his head. Th�odore has a little book, that he lends
+people, which tells you the whole story.
+
+"But what is unquestionably the most remarkable thing about our church is
+the view from the belfry, which is full of grandeur. Certainly in your
+case, since you are not very strong, I should never recommend you: to
+climb our seven and ninety steps, just half the number they have in the
+famous cathedral at Milan. It is quite tiring enough for the most active
+person, especially as you have to go on your hands and knees, if you don't
+wish to crack your skull, and you collect all the cobwebs off the
+staircase upon your clothes. In any case you should be well wrapped up,"
+he went on, without noticing my aunt's fury at the mere suggestion that
+she could ever, possibly, be capable of climbing into his belfry, "for
+there's a strong breeze there, once you get to the top. Some people even
+assure me that they have felt the chill of death up there. No matter, on
+Sundays there are always clubs and societies, who come, some of them, long
+distances to admire our beautiful panorama, and they always go home
+charmed.  Wait now, next Sunday, if the weather holds, you will be sure to
+find a lot of people there, for Rogation-tide. You must admit, certainly,
+that the view from up there is like a fairy-tale, with what you might call
+vistas along the plain, which have quite a special charm of their own. On
+a clear day you can see as far as Verneuil. And then another thing; you
+can see at the same time places which you are in the habit of seeing one
+without the other, as, for instance, the course of the Vivonne and the
+ditches at Saint-Assise-l�s-Combray, which are separated, really, by a
+screen of tall trees; or, to take another example, there are all the
+canals at Jouy-le-Vicomte, which is _Gaudiacus vicecomitis_, as of course
+you know. Each time that I have been to Jouy I have seen a bit of a canal
+in one place, and then I have turned a corner and seen another, but when I
+saw the second I could no longer see the first. I tried in vain to imagine
+how they lay by one another; it was no good. But, from the top of
+Saint-Hilaire, it's quite another matter; the whole countryside is spread
+out before you like a map. Only, you cannot make out the water; you would
+say that there were great rifts in the town, slicing it up so neatly that
+it looks like a loaf of bread which still holds together after it has been
+cut up. To get it all quite perfect you would have to be in both places at
+once; up here on the top of Saint-Hilaire and down there at
+Jouy-le-Vicomte."
+
+The Cur� had so much exhausted my aunt that no sooner had he gone than she
+was obliged to send away Eulalie also.
+
+"Here, my poor Eulalie," she said in a feeble voice, drawing a coin from a
+small purse which lay ready to her hand. "This is just something so that
+you shall not forget me in your prayers."
+
+"Oh, but, Mme. Octave, I don't think I ought to; you know very well that I
+don't come here for that!" So Eulalie would answer, with the same
+hesitation and the same embarrassment, every Sunday, as though each
+temptation were the first, and with a look of displeasure which enlivened
+my aunt and never offended her, for if it so happened that Eulalie, when
+she took the money, looked a little less sulky than usual, my aunt would
+remark afterwards, "I cannot think what has come over Eulalie; I gave her
+just the trifle I always give, and she did not look at all pleased."
+
+"I don't think she has very much to complain of, all the same," Fran�oise
+would sigh grimly, for she had a tendency to regard as petty cash all that
+my aunt might give her for herself or her children, and as treasure
+riotously squandered on a pampered and ungrateful darling the little coins
+slipped, Sunday by Sunday, into Eulalie's hand, but so discreetly passed
+that Fran�oise never managed to see them. It was not that she wanted to
+have for herself the money my aunt bestowed on Eulalie. She already
+enjoyed a sufficiency of all that my aunt possessed, in the knowledge that
+the wealth of the mistress automatically ennobled and glorified the maid
+in the eyes of the world; and that she herself was conspicuous and worthy
+to be praised throughout Combray, Jouy-le-Vicomte, and other cities of
+men, on account of my aunt's many farms, her frequent and prolonged visits
+from the Cur�, and the astonishing number of bottles of Vichy water which
+she consumed.  Fran�oise was avaricious only for my aunt; had she had
+control over my aunt's fortune (which would have more than satisfied her
+highest ambition) she would have guarded it from the assaults of strangers
+with a maternal ferocity. She would, however, have seen no great harm in
+what my aunt, whom she knew to be incurably generous, allowed herself to
+give away, had she given only to those who were already rich. Perhaps she
+felt that such persons, not being actually in need of my aunt's presents,
+could not be suspected of simulating affection for her on that account.
+Besides, presents offered to persons of great wealth and position, such as
+Mme.  Sazerat, M. Swann, M. Legrandin and Mme. Goupil, to persons of the
+'same class' as my aunt, and who would naturally 'mix with her,' seemed to
+Fran�oise to be included among the ornamental customs of that strange and
+brilliant life led by rich people, who hunted and shot, gave balls and
+paid visits, a life which she would contemplate with an admiring smile.
+But it was by no means the same thing if, for this princely exchange of
+courtesies, my aunt substituted mere charity, if her beneficiaries were of
+the class which Fran�oise would label "people like myself," or "people no
+better than myself," people whom she despised even more if they did not
+address her always as "Mme. Fran�oise," just to shew that they considered
+themselves to be 'not as good.' And when she saw that, despite all her
+warnings, my aunt continued to do exactly as she pleased, and to fling
+money away with both hands (or so, at least, Fran�oise believed) on
+undeserving objects, she began to find that the presents she herself
+received from my aunt were very tiny compared to the imaginary riches
+squandered upon Eulalie, There was not, in the neighbourhood of Combray, a
+farm of such prosperity and importance that Fran�oise doubted Eulalie's
+ability to buy it, without thinking twice, out of the capital which her
+visits to my aunt had 'brought in.' It must be added that Eulalie had
+formed an exactly similar estimate of the vast and secret hoards of
+Fran�oise. So, every Sunday, after Eulalie had gone, Fran�oise would
+mercilessly prophesy her coming downfall. She hated Eulalie, but was at
+the same time afraid of her, and so felt bound, when Eulalie was there, to
+'look pleasant.' But she would make up for that after the other's
+departure; never, it is true, alluding to her by name, but hinting at her
+in Sibylline oracles, or in utterances of a comprehensive character, like
+those of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher, but so worded that their special
+application could not escape my aunt. After peering out at the side of the
+curtain to see whether Eulalie had shut the front-door behind her;
+"Flatterers know how to make themselves welcome, and to gather up the
+crumbs; but have patience, have patience; our God is a jealous God, and
+one fine day He will be avenged upon them!" she would declaim, with the
+sidelong, insinuating glance of Joash, thinking of Athaliah alone when he
+says that the
+
+    prosperity
+  Of wicked men runs like a torrent past,
+  And soon is spent.
+
+But on this memorable afternoon, when the Cur� had come as well, and by
+his interminable visit had drained my aunt's strength, Fran�oise followed
+Eulalie from the room, saying: "Mme. Octave, I will leave you to rest; you
+look utterly tired out."
+
+And my aunt answered her not a word, breathing a sigh so faint that it
+seemed it must prove her last, and lying there with closed eyes, as though
+already dead. But hardly had Fran�oise arrived downstairs, when four peals
+of a bell, pulled with the utmost violence, reverberated through the
+house, and my aunt, sitting erect upon her bed, called out: "Has Eulalie
+gone yet? Would you believe it; I forgot to ask her whether Mme. Goupil
+arrived in church before the Elevation. Run after her, quick!"
+
+But Fran�oise returned alone, having failed to overtake Eulalie.  "It is
+most provoking," said my aunt, shaking her head. "The one important thing
+that I had to ask her."
+
+In this way life went by for my aunt L�onie, always the same, in the
+gentle uniformity of what she called, with a pretence of deprecation but
+with a deep tenderness, her 'little jog-trot.' Respected by all and
+sundry, not merely in her own house, where every one of us, having learned
+the futility of recommending any healthier mode of life, had become
+gradually resigned to its observance, but in the village as well, where,
+three streets away, a tradesman who had to hammer nails into a
+packing-case would send first to Fran�oise to make sure that my aunt was
+not 'resting'--her 'little jog-trot' was, none the less, brutally
+disturbed on one occasion in this same year. Like a fruit hidden among its
+leaves, which has grown and ripened unobserved by man, until it falls of
+its own accord, there came upon us one night the kitchen-maid's
+confinement. Her pains were unbearable, and, as there was no midwife in
+Combray, Fran�oise had to set off before dawn to fetch one from Thiberzy.
+My aunt was unable to 'rest,' owing to the cries of the girl, and as
+Fran�oise, though the distance was nothing, was very late in returning,
+her services were greatly missed.  And so, in the course of the morning,
+my mother said to me: "Run upstairs, and see if your aunt wants anything."
+
+I went into the first of her two rooms, and through the open door of the
+other saw my aunt lying on her side, asleep. I could hear her breathing,
+in what was almost distinguishable as a snore. I was just going to slip
+away when something, probably the sound of my entry, interrupted her
+sleep, and made it 'change speed,' as they say of motorcars nowadays, for
+the music of her snore broke off for a second and began again on a lower
+note; then she awoke, and half turned her face, which I could see for the
+first time; a kind of horror was imprinted on it; plainly she had just
+escaped from some terrifying dream. She could not see me from where she
+was lying, and I stood there not knowing whether I ought to go forward or
+to retire; but all at once she seemed to return to a sense of reality, and
+to grasp the falsehood of the visions that had terrified her; a smile of
+joy, a pious act of thanksgiving to God, Who is pleased to grant that life
+shall be less cruel than our dreams, feebly illumined her face, and, with
+the habit she had formed of speaking to herself, half-aloud, when she
+thought herself alone, she murmured: "The Lord be praised! We have nothing
+to disturb us here but the kitchen-maid's baby. And I've been dreaming
+that my poor Octave had come back to life, and was trying to make me take
+a walk every day!" She stretched out a hand towards her rosary, which was
+lying on the small table, but sleep was once again getting the mastery,
+and did not leave her the strength to reach it; she fell asleep, calm and
+contented, and I crept out of the room on tiptoe, without either her or
+anyone's else ever knowing, from that day to this, what I had seen and
+heard.
+
+When I say that, apart from such rare happenings as this confinement, my
+aunt's 'little jog-trot' never underwent any variation, I do not include
+those variations which, repeated at regular intervals and in identical
+form, did no more, really, than print a sort of uniform pattern upon the
+greater uniformity of her life. So, for instance, every Saturday, as
+Fran�oise had to go in the afternoon to market at Roussainville-le-Pin,
+the whole household would have to have luncheon an hour earlier. And my
+aunt had so thoroughly acquired the habit of this weekly exception to her
+general habits, that she clung to it as much as to the rest. She was so
+well 'routined' to it, as Fran�oise would say, that if, on a Saturday, she
+had had to wait for her luncheon until the regular hour, it would have
+'upset' her as much as if she had had, on an ordinary day, to put her
+luncheon forward to its Saturday time. Incidentally this acceleration of
+luncheon gave Saturday, for all of us, an individual character, kindly and
+rather attractive. At the moment when, ordinarily, there was still an hour
+to be lived through before meal-time sounded, we would all know that in a
+few seconds we should see the endives make their precocious appearance,
+followed by the special favour of an omelette, an unmerited steak. The
+return of this asymmetrical Saturday was one of those petty occurrences,
+intra-mural, localised, almost civic, which, in uneventful lives and
+stable orders of society, create a kind of national unity, and become the
+favourite theme for conversation, for pleasantries, for anecdotes which
+can be embroidered as the narrator pleases; it would have provided a
+nucleus, ready-made, for a legendary cycle, if any of us had had the epic
+mind. At daybreak, before we were dressed, without rhyme or reason, save
+for the pleasure of proving the strength of our solidarity, we would call
+to one another good-humoredly, cordially, patriotically, "Hurry up;
+there's no time to be lost; don't forget, it's Saturday!" while my aunt,
+gossiping with Fran�oise, and reflecting that the day would be even longer
+than usual, would say, "You might cook them a nice bit of veal, seeing
+that it's Saturday." If, at half-past ten, some one absent-mindedly pulled
+out a watch and said, "I say, an hour-and-a-half still before luncheon,"
+everyone else would be in ecstasies over being able to retort at once:
+"Why, what are you thinking about? Have you for-gotten that it's
+Saturday?" And a quarter of an hour later we would still be laughing, and
+reminding ourselves to go up and tell aunt L�onie about this absurd
+mistake, to amuse her. The very face of the sky appeared to undergo a
+change. After luncheon the sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would
+blaze an hour longer in the zenith, and when some one, thinking that we
+were late in starting for our walk, said, "What, only two o'clock!"
+feeling the heavy throb go by him of the twin strokes from the steeple of
+Saint-Hilaire (which as a rule passed no one at that hour upon the
+highways, deserted for the midday meal or for the nap which follows it, or
+on the banks of the bright and ever-flowing stream, which even the angler
+had abandoned, and so slipped unaccompanied into the vacant sky, where
+only a few loitering clouds remained to greet them) the whole family would
+respond in chorus: "Why, you're forgetting; we had luncheon an hour
+earlier; you know very well it's Saturday."
+
+The surprise of a 'barbarian' (for so we termed everyone who was not
+acquainted with Saturday's special customs) who had called at eleven
+o'clock to speak to my father, and had found us at table, was an event
+which used to cause Fran�oise as much merriment as, perhaps, anything that
+had ever happened in her life. And if she found it amusing that the
+nonplussed visitor should not have known, beforehand, that we had our
+luncheon an hour earlier on Saturday, it was still more irresistibly funny
+that my father himself (fully as she sympathised, from the bottom of her
+heart, with the rigid chauvinism which prompted him) should never have
+dreamed that the barbarian could fail to be aware of so simple a matter,
+and so had replied, with no further enlightenment of the other's surprise
+at seeing us already in the dining-room: "You see, it's Saturday." On
+reaching this point in the story, Fran�oise would pause to wipe the tears
+of merriment from her eyes, and then, to add to her own enjoyment, would
+prolong the dialogue, inventing a further reply for the visitor to whom
+the word 'Saturday' had conveyed nothing. And so far from our objecting to
+these interpolations, we would feel that the story was not yet long
+enough, and would rally her with: "Oh, but surely he said something else
+as well. There was more than that, the first time you told it."
+
+My great-aunt herself would lay aside her work, and raise her head and
+look on at us over her glasses.
+
+The day had yet another characteristic feature, namely, that during May we
+used to go out on Saturday evenings after dinner to the 'Month of Mary'
+devotions.
+
+As we were liable, there, to meet M. Vinteuil, who held very strict views
+on "the deplorable untidiness of young people, which seems to be
+encouraged in these days," my mother would first see that there was
+nothing out of order in my appearance, and then we would set out for the
+church.  It was in these 'Month of Mary' services that I can remember
+having first fallen in love with hawthorn-blossom. The hawthorn was not
+merely in the church, for there, holy ground as it was, we had all of us a
+right of entry; but, arranged upon the altar itself, inseparable from the
+mysteries in whose celebration it was playing a part, it thrust in among
+the tapers and the sacred vessels its rows of branches, tied to one
+another horizontally in a stiff, festal scheme of decoration; and they
+were made more lovely still by the scalloped outline of the dark leaves,
+over which were scattered in profusion, as over a bridal train, little
+clusters of buds of a dazzling whiteness.  Though I dared not look at them
+save through my fingers, I could feel that the formal scheme was composed
+of living things, and that it was Nature herself who, by trimming the
+shape of the foliage, and by adding the crowning ornament of those snowy
+buds, had made the decorations worthy of what was at once a public
+rejoicing and a solemn mystery.  Higher up on the altar, a flower had
+opened here and there with a careless grace, holding so unconcernedly,
+like a final, almost vaporous bedizening, its bunch of stamens, slender as
+gossamer, which clouded the flower itself in a white mist, that in
+following these with my eyes, in trying to imitate, somewhere inside
+myself, the action of their blossoming, I imagined it as a swift and
+thoughtless movement of the head with an enticing glance from her
+contracted pupils, by a young girl in white, careless and alive.
+
+M. Vinteuil had come in with his daughter and had sat down beside us.  He
+belonged to a good family, and had once been music-master to my
+grandmother's sisters; so that when, after losing his wife and inheriting
+some property, he had retired to the neighbourhood of Combray, we used
+often to invite him to our house. But with his intense prudishness he had
+given up coming, so as not to be obliged to meet Swann, who had made what
+he called "a most unsuitable marriage, as seems to be the fashion in these
+days." My mother, on hearing that he 'composed,' told him by way of a
+compliment that, when she came to see him, he must play her something of
+his own. M. Vinteuil would have liked nothing better, but he carried
+politeness and consideration for others to so fine a point, always putting
+himself in their place, that he was afraid of boring them, or of appearing
+egotistical, if he carried out, or even allowed them to suspect what were
+his own desires. On the day when my parents had gone to pay him a visit, I
+had accompanied them, but they had allowed me to remain outside, and as M.
+Vinteuil's house, Montjouvain, stood on a site actually hollowed out from
+a steep hill covered with shrubs, among which I took cover, I had found
+myself on a level with his drawing-room, upstairs, and only a few feet
+away from its window. When a servant came in to tell him that my parents
+had arrived, I had seen M. Vinteuil run to the piano and lay out a sheet
+of music so as to catch the eye. But as soon as they entered the room he
+had snatched it away and hidden it in a corner. He was afraid, no doubt,
+of letting them suppose that he was glad to see them only because it gave
+him a chance of playing them some of his compositions. And every time that
+my mother, in the course of her visit, had returned to the subject of his
+playing, he had hurriedly protested: "I cannot think who put that on the
+piano; it is not the proper place for it at all," and had turned the
+conversation aside to other topics, simply because those were of less
+interest to himself.
+
+His one and only passion was for his daughter, and she, with her somewhat
+boyish appearance, looked so robust that it was hard to restrain a smile
+when one saw the precautions her father used to take for her health, with
+spare shawls always in readiness to wrap around her shoulders. My
+grandmother had drawn our attention to the gentle, delicate, almost timid
+expression which might often be caught flitting across the face, dusted
+all over with freckles, of this otherwise stolid child. When she had
+spoken, she would at once take her own words in the sense in which her
+audience must have heard them, she would be alarmed at the possibility of
+a misunderstanding, and one would see, in clear outline, as though in a
+transparency, beneath the mannish face of the 'good sort' that she was,
+the finer features of a young woman in tears.
+
+When, before turning to leave the church, I made a genuflection before the
+altar, I felt suddenly, as I rose again, a bitter-sweet fragrance of
+almonds steal towards me from the hawthorn-blossom, and I then noticed
+that on the flowers themselves were little spots of a creamier colour, in
+which I imagined that this fragrance must lie concealed, as the taste of
+an almond cake lay in the burned parts, or the sweetness of Mile.
+Vinteuil's cheeks beneath their freckles. Despite the heavy, motionless
+silence of the hawthorns, these gusts of fragrance came to me like the
+murmuring of an intense vitality, with which the whole altar was quivering
+like a roadside hedge explored by living antennae, of which I was reminded
+by seeing some stamens, almost red in colour, which seemed to have kept
+the springtime virulence, the irritant power of stinging insects now
+transmuted into flowers.
+
+Outside the church we would stand talking for a moment with M.  Vinteuil,
+in the porch. Boys would be chevying one another in the Square, and he
+would interfere, taking the side of the little ones and lecturing the big.
+If his daughter said, in her thick, comfortable voice, how glad she had
+been to see us, immediately it would seem as though some elder and more
+sensitive sister, latent in her, had blushed at this thoughtless,
+schoolboyish utterance, which had, perhaps, made us think that she was
+angling for an invitation to the house. Her father would then arrange a
+cloak over her shoulders, they would clamber into a little dog-cart which
+she herself drove, and home they would both go to Montjouvain. As for
+ourselves, the next day being Sunday, with no need to be up and stirring
+before high mass, if it was a moonlight night and warm, then, instead of
+taking us home at once, my father, in his thirst for personal distinction,
+would lead us on a long walk round by the Calvary, which my mother's utter
+incapacity for taking her bearings, or even for knowing which road she
+might be on, made her regard as a triumph of his strategic genius.
+Sometimes we would go as far as the viaduct, which began to stride on its
+long legs of stone at the railway station, and to me typified all the
+wretchedness of exile beyond the last outposts of civilisation, because
+every year, as we came down from Paris, we would be warned to take special
+care, when we got to Combray, not to miss the station, to be ready before
+the train stopped, since it would start again in two minutes and proceed
+across the viaduct, out of the lands of Christendom, of which Combray, to
+me, represented the farthest limit. We would return by the Boulevard de la
+Gare, which contained the most attractive villas in the town. In each of
+their gardens the moonlight, copying the art of Hubert Robert, had
+scattered its broken staircases of white marble, its fountains of water
+and gates temptingly ajar. Its beams had swept away the telegraph office.
+All that was left of it was a column, half shattered, but preserving the
+beauty of a ruin which endures for all time. I would by now be dragging my
+weary limbs, and ready to drop with sleep; the balmy scent of the
+lime-trees seemed a consolation which I could obtain only at the price of
+great suffering and exhaustion, and not worthy of the effort. From gates
+far apart the watchdogs, awakened by our steps in the silence, would set
+up an antiphonal barking, as I still hear them bark, at times, in the
+evenings, and it is in their custody (when the public gardens of Combray
+were constructed on its site) that the Boulevard de la Gare must have
+taken refuge, for wherever I may be, as soon as they begin their alternate
+challenge and acceptance, I can see it again with all its lime-trees, and
+its pavement glistening beneath the moon.
+
+Suddenly my father would bring us to a standstill and ask my
+mother--"Where are we?" Utterly worn out by the walk but still proud of
+her husband, she would lovingly confess that she had not the least idea.
+He would shrug his shoulders and laugh. And then, as though it had
+slipped, with his latchkey, from his waistcoat pocket, he would point out
+to us, when it stood before our eyes, the back-gate of our own garden,
+which had come hand-in-hand with the familiar corner of the Rue du
+Saint-Esprit, to await us, to greet us at the end of our wanderings over
+paths unknown. My mother would murmur admiringly "You really are
+wonderful!" And from that instant I had not to take another step; the
+ground moved forward under my feet in that garden where, for so long, my
+actions had ceased to require any control, or even attention, from my
+will. Custom came to take me in her arms, carried me all the way up to my
+bed, and laid me down there like a little child.
+
+Although Saturday, by beginning an hour earlier, and by depriving her of
+the services of Fran�oise, passed more slowly than other days for my aunt,
+yet, the moment it was past, and a new week begun, she would look forward
+with impatience to its return, as something that embodied all the novelty
+and distraction which her frail and disordered body was still able to
+endure. This was not to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for
+some even greater variation, that she did not pass through those abnormal
+hours in which one thirsts for something different from what one has, when
+those people who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to
+generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or
+the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news),
+for some emotion (even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which
+prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and
+sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break
+them; when the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to
+subdue its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own
+uncontrolled desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its
+guiding reins into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be,
+cruel. Of course, since my aunt's strength, which was completely drained
+by the slightest exertion, returned but drop by drop into the pool of her
+repose, the reservoir was very slow in filling, and months would go by
+before she reached that surplus which other people use up in their daily
+activities, but which she had no idea--and could never decide how to
+employ. And I have no doubt that then--just as a desire to have her
+potatoes served with b�chamel sauce, for a change, would be formed,
+ultimately, from the pleasure she found in the daily reappearance of those
+mashed potatoes of which she was never 'tired'--she would extract from the
+accumulation of those monotonous days (on which she so much depended) a
+keen expectation of some domestic cataclysm, instantaneous in its
+happening, but violent enough to compel her to put into effect, once for
+all, one of those changes which she knew would be beneficial to her
+health, but to which she could never make up her mind without some such
+stimulus. She was genuinely fond of us; she would have enjoyed the long
+luxury of weeping for our untimely decease; coming at a moment when she
+felt 'well' and was not in a perspiration, the news that the house was
+being destroyed by a fire, in which all the rest of us had already
+perished, a fire which, in a little while, would not leave one stone
+standing upon another, but from which she herself would still have plenty
+of time to escape without undue haste, provided that she rose at once from
+her bed, must often have haunted her dreams, as a prospect which combined
+with the two minor advantages of letting her taste the full savour of her
+affection for us in long years of mourning, and of causing universal
+stupefaction in the village when she should sally forth to conduct our
+obsequies, crushed but courageous, moribund but erect, the paramount and
+priceless boon of forcing her at the right moment, with no time to be
+lost, no room for weakening hesitations, to go off and spend the summer at
+her charming farm of Mirougrain, where there was a waterfall. Inasmuch as
+nothing of this sort had ever occurred, though indeed she must often have
+pondered the success of such a manoeuvre as she lay alone absorbed in her
+interminable games of patience (and though it must have plunged her in
+despair from the first moment of its realisation, from the first of those
+little unforeseen facts, the first word of calamitous news, whose accents
+can never afterwards be expunged from the memory, everything that bears
+upon it the imprint of actual, physical death, so terribly different from
+the logical abstraction of its possibility) she would fall back from time
+to time, to add an interest to her life, upon imagining other, minor
+catastrophes, which she would follow up with passion. She would beguile
+herself with a sudden suspicion that Fran�oise had been robbing her, that
+she had set a trap to make certain, and had caught her betrayer
+red-handed; and being in the habit, when she made up a game of cards by
+herself, of playing her own and her adversary's hands at once, she would
+first stammer out Fran�oise's awkward apologies, and then reply to them
+with such a fiery indignation that any of us who happened to intrude upon
+her at one of these moments would find her bathed in perspiration, her
+eyes blazing, her false hair pushed awry and exposing the baldness of her
+brows. Fran�oise must often, from the next room, have heard these mordant
+sarcasms levelled at herself, the mere framing of which in words would not
+have relieved my aunt's feelings sufficiently, had they been allowed to
+remain in a purely immaterial form, without the degree of substance and
+reality which she added to them by murmuring them half-aloud.  Sometimes,
+however, even these counterpane dramas would not satisfy my aunt; she must
+see her work staged. And so, on a Sunday, with all the doors mysteriously
+closed, she would confide in Eulalie her doubts of Fran�oise's integrity
+and her determination to be rid of her, and on another day she would
+confide in Fran�oise her suspicions of the disloyalty of Eulalie, to whom
+the front-door would very soon be closed for good. A few days more, and,
+disgusted with her latest confidant, she would again be 'as thick as
+thieves' with the traitor, while, before the next performance, the two
+would once more have changed their parts. But the suspicions which Eulalie
+might occasionally breed in her were no more than a fire of straw, which
+must soon subside for lack of fuel, since Eulalie was not living with her
+in the house. It was a very different matter when the suspect was
+Fran�oise, of whose presence under the same roof as herself my aunt was
+perpetually conscious, while for fear of catching cold, were she to leave
+her bed, she would never dare go downstairs to the kitchen to see for
+herself whether there was, indeed, any foundation for her suspicions. And
+so on by degrees, until her mind had no other occupation than to attempt,
+at every hour of the day, to discover what was being done, what was being
+concealed from her by Fran�oise. She would detect the most furtive
+movement of Fran�oise's features, something contradictory in what she was
+saying, some desire which she appeared to be screening.  And she would
+shew her that she was unmasked, by, a single word, which made Fran�oise
+turn pale, and which my aunt seemed to find a cruel satisfaction in
+driving into her unhappy servant's heart. And the very next Sunday a
+disclosure by Eulalie--like one of those discoveries which suddenly open
+up an unsuspected field for exploration to some new science which has
+hitherto followed only the beaten paths--proved to my aunt that her own
+worst suspicions fell a long way short of the appalling truth. "But
+Fran�oise ought to know that," said Eulalie, "now that you have given her
+a carriage."
+
+"Now that I have given her a carriage!" gasped my aunt.
+
+"Oh, but I didn't know; I only thought so; I saw her go by yesterday in
+her open coach, as proud as Artaban, on her way to Roussainville market. I
+supposed that it must be Mme. Octave who had given it to her."
+
+So on by degrees, until Fran�oise and my aunt, the quarry and the hunter,
+could never cease from trying to forestall each other's devices.  My
+mother was afraid lest Fran�oise should develop a genuine hatred of my
+aunt, who was doing everything in her power to annoy her. However that
+might be, Fran�oise had come, more and more, to pay an infinitely
+scrupulous attention to my aunt's least word and gesture. When she had to
+ask her for anything she would hesitate, first, for a long time, making up
+her mind how best to begin. And when she had uttered her request, she
+would watch my aunt covertly, trying to guess from the expression on her
+face what she thought of it, and how she would reply. And in this
+way--whereas an artist who had been reading memoirs of the seventeenth
+century, and wished to bring himself nearer to the great Louis, would
+consider that he was making progress in that direction when he constructed
+a pedigree that traced his own descent from some historic family, or when
+he engaged in correspondence with one of the reigning Sovereigns of
+Europe, and so would shut his eyes to the mistake he was making in seeking
+to establish a similarity by an exact and therefore lifeless copy of mere
+outward forms--a middle-aged lady in a small country town, by doing no
+more than yield whole-hearted obedience to her own irresistible
+eccentricities, and to a spirit of mischief engendered by the utter
+idleness of her existence, could see, without ever having given a thought
+to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily life, her morning
+toilet, her luncheon, her afternoon nap, assume, by virtue of their
+despotic singularity, something of the interest that was to be found in
+what Saint-Simon used to call the 'machinery' of life at Versailles; and
+was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence, a shade of good
+humour or of arrogance on her features, would provide Fran�oise with
+matter for a mental commentary as tense with passion and terror, as did
+the silence, the good humour or the arrogance of the King when a courtier,
+or even his greatest nobles, had presented a petition to him, at the
+turning of an avenue, at Versailles.
+
+One Sunday, when my aunt had received simultaneous visits from the Cur�
+and from Eulalie, and had been left alone, afterwards, to rest, the whole
+family went upstairs to bid her good night, and Mamma ventured to condole
+with her on the unlucky coincidence that always brought both visitors to
+her door at the same time.
+
+"I hear that things went wrong again to-day, L�onie," she said kindly,
+"you have had all your friends here at once."
+
+And my great-aunt interrupted with: "Too many good things..."
+for, since her daughter's illness, she felt herself in duty bound to
+revive her as far as possible by always drawing her attention to the
+brighter side of things. But my father had begun to speak.
+
+"I should like to take advantage," he said, "of the whole family's being
+here together, to tell you a story, so as not to have to begin all over
+again to each of you separately. I am afraid we are in M. Legrandin's bad
+books; he would hardly say 'How d'ye do' to me this morning."
+
+I did not wait to hear the end of my father's story, for I had been with
+him myself after mass when we had passed M. Legrandin; instead, I went
+downstairs to the kitchen to ask for the bill of fare for our dinner,
+which was of fresh interest to me daily, like the news in a paper, and
+excited me as might the programme of a coming festivity.
+
+As M. Legrandin had passed close by us on our way from church, walking by
+the side of a lady, the owner of a country house in the neighbourhood,
+whom we knew only by sight, my father had saluted him in a manner at once
+friendly and reserved, without stopping in his walk; M.  Legrandin had
+barely acknowledged the courtesy, and then with an air of surprise, as
+though he had not recognised us, and with that distant look characteristic
+of people who do not wish to be agreeable, and who from the suddenly
+receding depths of their eyes seem to have caught sight of you at the far
+end of an interminably straight road, and at so great a distance that they
+content themselves with directing towards you an almost imperceptible
+movement of the head, in proportion to your doll-like dimensions.
+
+Now, the lady who was walking with Legrandin was a model of virtue, known
+and highly respected; there could be no question of his being out for
+amorous adventure, and annoyed at being detected; and my father asked
+himself how he could possibly have displeased our friend.
+
+"I should be all the more sorry to feel that he was angry with us," he
+said, "because among all those people in their Sunday clothes there is
+something about him, with his little cut-away coat and his soft neckties,
+so little 'dressed-up,' so genuinely simple; an air of innocence, almost,
+which is really attractive."
+
+But the vote of the family council was unanimous, that my father had
+imagined the whole thing, or that Legrandin, at the moment in question,
+had been preoccupied in thinking about something else. Anyhow, my father's
+fears were dissipated no later than the following evening. As we returned
+from a long walk we saw, near the Pont-Vieux, Legrandin himself, who, on
+account of the holidays, was spending a few days more in Combray. He came
+up to us with outstretched hand: "Do you know, master book-lover," he
+asked me, "this line of Paul Desjardins?
+
+  Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.
+
+Is not that a fine rendering of a moment like this? Perhaps you have never
+read Paul Desjardins. Read him, my boy, read him; in these days he is
+converted, they tell me, into a preaching friar, but he used to have the
+most charming water-colour touch--
+
+  Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.
+
+May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even
+when the time comes, which is coming now for me, when the woods are all
+black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself,
+as I am doing, by looking up to the sky." He took a cigarette from his
+pocket and stood for a long time, his eyes fixed on the horizon. "Goodbye,
+friends!" he suddenly exclaimed, and left us.
+
+At the hour when I usually went downstairs to find out what there was for
+dinner, its preparation would already have begun, and Fran�oise, a colonel
+with all the forces of nature for her subalterns, as in the fairy-tales
+where giants hire themselves out as scullions, would be stirring the
+coals, putting the potatoes to steam, and, at the right moment, finishing
+over the fire those culinary masterpieces which had been first got ready
+in some of the great array of vessels, triumphs of the potter's craft,
+which ranged from tubs and boilers and cauldrons and fish kettles down to
+jars for game, moulds for pastry, and tiny pannikins for cream, and
+included an entire collection of pots and pans of every shape and size. I
+would stop by the table, where the kitchen-maid had shelled them, to
+inspect the platoons of peas, drawn up in ranks and numbered, like little
+green marbles, ready for a game; but what fascinated me would be the
+asparagus, tinged with ultramarine and rosy pink which ran from their
+heads, finely stippled in mauve and azure, through a series of
+imperceptible changes to their white feet, still stained a little by the
+soil of their garden-bed: a rainbow-loveliness that was not of this world.
+I felt that these celestial hues indicated the presence of exquisite
+creatures who had been pleased to assume vegetable form, who, through the
+disguise which covered their firm and edible flesh, allowed me to discern
+in this radiance of earliest dawn, these hinted rainbows, these blue
+evening shades, that precious quality which I should recognise again when,
+all night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played
+(lyrical and coarse in their jesting as the fairies in Shakespeare's
+_Dream_) at transforming my humble chamber into a bower of aromatic
+perfume.
+
+Poor Giotto's Charity, as Swann had named her, charged by Fran�oise with
+the task of preparing them for the table, would have them lying beside her
+in a basket; sitting with a mournful air, as though all the sorrows of the
+world were heaped upon her; and the light crowns of azure which capped the
+asparagus shoots above their pink jackets would be finely and separately
+outlined, star by star, as in Giotto's fresco are the flowers banded about
+the brows, or patterning the basket of his Virtue at Padua. And,
+meanwhile, Fran�oise would be turning on the spit one of those chickens,
+such as she alone knew how to roast, chickens which had wafted far abroad
+from Combray the sweet savour of her merits, and which, while she was
+serving them to us at table, would make the quality of kindness
+predominate for the moment in my private conception of her character; the
+aroma of that cooked flesh, which she knew how to make so unctuous and so
+tender, seeming to me no more than the proper perfume of one of her many
+virtues.
+
+But the day on which, while my father took counsel with his family upon
+our strange meeting with Legrandin, I went down to the kitchen, was one of
+those days when Giotto's Charity, still very weak and ill after her recent
+confinement, had been unable to rise from her bed; Fran�oise, being
+without assistance, had fallen into arrears. When I went in, I saw her in
+the back-kitchen which opened on to the courtyard, in process of killing a
+chicken; by its desperate and quite natural resistance, which Fran�oise,
+beside herself with rage as she attempted to slit its throat beneath the
+ear, accompanied with shrill cries of "Filthy creature! Filthy creature!"
+it made the saintly kindness and unction of our servant rather less
+prominent than it would do, next day at dinner, when it made its
+appearance in a skin gold-embroidered like a chasuble, and its precious
+juice was poured out drop by drop as from a pyx. When it was dead
+Fran�oise mopped up its streaming blood, in which, however, she did not
+let her rancour drown, for she gave vent to another burst of rage, and,
+gazing down at the carcass of her enemy, uttered a final "Filthy
+creature!"
+
+I crept out of the kitchen and upstairs, trembling all over; I could have
+prayed, then, for the instant dismissal of Fran�oise. But who would have
+baked me such hot rolls, boiled me such fragrant coffee, and even--roasted
+me such chickens? And, as it happened, everyone else had already had to
+make the same cowardly reckoning. For my aunt L�onie knew (though I was
+still in ignorance of this) that Fran�oise, who, for her own daughter or
+for her nephews, would have given her life without a murmur, shewed a
+singular implacability in her dealings with the rest of the world. In
+spite of which my aunt still retained her, for, while conscious of her
+cruelty, she could appreciate her services. I began gradually to realise
+that Fran�oise's kindness, her compunction, the sum total of her virtues
+concealed many of these back-kitchen tragedies, just as history reveals to
+us that the reigns of the kings and queens who are portrayed as kneeling
+with clasped hands in the windows of churches, were stained by oppression
+and bloodshed. I had taken note of the fact that, apart from her own
+kinsfolk, the sufferings of humanity inspired in her a pity which
+increased in direct ratio to the distance separating the sufferers from
+herself. The tears which flowed from her in torrents when she read of the
+misfortunes of persons unknown to her, in a newspaper, were quickly
+stemmed once she had been able to form a more accurate mental picture of
+the victims. One night, shortly after her confinement, the kitchen-maid
+was seized with the most appalling pains; Mamma heard her groans, and rose
+and awakened Fran�oise, who, quite unmoved, declared that all the outcry
+was mere malingering, that the girl wanted to 'play the mistress' in the
+house.  The doctor, who had been afraid of some such attack, had left a
+marker in a medical dictionary which we had, at the page on which the
+symptoms were described, and had told us to turn up this passage, where we
+would find the measures of 'first aid' to be adopted. My mother sent
+Fran�oise to fetch the book, warning her not to let the marker drop out.
+An hour elapsed, and Fran�oise had not returned; my mother, supposing that
+she had gone back to bed, grew vexed, and told me to go myself to the
+bookcase and fetch the volume. I did so, and there found Fran�oise who, in
+her curiosity to know what the marker indicated, had begun to read the
+clinical account of these after-pains, and was violently sobbing, now that
+it was a question of a type of illness with which she was not familiar. At
+each painful symptom mentioned by the writer she would exclaim: "Oh, oh,
+Holy Virgin, is it possible that God wishes any wretched human creature to
+suffer so? Oh, the poor girl!"
+
+But when I had called her, and she had returned to the bedside of Giotto's
+Charity, her tears at once ceased to flow; she could find no stimulus for
+that pleasant sensation of tenderness and pity which she very well knew,
+having been moved to it often enough by the perusal of newspapers; nor any
+other pleasure of the same kind in her sense of weariness and irritation
+at being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night for the
+kitchen-maid; so that at the sight of those very sufferings, the printed
+account of which had moved her to tears, she had nothing to offer but
+ill-tempered mutterings, mingled with bitter sarcasm, saying, when she
+thought that we had gone out of earshot: "Well, she need never have done
+what she must have done to bring all this about! She found that pleasant
+enough, I dare say! She had better not put on any airs now. All the same,
+he must have been a god-forsaken young man to go after _that_. Dear, dear,
+it's just as they used to say in my poor mother's country:
+
+  Snaps and snails and puppy-dogs' tails,
+    And dirty sluts in plenty,
+  Smell sweeter than roses in young men's noses
+    When the heart is one-and-twenty."
+
+Although, when her grandson had a slight cold in his head, she would Bet
+off at night, even if she were ill also, instead of going to bed, to see
+whether he had everything that he wanted, covering ten miles on foot
+before daybreak so as to be in time to begin her work, this same love for
+her own people, and her desire to establish the future greatness of her
+house on a solid foundation reacted, in her policy with regard to the
+other servants, in one unvarying maxim, which was never to let any of them
+set foot in my aunt's room; indeed she shewed a sort of pride in not
+allowing anyone else to come near my aunt, preferring, when she herself
+was ill, to get out of bed and to administer the Vichy water in person,
+rather than to concede to the kitchen-maid the right of entry into her
+mistress's presence.  There is a species of hymenoptera, observed by
+Fabre, the burrowing wasp, which in order to provide a supply of fresh
+meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls in the science of
+anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive cruelty, and, having
+made a collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds with marvellous
+knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of
+locomotion (but none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the
+paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid, will furnish the larva,
+when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive quarry, incapable either
+of flight or of resistance, but perfectly fresh for the larder: in the
+same way Fran�oise had adopted, to minister to her permanent and
+unfaltering resolution to render the house uninhabitable to any other
+servant, a series of crafty and pitiless stratagems.  Many years later we
+discovered that, if we had been fed on asparagus day after day throughout
+that whole season, it was because the smell of the plants gave the poor
+kitchen-maid, who had to prepare them, such violent attacks of asthma that
+she was finally obliged to leave my aunt's service.
+
+Alas! we had definitely to alter our opinion of M. Legrandin. On one-of
+the Sundays following our meeting with him on the Pont-Vieux, after which
+my father had been forced to confess himself mistaken, as mass drew to an
+end, and, with the sunshine and the noise of the outer world, something
+else invaded the church, an atmosphere so far from sacred that Mme.
+Goupil, Mme.  Percepied (all those, in fact, who a moment ago, when I
+arrived a little late, had been sitting motionless, their eyes fixed on
+their prayer-books; who, I might even have thought, had not seen me come
+in, had not their feet moved slightly to push away the little
+kneeling-desk which was preventing me from getting to my chair) began in
+loud voices to discuss with us all manner of utterly mundane topics, as
+though we were already outside in the Square, we saw, standing on the
+sun-baked steps of the porch, dominating the many-coloured tumult of the
+market, Legrandin himself, whom the husband of the lady we had seen with
+him, on the previous occasion, was just going to introduce to the wife of
+another large landed proprietor of the district. Legrandin's face shewed
+an extraordinary zeal and animation; he made a profound bow, with a
+subsidiary backward movement which brought his spine sharply up into a
+position behind its starting-point, a gesture in which he must have been
+trained by the husband of his sister, Mme. de Cambremer. This rapid
+recovery caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin's
+hips, which I had not supposed to be so fleshy; I cannot say why, but this
+undulation of pure matter, this wholly carnal fluency, with not the least
+hint in it of spiritual significance, this wave lashed to a fury by the
+wind of an assiduity, an obsequiousness of the basest sort, awoke my mind
+suddenly to the possibility of a Legrandin altogether different from the
+one whom we knew. The lady gave him some message for her coachman, and
+while he was stepping down to her carriage the impression of joy, timid
+and devout, which the introduction had stamped there, still lingered on
+his face. Carried away in a sort of dream, he smiled, then he began to
+hurry back towards the lady; he was walking faster than usual, and his
+shoulders swayed backwards and forwards, right and left, in the most
+absurd fashion; altogether he looked, so utterly had he abandoned himself
+to it, ignoring all other considerations, as though he were the lifeless
+and wire-pulled puppet of his own happiness. Meanwhile we were coming out
+through the porch; we were passing close beside him; he was too well bred
+to turn his head away; but he fixed his eyes, which had suddenly changed
+to those of a seer, lost in the profundity of his vision, on so distant a
+point of the horizon that he could not see us, and so had not to
+acknowledge our presence.  His face emerged, still with an air of
+innocence, from his straight and pliant coat, which looked as though
+conscious of having been led astray, in spite of itself, and plunged into
+surroundings of a detested splendour.  And a spotted necktie, stirred by
+the breezes of the Square, continued to float in front of Legrandin, like
+the standard of his proud isolation, of his noble independence. Just as we
+reached the house my mother discovered that we had forgotten the
+'Saint-Honor�,' and asked my father to go back with me and tell them to
+send it up at once. Near the church we met Legrandin, coming towards us
+with the same lady, whom he was escorting to her carriage. He brushed past
+us, and did not interrupt what he was saying to her, but gave us, out of
+the corner of his blue eye, a little sign, which began and ended, so to
+speak, inside his eyelids, and as it did not involve the least movement of
+his facial muscles, managed to pass quite unperceived by the lady; but,
+striving to compensate by the intensity of his feelings for the somewhat
+restricted field in which they had to find expression, he made that blue
+chink, which was set apart for us, sparkle with all the animation of
+cordiality, which went far beyond mere playfulness, and almost touched the
+border-line of roguery; he subtilised the refinements of good-fellowship
+into a wink of connivance, a hint, a hidden meaning, a secret
+understanding, all the mysteries of complicity in a plot, and finally
+exalted his assurances of friendship to the level of protestations of
+affection, even of a declaration of love, lighting up for us, and for us
+alone, with a secret and languid flame invisible by the great lady upon
+his other side, an enamoured pupil in a countenance of ice.
+
+Only the day before he had asked my parents to send me to dine with him on
+this same Sunday evening. "Come and bear your aged friend company," he had
+said to me. "Like the nosegay which a traveller sends us from some land to
+which we shall never go again, come and let me breathe from the far
+country of your adolescence the scent of those flowers of spring among
+which I also used to wander, many years ago. Come with the primrose, with
+the canon's beard, with the gold-cup; come with the stone-crop, whereof
+are posies made, pledges of love, in the Balzacian flora, come with that
+flower of the Resurrection morning, the Easter daisy, come with the
+snowballs of the guelder-rose, which begin to embalm with their fragrance
+the alleys of your great-aunt's garden ere the last snows of Lent are
+melted from its soil. Come with the glorious silken raiment of the lily,
+apparel fit for Solomon, and with the many-coloured enamel of the pansies,
+but come, above all, with the spring breeze, still cooled by the last
+frosts of wirier, wafting apart, for the two butterflies' sake, that have
+waited outside all morning, the closed portals of the first Jerusalem
+rose."
+
+The question was raised at home whether, all things considered, I ought
+still to be sent to dine with M. Legrandin. But my grandmother refused to
+believe that he could have been impolite.
+
+"You admit yourself that he appears at church there, quite simply dressed,
+and all that; he hardly looks like a man of fashion." She added that; in
+any event, even if, at the worst, he had been intentionally rude, it was
+far better for us to pretend that we had noticed nothing. And indeed my
+father himself, though more annoyed than any of us by the attitude which
+Legrandin had adopted, may still have held in reserve a final uncertainty
+as to its true meaning. It was like every attitude or action which reveals
+a man's deep and hidden character; they bear no relation to what he has
+previously said, and we cannot confirm our suspicions by the culprit's
+evidence, for he will admit nothing; we are reduced to the evidence of our
+own senses, and we ask ourselves, in the face of this detached and
+incoherent fragment of recollection, whether indeed our senses have not
+been the victims of a hallucination; with the result that such attitudes,
+and these alone are of importance in indicating character, are the most
+apt to leave us in perplexity.
+
+I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house, by moonlight. "There
+is a charming quality, is there not," he said to me, "in this silence; for
+hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist, whom you will read in
+time to come, claims that there is no remedy but silence and shadow. And
+see you this, my boy, there comes in all lives a time, towards which you
+still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of
+light, the light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the
+stillroom of darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what the
+moonlight breathes through the flute of silence."
+
+I could hear what M. Legrandin was saying; like everything that he said,
+it sounded attractive; but I was disturbed by the memory of a lady whom I
+had seen recently for the first time; and thinking, now that I knew that
+Legrandin was on friendly terms with several of the local aristocracy,
+that perhaps she also was among his acquaintance, I summoned up all my
+courage and said to him: "Tell me, sir, do you, by any chance, know the
+lady--the ladies of Guermantes?" and I felt glad because, in pronouncing
+the name, I had secured a sort of power over it, by the mere act of
+drawing it up out of my dreams and giving it an objective existence in the
+world of spoken things.
+
+But, at the sound of the word Guermantes, I saw in the middle of each of
+our friend's blue eyes a little brown dimple appear, as though they had
+been stabbed by some invisible pin-point, while the rest of his pupils,
+reacting from the shock, received and secreted the azure overflow. His
+fringed eyelids darkened, and drooped. His mouth, which had been stiffened
+and seared with bitter lines, was the first to recover, and smiled, while
+his eyes still seemed full of pain, like the eyes of a good-looking martyr
+whose body bristles with arrows.
+
+"No, I do not know them," he said, but instead of uttering so simple a
+piece of information, a reply in which there was so little that could
+astonish me, in the natural and conversational tone which would have
+befitted it, he recited it with a separate stress upon each word, leaning
+forward, bowing his head, with at once the vehemence which a man gives, so
+as to be believed, to a highly improbable statement (as though the fact
+that he did not know the Guermantes could be due only to some strange
+accident of fortune) and with the emphasis of a man who, finding himself
+unable to keep silence about what is to him a painful situation, chooses
+to proclaim it aloud, so as to convince his hearers that the confession he
+is making is one that causes him no embarrassment, but is easy, agreeable,
+spontaneous, that the situation in question, in this case the absence of
+relations with the Guermantes family, might very well have been not forced
+upon, but actually designed by Legrandin himself, might arise from some
+family tradition, some moral principle or mystical vow which expressly
+forbade his seeking their society.
+
+"No," he resumed, explaining by his words the tone in which they were
+uttered. "No, I do not know them; I have never wished to know them; I have
+always made a point of preserving complete independence; at heart, as you
+know, I am a bit of a Radical. People are always coming to me about it,
+telling me I am mistaken in not going to Guermantes, that I make myself
+seem ill-bred, uncivilised, an old bear. But that's not the sort of
+reputation that can frighten me; it's too true! In my heart of hearts I
+care for nothing in the world now but a few churches, books--two or three,
+pictures--rather more, perhaps, and the light of the moon when the fresh
+breeze of youth (such as yours) wafts to my nostrils the scent of gardens
+whose flowers my old eyes are not sharp enough, now, to distinguish."
+
+I did not understand very clearly why, in order to refrain from going to
+the houses of people whom one did not know, it should be necessary to
+cling to one's independence, nor how that could give one the appearance of
+a savage or a bear. But what I did understand was this, that Legrandin was
+not altogether truthful when he said that he cared only for churches,
+moonlight, and youth; he cared also, he cared a very great deal, for
+people who lived in country houses, and would be so much afraid, when in
+their company, of incurring their displeasure that he would never dare to
+let them see that he numbered, as well, among his friends middle-class
+people, the families of solicitors and stockbrokers, preferring, if the
+truth must be known, that it should be revealed in his absence, when he
+was out of earshot, that judgment should go against him (if so it must) by
+default: in a word, he was a snob. Of course he would never have admitted
+all or any of this in the poetical language which my family and I so much
+admired.  And if I asked him, "Do you know the Guermantes family?"
+Legrandin the talker would reply, "No, I have never cared to know them."
+But unfortunately the talker was now subordinated to another Legrandin,
+whom he kept carefully hidden in his breast, whom he would never
+consciously exhibit, because this other could tell stories about our own
+Legrandin and about his snobbishness which would have ruined his
+reputation for ever; and this other Legrandin had replied to me already in
+that wounded look, that stiffened smile, the undue gravity of his tone in
+uttering those few words, in the thousand arrows by which our own
+Legrandin had instantaneously been stabbed and sickened, like a Saint
+Sebastian of snobbery:
+
+"Oh, how you hurt me! No, I do not know the Guermantes family. Do not
+remind me of the great sorrow of my life." And since this other, this
+irrepressible, dominant, despotic Legrandin, if he lacked our Legrandin's
+charming vocabulary, shewed an infinitely greater promptness in expressing
+himself, by means of what are called 'reflexes,' it followed that, when
+Legrandin the talker attempted to silence him, he would already have
+spoken, and it would be useless for our friend to deplore the bad
+impression which the revelations of his _alter ego_ must have caused,
+since he could do no more now than endeavour to mitigate them.
+
+This was not to say that M. Legrandin was anything but sincere when he
+inveighed against snobs. He could not (from his own knowledge, at least)
+be aware that he was one also, since it is only with the passions of
+others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to find out
+about our own can be no more than what other people have shewn us. Upon
+ourselves they react but indirectly, through our imagination, which
+substitutes for our actual, primary motives other, secondary motives, less
+stark and therefore more decent. Never had Legrandin's snobbishness
+impelled him to make a habit of visiting a duchess as such. Instead, it
+would set his imagination to make that duchess appear, in Legrandin's
+eyes, endowed with all the graces. He would be drawn towards the duchess,
+assuring himself the while that he was yielding to the attractions of her
+mind, and her other virtues, which the vile race of snobs could never
+understand.  Only his fellow-snobs knew that he was of their number, for,
+owing to their inability to appreciate the intervening efforts of his
+imagination, they saw in close juxtaposition the social activities of
+Legrandin and their primary cause.
+
+At home, meanwhile, we had no longer any illusions as to M. Legrandin, and
+our relations with him had become much more distant. Mamma would be
+greatly delighted whenever she caught him red-handed in the sin, which he
+continued to call the unpardonable sin, of snobbery. As for my father, he
+found it difficult to take Legrandin's airs in so light, in so detached a
+spirit; and when there was some talk, one year, of sending me to spend the
+long summer holidays at Balbec with my grandmother, he said: "I must, most
+certainly, tell Legrandin that you are going to Balbec, to see whether he
+will offer you an introduction to his sister. He probably doesn't remember
+telling us that she lived within a mile of the place."
+
+My grandmother, who held that, when one went to the seaside, one ought to
+be on the beach from morning to night, to taste the salt breezes, and that
+one should not know anyone in the place, because calls and parties and
+excursions were so much time stolen from what belonged, by rights, to the
+sea-air, begged him on no account to speak to Legrandin of our plans; for
+already, in her mind's eye, she could see his sister, Mme. de Cambremer,
+alighting from her carriage at the door of our hotel just as we were on
+the point of going out fishing, and obliging us to remain indoors all
+afternoon to entertain her. But Mamma laughed her fears to scorn, for she
+herself felt that the danger was not so threatening, and that Legrandin
+would shew no undue anxiety to make us acquainted with his sister. And, as
+it happened, there was no need for any of us to introduce the subject of
+Balbec, for it was Legrandin himself who, without the least suspicion that
+we had ever had any intention of visiting those parts, walked into the
+trap uninvited one evening, when we met him strolling on the banks of the
+Vivonne.
+
+"There are tints in the clouds this evening, violets and blues, which are
+very beautiful, are they not, my friend?" he said to my father.
+"Especially a blue which is far more floral than atmospheric, a cineraria
+blue, which it is surprising to see in the sky. And that little pink cloud
+there, has it not just the tint of some flower, a carnation or hydrangea?
+Nowhere, perhaps, except on the shores of the English Channel, where
+Normandy merges into Brittany, have I been able to find such copious
+examples of what you might call a vegetable kingdom in the clouds. Down
+there, close to Balbec, among all those places which are still so
+uncivilised, there is a little bay, charmingly quiet, where the sunsets of
+the Auge Valley, those red-and-gold sunsets (which, all the same, I am
+very far from despising) seem commonplace and insignificant; for in that
+moist and gentle atmosphere these heavenly flower-beds will break into
+blossom, in a few moments, in the evenings, incomparably lovely, and often
+lasting for hours before they fade. Others shed their leaves at once, and
+then it is more beautiful still to see the sky strewn with the scattering
+of their innumerable petals, sulphurous yellow and rosy red. In that bay,
+which they call the Opal Bay, the golden sands appear more charming still
+from being fastened, like fair Andromeda, to those terrible rocks of the
+surrounding coast, to that funereal shore, famed for the number of its
+wrecks, where every winter many a brave vessel falls a victim to the
+perils of the sea. Balbec! the oldest bone in the geological skeleton that
+underlies our soil, the true Armor, the sea, the land's end, the accursed
+region which Anatole France--an enchanter whose works our young friend
+ought to read--has so well depicted, beneath its eternal fogs, as though
+it were indeed the land of the Cimmerians in the Odyssey. Balbec; yes,
+they are building hotels there now, superimposing them upon its ancient
+and charming soil, which they are powerless to alter; how delightful it
+is, down there, to be able to step out at once into regions so primitive
+and so entrancing."
+
+"Indeed! And do you know anyone at Balbec?" inquired my father.  "This
+young man is just going to spend a couple of months there with his
+grandmother, and my wife too, perhaps."
+
+Legrandin, taken unawares by the question at a moment when he was looking
+directly at my father, was unable to turn aside his gaze, and so
+concentrated it with steadily increasing intensity--smiling mournfully the
+while--upon the eyes of his questioner, with an air of friendliness and
+frankness and of not being afraid to look him in the face, until he seemed
+to have penetrated my father's skull, as it had been a ball of glass, and
+to be seeing, at the moment, a long way beyond and behind it, a brightly
+coloured cloud, which provided him with a mental alibi, and would enable
+him to establish the theory that, just when he was being asked whether he
+knew anyone at Balbec, he had been thinking of something else, and so had
+not heard the question. As a rule these tactics make the questioner
+proceed to ask, "Why, what are you thinking about?" But my father,
+inquisitive, annoyed, and cruel, repeated: "Have you friends, then, in
+that neighbourhood, that you know Balbec so well?"
+
+In a final and desperate effort the smiling gaze of Legrandin struggled to
+the extreme limits of its tenderness, vagueness, candour, and distraction;
+then feeling, no doubt, that there was nothing left for it now but to
+answer, he said to us: "I have friends all the world over, wherever there
+are companies of trees, stricken but not defeated, which have come
+together to offer a common supplication, with pathetic obstinacy, to an
+inclement sky which has no mercy upon them."
+
+"That is not quite what I meant," interrupted my father, obstinate as a
+tree and merciless as the sky. "I asked you, in case anything should
+happen to my mother-in-law and she wanted to feel that she was not all
+alone down there, at the ends of the earth, whether you knew any of the
+people."
+
+"There as elsewhere, I know everyone and I know no one," replied
+Legrandin, who was by no means ready yet to surrender; "places I know
+well, people very slightly. But, down there, the places themselves seem to
+me just like people, rare and wonderful people, of a delicate quality
+which would have been corrupted and ruined by the gift of life. Perhaps it
+is a castle which you encounter upon the cliff's edge; standing there by
+the roadside, where it has halted to contemplate its sorrows before an
+evening sky, still rosy, through which a golden moon is climbing; while
+the fishing-boats, homeward bound, creasing the watered silk of the
+Channel, hoist its pennant at their mastheads and carry its colours. Or
+perhaps it is a simple dwelling-house that stands alone, ugly, if
+anything, timid-seeming but full of romance, hiding from every eye some
+imperishable secret of happiness and disenchantment. That land which knows
+not truth," he continued with Machiavellian subtlety, "that land of
+infinite fiction makes bad reading for any boy; and is certainly not what
+I should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is already so
+much inclined to melancholy, for a heart already predisposed to receive
+its impressions.  Climates that breathe amorous secrets and futile regrets
+may agree with an old and disillusioned man like myself; but they must
+always prove fatal to a temperament which is still unformed. Believe me,"
+he went on with emphasis, "the waters of that bay--more Breton than
+Norman--may exert a sedative influence, though even that is of
+questionable value, upon a heart which, like mine, is no longer unbroken,
+a heart for whose wounds there is no longer anything to compensate. But at
+your age, my boy, those waters are contra-indicated.... Good night to you,
+neighbours," he added, moving away from us with that evasive abruptness to
+which we were accustomed; and then, turning towards us, with a
+physicianly finger raised in warning, he resumed the consultation: "No
+Balbec before you are fifty!" he called out to me, "and even then it must
+depend on the state of the heart."
+
+My father spoke to him of it again, as often as we met him, and tortured
+him with questions, but it was labour in vain: like that scholarly
+swindler who devoted to the fabrication of forged palimpsests a wealth of
+skill and knowledge and industry the hundredth part of which would have
+sufficed to establish him in a more lucrative--but an honourable
+occupation, M. Legrandin, had we insisted further, would in the end have
+constructed a whole system of ethics, and a celestial geography of Lower
+Normandy, sooner than admit to us that, within a mile of Balbec, his own
+sister was living in her own house; sooner than find himself obliged to
+offer us a letter of introduction, the prospect of which would never have
+inspired him with such terror had he been absolutely certain--as, from his
+knowledge of my grandmother's character, he really ought to have been
+certain--that in no circumstances whatsoever would we have dreamed of
+making use of it.
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+We used always to return from our walks in good time to pay aunt L�onie a
+visit before dinner. In the first weeks of our Combray holidays, when the
+days ended early, we would still be able to see, as we turned into the Rue
+du Saint-Esprit, a reflection of the western sky from the windows of the
+house and a band of purple at the foot of the Calvary, which was mirrored
+further on in the pond; a fiery glow which, accompanied often by a cold
+that burned and stung, would associate itself in my mind with the glow of
+the fire over which, at that very moment, was roasting the chicken that
+was to furnish me, in place of the poetic pleasure I had found in my walk,
+with the sensual pleasures of good feeding, warmth and rest.  But in
+summer, when we came back to the house, the sun would not have set; and
+while we were upstairs paying our visit to aunt L�onie its rays, sinking
+until they touched and lay along her window-sill, would there be caught
+and held by the large inner curtains and the bands which tied them back to
+the wall, and split and scattered and filtered; and then, at last, would
+fall upon and inlay with tiny flakes of gold the lemonwood of her
+chest-of-drawers, illuminating the room in their passage with the same
+delicate, slanting, shadowed beams that fall among the boles of forest
+trees. But on some days, though very rarely, the chest-of-drawers would
+long since have shed its momentary adornments, there would no longer, as
+we turned into the Rue du Saint-Esprit, be any reflection from the western
+sky burning along the line of window-panes; the pond beneath the Calvary
+would have lost its fiery glow, sometimes indeed had changed already to an
+opalescent pallor, while a long ribbon of moonlight, bent and broken and
+broadened by every ripple upon the water's surface, would be lying across
+it, from end to end. Then, as we drew near the house, we would make out a
+figure standing upon the doorstep, and Mamma would say to me: "Good
+heavens! There is Fran�oise looking out for us; your aunt must be anxious;
+that means we are late."
+
+And without wasting time by stopping to take off our 'things' we would fly
+upstairs to my aunt L�onie's room to reassure her, to prove to her by our
+bodily presence that all her gloomy imaginings were false, that, on the
+contrary, nothing had happened to us, but that we had gone the 'Guermantes
+way,' and, good lord, when one took that walk, my aunt knew well
+enough that one could never say at what time one would be home.
+
+"There, Fran�oise," my aunt would say, "didn't I tell you that they must
+have gone the Guermantes way? Good gracious! They must be hungry! And your
+nice leg of mutton will be quite dried up now, after all the hours it's
+been waiting. What a time to come in! Well, and so you went the Guermantes
+way?"
+
+"But, Leonie, I supposed you knew," Mamma would answer. "I thought that
+Fran�oise had seen us go out by the little gate, through the
+kitchen-garden."
+
+For there were, in the environs of Combray, two 'ways' which we used to
+take for our walks, and so diametrically opposed that we would actually
+leave the house by a different door, according to the way we had chosen:
+the way towards M�s�glise-la-Vineuse, which we called also 'Swann's way,'
+because, to get there, one had to pass along the boundary of M. Swann's
+estate, and the 'Guermantes way.' Of M�s�glise-la-Vineuse, to tell the
+truth, I never knew anything more than the way there, and the strange
+people who would come over on Sundays to take the air in Combray, people
+whom, this time, neither my aunt nor any of us would 'know at all,' and
+whom we would therefore assume to be 'people who must have come over from
+M�s�glise.' As for Guermantes, I was to know it well enough one day, but
+that day had still to come; and, during the whole of my boyhood, if
+M�s�glise was to me something as inaccessible as the horizon, which
+remained hidden from sight, however far one went, by the folds of a
+country which no longer bore the least resemblance to the country round
+Combray; Guermantes, on the other hand, meant no more than the ultimate
+goal, ideal rather than real, of the 'Guermantes way,' a sort of abstract
+geographical term like the North Pole or the Equator. And so to 'take the
+Guermantes way' in order to get to M�s�glise, or vice versa, would have
+seemed to me as nonsensical a proceeding as to turn to the east in order
+to reach the west. Since my father used always to speak of the 'M�s�glise
+way' as comprising the finest view of a plain that he knew anywhere, and
+of the 'Guermantes way' as typical of river scenery, I had invested each
+of them, by conceiving them in this way as two distinct entities, with
+that cohesion, that unity which belongs only to the figments of the mind;
+the smallest detail of either of them appeared to me as a precious thing,
+which exhibited the special excellence of the whole, while, immediately
+beside them, in the first stages of our walk, before we had reached the
+sacred soil of one or the other, the purely material roads, at definite
+points on which they were set down as the ideal view over a plain and the
+ideal scenery of a river, were no more worth the trouble of looking at
+them than, to a keen playgoer and lover of dramatic art, are the little
+streets which may happen to run past the walls of a theatre. But, above
+all, I set between them, far more distinctly than the mere distance in
+miles and yards and inches which separated one from the other, the
+distance that there was between the two parts of my brain in which I used
+to think of them, one of those distances of the mind which time serves
+only to lengthen, which separate things irremediably from one another,
+keeping them for ever upon different planes. And this distinction was
+rendered still more absolute because the habit we had of never going both
+ways on the same day, or in the course of the same walk, but the
+'M�s�glise way' one time and the 'Guermantes way' another, shut them up,
+so to speak, far apart and unaware of each other's existence, in the
+sealed vessels--between which there could be no communication--of separate
+afternoons.
+
+When we had decided to go the 'M�s�glise way' we would start (without
+undue haste, and even if the sky were clouded over, since the walk was not
+very long, and did not take us too far from home), as though we were not
+going anywhere in particular, by the front-door of my aunt's house, which
+opened on to the Rue du Saint-Esprit. We would be greeted by the gunsmith,
+we would drop our letters into the box, we would tell Th�odore, from
+Fran�oise, as we passed, that she had run out of oil or coffee, and we
+would leave the town by the road which ran along the white fence of M.
+Swann's park. Before reaching it we would be met on our way by the scent
+of his lilac-trees, come out to welcome strangers. Out of the fresh little
+green hearts of their foliage the lilacs raised inquisitively over the
+fence of the park their plumes of white or purple blossom, which glowed,
+even in the shade, with the sunlight in which they had been bathed. Some
+of them, half-concealed by the little tiled house, called the Archers'
+Lodge, in which Swann's keeper lived, overtopped its gothic gable with
+their rosy minaret.  The nymphs of spring would have seemed coarse and
+vulgar in comparison with these young houris, who retained, in this French
+garden, the pure and vivid colouring of a Persian miniature. Despite my
+desire to throw my arms about their pliant forms and to draw down towards
+me the starry locks that crowned their fragrant heads, we would pass them
+by without stopping, for my parents had ceased to visit Tansonville since
+Swann's marriage, and, so as not to appear to be looking into his park, we
+would, instead of taking the road which ran beside its boundary and then
+climbed straight up to the open fields, choose another way, which led in
+the same direction, but circuitously, and brought us out rather too far
+from home.
+
+One day my grandfather said to my 'father: "Don't you remember Swann's
+telling us yesterday that his wife and daughter had gone off to Rheims and
+that he was taking the opportunity of spending a day or two in Paris? We
+might go along by the park, since the ladies are not at home; that will
+make it a little shorter."
+
+We stopped for a moment by the fence. Lilac-time was nearly over; some of
+the trees still thrust aloft, in tall purple chandeliers, their tiny balls
+of blossom, but in many places among their foliage where, only a week
+before, they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam, these were
+now spent and shrivelled and discoloured, a hollow scum, dry and
+scentless. My grandfather pointed out to my father in what respects the
+appearance of the place was still the same, and how far it had altered
+since the walk that he had taken with old M. Swann, on the day of his
+wife's death; and he seized the opportunity to tell us, once again, the
+story of that walk.
+
+In front of us a path bordered with nasturtiums rose in the full glare of
+the sun towards the house. But to our right the park stretched away into
+the distance, on level ground. Overshadowed by the tall trees which stood
+close around it, an 'ornamental water' had been constructed by Swann's
+parents but, even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material
+upon which man has to work; certain spots will persist in remaining
+surrounded by the vassals of their own especial sovereignty, and will
+raise their immemorial standards among all the 'laid-out' scenery of a
+park, just as they would have done far from any human interference, in a
+solitude which must everywhere return to engulf them, springing up out of
+the necessities of their exposed position, and superimposing itself upon
+the work of man's hands. And so it was that, at the foot of the path which
+led down to this artificial lake, there might be seen, in its two tiers
+woven of trailing forget-me-nots below and of periwinkle flowers above,
+the natural, delicate, blue garland which binds the luminous, shadowed
+brows of water-nymphs; while the iris, its swords sweeping every way in
+regal profusion, stretched out over agrimony and water-growing king-cups
+the lilied sceptres, tattered glories of yellow and purple, of the kingdom
+of the lake.
+
+The absence of Mlle. Swann, which--since it preserved me from the terrible
+risk of seeing her appear on one of the paths, and of being identified and
+scorned by this so privileged little girl who had Bergotte for a friend
+and used to go with him to visit cathedrals--made the exploration of
+Tansonville, now for the first time permitted me, a matter of
+indifference to myself, seemed however to invest the property, in my
+grandfather's and father's eyes, with a fresh and transient charm, and
+(like an entirely cloudless sky when one is going mountaineering) to make
+the day extraordinarily propitious for a walk in this direction; I should
+have liked to see their reckoning proved false, to see, by a miracle,
+Mlle. Swann appear, with her father, so close to us that we should not
+have time to escape, and should therefore be obliged to make her
+acquaintance. And so, when I suddenly noticed a straw basket lying
+forgotten on the grass by the side of a line whose float was bobbing in
+the water, I made a great effort to keep my father and grandfather looking
+in another direction, away from this sign that she might, after all, be in
+residence. Still, as Swann had told us that he ought not, really, to go
+away just then, as he had some people staying in the house, the line might
+equally belong to one of these guests. Not a footstep was to be heard on
+any of the paths. Somewhere in one of the tall trees, making a stage in
+its height, an invisible bird, desperately attempting to make the day seem
+shorter, was exploring with a long, continuous note the solitude that
+pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer,
+so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility that, one would
+have said, it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been
+trying to make pass more quickly. The sunlight fell so implacably from a
+fixed sky that one was naturally inclined to slip away out of the reach of
+its attentions, and even the slumbering water, whose repose was
+perpetually being invaded by the insects that swarmed above its surface,
+while it dreamed, no doubt, of some imaginary maelstrom, intensified the
+uneasiness which the sight of that floating cork had wrought in me, by
+appearing to draw it at full speed across the silent reaches of a mirrored
+firmament; now almost vertical, it seemed on the point of plunging down
+out of sight, and I had begun to ask myself whether, setting aside the
+longing and the terror that I had of making her acquaintance, it was not
+actually my duty to warn Mlle. Swann that the fish was biting--when I was
+obliged to run after my father and grandfather, who were calling me, and
+were surprised that I had not followed them along the little path,
+climbing up hill towards the open fields, into which they had already
+turned.  I found the whole path throbbing with the fragrance of
+hawthorn-blossom.  The hedge resembled a series of chapels, whose walls
+were no longer visible under the mountains of flowers that were heaped
+upon their altars; while underneath, the sun cast a square of light upon
+the ground, as though it had shone in upon them through a window; the
+scent that swept out over me from them was as rich, and as circumscribed
+in its range, as though I had been standing before the Lady-altar, and the
+flowers, themselves adorned also, held out each its little bunch of
+glittering stamens with an air of inattention, fine, radiating 'nerves' in
+the flamboyant style of architecture, like those which, in church, framed
+the stair to the rood-loft or closed the perpendicular tracery of the
+windows, but here spread out into pools of fleshy white, like
+strawberry-beds in spring. How simple and rustic, in comparison with
+these, would seem the dog-roses which, in a few weeks' time, would be
+climbing the same hillside path in the heat of the sun, dressed in the
+smooth silk of their blushing pink bodices, which would be undone and
+scattered by the first breath of wind.
+
+But it was in vain that I lingered before the hawthorns, to breathe in, to
+marshal! before my mind (which knew not what to make of it), to lose in
+order to rediscover their invisible and unchanging odour, to absorb myself
+in the rhythm which disposed their flowers here and there with the
+light-heartedness of youth, and at intervals as unexpected as certain
+intervals of music; they offered me an indefinite continuation of the same
+charm, in an inexhaustible profusion, but without letting me delve into it
+any more deeply, like those melodies which one can play over a hundred
+times in succession without coming any nearer to their secret. I turned
+away from them for a moment so as to be able to return to them with
+renewed strength.  My eyes followed up the slope which, outside the hedge,
+rose steeply to the fields, a poppy that had strayed and been lost by its
+fellows, or a few cornflowers that had fallen lazily behind, and decorated
+the ground here and there with their flowers like the border of a
+tapestry, in which may be seen at intervals hints of the rustic theme
+which appears triumphant in the panel itself; infrequent still, spaced
+apart as the scattered houses which warn us that we are approaching a
+village, they betokened to me the vast expanse of waving corn beneath the
+fleecy clouds, and the sight of a single poppy hoisting upon its slender
+rigging and holding against the breeze its scarlet ensign, over the buoy
+of rich black earth from which it sprang, made my heart beat as does a
+wayfarer's when he perceives, upon some low-lying ground, an old and
+broken boat which is being caulked and made seaworthy, and cries out,
+although he has not yet caught sight of it, "The Sea!"
+
+And then I returned to my hawthorns, and stood before them as one stands
+before those masterpieces of painting which, one imagines, one will be
+better able to 'take in' when one has looked away, for a moment, at
+something else; but in vain did I shape my fingers into a frame, so as to
+have nothing but the hawthorns before my eyes; the sentiment which they
+aroused in me remained obscure and vague, struggling and failing to free
+itself, to float across and become one with the flowers. They themselves
+offered me no enlightenment, and I could not call upon any other flowers
+to satisfy this mysterious longing. And then, inspiring me with that
+rapture which we feel on seeing a work by our favourite painter quite
+different from any of those that we already know, or, better still, when
+some one has taken us and set us down in front of a picture of which we
+have hitherto seen no more than a pencilled sketch, or when a piece of
+music which we have heard played over on the piano bursts out again in our
+ears with all the splendour and fullness of an orchestra, my grandfather
+called me to him, and, pointing to the hedge of Tansonville, said: "You
+are fond of hawthorns; just look at this pink one; isn't it pretty?"
+
+And it was indeed a hawthorn, but one whose flowers were pink, and
+lovelier even than the white. It, too, was in holiday attire, for one of
+those days which are the only true holidays, the holy days of religion,
+because they are not appointed by any capricious accident, as secular
+holidays are appointed, upon days which are not specially ordained for
+such observances, which have nothing about them that is essentially
+festal--but it was attired even more richly than the rest, for the flowers
+which clung to its branches, one above another, so thickly as to leave no
+part of the tree undecorated, like the tassels wreathed about the crook of
+a rococo shepherdess, were every one of them 'in colour,' and consequently
+of a superior quality, by the aesthetic standards of Combray, to the
+'plain,' if one was to judge by the scale of prices at the 'stores' in the
+Square, or at Camus's, where the most expensive biscuits were those whose
+sugar was pink. And for my own part I set a higher value on cream cheese
+when it was pink, when I had been allowed to tinge it with crushed
+strawberries. And these flowers had chosen precisely the colour of some
+edible and delicious thing, or of some exquisite addition to one's costume
+for a great festival, which colours, inasmuch as they make plain the
+reason for their superiority, are those whose beauty is most evident to
+the eyes of children, and for that reason must always seem more vivid and
+more natural than any other tints, even after the child's mind has
+realised that they offer no gratification to the appetite, and have not
+been selected by the dressmaker. And, indeed, I had felt at once, as I had
+felt before the white blossom, but now still more marvelling, that it was
+in no artificial manner, by no device of human construction, that the
+festal intention of these flowers was revealed, but that it was Nature
+herself who had spontaneously expressed it (with the simplicity of a woman
+from a village shop, labouring at the decoration of a street altar for
+some procession) by burying the bush in these little rosettes, almost too
+ravishing in colour, this rustic 'pompadour.' High up on the branches,
+like so many of those tiny rose-trees, their pots concealed in jackets of
+paper lace, whose slender stems rise in a forest from the altar on the
+greater festivals, a thousand buds were swelling and opening, paler in
+colour, but each disclosing as it burst, as at the bottom of a cup of pink
+marble, its blood-red stain, and suggesting even more strongly than the
+full-blown flowers the special, irresistible quality of the hawthorn-tree,
+which, wherever it budded, wherever it was about to blossom, could bud and
+blossom in pink flowers alone. Taking its place in the hedge, but as
+different from the rest as a young girl in holiday attire among a crowd of
+dowdy women in everyday clothes, who are staying at home, equipped and
+ready for the 'Month of Mary,' of which it seemed already to form a part,
+it shone and smiled in its cool, rosy garments, a Catholic bush indeed,
+and altogether delightful.
+
+The hedge allowed us a glimpse, inside the park, of an alley bordered with
+jasmine, pansies, and verbenas, among which the stocks held open their
+fresh plump purses, of a pink as fragrant and as faded as old Spanish
+leather, while on the gravel-path a long watering-pipe, painted green,
+coiling across the ground, poured, where its holes were, over the flowers
+whose perfume those holes inhaled, a vertical and prismatic fan of
+infinitesimal, rainbow-coloured drops. Suddenly I stood still, unable to
+move, as happens when something appears that requires not only our eyes to
+take it in, but involves a deeper kind of perception and takes possession
+of the whole of our being. A little girl, with fair, reddish hair, who
+appeared to be returning from a walk, and held a trowel in her hand, was
+looking at us, raising towards us a face powdered with pinkish freckles.
+Her black eyes gleamed, and as I did not at that time know, and indeed
+have never since learned how to reduce to its objective elements any
+strong impression, since I had not, as they say, enough 'power of
+observation' to isolate the sense of their colour, for a long time
+afterwards, whenever I thought of her, the memory of those bright eyes
+would at once present itself to me as a vivid azure, since her complexion
+was fair; so much so that, perhaps, if her eyes had not been quite so
+black--which was what struck one most forcibly on first meeting her--I
+should not have been, as I was, especially enamoured of their imagined
+blue.
+
+I gazed at her, at first with that gaze which is not merely a messenger
+from the eyes, but in whose window all the senses assemble and lean out,
+petrified and anxious, that gaze which would fain reach, touch, capture,
+bear off in triumph the body at which it is aimed, and the soul with the
+body; then (so frightened was I lest at any moment my grandfather and
+father, catching sight of the girl, might tear me away from her, by making
+me run on in front of them) with another, an unconsciously appealing look,
+whose object was to force her to pay attention to me, to see, to know me.
+She cast a glance forwards and sideways, so as to take stock of my
+grandfather and father, and doubtless the impression she formed of them
+was that we were all absurd people, for she turned away with an
+indifferent and contemptuous air, withdrew herself so as to spare her face
+the indignity of remaining within their field of vision; and while they,
+continuing to walk on without noticing her, had overtaken and passed me,
+she allowed her eyes to wander, over the space that lay between us, in my
+direction, without any particular expression, without appearing to have
+seen me, but with an intensity, a half-hidden smile which I was unable to
+interpret, according to the instruction I had received in the ways of good
+breeding, save as a mark of infinite disgust; and her hand, at the same
+time, sketched in the air an indelicate gesture, for which, when it was
+addressed in public to a person whom one did not know, the little
+dictionary of manners which I carried in my mind supplied only one
+meaning, namely, a deliberate insult.
+
+"Gilberte, come along; what are you doing?" called out in a piercing tone
+of authority a lady in white, whom I had not seen until that moment,
+while, a little way beyond her, a gentleman in a suit of linen 'ducks,'
+whom I did not know either, stared at me with eyes which seemed to be
+starting from his head; the little girl's smile abruptly faded, and,
+seizing her trowel, she made off without turning to look again in my
+direction, with an air of obedience, inscrutable and sly.
+
+And so was wafted to my ears the name of Gilberte, bestowed on me like a
+talisman which might, perhaps, enable me some day to rediscover her whom
+its syllables had just endowed with a definite personality, whereas, a
+moment earlier, she had been only something vaguely seen. So it came to
+me, uttered across the heads of the stocks and jasmines, pungent and cool
+as the drops which fell from the green watering-pipe; impregnating and
+irradiating the zone of pure air through which it had passed, which it set
+apart and isolated from all other air, with the mystery of the life of her
+whom its syllables designated to the happy creatures that lived and walked
+and travelled in her company; unfolding through the arch of the pink
+hawthorn, which opened at the height of my shoulder, the quintessence of
+their familiarity--so exquisitely painful to myself--with her, and with
+all that unknown world of her existence, into which I should never
+penetrate.
+
+For a moment (while we moved away, and my grandfather murmured: "Poor
+Swann, what a life they are leading him; fancy sending him away so that
+she can be left alone with her Charlus--for that was Charlus: I recognised
+him at once! And the child, too; at her age, to be mixed up in all that!")
+the impression left on me by the despotic tone in which Gilberte's mother
+had spoken to her, without her replying, by exhibiting her to me as being
+obliged to yield obedience to some one else, as not being indeed superior
+to the whole world, calmed my sufferings somewhat, revived some hope in
+me, and cooled the ardour of my love. But very soon that love surged up
+again in me like a reaction by which my humiliated heart was endeavouring
+to rise to Gilberte's level, or to draw her down to its own.  I loved her;
+I was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to
+do her some injury, to force her to keep some memory of me.  I knew her to
+be so beautiful that I should have liked to be able to retrace my steps so
+as to shake my fist at her and shout, "I think you are hideous, grotesque;
+you are utterly disgusting!" However, I walked away, carrying with me,
+then and for ever afterwards, as the first illustration of a type of
+happiness rendered inaccessible to a little boy of my kind by certain laws
+of nature which it was impossible to transgress, the picture of a little
+girl with reddish hair, and a skin freckled with tiny pink marks, who held
+a trowel in her hand, and smiled as she directed towards me a long and
+subtle and inexpressive stare. And already the charm with which her name,
+like a cloud of incense, had filled that archway in the pink hawthorn
+through which she and I had, together, heard its sound, was beginning to
+conquer, to cover, to embalm, to beautify everything with which it had any
+association: her grandparents, whom my own had been so unspeakably
+fortunate as to know, the glorious profession of a stockholder, even the
+melancholy neighbourhood of the Champs-Elys�es, where she lived in Paris.
+
+"L�onie," said my grandfather on our return, "I wish we had had you with
+us this afternoon. You would never have known Tansonville. If I had had
+the courage I would have cut you a branch of that pink hawthorn you used
+to like so much." And so my grandfather told her the story of our walk,
+either just to amuse her, or perhaps because there was still some hope
+that she might be stimulated to rise from her bed and to go out of doors.
+For in earlier days she had been very fond of Tansonville, and, moreover,
+Swann's visits had been the last that she had continued to receive, at a
+time when she had already closed her doors to all the world. And just as,
+when he called, in these later days, to inquire for her (and she was still
+the only person in our household whom he would ask to see), she would send
+down to say that she was tired at the moment and resting, but that she
+would be happy to see him another time, so, this evening, she said to my
+grandfather, "Yes, some day when the weather is fine I shall go for a
+drive as far as the gate of the park." And in saying this she was quite
+sincere. She would have liked to see Swann and Tansonville again; but the
+mere wish to do so sufficed for all that remained of her strength, which
+its fulfilment would have more than exhausted. Sometimes a spell of fine
+weather made her a little more energetic, she would rise and put on her
+clothes; but before she had reached the outer room she would be 'tired'
+again, and would insist on returning to her bed. The process which had
+begun in her--and in her a little earlier only than it must come to all of
+us--was the great and general renunciation which old age makes in
+preparation for death, the chrysalis stage of life, which may be observed
+wherever life has been unduly prolonged; even in old lovers who have lived
+for one another with the utmost intensity of passion, and in old friends
+bound by the closest ties of mental sympathy, who, after a certain year,
+cease to make, the necessary journey, or even to cross the street to see
+one another, cease to correspond, and know well that they will communicate
+no more in this world. My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that
+she would not see Swann again, that she would never leave her own house
+any more, but this ultimate seclusion seemed to be accepted by her with
+all the more readiness for the very reason which, to our minds, ought to
+have made it more unbearable; namely, that such a seclusion was forced
+upon her by the gradual and steady diminution in her strength which she
+was able to measure daily, which, by making every action, every movement
+'tiring' to her if not actually painful, gave to inaction, isolation and
+silence the blessed, strengthening and refreshing charm of repose.
+
+My aunt did not go to see the pink hawthorn in the hedge, but at all hours
+of the day I would ask the rest of my family whether she was not going to
+go, whether she used not, at one time, to go often to Tansonville, trying
+to make them speak of Mile. Swann's parents and grandparents, who appeared
+to me to be as great and glorious as gods. The name, which had for me
+become almost mythological, of Swann--when I talked with my family I would
+grow sick with longing to hear them utter it; I dared not pronounce it
+myself, but I would draw them into a discussion of matters which led
+naturally to Gilberte and her family, in which she was involved, in
+speaking of which I would feel myself not too remotely banished from her
+company; and I would suddenly force my father (by pretending, for
+instance, to believe that my grandfather's business had been in our family
+before his day, or that the hedge with the pink hawthorn which my aunt
+L�onie wished to visit was on common ground) to correct my statements, to
+say, as though in opposition to me and of his own accord: "No, no, the
+business belonged to _Swann's_ father, that hedge is part of _Swann's_
+park." And then I would be obliged to pause for breath; so stifling was
+the pressure, upon that part of me where it was for ever inscribed, of
+that name which, at the moment when I heard it, seemed to me fuller, more
+portentous than any other name, because it was burdened with the weight of
+all the occasions on which I had secretly uttered it in my mind. It caused
+me a pleasure which I was ashamed to have dared to demand from my parents,
+for so great was it that to have procured it for me must have involved
+them in an immensity of effort, and with no recompense, since for them
+there was no pleasure in the sound. And so I would prudently turn the
+conversation. And by a scruple of conscience, also. All the singular
+seductions which I had stored up in the sound of that word Swann, I found
+again as soon as it was uttered.  And then it occurred to me suddenly that
+my parents could not fail to experience the same emotions, that they must
+find themselves sharing my point of view, that they perceived in their
+turn, that they condoned, that they even embraced my visionary longings,
+and I was as wretched as though I had ravished and corrupted the innocence
+of their hearts.
+
+That year my family fixed the day of their return to Paris rather earlier
+than usual. On the morning of our departure I had had my hair curled, to
+be ready to face the photographer, had had a new hat carefully set upon my
+head, and had been buttoned into a velvet jacket; a little later my
+mother, after searching everywhere for me, found me standing in tears on
+that steep little hillside close to Tansonville, bidding a long farewell
+to my hawthorns, clasping their sharp branches to my bosom, and (like a
+princess in a tragedy, oppressed by the weight of all her senseless
+jewellery) with no gratitude towards the officious hand which had, in
+curling those ringlets, been at pains to collect all my hair upon my
+forehead; trampling underfoot the curl-papers which I had torn from my
+head, and my new hat with them. My mother was not at all moved by my
+tears, but she could not suppress a cry at the sight of my battered
+headgear and my ruined jacket.  I did not, however, hear her. "Oh, my poor
+little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it is not you
+that want to make me unhappy, to force me to leave you. You, you have
+never done me any harm. So I shall always love you." And, drying my eyes,
+I promised them that, when I grew up, I would never copy the foolish
+example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring days, instead
+of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I would make excursions into
+the country to see the first hawthorn-trees in bloom.
+
+Once in the fields we never left them again during the rest of our
+M�s�glise walk. They were perpetually crossed, as though by invisible
+streams of traffic, by the wind, which was to me the tutelary genius of
+Combray.  Every year, on the day of our arrival, in order to feel that I
+really was at Combray, I would climb the hill to find it running again
+through my clothing, and setting me running in its wake. One always had
+the wind for companion when one went the 'M�s�glise way,' on that swelling
+plain which stretched, mile beyond mile, without any disturbance of its
+gentle contour.  I knew that Mlle. Swann used often to go and spend a few
+days at Laon, and, for all that it was many miles away, the distance was
+obviated by the absence of any intervening obstacle; when, on hot
+afternoons, I would see a breath of wind emerge from the farthest horizon,
+bowing the heads of the corn in distant fields, pouring like a flood over
+all that vast expanse, and finally settling down, warm and rustling, among
+the clover and sainfoin at my feet, that plain which was common to us both
+seemed then to draw us together, to unite us; I would imagine that the
+same breath had passed by her also, that there was some message from her
+in what it was whispering to me, without my being able to understand it,
+and I would catch and kiss it as it passed. On my left was a village
+called Champieu (_Campus Pagani_, according to the Cur�). On my right I
+could see across the cornfields the two crocketed, rustic spires of
+Saint-Andr�-des-Champs, themselves as tapering, scaly, plated,
+honeycombed, yellowed, and roughened as two ears of wheat.
+
+At regular intervals, among the inimitable ornamentation of their leaves,
+which can be mistaken for those of no other fruit-tree, the apple-trees
+were exposing their broad petals of white satin, or hanging in shy bunches
+their unopened, blushing buds. It was while going the 'M�s�glise way' that
+I first noticed the circular shadow which apple-trees cast upon the sunlit
+ground, and also those impalpable threads of golden silk which the setting
+sun weaves slantingly downwards from beneath their leaves, and which I
+would see my father slash through with his stick without ever making them
+swerve from their straight path.
+
+Sometimes in the afternoon sky a white moon would creep up like a little
+cloud, furtive, without display, suggesting an actress who does not have
+to 'come on' for a while, and so goes 'in front' in her ordinary clothes
+to watch the rest of the company for a moment, but keeps in the
+background, not wishing to attract attention to herself. I was glad to
+find her image reproduced in books and paintings, though these works of
+art were very different--at least in my earlier years, before Bloch had
+attuned my eyes and mind to more subtle harmonies--from those in which the
+moon seems fair to me to-day, but in which I should not have recognised
+her then. It might be, for instance, some novel by Saintine, some
+landscape by Gleyre, in which she is cut out sharply against the sky, in
+the form of a silver sickle, some work as unsophisticated and as
+incomplete as were, at that date, my own impressions, and which it enraged
+my grandmother's sisters to see me admire. They held that one ought to set
+before children, and that children shewed their own innate good taste in
+admiring, only such books and pictures as they would continue to admire
+when their minds were developed and mature. No doubt they regarded
+aesthetic values as material objects which an unclouded vision could not
+fail to discern, without needing to have their equivalent in experience of
+life stored up and slowly ripening in one's heart.
+
+It was along the 'M�s�glise 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 shewn 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. Vinteuil assured them that it was, and indeed it is
+remarkable that people never fail to arouse admiration of their normal
+qualities in the relatives of anyone with whom they are in physical
+intercourse. Bodily passion, which has been so unjustly decried, compels
+its victims to display every vestige that is in them of unselfishness and
+generosity, and so effectively that they shine resplendent in the eyes of
+all beholders. Dr. Percepied, whose loud voice and bushy eyebrows enabled
+him to play to his heart's content the part of 'double-dealer,' a part to
+which he was not, otherwise, adapted, without in the least degree
+compromising his unassailable and quite unmerited reputation of being a
+kind-hearted old curmudgeon, could make the Cur� and everyone else laugh
+until they cried by saying in a harsh voice: "What d'ye say to this, now?
+It seems that she plays music with her friend, Mile. Vinteuil.  That
+surprises you, does it? Oh, I know nothing, nothing at all. It was Papa
+Vinteuil who told me all about it yesterday. After all, she has every
+right to be fond of music, that girl. I should never dream of thwarting
+the artistic vocation of a child; nor Vinteuil either, it seems. And then
+he plays music too, with his daughter's friend. Why, gracious heavens, it
+must be a regular musical box, that house out there! What are you laughing
+at?  I say they've been playing too much music, those people. I met Papa
+Vinteuil the other day, by the cemetery. It was all he could do to keep on
+his feet."
+
+Anyone who, like ourselves, had seen M. Vinteuil, about this time,
+avoiding people whom he knew, and turning away as soon as he caught sight
+of them, changed in a few months into an old man, engulfed in a sea of
+sorrows, incapable of any effort not directly aimed at promoting his
+daughter's happiness, spending whole days beside his wife's grave, could
+hardly have failed to realise that he was gradually dying of a broken
+heart, could hardly have supposed that he paid no attention to the rumours
+which were going about. He knew, perhaps he even believed, what his
+neighbours were saying.  There is probably no one, however rigid his
+virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of
+circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which he
+himself has been most outspoken in condemning, without at first
+recognising it beneath the disguise which it assumes on entering his
+presence, so as to wound him and to make him suffer; the odd words, the
+unaccountable attitude, one evening, of a person whom he has a thousand
+reasons for loving. But for a man of M. Vinteuil's sensibility it must
+have been far more painful than for a hardened man of the world to have to
+resign himself to one of those situations which are wrongly supposed to
+occur in Bohemian circles only; for they are produced whenever there needs
+to establish itself in the security necessary to its development a vice
+which Nature herself has planted in the soul of a child, perhaps by no
+more than blending the virtues of its father and mother, as she might
+blend the colours of their eyes. And yet however much M. Vinteuil may have
+known of his daughter's conduct it did not follow that his adoration of
+her grew any less. The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in
+which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that engendered those
+beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them; they can aim at them
+continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them; and
+an avalanche of miseries and maladies coming, one after another, without
+interruption into the bosom of a family, will not make it lose faith in
+either the clemency of its God or the capacity of its physician. But when
+M. Vinteuil regarded his daughter and himself from the point of view of
+the world, and of their reputation, when he attempted to place himself by
+her side in the rank which they occupied in the general estimation of
+their neighbours, then he was bound to give judgment, to utter his own and
+her social condemnation in precisely the terms which the inhabitant of
+Combray most hostile to him and his daughter would have employed; he saw
+himself and her in 'low,' in the very 'lowest water,' inextricably
+stranded; and his manners had of late been tinged with that humility, that
+respect for persons who ranked above him and to whom he must now look up
+(however far beneath him they might hitherto have been), that tendency to
+search for some means of rising again to their level, which is an almost
+mechanical result of any human misfortune.
+
+One day, when we were walking with Swann in one of the streets of Combray,
+M. Vinteuil, turning out of another street, found himself so suddenly face
+to face with us all that he had not time to escape; and Swann, with that
+almost arrogant charity of a man of the world who, amid the dissolution of
+all his own moral prejudices, finds in another's shame merely a reason for
+treating him with a friendly benevolence, the outward signs of which serve
+to enhance and gratify the self-esteem of the bestower because he feels
+that they are all the more precious to him upon whom they are bestowed,
+conversed at great length with M. Vinteuil, with whom for a long time he
+had been barely on speaking terms, and invited him, before leaving us, to
+send his daughter over, one day, to play at Tansonville. It was an
+invitation which, two years earlier, would have enraged M. Vinteuil, but
+which now filled him with so much gratitude that he felt himself obliged
+to refrain from the indiscretion of accepting. Swann's friendly regard for
+his daughter seemed to him to be in itself so honourable, so precious a
+support for his cause that he felt it would perhaps be better to make no
+use of it, so as to have the wholly Platonic satisfaction of keeping it in
+reserve.
+
+"What a charming man!" he said to us, after Swann had gone, with the same
+enthusiasm and veneration which make clever and pretty women of the middle
+classes fall victims to the physical and intellectual charms of a duchess,
+even though she be ugly and a fool. "What a charming man!  What a pity
+that he should have made such a deplorable marriage!"
+
+And then, so strong an element of hypocrisy is there in even the most
+sincere of men, who cast off, while they are talking to anyone, the
+opinion they actually hold of him and will express when he is no longer
+there, my family joined with M. Vinteuil in deploring Swann's marriage,
+invoking principles and conventions which (all the more because they
+invoked them in common with him, as though we were all thorough good
+fellows of the same sort) they appeared to suggest were in no way
+infringed at Montjouvain.  M. Vinteuil did not send his daughter to visit
+Swann, an omission which Swann was the first to regret. For constantly,
+after meeting M. Vinteuil, he would remember that he had been meaning for
+a long time to ask him about some one of the same name as himself, one of
+his relatives, Swann supposed. And on this occasion he determined that he
+would not forget what he had to say to him when M. Vinteuil should appear
+with his daughter at Tansonville.
+
+Since the 'M�s�glise way' was the shorter of the two that we used to take
+for our walks round Combray, and for that reason was reserved for days of
+uncertain weather, it followed that the climate of M�s�glise shewed an
+unduly high rainfall, and we would never lose sight of the fringe of
+Roussainville wood, so that we could, at any moment, run for shelter
+beneath its dense thatch of leaves.
+
+Often the sun would disappear behind a cloud, which impinged on its
+roundness, but whose edge the sun gilded in return. The brightness, though
+not the light of day, would then be shut off from a landscape in which all
+life appeared to be suspended, while the little village of Roussainville
+carved in relief upon the sky the white mass of its gables, with a
+startling precision of detail. A gust of wind blew from its perch a rook,
+which floated away and settled in the distance, while beneath a paling sky
+the woods on the horizon assumed a deeper tone of blue, as though they
+were painted in one of those cameos which you still find decorating the
+walls of old houses.
+
+But on other days would begin to fall the rain, of which we had had due
+warning from the little barometer-figure which the spectacle-maker hung
+out in his doorway. Its drops, like migrating birds which fly off in a
+body at a given moment, would come down out of the sky in close marching
+order.  They would never drift apart, would make no movement at random in
+their rapid course, but each one, keeping in its place, would draw after
+it the drop which was following, and the sky would be as greatly darkened
+as by the swallows flying south. We would take refuge among the trees. And
+when it seemed that their flight was accomplished, a few last drops,
+feebler and slower than the rest, would still come down. But we would
+emerge from our shelter, for the rain was playing a game, now, among the
+branches, and, even when it was almost dry again underfoot, a stray drop
+or two, lingering in the hollow of a leaf, would run down and hang
+glistening from the point of it until suddenly it splashed plump upon our
+upturned faces from the whole height of the tree.
+
+Often, too, we would hurry for shelter, tumbling in among all its stony
+saints and patriarchs, into the porch of Saint-Andr�-des-Champs, How
+typically French that church was! Over its door the saints, the kings of
+chivalry with lilies in their hands, the wedding scenes and funerals were
+carved as they might have been in the mind of Fran�oise. The sculptor had
+also recorded certain anecdotes of Aristotle and Virgil, precisely as
+Fran�oise in her kitchen would break into speech about Saint Louis as
+though she herself had known him, generally in order to depreciate, by
+contrast with him, my grandparents, whom she considered less 'righteous.'
+One could see that the ideas which the mediaeval artist and the mediaeval
+peasant (who had survived to cook for us in the nineteenth century) had of
+classical and of early Christian history, ideas whose inaccuracy was
+atoned for by their honest simplicity, were derived not from books, but
+from a tradition at once ancient and direct, unbroken, oral, degraded,
+unrecognisable, and alive. Another Combray person whom I could discern
+also, potential and typified, in the gothic sculptures of
+Saint-Andr�-des-Champs was young Th�odore, the assistant in Camus's shop.
+And, indeed, Fran�oise herself was well aware that she had in him a
+countryman and contemporary, for when my aunt was too ill for Fran�oise to
+be able, unaided, to lift her in her bed or to carry her to her chair,
+rather than let the kitchen-maid come upstairs and, perhaps, 'make an
+impression' on my aunt, she would send out for Th�odore. And this lad, who
+was regarded, and quite rightly, in the town as a 'bad character,' was so
+abounding in that spirit which had served to decorate the porch of
+Saint-Andr�-des-Champs, and particularly in the feelings of respect due,
+in Franchise's eyes, to all 'poor invalids,' and, above all, to her own
+'poor mistress,' that he had, when he bent down to raise my aunt's head
+from her pillow, the same air of pr�rapha�lite simplicity and zeal which
+the little angels in the has-reliefs wear, who throng, with tapers in
+their hands, about the deathbed of Our Lady, as though those carved faces
+of stone, naked and grey like trees in winter, were, like them, asleep
+only, storing up life and waiting to flower again in countless plebeian
+faces, reverend and cunning as the face of Th�odore, and glowing with the
+ruddy brilliance of ripe apples.
+
+There, too, not fastened to the wall like the little angels, but detached
+from the porch, of more than human stature, erect upon her pedestal as
+upon a footstool, which had been placed there to save her feet from
+contact with the wet ground, stood a saint with the full cheeks, the firm
+breasts which swelled out inside her draperies like a cluster of ripe
+grapes inside a bag, the narrow forehead, short and stubborn nose,
+deep-set eyes, and strong, thick-skinned, courageous expression of the
+country-women of those parts. This similarity, which imparted to the
+statue itself a kindliness that I had not looked to find in it, was
+corroborated often by the arrival of some girl from the fields, come, like
+ourselves, for shelter beneath the porch, whose presence there--as when
+the leaves of a climbing plant have grown up beside leaves carved in
+stone--seemed intended by fate to allow us, by confronting it with its
+type in nature, to form a critical estimate of the truth of the work of
+art. Before our eyes, in the distance, a promised or an accursed land,
+Roussainville, within whose walls I had never penetrated, Roussainville
+was now, when the rain had ceased for us, still being chastised, like a
+village in the Old Testament, by all the innumerable spears and arrows of
+the storm, which beat down obliquely upon the dwellings of its
+inhabitants, or else had already received the forgiveness of the Almighty,
+Who had restored to it the light of His sun, which fell upon it in rays of
+uneven length, like the rays of a monstrance upon an altar.
+
+Sometimes, when the weather had completely broken, we were obliged to go
+home and to remain shut up indoors. Here and there, in the distance, in a
+landscape which, what with the failing light and saturated atmosphere,
+resembled a seascape rather, a few solitary houses clinging to the lower
+slopes of a hill whose heights were buried in a cloudy darkness shone out
+like little boats which had folded their sails and would ride at anchor,
+all night, upon the sea. But what mattered rain or storm? In summer, bad
+weather is no more than a passing fit of superficial ill-temper expressed
+by the permanent, underlying fine weather; a very different thing from the
+fluid and unstable 'fine weather' of winter, its very opposite, in fact;
+for has it not (firmly established in the soil, on which it has taken
+solid form in dense masses of foliage over which the rain may pour in
+torrents without weakening the resistance offered by their real and
+lasting happiness) hoisted, to keep them flying throughout the season, in
+the village streets, on the walls of the houses and in their gardens, its
+silken banners, violet and white. Sitting in the little parlour, where I
+would pass the time until dinner with a book, I might hear the water
+dripping from our chestnut-trees, but I would know that the shower would
+only glaze and brighten the greenness of their thick, crumpled leaves, and
+that they themselves had undertaken to remain there, like pledges of
+summer, all through the rainy night, to assure me of the fine weather's
+continuing; it might rain as it pleased, but to-morrow, over the white
+fence of Tansonville, there would surge and flow, numerous as ever, a sea
+of little heart-shaped leaves; and without the least anxiety I could watch
+the poplar in the Rue des Perchamps praying for mercy, bowing in
+desperation before the storm; without the least anxiety I could hear, at
+the far end of the garden, the last peals of thunder growling among our
+lilac-trees.
+
+If the weather was bad all morning, my family would abandon the idea of a
+walk, and I would remain at home. But, later on, I formed the habit of
+going out by myself on such days, and walking towards
+M�s�glise-la-Vineuse, during that autumn when we had to come to Combray to
+settle the division of my aunt L�onie's estate; for she had died at last,
+leaving both parties among her neighbours triumphant in the fact of her
+demise--those who had insisted that her mode of life was enfeebling and
+must ultimately kill her, and, equally, those who had always maintained
+that she suffered from some disease not imaginary, but organic, by the
+visible proof of which the most sceptical would be obliged to own
+themselves convinced, once she had succumbed to it; causing no intense
+grief to any save one of her survivors, but to that one a grief savage in
+its violence. During the long fortnight of my aunt's last illness
+Fran�oise never went out of her room for an instant, never took off her
+clothes, allowed no one else to do anything for my aunt, and did not leave
+her body until it was actually in its grave. Then, at last, we understood
+that the sort of terror in which Fran�oise had lived of my aunt's harsh
+words, her suspicions and her anger, had developed in her a sentiment
+which we had mistaken for hatred, and which was really veneration and
+love. Her true mistress, whose decisions it had been impossible to
+foresee, from whose stratagems it had been so hard to escape, of whose
+good nature it had been so easy to take advantage, her sovereign, her
+mysterious and omnipotent monarch was no more. Compared with such a
+mistress we counted for very little. The time had long passed when, on our
+first coming to spend our holidays at Combray, we had been of equal
+importance, in Franchise's eyes, with my aunt.
+
+During that autumn my parents, finding the days so fully occupied with the
+legal formalities that had to be gone through, and discussions with
+solicitors and farmers, that they had little time for walks which, as it
+happened, the weather made precarious, began to let me go, without them,
+along the 'M�s�glise way,' wrapped up in a huge Highland plaid which
+protected me from the rain, and which I was all the more ready to throw
+over my shoulders because I felt that the stripes of its gaudy tartan
+scandalised Fran�oise, whom it was impossible to convince that the colour
+of one's clothes had nothing whatever to do with one's mourning for the
+dead, and to whom the grief which we had shewn on my aunt's death was
+wholly unsatisfactory, since we had not entertained the neighbours to a
+great funeral banquet, and did not adopt a special tone when we spoke of
+her, while I at times might be heard humming a tune. I am sure that in a
+book--and to that extent my feelings were closely akin to those of
+Fran�oise--such a conception of mourning, in the manner of the _Chanson de
+Roland_ and of the porch of Saint-Andr�-des-Champs, would have seemed most
+attractive.  But the moment that Fran�oise herself approached, some evil
+spirit would urge me to attempt to make her angry, and I would avail
+myself of the slightest pretext to say to her that I regretted my aunt's
+death because she had been a good woman in spite of her absurdities, but
+not in the least because she was my aunt; that she might easily have been
+my aunt and yet have been so odious that her death would not have caused
+me a moment's sorrow; statements which, in a book, would have struck me as
+merely fatuous.
+
+And if Fran�oise then, inspired like a poet with a flood of confused
+reflections upon bereavement, grief, and family memories, were to plead
+her inability to rebut my theories, saying: "I don't know how to _espress_
+myself"--I would triumph over her with an ironical and brutal common sense
+worthy of Dr. Percepied; and if she went on: "All the same she was a
+_geological_ relation; there is always the respect due to your _geology_,"
+I would shrug my shoulders and say: "It is really very good of me to
+discuss the matter with an illiterate old woman who cannot speak her own
+language," adopting, to deliver judgment on Fran�oise, the mean and narrow
+outlook of the pedant, whom those who are most contemptuous of him in the
+impartiality of their own minds are only too prone to copy when they are
+obliged to play a part upon the vulgar stage of life.
+
+My walks, that autumn, were all the more delightful because I used to take
+them after long hours spent over a book. When I was tired of reading,
+after a whole morning in the house, I would throw my plaid across my
+shoulders and set out; my body, which in a long spell of enforced
+immobility had stored up an accumulation of vital energy, was now obliged,
+like a spinning-top wound and let go, to spend this in every direction.
+The walls of houses, the Tansonville hedge, the trees of Roussainville
+wood, the bushes against which Montjouvain leaned its back, all must bear
+the blows of my walking-stick or umbrella, must hear my shouts of
+happiness, blows and shouts being indeed no more than expressions of the
+confused ideas which exhilarated me, and which, not being developed to the
+point at which they might rest exposed to the light of day, rather than
+submit to a slow and difficult course of elucidation, found it easier and
+more pleasant to drift into an immediate outlet. And so it is that the
+bulk of what appear to be the emotional renderings of our inmost
+sensations do no more than relieve us of the burden of those sensations by
+allowing them to escape from us in an indistinct form which does not teach
+us how it should be interpreted. When I attempt to reckon up all that I
+owe to the 'M�s�glise way,' all the humble discoveries of which it was
+either the accidental setting or the direct inspiration and cause, I am
+reminded that it was in that same autumn, on one of those walks, near the
+bushy precipice which guarded Montjouvain from the rear, that I was struck
+for the first time by this lack of harmony between our impressions and
+their normal forms of expression. After an hour of rain and wind, against
+which I had put up a brisk fight, as I came to the edge of the Montjouvain
+pond, and reached a little hut, roofed with tiles, in which M. Vinteuil's
+gardener kept his tools, the sun shone out again, and its golden rays,
+washed clean by the shower, blazed once more in the sky, on the trees, on
+the wall of the hut, and on the still wet tiles of the roof, which had a
+chicken perching upon its ridge. The wind pulled out sideways the wild
+grass that grew in the wall, and the chicken's downy feathers, both of
+which things let themselves float upon the wind's breath to their full
+extent, with the unresisting submissiveness of light and lifeless matter.
+The tiled roof cast upon the pond, whose reflections were now clear again
+in the sunlight, a square of pink marble, the like of which I had never
+observed before. And, seeing upon the water, where it reflected the wall,
+a pallid smile responding to the smiling sky, I cried aloud in my
+enthusiasm, brandishing my furled umbrella: "Damn, damn, damn, damn!" But
+at the same time I felt that I was in duty bound not to content myself
+with these unilluminating words, but to endeavour to see more clearly into
+the sources of my enjoyment.
+
+And it was at that moment, too--thanks to a peasant who went past,
+apparently in a bad enough humour already, but more so when he nearly
+received my umbrella in his face, and who replied without any cordiality
+to my "Fine day, what! good to be out walking!"--that I learned that
+identical emotions do not spring up in the hearts of all men
+simultaneously, by a pre-established order. Later on I discovered that,
+whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the
+friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment
+have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and
+wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed. And if I had been
+thinking with affection of my parents, and forming the most sensible and
+proper plans for giving them pleasure, they would have been using the same
+interval of time to discover some misdeed that I had already forgotten,
+and would begin to scold me severely, just as I flung myself upon them
+with a kiss.
+
+Sometimes to the exhilaration which I derived from being alone would be
+added an alternative feeling, so that I could not be clear in my mind to
+which I should give the casting vote; a feeling stimulated by the desire
+to see rise up before my eyes a peasant-girl whom I might clasp in my
+arms.  Coming abruptly, and without giving me time to trace it accurately
+to its source among so many ideas of a very different kind, the pleasure
+which accompanied this desire seemed only a degree superior to what was
+given me by my other thoughts. I found an additional merit in everything
+that was in my mind at the moment, in the pink reflection of the tiled
+roof, the wild grass in the wall, the village of Roussainville into which
+I had long desired to penetrate, the trees of its wood and the steeple of
+its church, created in them by this fresh emotion which made them appear
+more desirable only because I thought it was they that had provoked it,
+and which seemed only to wish to bear me more swiftly towards them when it
+filled my sails with a potent, unknown, and propitious breeze. But if this
+desire that a woman should appear added for me something more exalting
+than the charms of nature, they in their turn enlarged what I might, in
+the woman's charm, have found too much restricted. It seemed to me that
+the beauty of the trees was hers also, and that, as for the spirit of
+those horizons, of the village of Roussainville, of the books which I was
+reading that year, it was her kiss which would make me master of them all;
+and, my imagination drawing strength from contact with my sensuality, my
+sensuality expanding through all the realms of my imagination, my desire
+had no longer any bounds. Moreover--just as in moments of musing
+contemplation of nature, the normal actions of the mind being suspended,
+and our abstract ideas of things set on one side, we believe with the
+profoundest faith in the originality, in the individual existence of the
+place in which we may happen to be--the passing figure which my desire
+evoked seemed to be not any one example of the general type of 'woman,'
+but a necessary and natural product of the soil. For at that time
+everything which was not myself, the earth and the creatures upon it,
+seemed to me more precious, more important, endowed with a more real
+existence than they appear to full-grown men. And between the earth and
+its creatures I made no distinction. I had a desire for a peasant-girl
+from M�s�glise or Roussainville, for a fisher-girl from Balbec, just as I
+had a desire for Balbec and M�s�glise. The pleasure which those girls were
+empowered to give me would have seemed less genuine, I should have had no
+faith in it any longer, if I had been at liberty to modify its conditions
+as I chose. To meet in Paris a fisher-girl from Balbec or a peasant-girl
+from M�s�glise would have been like receiving the present of a shell which
+I had never seen upon the beach, or of a fern which I had never found
+among the woods, would have stripped from the pleasure which she was about
+to give me all those other pleasures in the thick of which my imagination
+had enwrapped her. But to wander thus among the woods of Roussainville
+without a peasant-girl to embrace was to see those woods and yet know
+nothing of their secret treasure, their deep-hidden beauty.  That girl
+whom I never saw save dappled with the shadows of their leaves, was to me
+herself a plant of local growth, only taller than the rest, and one whose
+structure would enable me to approach more closely than in them to the
+intimate savour of the land from which she had sprung. I could believe
+this all the more readily (and also that the caresses by which she would
+bring that savour to my senses were themselves of a particular kind,
+yielding a pleasure which I could never derive from any but herself) since
+I was still, and must for long remain, in that period of life when one has
+not yet separated the fact of this sensual pleasure from the various women
+in whose company one has tasted it, when one has not reduced it to a
+general idea which makes one regard them thenceforward as the variable
+instruments of a pleasure that is always the same. Indeed, that pleasure
+does not exist, isolated and formulated in the consciousness, as the
+ultimate object with which one seeks a woman's company, or as the cause of
+the uneasiness which, in anticipation, one then feels. Hardly even does
+one think of oneself, but only how to escape from oneself. Obscurely
+awaited, immanent and concealed, it rouses to such a paroxysm, at the
+moment when at last it makes itself felt, those other pleasures which we
+find in the tender glance, in the kiss of her who is by our side, that it
+seems to us, more than anything else, a sort of transport of gratitude for
+the kindness of heart of our companion and for her touching predilection
+of ourselves, which we measure by the benefits, by the happiness that she
+showers upon us.
+
+Alas, it was in vain that I implored the dungeon-keep of Roussainville,
+that I begged it to send out to meet me some daughter of its village,
+appealing to it as to the sole confidant to whom I had disclosed my
+earliest desire when, from the top floor of our house at Combray, from the
+little room that smelt of orris-root, I had peered out and seen nothing
+but its tower, framed in the square of the half-opened window, while, with
+the heroic scruples of a traveller setting forth for unknown climes, or of
+a desperate wretch hesitating on the verge of self-destruction, faint with
+emotion, I explored, across the bounds of my own experience, an untrodden
+path which, I believed, might lead me to my death, even--until passion
+spent itself and left me shuddering among the sprays of flowering currant
+which, creeping in through the window, tumbled all about my body. In vain
+I called upon it now. In vain I compressed the whole landscape into my
+field of vision, draining it with an exhaustive gaze which sought to
+extract from it a female creature. I might go alone as far as the porch of
+Saint-Andr�-des-Champs: never did I find there the girl whom I should
+inevitably have met, had I been with my grandfather, and so unable to
+engage her in conversation.  I would fix my eyes, without limit of time,
+upon the trunk of a distant tree, from behind which she must appear and
+spring towards me; my closest scrutiny left the horizon barren as before;
+night was falling; without any hope now would I concentrate my attention,
+as though to force up out of it the creatures which it must conceal, upon
+that sterile soil, that stale and outworn land; and it was no longer in
+lightness of heart, but with sullen anger that I aimed blows at the trees
+of Roussainville wood, from among which no more living creatures made
+their appearance than if they had been trees painted on the stretched
+canvas background of a panorama, when, unable to resign myself to having
+to return home without having held in my arms the woman I so greatly
+desired, I was yet obliged to retrace my steps towards Combray, and to
+admit to myself that the chance of her appearing in my path grew smaller
+every moment. And if she had appeared, would I have dared to speak to her?
+I felt that she would have regarded me as mad, for I no longer thought of
+those desires which came to me on my walks, but were never realized, as
+being shared by others, or as having any existence apart from myself. They
+seemed nothing more now than the purely subjective, impotent, illusory
+creatures of my temperament. They were in no way connected now with
+nature, with the world of real things, which from now onwards lost all its
+charm and significance, and meant no more to my life than a purely
+conventional framework, just as the action of a novel is framed in the
+railway carriage, on a seat of which a traveller is reading it to pass the
+time.
+
+And it is perhaps from another impression which I received at
+Mont-jouvain, some years later, an impression which at that time was
+without meaning, that there arose, long afterwards, my idea of that cruel
+side of human passion called 'sadism.' We shall see, in due course, that
+for quite another reason the memory of this impression was to play an
+important part in my life. It was during a spell of very hot weather; my
+parents, who had been obliged to go away for the whole day, had told me
+that I might stay out as late as I pleased; and having gone as far as the
+Montjouvain pond, where I enjoyed seeing again the reflection of the tiled
+roof of the hut, I had lain down in the shade and gone to sleep among the
+bushes on the steep slope that rose up behind the house, just where I had
+waited for my parents, years before, one day when they had gone to call on
+M.  Vinteuil. It was almost dark when I awoke, and I wished to rise and go
+away, but I saw Mile. Vinteuil (or thought, at least, that I recognised
+her, for I had not seen her often at Combray, and then only when she was
+still a child, whereas she was now growing into a young woman), who
+probably had just come in, standing in front of me, and only a few feet
+away from me, in that room in which her father had entertained mine, and
+which she had now made into a little sitting-room for herself. The window
+was partly open; the lamp was lighted; I could watch her every movement
+without her being able to see me; but, had I gone away, I must have made a
+rustling sound among the bushes, she would have heard me, and might have
+thought that I had been hiding there in order to spy upon her.
+
+She was in deep mourning, for her father had but lately died. We had not
+gone to see her; my mother had not cared to go, on account of that virtue
+which alone in her fixed any bounds to her benevolence--namely, modesty;
+but she pitied the girl from the depths of her heart. My mother had not
+forgotten the sad end of M. Vinteuil's life, his complete absorption,
+first in having to play both mother and nursery-maid to his daughter, and,
+later, in the suffering which she had caused him; she could see the
+tortured expression which was never absent from the old man's face in
+those terrible last years; she knew that he had definitely abandoned the
+task of transcribing in fair copies the whole of his later work, the poor
+little pieces, we imagined, of an old music-master, a retired village
+organist, which, we assumed, were of little or no value in themselves,
+though we did not despise them, because they were of such great value to
+him and had been the chief motive of his life before he sacrificed them to
+his daughter; pieces which, being mostly not even written down, but
+recorded only in his memory, while the rest were scribbled on loose sheets
+of paper, and quite illegible, must now remain unknown for ever; my mother
+thought, also, of that other and still more cruel renunciation to which M.
+Vinteuil had been driven, that of seeing the girl happily settled, with an
+honest and respectable future; when she called to mind all this utter and
+crushing misery that had come upon my aunts' old music-master, she was
+moved to very real grief, and shuddered to think of that other grief, so
+different in its bitterness, which Mlle. Vinteuil must now be feeling,
+tinged with remorse at having virtually killed her father. "Poor M.
+Vinteuil," my mother would say, "he lived for his daughter, and now he has
+died for her, without getting his reward. Will he get it now, I wonder,
+and in what form?  It can only come to him from her."
+
+At the far end of Mlle. Vinteuil's sitting-room, on the mantelpiece, stood
+a small photograph of her father which she went briskly to fetch, just as
+the sound of carriage wheels was heard from the road outside, then flung
+herself down on a sofa and drew close beside her a little table on which
+she placed the photograph, just as, long ago, M. Vinteuil had 'placed'
+beside him the piece of music which he would have liked to play over to my
+parents. And then her friend came in. Mlle. Vinteuil greeted her without
+rising, clasping her hands behind her head, and drew her body to one side
+of the sofa, as though to 'make room.' But no sooner had she done this
+than she appeared to feel that she was perhaps suggesting a particular
+position to her friend, with an emphasis which might well be regarded as
+importunate. She thought that her friend would prefer, no doubt, to sit
+down at some distance from her, upon a chair; she felt that she had been
+indiscreet; her sensitive heart took fright; stretching herself out again
+over the whole of the sofa, she closed her eyes and began to yawn, so as
+to indicate that it was a desire to sleep, and that alone, which had made
+her lie down there. Despite the rude and hectoring familiarity with which
+she treated her companion I could recognise in her the obsequious and
+reticent advances, the abrupt scruples and restraints which had
+characterised her father. Presently she rose and came to the window, where
+she pretended to be trying to close the shutters and not succeeding.
+
+"Leave them open," said her friend. "I am hot."
+
+"But it's too dreadful! People will see us," Mlle. Vinteuil answered.  And
+then she guessed, probably, that her friend would think that she had
+uttered these words simply in order to provoke a reply in certain other
+words, which she seemed, indeed, to wish to hear spoken, but, from
+prudence, would let her friend be the first to speak. And so, although I
+could not see her face clearly enough, I am sure that the expression must
+have appeared on it which my grandmother had once found so delightful,
+when she hastily went on: "When I say 'see us' I mean, of course, see us
+reading. It's so dreadful to think that in every trivial little thing you
+do some one may be overlooking you."
+
+With the instinctive generosity of her nature, a courtesy beyond her
+control, she refrained from uttering the studied words which, she had
+felt, were indispensable for the full realisation of her desire. And
+perpetually, in the depths of her being, a shy and suppliant maiden would
+kneel before that other element, the old campaigner, battered but
+triumphant, would intercede with him and oblige him to retire.
+
+"Oh, yes, it is so extremely likely that people are looking at us at this
+time of night in this densely populated district!" said her friend, with
+bitter irony. "And what if they are?" she went on, feeling bound to
+annotate with a malicious yet affectionate wink these words which she was
+repeating, out of good nature, like a lesson prepared beforehand which,
+she knew, it would please Mlle. Vinteuil to hear. "And what if they are?
+All the better that they should see us."
+
+Mlle. Vinteuil shuddered and rose to her feet. In her sensitive and
+scrupulous heart she was ignorant what words ought to flow, spontaneously,
+from her lips, so as to produce the scene for which her eager senses
+clamoured. She reached out as far as she could across the limitations of
+her true character to find the language appropriate to a vicious young
+woman such as she longed to be thought, but the words which, she imagined,
+such a young woman might have uttered with sincerity sounded unreal in her
+own mouth. And what little she allowed herself to say was said in a
+strained tone, in which her ingrained timidity paralysed her tendency to
+freedom and audacity of speech; while she kept on interrupting herself
+with: "You're sure you aren't cold? You aren't too hot? You don't want to
+sit and read by yourself?...
+
+"Your ladyship's thoughts seem to be rather 'warm' this evening," she
+concluded, doubtless repeating a phrase which she had heard used, on some
+earlier occasion, by her friend.
+
+In the V-shaped opening of her crape bodice Mlle. Vinteuil felt the sting
+of her friend's sudden kiss; she gave a little scream and ran away; and
+then they began to chase one another about the room, scrambling over the
+furniture, their wide sleeves fluttering like wings, clucking and crowing
+like a pair of amorous fowls. At last Mlle. Vinteuil fell down exhausted
+upon the sofa, where she was screened from me by the stooping body of her
+friend. But the latter now had her back turned to the little table on
+which the old music-master's portrait had been arranged. Mlle.  Vinteuil
+realised that her friend would not see it unless her attention were drawn
+to it, and so exclaimed, as if she herself had just noticed it for the
+first time: "Oh! there's my father's picture looking at us; I can't think
+who can have put it there; I'm sure I've told them twenty times, that is
+not the proper place for it."
+
+I remembered the words that M. Vinteuil had used to my parents in
+apologising for an obtrusive sheet of music. This photograph was, of
+course, in common use in their ritual observances, was subjected to daily
+profanation, for the friend replied in words which were evidently a
+liturgical response: "Let him stay there. He can't trouble us any longer.
+D'you think he'd start whining, d'you think he'd pack you out of the house
+if he could see you now, with the window open, the ugly old monkey?"
+
+To which Mlle. Vinteuil replied, "Oh, please!"--a gentle reproach which
+testified to the genuine goodness of her nature, not that it was prompted
+by any resentment at hearing her father spoken of in this fashion (for
+that was evidently a feeling which she had trained herself, by a long
+course of sophistries, to keep in close subjection at such moments), but
+rather because it was the bridle which, so as to avoid all appearance of
+egotism, she herself used to curb the gratification which her friend was
+attempting to procure for her. It may well have been, too, that the
+smiling moderation with which she faced and answered these blasphemies,
+that this tender and hypocritical rebuke appeared to her frank and
+generous nature as a particularly shameful and seductive form of that
+criminal attitude towards life which she was endeavouring to adopt.  But
+she could not resist the attraction of being treated with affection by a
+woman who had just shewn herself so implacable towards the defenceless
+dead; she sprang on to the knees of her friend and held out a chaste brow
+to be kissed; precisely as a daughter would have done to her mother,
+feeling with exquisite joy that they would thus, between them, inflict the
+last turn of the screw of cruelty, in robbing M. Vinteuil, as though they
+were actually rifling his tomb, of the sacred rights of fatherhood. Her
+friend took the girl's head in her hands and placed a kiss on her brow
+with a docility prompted by the real affection she had for Mlle. Vinteuil,
+as well as by the desire to bring what distraction she could into the dull
+and melancholy life of an orphan.
+
+"Do you know what I should like to do to that old horror?" she said,
+taking up the photograph. She murmured in Mlle. Vinteuil's ear something
+that I could not distinguish.
+
+"Oh! You would never dare."
+
+"Not dare to spit on it? On that?" shouted the friend with deliberate
+brutality.
+
+I heard no more, for Mlle. Vinteuil, who now seemed weary, awkward,
+preoccupied, sincere, and rather sad, came back to the window and drew the
+shutters close; but I knew now what was the reward that M. Vinteuil, in
+return for all the suffering that he had endured in his lifetime, on
+account of his daughter, had received from her after his death.
+
+And yet I have since reflected that if M. Vinteuil had been able to be
+present at this scene, he might still, and in spite of everything, have
+continued to believe in his daughter's soundness of heart, and that he
+might even, in so doing, have been not altogether wrong. It was true that
+in all Mlle. Vinteuil's actions the appearance of evil was so strong and
+so consistent that it would have been hard to find it exhibited in such
+completeness save in what is nowadays called a 'sadist'; it is behind the
+footlights of a Paris theatre, and not under the homely lamp of an actual
+country house, that one expects to see a girl leading her friend on to
+spit upon the portrait of a father who has lived and died for nothing and
+no one but herself; and when we find in real life a desire for
+melodramatic effect, it is generally the 'sadic' instinct that is
+responsible for it. It is possible that, without being in the least
+inclined towards 'sadism,' a girl might have shewn the same outrageous
+cruelty as Mlle. Vinteuil in desecrating the memory and defying the wishes
+of her dead father, but she would not have given them deliberate
+expression in an act so crude in its symbolism, so lacking in subtlety;
+the criminal element in her behaviour would have been less evident to
+other people, and even to herself, since she would not have admitted to
+herself that she was doing wrong. But, appearances apart, in Mlle.
+Vinteuil's soul, at least in the earlier stages, the evil element was
+probably not unmixed. A 'sadist' of her kind is an artist in evil, which a
+wholly wicked person could not be, for in that case the evil would not
+have been external, it would have seemed quite natural to her, and would
+not even have been distinguishable from herself; and as for virtue,
+respect for the dead, filial obedience, since she would never have
+practised the cult of these things, she would take no impious delight in
+their profanation.  'Sadists' of Mlle. Vinteuil's sort are creatures so
+purely sentimental, so virtuous by nature, that even sensual pleasure
+appears to them as something bad, a privilege reserved for the wicked. And
+when they allow themselves for a moment to enjoy it they endeavour to
+impersonate, to assume all the outward appearance of wicked people, for
+themselves and their partners in guilt, so as to gain the momentary
+illusion of having escaped beyond the control of their own gentle and
+scrupulous natures into the inhuman world of pleasure. And I could
+understand how she must have longed for such an escape when I realised
+that it was impossible for her to effect it. At the moment when she wished
+to be thought the very antithesis of her father, what she at once
+suggested to me were the mannerisms, in thought and speech, of the poor
+old music-master. Indeed, his photograph was nothing; what she really
+desecrated, what she corrupted into ministering to her pleasures, but what
+remained between them and her and prevented her from any direct enjoyment
+of them, was the likeness between her face and his, his mother's blue eyes
+which he had handed down to her, like some trinket to be kept in the
+family, those little friendly movements and inclinations which set up
+between the viciousness of Mlle. Vinteuil and herself a phraseology, a
+mentality not designed for vice, which made her regard it as not in any
+way different from the numberless little social duties and courtesies to
+which she must devote herself every day. It was not evil that gave her the
+idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather,
+that seemed evil. And as, every time that she indulged in it, pleasure
+came to her attended by evil thoughts such as, ordinarily, had no place in
+her virtuous mind, she came at length to see in pleasure itself something
+diabolical, to identify it with Evil. Perhaps Mlle. Vinteuil felt that at
+heart her friend was not altogether bad, not really sincere when she gave
+vent to those blasphemous utterances.  At any rate, she had the pleasure
+of receiving those kisses on her brow, those smiles, those glances; all
+feigned, perhaps, but akin in their base and vicious mode of expression to
+those which would have been discernible on the face of a creature formed
+not out of kindness and long-suffering, but out of self-indulgence and
+cruelty. She was able to delude herself for a moment into believing that
+she was indeed amusing herself in the way in which, with so unnatural an
+accomplice, a girl might amuse herself who really did experience that
+savage antipathy towards her father's memory. Perhaps she would not have
+thought of wickedness as a state so rare, so abnormal, so exotic, one
+which it was so refreshing to visit, had she been able to distinguish in
+herself, as in all her fellow-men and women, that indifference to the
+sufferings which they cause which, whatever names else be given it, is the
+one true, terrible and lasting form of cruelty.
+
+    -   -   -
+
+If the 'M�s�glise way' was so easy, it was a very different matter when we
+took the 'Guermantes way,' for that meant a long walk, and we must make
+sure, first, of the weather. When we seemed to have entered upon a spell
+of fine days, when Fran�oise, in desperation that not a drop was falling
+upon the 'poor crops,' gazing up at the sky and seeing there only a little
+white cloud floating here and there upon its calm, azure surface, groaned
+aloud and exclaimed: "You would say they were nothing more nor less than a
+lot of dogfish swimming about and sticking up their snouts! Ah, they never
+think of making it rain a little for the poor labourers! And then when the
+corn is all ripe, down it will come, rattling all over the place, and
+think no more of where it is falling than if it was on the sea!"--when my
+father's appeals to the gardener had met with the same encouraging answer
+several times in succession, then some one would say, at dinner:
+"To-morrow, if the weather holds, we might go the Guermantes way." And off
+we would set, immediately after luncheon, through the little garden gate
+which dropped us into the Rue des Perchamps, narrow and bent at a sharp
+angle, dotted with grass-plots over which two or three wasps would spend
+the day botanising, a street as quaint as its name, from which its odd
+characteristics and its personality were, I felt, derived; a street for
+which one might search in vain through the Combray of to-day, for the
+public school now rises upon its site. But in my dreams of Combray (like
+those architects, pupils of Viollet-le-Duc, who, fancying that they can
+detect, beneath a Renaissance rood-loft and an eighteenth-century altar,
+traces of a Norman choir, restore the whole church to the state in which
+it probably was in the twelfth century) I leave not a stone of the modern
+edifice standing, I pierce through it and 'restore' the Rue des Perchamps.
+And for such reconstruction memory furnishes me with more detailed
+guidance than is generally at the disposal of restorers; the pictures
+which it has preserved--perhaps the last surviving in the world to-day,
+and soon to follow the rest into oblivion--of what Combray looked like in
+my childhood's days; pictures which, simply because it was the old Combray
+that traced their outlines upon my mind before it vanished, are as
+moving--if I may compare a humble landscape with those glorious works,
+reproductions of which my grandmother was so fond of bestowing on me--as
+those old engravings of the 'Cenacolo,' or that painting by Gentile
+Bellini, in which one sees, in a state in which they no longer exist, the
+masterpiece of Leonardo and the portico of Saint Mark's.
+
+We would pass, in the Rue de l'Oiseau, before the old hostelry of the
+Oiseau Flesch�, into whose great courtyard, once upon a time, would rumble
+the coaches of the Duchesses de Montpensier, de Guermantes, and de
+Montmorency, when they had to come down to Combray for some litigation
+with their farmers, or to receive homage from them. We would come at
+length to the Mall, among whose treetops I could distinguish the steeple
+of Saint-Hilaire. And I should have liked to be able to sit down and spend
+the whole day there, reading and listening to the bells, for it was so
+charming there and so quiet that, when an hour struck, you would have said
+not that it broke in upon the calm of the day, but that it relieved the
+day of its superfluity, and that the steeple, with the indolent,
+painstaking exactitude of a person who has nothing else to do, had simply,
+in order to squeeze out and let fall the few golden drops which had slowly
+and naturally accumulated in the hot sunlight, pressed, at a given moment,
+the distended surface of the silence.
+
+The great charm of the 'Guermantes' way was that we had beside us, almost
+all the time, the course of the Vivonne. We crossed it first, ten minutes
+after leaving the house, by a foot-bridge called the Pont-Vieux.  And
+every year, when we arrived at Combray, on Easter morning, after the
+sermon, if the weather was fine, I would run there to see (amid all the
+disorder that prevails on the morning of a great festival, the gorgeous
+preparations for which make the everyday household utensils that they have
+not contrived to banish seem more sordid than ever) the river flowing
+past, sky-blue already between banks still black and bare, its only
+companions a clump of daffodils, come out before their time, a few
+primroses, the first in flower, while here and there burned the blue flame
+of a violet, its stem bent beneath the weight of the drop of perfume
+stored in its tiny horn. The Pont-Vieux led to a tow-path which, at this
+point, would be overhung in summer by the bluish foliage of a hazel, under
+which a fisherman in a straw hat seemed to have taken root. At Combray,
+where I knew everyone, and could always detect the blacksmith or grocer's
+boy through his disguise of a beadle's uniform or chorister's surplice,
+this fisherman was the only person whom I was never able to identify. He
+must have known my family, for he used to raise his hat when we passed;
+and then I would always be just on the point of asking his name, when some
+one would make a sign to me to be quiet, or I would frighten the fish. We
+would follow the tow-path which ran along the top of a steep bank, several
+feet above the stream. The ground on the other side was lower, and
+stretched in a series of broad meadows as far as the village and even to
+the distant railway-station. Over these were strewn the remains,
+half-buried in the long grass, of the castle of the old Counts of Combray,
+who, during the Middle Ages, had had on this side the course of the
+Vivonne as a barrier and defence against attack from the Lords of
+Guermantes and Abbots of Martinville. Nothing was left now but a few
+stumps of towers, hummocks upon the broad surface of the fields, hardly
+visible, broken battlements over which, in their day, the bowmen had
+hurled down stones, the watchmen had gazed out over Novepont,
+Clairefontaine, Martinville-le-Sec, Bailleau-l'Exempt, fiefs all of them
+of Guermantes, a ring in which Combray was locked; but fallen among the
+grass now, levelled with the ground, climbed and commanded by boys from
+the Christian Brothers' school, who came there in their playtime, or with
+lesson-books to be conned; emblems of a past that had sunk down and
+well-nigh vanished under the earth, that lay by the water's edge now, like
+an idler taking the air, yet giving me strong food for thought, making the
+name of Combray connote to me not the little town of to-day only, but an
+historic city vastly different, seizing and holding my imagination by the
+remote, incomprehensible features which it half-concealed beneath a
+spangled veil of buttercups. For the buttercups grew past numbering on
+this spot which they had chosen for their games among the grass, standing
+singly, in couples, in whole companies, yellow as the yolk of eggs, and
+glowing with an added lustre, I felt, because, being powerless to
+consummate with my palate the pleasure which the sight of them never
+failed to give me, I would let it accumulate as my eyes ranged over their
+gilded expanse, until it had acquired the strength to create in my mind a
+fresh example of absolute, unproductive beauty; and so it had been from my
+earliest childhood, when from the tow-path I had stretched out my arms
+towards them, before even I could pronounce their charming name--a name
+fit for the Prince in some French fairy-tale; colonists, perhaps, in some
+far distant century from Asia, but naturalised now for ever in the
+village, well satisfied with their modest horizon, rejoicing in the
+sunshine and the water's edge, faithful to their little glimpse of the
+railway-station; yet keeping, none the less, as do some of our old
+paintings, in their plebeian simplicity, a poetic scintillation from the
+golden East.
+
+I would amuse myself by watching the glass jars which the boys used to
+lower into the Vivonne, to catch minnows, and which, filled by the current
+of the stream, in which they themselves also were enclosed, at once
+'containers' whose transparent sides were like solidified water and
+'contents' plunged into a still larger container of liquid, flowing
+crystal, suggested an image of coolness more delicious and more provoking
+than the same water in the same jars would have done, standing upon a
+table laid for dinner, by shewing it as perpetually in flight between the
+impalpable water, in which my hands could not arrest it, and the insoluble
+glass, in which my palate could not enjoy it. I decided that I would come
+there again with a line and catch fish; I begged for and obtained a morsel
+of bread from our luncheon basket; and threw into the Vivonne pellets
+which had the power, it seemed, to bring about a chemical precipitation,
+for the water at once grew solid round about them in oval clusters of
+emaciated tadpoles, which until then it had, no doubt, been holding in
+solution, invisible, but ready and alert to enter the stage of
+crystallisation.
+
+Presently the course of the Vivonne became choked with water-plants.  At
+first they appeared singly, a lily, for instance, which the current,
+across whose path it had unfortunately grown, would never leave at rest
+for a moment, so that, like a ferry-boat mechanically propelled, it would
+drift over to one bank only to return to the other, eternally repeating
+its double journey. Thrust towards the bank, its stalk would be
+straightened out, lengthened, strained almost to breaking-point until the
+current again caught it, its green moorings swung back over their
+anchorage and brought the unhappy plant to what might fitly be called its
+starting-point, since it was fated not to rest there a moment before
+moving off once again. I would still find it there, on one walk after
+another, always in the same helpless state, suggesting certain victims of
+neurasthenia, among whom my grandfather would have included my aunt
+L�onie, who present without modification, year after year, the spectacle
+of their odd and unaccountable habits, which they always imagine
+themselves to be on the point of shaking off, but which they always retain
+to the end; caught in the treadmill of their own maladies and
+eccentricities, their futile endeavours to escape serve only to actuate
+its mechanism, to keep in motion the clockwork of their strange,
+ineluctable, fatal daily round. Such as these was the water-lily, and also
+like one of those wretches whose peculiar torments, repeated indefinitely
+throughout eternity, aroused the curiosity of Dante, who would have
+inquired of them at greater length and in fuller detail from the victims
+themselves, had not Virgil, striding on ahead, obliged him to hasten after
+him at full speed, as I must hasten after my parents.
+
+But farther on the current slackened, where the stream ran through a
+property thrown open to the public by its owner, who had made a hobby of
+aquatic gardening, so that the little ponds into which the Vivonne was
+here diverted were aflower with water-lilies. As the banks at this point
+were thickly wooded, the heavy shade of the trees gave the water a
+background which was ordinarily dark green, although sometimes, when we
+were coming home on a calm evening after a stormy afternoon, I have seen
+in its depths a clear, crude blue that was almost violet, suggesting a
+floor of Japanese cloisonn�. Here and there, on the surface, floated,
+blushing like a strawberry, the scarlet heart of a lily set in a ring of
+white petals.
+
+Beyond these the flowers were more frequent, but paler, less glossy, more
+thickly seeded, more tightly folded, and disposed, by accident, in
+festoons so graceful that I would fancy I saw floating upon the stream, as
+though after the dreary stripping of the decorations used in some Watteau
+festival, moss-roses in loosened garlands. Elsewhere a corner seemed to be
+reserved for the commoner kinds of lily; of a neat pink or white like
+rocket-flowers, washed clean like porcelain, with housewifely care; while,
+a little farther again, were others, pressed close together in a floating
+garden-bed, as though pansies had flown out of a garden like butterflies
+and were hovering with blue and burnished wings over the transparent
+shadowiness of this watery border; this skiey border also, for it set
+beneath the flowers a soil of a colour more precious, more moving than
+their own; and both in the afternoon, when it sparkled beneath the lilies
+in the kaleidoscope of a happiness silent, restless, and alert, and
+towards evening, when it was filled like a distant heaven with the roseate
+dreams of the setting sun, incessantly changing and ever remaining in
+harmony, about the more permanent colour of the flowers themselves, with
+the utmost profundity, evanescence, and mystery--with a quiet suggestion
+of infinity; afternoon or evening, it seemed to have set them flowering in
+the heart of the sky.
+
+After leaving this park the Vivonne began to flow again more swiftly.  How
+often have I watched, and longed to imitate, when I should be free to live
+as I chose, a rower who had shipped his oars and lay stretched out on his
+back, his head down, in the bottom of his boat, letting it drift with the
+current, seeing nothing but the sky which slipped quietly above him,
+shewing upon his features a foretaste of happiness and peace.
+
+We would sit down among the irises at the water's edge. In the holiday sky
+a lazy cloud streamed out to its full length. Now and then, crushed by the
+burden of idleness, a carp would heave up out of the water, with an
+anxious gasp. It was time for us to feed. Before starting homewards we
+would sit for a long time there, eating fruit and bread and chocolate, on
+the grass, over which came to our ears, horizontal, faint, but solid still
+and metallic, the sound of the bells of Saint-Hilaire, which had melted
+not at all in the atmosphere it was so well accustomed to traverse, but,
+broken piecemeal by the successive palpitation of all their sonorous
+strokes, throbbed as it brushed the flowers at our feet.
+
+Sometimes, at the water's edge and embedded in trees, we would come upon a
+house of the kind called 'pleasure houses,' isolated and lost, seeing
+nothing of the world, save the river which bathed its feet. A young woman,
+whose pensive face and fashionable veils did not suggest a local origin,
+and who had doubtless come there, in the popular phrase, 'to bury herself,'
+to taste the bitter sweetness of feeling that her name, and still more the
+name of him whose heart she had once held, but had been unable to keep,
+were unknown there, stood framed in a window from which she had no outlook
+beyond the boat that was moored beside her door. She raised her eyes with
+an air of distraction when she heard, through the trees that lined the
+bank, the voices of passers-by of whom, before they came in sight, she
+might be certain that never had they known, nor would they know, the
+faithless lover, that nothing in their past lives bore his imprint, which
+nothing in their future would have occasion to receive. One felt that in
+her renunciation of life she had willingly abandoned those places in which
+she would at least have been able to see him whom she loved, for others
+where he had never trod. And I watched her, as she returned from some walk
+along a road where she had known that he would not appear, drawing from
+her submissive fingers long gloves of a precious, useless charm.
+
+Never, in the course of our walks along the 'Guermantes way,' might we
+penetrate as far as the source of the Vivonne, of which I had often
+thought, which had in my mind so abstract, so ideal an existence, that I
+had been as much surprised when some one told me that it was actually to
+be found in the same department, and at a given number of miles from
+Combray, as I had been on the day when I had learned that there was
+another fixed point somewhere on the earth's surface, where, according to
+the ancients, opened the jaws of Hell. Nor could we ever reach that other
+goal, to which I longed so much to attain, Guermantes itself. I knew that
+it was the residence of its proprietors, the Duc and Duchesse de
+Guermantes, I knew that they were real personages who did actually exist,
+but whenever I thought about them I pictured them to myself either in
+tapestry, as was the 'Coronation of Esther' which hung in our church, or
+else in changing, rainbow colours, as was Gilbert the Bad in his window,
+where he passed from cabbage green, when I was dipping my fingers in the
+holy water stoup, to plum blue when I had reached our row of chairs, or
+again altogether impalpable, like the image of Genevi�ve de Brabant,
+ancestress of the Guermantes family, which the magic lantern sent
+wandering over the curtains of my room or flung aloft upon the ceiling--in
+short, always wrapped in the mystery of the Merovingian age, and bathed,
+as in a sunset, in the orange light which glowed from the resounding
+syllable 'antes.' And if, in spite of that, they were for me, in their
+capacity as a duke and a duchess, real people, though of an unfamiliar
+kind, this ducal personality was in its turn enormously distended,
+immaterialised, so as to encircle and contain that Guermantes of which
+they were duke and duchess, all that sunlit 'Guermantes way' of our walks,
+the course of the Vivonne, its water-lilies and its overshadowing trees,
+and an endless series of hot summer afternoons. And I knew that they bore
+not only the titles of Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes, but that since the
+fourteenth century, when, after vain attempts to conquer its earlier lords
+in battle, they had allied themselves by marriage, and so became Counts of
+Combray, the first citizens, consequently, of the place, and yet the only
+ones among its citizens who did not reside in it--Comtes de Combray,
+possessing Combray, threading it on their string of names and titles,
+absorbing it in their personalities, and illustrating, no doubt, in
+themselves that strange and pious melancholy which was peculiar to
+Combray; proprietors of the town, though not of any particular house
+there; dwelling, presumably, out of doors, in the street, between heaven
+and earth, like that Gilbert de Guermantes, of whom I could see, in the
+stained glass of the apse of Saint-Hilaire, only the 'other side' in dull
+black lacquer, if I raised my eyes to look for him, when I was going to
+Camus's for a packet of salt.
+
+And then it happened that, going the 'Guermantes way,' I passed
+occasionally by a row of well-watered little gardens, over whose hedges
+rose clusters of dark blossom. I would stop before them, hoping to gain
+some precious addition to my experience, for I seemed to have before my
+eyes a fragment of that riverside country which I had longed so much to
+see and know since coming upon a description of it by one of my favourite
+authors. And it was with that story-book land, with its imagined soil
+intersected by a hundred bubbling watercourses, that Guermantes, changing
+its form in my mind, became identified, after I heard Dr. Percepied speak
+of the flowers and the charming rivulets and fountains that were to be
+seen there in the ducal park. I used to dream that Mme. de Guermantes,
+taking a sudden capricious fancy for myself, invited me there, that all
+day long she stood fishing for trout by my side. And when evening came,
+holding my hand in her own, as we passed by the little gardens of her
+vassals, she would point out to me the flowers that leaned their red and
+purple spikes along the tops of the low walls, and would teach me all
+their names. She would make me tell her, too, all about the poems that I
+meant to compose. And these dreams reminded me that, since I wished, some
+day, to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I
+was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried
+to discover some subjects to which I could impart a philosophical
+significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, I would
+see before me vacuity, nothing, would feel either that I was wholly devoid
+of talent, or that, perhaps, a malady of the brain was hindering its
+development.  Sometimes I would depend upon my father's arranging
+everything for me. He was so powerful, in such favour with the people who
+'really counted,' that he made it possible for us to transgress laws which
+Fran�oise had taught me to regard as more ineluctable than the laws of
+life and death, as when we were allowed to postpone for a year the
+compulsory repainting of the walls of our house, alone among all the
+houses in that part of Paris, or when he obtained permission from the
+Minister for Mme.  Sazerat's son, who had been ordered to some
+watering-place, to take his degree two months before the proper time,
+among the candidates whose surnames began with 'A,' instead of having to
+wait his turn as an 'S.' If I had fallen seriously ill, if I had been
+captured by brigands, convinced that my father's understanding with the
+supreme powers was too complete, that his letters of introduction to the
+Almighty were too irresistible for my illness or captivity to turn out
+anything but vain illusions, in which there was no danger actually
+threatening me, I should have awaited with perfect composure the
+inevitable hour of my return to comfortable realities, of my deliverance
+from bondage or restoration to health. Perhaps this want of talent, this
+black cavity which gaped in my mind when I ransacked it for the theme of
+my future writings, was itself no more, either, than an unsubstantial
+illusion, and would be brought to an end by the intervention of my father,
+who would arrange with the Government and with Providence that I should be
+the first writer of my day.  But at other times, while my parents were
+growing impatient at seeing me loiter behind instead of following them, my
+actual life, instead of seeming an artificial creation by my father, and
+one which he could modify as he chose, appeared, on the contrary, to be
+comprised in a larger reality which had not been created for my benefit,
+from whose judgments there was no appeal, in the heart of which I was
+bound, helpless, without friend or ally, and beyond which no further
+possibilities lay concealed. It was evident to me then that I existed in
+the same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die
+like them, and that among them I was to be distinguished merely as one of
+those who have no aptitude for writing. And so, utterly despondent, I
+renounced literature for ever, despite the encouragements that had been
+given me by Bloch. This intimate, spontaneous feeling, this sense of the
+nullity of my intellect, prevailed against all the flattering speeches
+that might be lavished upon me, as a wicked man, when everyone is loud in
+the praise of his good deeds, is gnawed by the secret remorse of
+conscience.
+
+One day my mother said: "You are always talking about Mme. de Guermantes.
+Well, Dr. Percepied did a great deal for her when she was ill, four years
+ago, and so she is coming to Combray for his daughter's wedding. You will
+be able to see her in church." It was from Dr. Percepied, as it happened,
+that I had heard most about Mme. de Guermantes, and he had even shewn us
+the number of an illustrated paper in which she was depicted in the
+costume which she had worn at a fancy dress ball given by the Princesse de
+L�on.
+
+Suddenly, during the nuptial mass, the beadle, by moving to one side,
+enabled me to see, sitting in a chapel, a lady with fair hair and a large
+nose, piercing blue eyes, a billowy scarf of mauve silk, glossy and new
+and brilliant, and a little spot at the corner of her nose. And because on
+the surface of her face, which was red, as though she had been very warm,
+I could make out, diluted and barely perceptible, details which resembled
+the portrait that had been shewn to me; because, more especially, the
+particular features which I remarked in this lady, if I attempted to
+catalogue them, formulated themselves in precisely the same terms:--_a
+large nose, blue eyes_, as Dr. Percepied had used when describing in my
+presence the Duchesse de Guermantes, I said to myself: "This lady is like
+the Duchesse de Guermantes." Now the chapel from which she was following
+the service was that of Gilbert the Bad; beneath its flat tombstones,
+yellowed and bulging like cells of honey in a comb, rested the bones of
+the old Counts of Brabant; and I remembered having heard it said that this
+chapel was reserved for the Guermantes family, whenever any of its members
+came to attend a ceremony at Combray; there was, indeed, but one woman
+resembling the portrait of Mme. de Guermantes who on that day, the very
+day on which she was expected to come there, could be sitting in that
+chapel: it was she! My disappointment was immense. It arose from my not
+having borne in mind, when I thought of Mme. de Guermantes, that I was
+picturing her to myself in the colours of a tapestry or a painted window,
+as living in another century, as being of another substance than the rest
+of the human race. Never had I taken into account that she might have a
+red face, a mauve scarf like Mme. Sazerat; and the oval curve of her
+cheeks reminded me so strongly of people whom I had seen at home that the
+suspicion brushed against my mind (though it was immediately banished)
+that this lady in her creative principle, in the molecules of her physical
+composition, was perhaps not substantially the Duchesse de Guermantes, but
+that her body, in ignorance of the name that people had given it, belonged
+to a certain type of femininity which included, also, the wives of doctors
+and tradesmen. "It is, it must be Mme. de Guermantes, and no one else!"
+were the words underlying the attentive and astonished expression with
+which I was gazing upon this image, which, naturally enough, bore no
+resemblance to those that had so often, under the same title of 'Mme. de
+Guermantes,' appeared to me in dreams, since this one had not been, like
+the others, formed arbitrarily by myself, but had sprung into sight for
+the first time, only a moment ago, here in church; an image which was not
+of the same nature, was not colourable at will, like those others that
+allowed themselves to imbibe the orange tint of a sonorous syllable, but
+which was so real that everything, even to the fiery little spot at the
+corner of her nose, gave an assurance of her subjection to the laws of
+life, as in a transformation scene on the stage a crease in the dress of a
+fairy, a quivering of her tiny finger, indicate the material presence of a
+living actress before our eyes, whereas we were uncertain, till then,
+whether we were not looking merely at a projection of limelight from a
+lantern.
+
+Meanwhile I was endeavouring to apply to this image, which the prominent
+nose, the piercing eyes pinned down and fixed in my field of vision
+(perhaps because it was they that had first struck it, that had made the
+first impression on its surface, before I had had time to wonder whether
+the woman who thus appeared before me might possibly be Mme.  de
+Guermantes), to this fresh and unchanging image the idea: "It is Mme.  de
+Guermantes"; but I succeeded only in making the idea pass between me and
+the image, as though they were two discs moving in separate planes, with a
+space between. But this Mme. de Guermantes of whom I had so often dreamed,
+now that I could see that she had a real existence independent of myself,
+acquired a fresh increase of power over my imagination, which, paralysed
+for a moment by contact with a reality so different from anything that it
+had expected, began to react and to say within me: "Great and glorious
+before the days of Charlemagne, the Guermantes had the right of life and
+death over their vassals; the Duchesse de Guermantes descends from
+Genevi�ve de Brabant. She does not know, nor would she consent to know,
+any of the people who are here to-day."
+
+And then--oh, marvellous independence of the human gaze, tied to the human
+face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray, alone, as
+far as it may choose--while Mme. de Guermantes sat in the chapel above the
+tombs of her dead ancestors, her gaze lingered here and wandered there,
+rose to the capitals of the pillars, and even rested upon myself, like a
+ray of sunlight straying down the nave, but a ray of sunlight which, at
+the moment when I received its caress, appeared conscious of where it
+fell. As for Mme. de Guermantes herself, since she remained there
+motionless, sitting like a mother who affects not to notice the rude or
+awkward conduct of her children who, in the course of their play, are
+speaking to people whom she does not know, it was impossible for me to
+determine whether she approved or condemned the vagrancy of her eyes in
+the careless detachment of her heart.
+
+I felt it to be important that she should not leave the church before I
+had been able to look long enough upon her, reminding myself that for
+years past I had regarded the sight of her as a thing eminently to be
+desired, and I kept my eyes fixed on her, as though by gazing at her I
+should be able to carry away and incorporate, to store up, for later
+reference, in myself the memory of that prominent nose, those red cheeks,
+of all those details which struck me as so much precious, authentic,
+unparalleled information with regard to her face. And now that, whenever I
+brought my mind to bear upon that face--and especially, perhaps, in my
+determination, that form of the instinct of self-preservation with which
+we guard everything that is best in ourselves, not to admit that I had
+been in any way deceived--I found only beauty there; setting her once
+again (since they were one and the same person, this lady who sat before
+me and that Duchesse de Guermantes whom, until then, I had been used to
+conjure into an imagined shape) apart from and above that common run of
+humanity with which the sight, pure and simple, of her in the flesh had
+made me for a moment confound her, I grew indignant when I heard people
+saying, in the congregation round me: "She is better looking than Mme.
+Sazerat" or "than Mlle. Vinteuil," as though she had been in any way
+comparable with them. And my gaze resting upon her fair hair, her blue
+eyes, the lines of her neck, and overlooking the features which might have
+reminded me of the faces of other women, I cried out within myself, as I
+admired this deliberately unfinished sketch: "How lovely she is!  What
+true nobility! it is indeed a proud Guermantes, the descendant of
+Genevi�ve de Brabant, that I have before me!" And the care which I took to
+focus all my attention upon her face succeeded in isolating it so
+completely that to-day, when I call that marriage ceremony to mind, I find
+it impossible to visualise any single person who was present except her,
+and the beadle who answered me in the affirmative when I inquired whether
+the lady was, indeed, Mme. de Guermantes. But her, I can see her still
+quite clearly, especially at the moment when the procession filed into the
+sacristy, lighted by the intermittent, hot sunshine of a windy and rainy
+day, where Mme. de Guermantes found herself in the midst of all those
+Combray people whose names, even, she did not know, but whose inferiority
+proclaimed her own supremacy so loud that she must, in return, feel for
+them a genuine, pitying sympathy, and whom she might count on impressing
+even more forcibly by virtue of her simplicity and natural charm. And
+then, too, since she could not bring into play the deliberate glances,
+charged with a definite meaning, which one directs, in a crowd, towards
+people whom one knows, but must allow her vague thoughts to escape
+continually from her eyes in a flood of blue light which she was powerless
+to control, she was anxious not to distress in any way, not to seem to be
+despising those humbler mortals over whom that current flowed, by whom it
+was everywhere arrested. I can see again to-day, above her mauve scarf,
+silky and buoyant, the gentle astonishment in her eyes, to which she had
+added, without daring to address it to anyone in particular, but so that
+everyone might enjoy his share of it, the almost timid smile of a
+sovereign lady who seems to be making an apology for her presence among
+the vassals whom she loves. This smile rested upon myself, who had never
+ceased to follow her with my eyes. And I, remembering the glance which she
+had let fall upon me during the service, blue as a ray of sunlight that
+had penetrated the window of Gilbert the Bad, said to myself, "Of course,
+she is thinking about me." I fancied that I had found favour in her sight,
+that she would continue to think of me after she had left the church, and
+would, perhaps, grow pensive again, that evening, at Guermantes, on my
+account. And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes
+enough to make us love a woman that she looks on us with contempt, as I
+supposed Mlle. Swann to have done, while we imagine that she cannot ever
+be ours, it is enough, also, sometimes that she looks on us kindly, as
+Mme. de Guermantes did then, while we think of her as almost ours already.
+Her eyes waxed blue as a periwinkle flower, wholly beyond my reach, yet
+dedicated by her to me; and the sun, bursting out again from behind a
+threatening cloud and darting the full force of its rays on to the Square
+and into the sacristy, shed a geranium glow over the red carpet laid down
+for the wedding, along which Mme. de Guermantes smilingly advanced, and
+covered its woollen texture with a nap of rosy velvet, a bloom of light,
+giving it that sort of tenderness, of solemn sweetness in the pomp of a
+joyful celebration, which characterises certain pages of _Lohengrin_,
+certain paintings by Carpaccio, and makes us understand how Baudelaire was
+able to apply to the sound of the trumpet the epithet 'delicious.'
+
+How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the
+'Guermantes way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect
+on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must abandon
+all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I felt for
+this, while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself, made me
+suffer so acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of its own
+accord, by a sort of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased entirely to
+think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on which my want
+of talent precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart from all those
+literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment to anything,
+suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a stone, the smell of
+a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the special pleasure that each
+of them gave me, and also because they appeared to be concealing, beneath
+what my eyes could see, something which they invited me to approach and
+seize from them, but which, despite all my efforts, I never managed to
+discover.  As I felt that the mysterious object was to be found in them, I
+would stand there in front of them, motionless, gazing, breathing,
+endeavouring to penetrate with my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And
+if I had then to hasten after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I
+would still seek to recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would
+concentrate upon recalling exactly the line of the roof, the colour of the
+stone, which, without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to
+be teeming, ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which
+they were themselves no more than the outer coverings. It was certainly
+not any impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had
+lost of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of
+them was associated with some material object devoid of any intellectual
+value, and suggesting no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an
+unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and in
+that way distracted me from the tedium, from the sense of my own impotence
+which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme for some great
+literary work. So urgent was the task imposed on my conscience by these
+impressions of form or perfume or colour--to strive for a perception of
+what lay hidden beneath them, that I was never long in seeking an excuse
+which would allow me to relax so strenuous an effort and to spare myself
+the fatigue that it involved. As good luck would have it, my parents
+called me; I felt that I had not, for the moment, the calm environment
+necessary for a successful pursuit of my researches, and that it would be
+better to think no more of the matter until I reached home, and not to
+exhaust myself in the meantime to no purpose. And so I concerned myself no
+longer with the mystery that lay hidden in a form or a perfume, quite at
+ease in my mind, since I was taking it home with me, protected by its
+visible and tangible covering, beneath which I should find it still alive,
+like the fish which, on days when I had been allowed to go out fishing, I
+used to carry back in my basket, buried in a couch of grass which kept
+them cool and fresh. Once in the house again I would begin to think of
+something else, and so my mind would become littered (as my room was with
+the flowers that I had gathered on my walks, or the odds and ends that
+people had given me) with a stone from the surface of which the sunlight
+was reflected, a roof, the sound of a bell, the smell of fallen leaves, a
+confused mass of different images, under which must have perished long ago
+the reality of which I used to have some foreboding, but which I never had
+the energy to discover and bring to light. Once, however, when we had
+prolonged our walk far beyond its ordinary limits, and so had been very
+glad to encounter, half way home, as afternoon darkened into evening, Dr.
+Percepied, who drove past us at full speed in his carriage, saw and
+recognised us, stopped, and made us jump in beside him, I received an
+impression of this sort which I did not abandon without having first
+subjected it to an examination a little more thorough. I had been set on
+the box beside the coachman, we were going like the wind because the
+Doctor had still, before returning to Combray, to call at
+Martinville-le-Sec, at the house of a patient, at whose door he asked us
+to wait for him. At a bend in the road I experienced, suddenly, that
+special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other, when I caught
+sight of the twin steeples of Martinville, on which the setting sun was
+playing, while the movement of the carriage and the windings of the road
+seemed to keep them continually changing their position; and then of a
+third steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, which, although separated from them by a
+hill and a valley, and rising from rather higher ground in the distance,
+appeared none the less to be standing by their side.
+
+In ascertaining and noting the shape of their spires, the changes of
+aspect, the sunny warmth of their surfaces, I felt that I was not
+penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay
+behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at once
+to contain and to conceal.
+
+The steeples appeared so distant, and we ourselves seemed to come so
+little nearer them, that I was astonished when, a few minutes later, we
+drew up outside the church of Martinville. I did not know the reason for
+the pleasure which I had found in seeing them upon the horizon, and the
+business of trying to find out what that reason was seemed to me irksome;
+I wished only to keep in reserve in my brain those converging lines,
+moving in the sunshine, and, for the time being, to think of them no more.
+And it is probable that, had I done so, those two steeples would have
+vanished for ever, in a great medley of trees and roofs and scents and
+sounds which I had noticed and set apart on account of the obscure sense
+of pleasure which they gave me, but without ever exploring them more
+fully. I got down from the box to talk to my parents while we were waiting
+for the Doctor to reappear. Then it was time to start; I climbed up again
+to my place, turning my head to look back, once more, at my steeples, of
+which, a little later, I caught a farewell glimpse at a turn in the road.
+The coachman, who seemed little inclined for conversation, having barely
+acknowledged my remarks, I was obliged, in default of other society, to
+fall back on my own, and to attempt to recapture the vision of my
+steeples. And presently their outlines and their sunlit surface, as though
+they had been a sort of rind, were stripped apart; a little of what they
+had concealed from me became apparent; an idea came into my mind which had
+not existed for me a moment earlier, framed itself in words in my head;
+and the pleasure with which the first sight of them, just now, had filled
+me was so much enhanced that, overpowered by a sort of intoxication, I
+could no longer think of anything but them. At this point, although we had
+now travelled a long way from Martinville, I turned my head and caught
+sight of them again, quite black this time, for the sun had meanwhile set.
+Every few minutes a turn in the road would sweep them out of sight; then
+they shewed themselves for the last time, and so I saw them no more.
+
+Without admitting to myself that what lay buried within the steeples of
+Martinville must be something analogous to a charming phrase, since it was
+in the form of words which gave me pleasure that it had appeared to me, I
+borrowed a pencil and some paper from the Doctor, and composed, in spite
+of the jolting of the carriage, to appease my conscience and to satisfy my
+enthusiasm, the following little fragment, which I have since discovered,
+and now reproduce, with only a slight revision here and there.
+
+    -   -   -
+
+Alone, rising from the level of the plain, and seemingly lost in that
+expanse of open country, climbed to the sky the twin steeples of
+Martinville. Presently we saw three: springing into position confronting
+them by a daring volt, a third, a dilatory steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, was
+come to join them. The minutes passed, we were moving rapidly, and yet the
+three steeples were always a long way ahead of us, like three birds
+perched upon the plain, motionless and conspicuous in the sunlight. Then
+the steeple of Vieuxvicq withdrew, took its proper distance, and the
+steeples of Martinville remained alone, gilded by the light of the setting
+sun, which, even at that distance, I could see playing and smiling upon
+their sloped sides. We had been so long in approaching them that I was
+thinking of the time that must still elapse before we could reach them
+when, of a sudden, the carriage, having turned a corner, set us down at
+their feet; and they had flung themselves so abruptly in our path that we
+had barely time to stop before being dashed against the porch of the
+church.
+
+We resumed our course; we had left Martinville some little time, and the
+village, after accompanying us for a few seconds, had already disappeared,
+when, lingering alone on the horizon to watch our flight, its steeples and
+that of Vieuxvicq waved once again, in token of farewell, their sun-bathed
+pinnacles.  Sometimes one would withdraw, so that the other two might
+watch us for a moment still; then the road changed direction, they veered
+in the light like three golden pivots, and vanished from my gaze. But, a
+little later, when we were already close to Combray, the sun having set
+meanwhile, I caught sight of them for the last time, far away, and seeming
+no more now than three flowers painted upon the sky above the low line of
+fields. They made me think, too, of three maidens in a legend, abandoned
+in a solitary place over which night had begun to fall; and while we drew
+away from them at a gallop, I could see them timidly seeking their way,
+and, after some awkward, stumbling movements of their noble silhouettes,
+drawing close to one another, slipping one behind another, shewing nothing
+more, now, against the still rosy sky than a single dusky form, charming
+and resigned, and so vanishing in the night.
+
+    -   -   -
+
+I never thought again of this page, but at the moment when, on my corner
+of the box-seat, where the Doctor's coachman was in the habit of placing,
+in a hamper, the fowls which he had bought at Martinville market, I had
+finished writing it, I found such a sense of happiness, felt that it had
+so entirely relieved my mind of the obsession of the steeples, and of the
+mystery which they concealed, that, as though I myself were a hen and had
+just laid an egg, I began to sing at the top of my voice.
+
+All day long, during these walks, I had been able to muse upon the
+pleasure that there would be in the friendship of the Duchesse de
+Guermantes, in fishing for trout, in drifting by myself in a boat on the
+Vivonne; and, greedy for happiness, I asked nothing more from life, in
+such moments, than that it should consist always of a series of joyous
+afternoons.  But when, on our way home, I had caught sight of a farm, on
+the left of the road, at some distance from two other farms which were
+themselves close together, and from which, to return to Combray, we need
+only turn down an avenue of oaks, bordered on one side by a series of
+orchard-closes, each one planted at regular intervals with apple-trees
+which cast upon the ground, when they were lighted by the setting sun, the
+Japanese stencil of their shadows; then, sharply, my heart would begin to
+beat, I would know that in half an hour we should be at home, and that
+there, as was the rule on days when we had taken the 'Guermantes way' and
+dinner was, in consequence, served later than usual, I should be sent to
+bed as soon as I had swallowed my soup, so that my mother, kept at table,
+just as though there had been company to dinner, would not come upstairs
+to say good night to me in bed. The zone of melancholy which I then
+entered was totally distinct from that other zone, in which I had been
+bounding for joy a moment earlier, just as sometimes in the sky a band of
+pink is separated, as though by a line invisibly ruled, from a band of
+green or black. You may see a bird flying across the pink; it draws near
+the border-line, touches it, enters and is lost upon the black. The
+longings by which I had just now been absorbed, to go to Guermantes, to
+travel, to live a life of happiness--I was now so remote from them that
+their fulfilment would have afforded me no pleasure. How readily would I
+have sacrificed them all, just to be able to cry, all night long, in the
+arms of Mamma! Shuddering with emotion, I could not take my agonised eyes
+from my mother's face, which was not to appear that evening in the bedroom
+where I could see myself already lying, in imagination; and wished only
+that I were lying dead. And this state would persist until the morrow,
+when, the rays of morning leaning their bars of light, as the gardener
+might lean his ladder, against the wall overgrown with nasturtiums, which
+clambered up it as far as my window-sill, I would leap out of bed to run
+down at once into the garden, with no thought of the fact that evening
+must return, and with it the hour when I must leave my mother. And so it
+was from the 'Guermantes way' that I learned to distinguish between these
+states which reigned alternately in my mind, during certain periods, going
+so far as to divide every day between them, each one returning to
+dispossess the other with the regularity of a fever and ague: contiguous,
+and yet so foreign to one another, so devoid of means of communication,
+that I could no longer understand, or even picture to myself, in one state
+what I had desired or dreaded or even done in the other.
+
+So the 'M�s�glise way' and the 'Guermantes way' remain for me linked with
+many of the little incidents of that one of all the divers lives along
+whose parallel lines we are moved, which is the most abundant in sudden
+reverses of fortune, the richest in episodes; I mean the life of the mind.
+Doubtless it makes in us an imperceptible progress, and the truths which
+have changed for us its meaning and its aspect, which have opened new
+paths before our feet, we had for long been preparing for their discovery;
+but that preparation was unconscious; and for us those truths date only
+from the day, from the minute when they became apparent. The flowers which
+played then among the grass, the water which rippled past in the sunshine,
+the whole landscape which served as environment to their apparition
+lingers around the memory of them still with its unconscious or unheeding
+air; and, certainly, when they were slowly scrutinised by this humble
+passer-by, by this dreaming child--as the face of a king is scrutinised by
+a petitioner lost in the crowd--that scrap of nature, that corner of a
+garden could never suppose that it would be thanks to him that they would
+be elected to survive in all their most ephemeral details; and yet the
+scent of hawthorn which strays plundering along the hedge from which, in a
+little while, the dog-roses will have banished it, a sound of footsteps
+followed by no echo, upon a gravel path, a bubble formed at the side of a
+waterplant by the current, and formed only to burst--my exaltation of mind
+has borne them with it, and has succeeded in making them traverse all
+these successive years, while all around them the one-trodden ways have
+vanished, while those who thronged those ways, and even the memory of
+those who thronged those trodden ways, are dead. Sometimes the fragment of
+landscape thus transported into the present will detach itself in such
+isolation from all associations that it floats uncertainly upon my mind,
+like a flowering isle of Delos, and I am unable to say from what place,
+from what time--perhaps, quite simply, from which of my dreams--it comes.
+But it is pre-eminently as the deepest layer of my mental soil, as firm
+sites on which I still may build, that I regard the M�s�glise and
+Guermantes 'ways.' It is because I used to think of certain things, of
+certain people, while I was roaming along them, that the things, the
+people which they taught me to know, and these alone, I still take
+seriously, still give me joy. Whether it be that the faith which creates
+has ceased to exist in me, or that reality will take shape in the memory
+alone, the flowers that people shew me nowadays for the first time never
+seem to me to be true flowers. The 'M�s�glise way' with its lilacs, its
+hawthorns, its cornflowers, its poppies, its apple-trees, the 'Guermantes
+way' with its river full of tadpoles, its water-lilies, and its buttercups
+have constituted for me for all time the picture of the land in which I
+fain would pass my life, in which my only requirements are that I may go
+out fishing, drift idly in a boat, see the ruins of a gothic fortress in
+the grass, and find hidden among the cornfields--as Saint-Andr�-des-Champs
+lay hidden--an old church, monumental, rustic, and yellow like a
+mill-stone; and the cornflowers, the hawthorns, the apple-trees which I
+may happen, when I go walking, to encounter in the fields, because they
+are situated at the same depth, on the level of my past life, at once
+establish contact with my heart. And yet, because there is an element of
+individuality in places, when I am seized with a desire to see again the
+'Guermantes way,' it would not be satisfied were I led to the banks of a
+river in which were lilies as fair, or even fairer than those in the
+Vivonne, any more than on my return home in the evening, at the hour when
+there awakened in me that anguish which, later on in life, transfers
+itself to the passion of love, and may even become its inseparable
+companion, I should have wished for any strange mother to come in and say
+good night to me, though she were far more beautiful and more intelligent
+than my own. No: just as the one thing necessary to send me to sleep
+contented (in that untroubled peace which no mistress, in later years, has
+ever been able to give me, since one has doubts of them at the moment when
+one believes in them, and never can possess their hearts as I used to
+receive, in her kiss, the heart of my mother, complete, without scruple or
+reservation, unburdened by any liability save to myself) was that it
+should be my mother who came, that she should incline towards me that face
+on which there was, beneath her eye, something that was, it appears, a
+blemish, and which I loved as much as all the rest--so what I want to see
+again is the 'Guermantes way' as I knew it, with the farm that stood a
+little apart from the two neighbouring farms, pressed so close together,
+at the entrance to the oak avenue; those meadows upon whose surface, when
+it is polished by the sun to the mirroring radiance of a lake, are
+outlined the leaves of the apple-trees; that whole landscape whose
+individuality sometimes, at night, in my dreams, binds me with a power
+that is almost fantastic, of which I can discover no trace when I awake.
+
+No doubt, by virtue of having permanently and indissolubly combined in me
+groups of different impressions, for no reason save that they had made me
+feel several separate things at the same time, the M�s�glise and
+Guermantes 'ways' left me exposed, in later life, to much disillusionment,
+and even to many mistakes. For often I have wished to see a person again
+without realising that it was simply because that person recalled to me a
+hedge of hawthorns in blossom; and I have been led to believe, and to make
+some one else believe in an aftermath of affection, by what was no more
+than an inclination to travel. But by the same qualities, and by their
+persistence in those of my impressions, to-day, to which they can find an
+attachment, the two 'ways' give to those impressions a foundation, depth,
+a dimension lacking from the rest. They invest them, too, with a charm, a
+significance which is for me alone. When, on a summer evening, the
+resounding sky growls like a tawny lion, and everyone is complaining of
+the storm, it is along the 'M�s�glise way' that my fancy strays alone in
+ecstasy, inhaling, through the noise of falling rain, the odour of
+invisible and persistent lilac-trees.
+
+And so I would often lie until morning, dreaming of the old days at
+Combray, of my melancholy and wakeful evenings there; of other days
+besides, the memory of which had been more lately restored to me by the
+taste--by what would have been called at Combray the 'perfume'---of a cup
+of tea; and, by an association of memories, of a story which, many years
+after I had left the little place, had been told me of a love affair in
+which Swann had been involved before I was born; with that accuracy of
+detail which it is easier, often, to obtain when we are studying the lives
+of people who have been dead for centuries than when we are trying to
+chronicle those of our own most intimate friends, an accuracy which it
+seems as impossible to attain as it seemed impossible to speak from one
+town to another, before we learned of the contrivance by which that
+impossibility has been overcome. All these memories, following one after
+another, were condensed into a single substance, but had not so far
+coalesced that I could not discern between the three strata, between my
+oldest, my instinctive memories, those others, inspired more recently by a
+taste or 'perfume,' and those which were actually the memories of another,
+from whom I had acquired them at second hand--no fissures, indeed, no
+geological faults, but at least those veins, those streaks of colour which
+in certain rocks, in certain marbles, point to differences of origin, age,
+and formation.
+
+It is true that, when morning drew near, I would long have settled the
+brief uncertainty of my waking dream, I would know in what room I was
+actually lying, would have reconstructed it round about me in the
+darkness, and--fixing my orientation by memory alone, or with the
+assistance of a feeble glimmer of light at the foot of which I placed the
+curtains and the window--would have reconstructed it complete and with its
+furniture, as an architect and an upholsterer might do, working upon an
+original, discarded plan of the doors and windows; would have replaced the
+mirrors and set the chest-of-drawers on its accustomed site. 'But scarcely
+had daylight itself--and no longer the gleam from a last, dying ember on a
+brass curtain-rod, which I had mistaken for daylight--traced across the
+darkness, as with a stroke of chalk across a blackboard, its first white
+correcting ray, when the window, with its curtains, would leave the frame
+of the doorway, in which I had erroneously placed it, while, to make room
+for it, the writing-table, which my memory had clumsily fixed where the
+window ought to be, would hurry off at full speed, thrusting before it the
+mantelpiece, and sweeping aside the wall of the passage; the well of the
+courtyard would be enthroned on the spot where, a moment earlier, my
+dressing-room had lain, and the dwelling-place which I had built up for
+myself in the darkness would have gone to join all those other dwellings
+of which I had caught glimpses from the whirlpool of awakening; put to
+flight by that pale sign traced above my window-curtains by the uplifted
+forefinger of day.
+
+
+
+SWANN IN LOVE
+
+
+To admit you to the 'little nucleus,' the 'little group,' the 'little
+clan' at the Verdurins', one condition sufficed, but that one was
+indispensable; you must give tacit adherence to a Creed one of whose
+articles was that the young pianist, whom Mme. Verdurin had taken under
+her patronage that year, and of whom she said "Really, it oughtn't to be
+allowed, to play Wagner as well as that!" left both Plant� and Rubinstein
+'sitting'; while Dr. Cottard was a more brilliant diagnostician than
+Potain. Each 'new recruit' whom the Verdurins failed to persuade that the
+evenings spent by other people, in other houses than theirs, were as dull
+as ditch-water, saw himself banished forthwith. Women being in this
+respect more rebellious than men, more reluctant to lay aside all worldly
+curiosity and the desire to find out for themselves whether other
+drawing-rooms might not sometimes be as entertaining, and the Verdurins
+feeling, moreover, that this critical spirit and this demon of frivolity
+might, by their contagion, prove fatal to the orthodoxy of the little
+church, they had been obliged to expel, one after another, all those of
+the 'faithful' who were of the female sex.
+
+Apart from the doctor's young wife, they were reduced almost exclusively
+that season (for all that Mme. Verdurin herself was a thoroughly 'good'
+woman, and came of a respectable middle-class family, excessively rich and
+wholly undistinguished, with which she had gradually and of her own accord
+severed all connection) to a young woman almost of a 'certain class,' a
+Mme. de Cr�cy, whom Mme. Verdurin called by her Christian name, Odette,
+and pronounced a 'love,' and to the pianist's aunt, who looked as though
+she had, at one period, 'answered the bell': ladies quite ignorant of the
+world, who in their social simplicity were so easily led to believe that
+the Princesse de Sagan and the Duchesse de Guermantes were obliged to pay
+large sums of money to other poor wretches, in order to have anyone at
+their dinner-parties, that if somebody had offered to procure them an
+invitation to the house of either of those great dames, the old doorkeeper
+and the woman of 'easy virtue' would have contemptuously declined.
+
+The Verdurins never invited you to dinner; you had your 'place laid'
+there. There was never any programme for the evening's entertainment.  The
+young pianist would play, but only if he felt inclined, for no one was
+forced to do anything, and, as M. Verdurin used to say: "We're all friends
+here. Liberty Hall, you know!"
+
+If the pianist suggested playing the Ride of the Valkyries, or the Prelude
+to Tristan, Mme. Verdurin would protest, not that the music was
+displeasing to her, but, on the contrary, that it made too violent an
+impression.  "Then you want me to have one of my headaches? You know quite
+well, it's the same every time he plays that. I know what I'm in for.
+Tomorrow, when I want to get up--nothing doing!" If he was not going to
+play they talked, and one of the friends--usually the painter who was in
+favour there that year--would "spin," as M. Verdurin put it, "a damned
+funny yarn that made 'em all split with laughter," and especially Mme.
+Verdurin, for whom--so strong was her habit of taking literally the
+figurative accounts of her emotions--Dr. Cottard, who was then just
+starting in general practice, would "really have to come one day and set
+her jaw, which she had dislocated with laughing too much."
+
+Evening dress was barred, because you were all 'good pals,' and didn't
+want to look like the 'boring people' who were to be avoided like the
+plague, and only asked to the big evenings, which were given as seldom as
+possible, and then only if it would amuse the painter or make the musician
+better known. The rest of the time you were quite happy playing charades
+and having supper in fancy dress, and there was no need to mingle any
+strange element with the little 'clan.'
+
+But just as the 'good pals' came to take a more and more prominent place
+in Mme. Verdurin's life, so the 'bores,' the 'nuisances' grew to include
+everybody and everything that kept her friends away from her, that made
+them sometimes plead 'previous engagements,' the mother of one, the
+professional duties of another, the 'little place in the country' of a
+third. If Dr. Cottard felt bound to say good night as soon as they rose
+from table, so as to go back to some patient who was seriously ill; "I
+don't know," Mme. Verdurin would say, "I'm sure it will do him far more
+good if you don't go disturbing him again this evening; he will have a
+good night without you; to-morrow morning you can go round early and you
+will find him cured." From the beginning of December it would make her
+quite ill to think that the 'faithful' might fail her on Christmas and New
+Year's Days. The pianist's aunt insisted that he must accompany her, on
+the latter, to a family dinner at her mother's.
+
+"You don't suppose she'll die, your mother," exclaimed Mme. Verdurin
+bitterly, "if you don't have dinner with her on New Year's Day, like
+people in the _provinces_!"
+
+Her uneasiness was kindled again in Holy Week: "Now you, Doctor, you're a
+sensible, broad-minded man; you'll come, of course, on Good Friday, just
+like any other day?" she said to Cottard in the first year of the little
+'nucleus,' in a loud and confident voice, as though there could be no
+doubt of his answer. But she trembled as she waited for it, for if he did
+not come she might find herself condemned to dine alone.
+
+"I shall come on Good Friday--to say good-bye to you, for we are going to
+spend the holidays in Auvergne."
+
+"In Auvergne? To be eaten by fleas and all sorts of creatures! A fine lot
+of good that will do you!" And after a solemn pause: "If you had only told
+us, we would have tried to get up a party, and all gone there together,
+comfortably."
+
+And so, too, if one of the 'faithful' had a friend, or one of the ladies a
+young man, who was liable, now and then, to make them miss an evening, the
+Verdurins, who were not in the least afraid of a woman's having a lover,
+provided that she had him in their company, loved him in their company and
+did not prefer him to their company, would say: "Very well, then, bring
+your friend along." And he would be put to the test, to see whether he was
+willing to have no secrets from Mme. Verdurin, whether he was susceptible
+of being enrolled in the 'little clan.' If he failed to pass, the faithful
+one who had introduced him would be taken on one side, and would be
+tactfully assisted to quarrel with the friend or mistress. But if the test
+proved satisfactory, the newcomer would in turn be numbered among the
+'faithful.' And so when, in the course of this same year, the courtesan
+told M. Verdurin that she had made the acquaintance of such a charming
+gentleman, M. Swann, and hinted that he would very much like to be allowed
+to come, M. Verdurin carried the request at once to his wife. He never
+formed an opinion on any subject until she had formed hers, his special
+duty being to carry out her wishes and those of the 'faithful' generally,
+which he did with boundless ingenuity.
+
+"My dear, Mme. de Cr�cy has something to say to you. She would like to
+bring one of her friends here, a M. Swann. What do you say?"
+
+"Why, as if anybody could refuse anything to a little piece of perfection
+like that. Be quiet; no one asked your opinion. I tell you that you are a
+piece of perfection."
+
+"Just as you like," replied Odette, in an affected tone, and then went on:
+"You know I'm not fishing for compliments."
+
+"Very well; bring your friend, if he's nice."
+
+Now there was no connection whatsoever between the 'little nucleus' and
+the society which Swann frequented, and a purely worldly man would have
+thought it hardly worth his while, when occupying so exceptional a
+position in the world, to seek an introduction to the Verdurins. But Swann
+was so ardent a lover that, once he had got to know almost all the women
+of the aristocracy, once they had taught him all that there was to learn,
+he had ceased to regard those naturalisation papers, almost a patent of
+nobility, which the Faubourg Saint-Germain had bestowed upon him, save as
+a sort of negotiable bond, a letter of credit with no intrinsic value,
+which allowed him to improvise a status for himself in some little hole in
+the country, or in some obscure quarter of Paris, where the good-looking
+daughter of a local squire or solicitor had taken his fancy. For at such
+times desire, or love itself, would revive in him a feeling of vanity from
+which he was now quite free in his everyday life, although it was, no
+doubt, the same feeling which had originally prompted him towards that
+career as a man of fashion in which he had squandered his intellectual
+gifts upon frivolous amusements, and had made use of his erudition in
+matters of art only to advise society ladies what pictures to buy and how
+to decorate their houses; and this vanity it was which made him eager to
+shine, in the sight of any fair unknown who had captivated him for the
+moment, with a brilliance which the name of Swann by itself did not emit.
+And he was most eager when the fair unknown was in humble circumstances.
+Just as it is not by other men of intelligence that an intelligent man is
+afraid of being thought a fool, so it is not by the great gentleman but by
+boors and 'bounders' that a man of fashion is afraid of finding his social
+value underrated. Three-fourths of the mental ingenuity displayed, of the
+social falsehoods scattered broadcast ever since the world began by people
+whose importance they have served only to diminish, have been aimed at
+inferiors. And Swann, who behaved quite simply and was at his ease when
+with a duchess, would tremble^ for fear of being despised, and would
+instantly begin to pose, were he to meet her grace's maid.
+
+Unlike so many people, who, either from lack of energy or else from a
+resigned sense of the obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur
+to remain moored like houseboats to a certain point on the bank of the
+stream of life, abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them above
+and below that point, that degree in life in which they will remain fixed
+until the day of their death, and are content, in the end, to describe as
+pleasures, for want of any better, those mediocre distractions, that just
+not intolerable tedium which is enclosed there with them; Swann would
+endeavour not to find charm and beauty in the women with whom he must pass
+time, but to pass his time among women whom he had already found to be
+beautiful and charming. And these were, as often as not, women whose
+beauty was of a distinctly 'common' type, for the physical qualities which
+attracted him instinctively, and without reason, were the direct opposite
+of those that he admired in the women painted or sculptured by his
+favourite masters. Depth of character, or a melancholy expression on a
+woman's face would freeze his senses, which would, however, immediately
+melt at the sight of healthy, abundant, rosy human flesh.
+
+If on his travels he met a family whom it would have been more correct for
+him to make no attempt to know, but among whom a woman caught his eye,
+adorned with a special charm that was new to him, to remain on his 'high
+horse' and to cheat the desire that she had kindled in him, to substitute
+a pleasure different from that which he might have tasted in her company
+by writing to invite one of his former mistresses to come and join him,
+would have seemed to him as cowardly an abdication in the face of life, as
+stupid a renunciation of a new form of happiness as if, instead of
+visiting the country where he was, he had shut himself up in his own rooms
+and looked at 'views' of Paris. He did not immure himself in the solid
+structure of his social relations, but had made of them, so as to be able
+to set it up afresh upon new foundations wherever a woman might take his
+fancy, one of those collapsible tents which explorers carry about with
+them. Any part of it which was not portable or could not be adapted to
+some fresh pleasure he would discard as valueless, however enviable it
+might appear to others. How often had his credit with a duchess, built up
+of the yearly accumulation of her desire to do him some favour for which
+she had never found an opportunity, been squandered in a moment by his
+calling upon her, in an indiscreetly worded message, for a recommendation
+by telegraph which would put him in touch at once with one of her agents
+whose daughter he had noticed in the country, just as a starving man might
+barter a diamond for a crust of bread. Indeed, when it was too late, he
+would laugh at himself for it, for there was in his nature, redeemed by
+many rare refinements, an element of clownishness. Then he belonged to
+that class of intelligent men who have led a life of idleness, and who
+seek consolation and, perhaps, an excuse in the idea, which their idleness
+offers to their intelligence, of objects as worthy of their interest as
+any that could be attained by art or learning, the idea that 'Life'
+contains situations more interesting and more romantic than all the
+romances ever written. So, at least, he would assure and had no difficulty
+in persuading the more subtle among his friends in the fashionable world,
+notably the Baron de Charlus, whom he liked to amuse with stories of the
+startling adventures that had befallen him, such as when he had met a
+woman in the train, and had taken her home with him, before discovering
+that she was the sister of a reigning monarch, in whose hands were
+gathered, at that moment, all the threads of European politics, of which
+he found himself kept informed in the most delightful fashion, or when, in
+the complexity of circumstances, it depended upon the choice which the
+Conclave was about to make whether he might or might not become the lover
+of somebody's cook.
+
+It was not only the brilliant phalanx of virtuous dowagers, generals and
+academicians, to whom he was bound by such close ties, that Swann
+compelled with so much cynicism to serve him as panders. All his friends
+were accustomed to receive, from time to time, letters which called on
+them for a word of recommendation or introduction, with a diplomatic
+adroitness which, persisting throughout all his successive 'affairs' and
+using different pretexts, revealed more glaringly than the clumsiest
+indiscretion, a permanent trait in his character and an unvarying quest. I
+used often to recall to myself when, many years later, I began to take an
+interest in his character because of the similarities which, in wholly
+different respects, it offered to my own, how, when he used to write to my
+grandfather (though not at the time we are now considering, for it was
+about the date of my own birth that Swann's great 'affair' began, and made
+a long interruption in his amatory practices) the latter, recognising his
+friend's handwriting on the envelope, would exclaim: "Here is Swann asking
+for something; on guard!" And, either from distrust or from the
+unconscious spirit of devilry which urges us to offer a thing only to
+those who do not want it, my grandparents would meet with an obstinate
+refusal the most easily satisfied of his prayers, as when he begged them
+for an introduction to a girl who dined with us every Sunday, and whom
+they were obliged, whenever Swann mentioned her, to pretend that they no
+longer saw, although they would be wondering, all through the week, whom
+they could invite to meet her, and often failed, in the end, to find
+anyone, sooner than make a sign to him who would so gladly have accepted.
+
+Occasionally a couple of my grandparents' acquaintance, who had been
+complaining for some time that they never saw Swann now, would announce
+with satisfaction, and perhaps with a slight inclination to make my
+grandparents envious of them, that he had suddenly become as charming as
+he could possibly be, and was never out of their house. My grandfather
+would not care to shatter their pleasant illusion, but would look at my
+grandmother, as he hummed the air of:
+
+  What is this mystery?
+  I cannot understand it;
+
+or of:
+
+  Vision fugitive...;
+  In matters such as this
+  'Tis best to close one's eyes.
+
+A few months later, if my grandfather asked Swann's new friend "What about
+Swann? Do you still see as much of him as ever?" the other's face would
+lengthen: "Never mention his name to me again!"
+
+"But I thought that you were such friends..."
+
+He had been intimate in this way for several months with some cousins of
+my grandmother, dining almost every evening at their house. Suddenly, and
+without any warning, he ceased to appear. They supposed him to be ill, and
+the lady of the house was going to send to inquire for him when, in her
+kitchen, she found a letter in his hand, which her cook had left by
+accident in the housekeeping book. In this he announced that he was
+leaving Paris and would not be able to come to the house again. The cook
+had been his mistress, and at the moment of breaking off relations she was
+the only one of the household whom he had thought it necessary to inform.
+
+But when his mistress for the time being was a woman in society, or at
+least one whose birth was not so lowly, nor her position so irregular that
+he was unable to arrange for her reception in 'society,' then for her sake
+he would return to it, but only to the particular orbit in which she moved
+or into which he had drawn her. "No good depending on Swann for this
+evening," people would say; "don't you remember, it's his American's night
+at the Opera?" He would secure invitations for her to the most exclusive
+drawing-rooms, to those houses where he himself went regularly, for weekly
+dinners or for poker; every evening, after a slight 'wave' imparted to his
+stiffly brushed red locks had tempered with a certain softness the ardour
+of his bold green eyes, he would select a flower for his buttonhole and
+set out to meet his mistress at the house of one or other of the women of
+his circle; and then, thinking of the affection and admiration which the
+fashionable folk, whom he always treated exactly as he pleased, would,
+when he met them there, lavish upon him in the presence of the woman whom
+he loved, he would find a fresh charm in that worldly existence of which
+he had grown weary, but whose substance, pervaded and warmly coloured by
+the flickering light which he had slipped into its midst, seemed to him
+beautiful and rare, now that he had incorporated in it a fresh love.
+
+But while each of these attachments, each of these flirtations had been
+the realisation, more or less complete, of a dream born of the sight of a
+face or a form which Swann had spontaneously, and without effort on his
+part, found charming, it was quite another matter when, one day at the
+theatre, he was introduced to Odette de Cr�cy by an old friend of his own,
+who had spoken of her to him as a ravishing creature with whom he might
+very possibly come to an understanding; but had made her out to be harder
+of conquest than she actually was, so as to appear to be conferring a
+special favour by the introduction. She had struck Swann not, certainly,
+as being devoid of beauty, but as endowed with a style of beauty which
+left him indifferent, which aroused in him no desire, which gave him,
+indeed, a sort of physical repulsion; as one of those women of whom every
+man can name some, and each will name different examples, who are the
+converse of the type which our senses demand. To give him any pleasure her
+profile was too sharp, her skin too delicate, her cheek-bones too
+prominent, her features too tightly drawn. Her eyes were fine, but so
+large that they seemed to be bending beneath their own weight, strained
+the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell or in an ill
+humour. Some time after this introduction at the theatre she had written
+to ask Swann whether she might see his collections, which would interest
+her so much, she, "an ignorant woman with a taste for beautiful things,"
+saying that she would know him better when once she had seen him in his
+'home,' where she imagined him to be "so comfortable with his tea and his
+books"; although she had not concealed her surprise at his being in that
+part of the town, which must be so depressing, and was "not nearly smart
+enough for such a very smart man." And when he allowed her to come she had
+said to him as she left how sorry she was to have stayed so short a time
+in a house into which she was so glad to have found her way at last,
+speaking of him as though he had meant something more to her than the rest
+of the people she knew, and appearing to unite their two selves with a
+kind of romantic bond which had made him smile. But at the time of life,
+tinged already with disenchantment, which Swann was approaching, when a
+man can content himself with being in love for the pleasure of loving
+without expecting too much in return, this linking of hearts, if it is no
+longer, as in early youth, the goal towards which love, of necessity,
+tends, still is bound to love by so strong an association of ideas that it
+may well become the cause of love if it presents itself first. In his
+younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he
+loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be
+enough to make him fall in love with her. And 50, at an age when it would
+appear--since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective
+pleasure--that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part in
+its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical
+order, without any foundation in desire.  At this time of life a man has
+already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer
+evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws, before
+his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we falsify it by
+memory and by suggestion; recognising one of its symptoms we recall and
+recreate the rest. Since we possess its hymn, engraved on our hearts in
+its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the opening lines,
+potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for us to remember
+all that follows. And if she begin in the middle, where it sings of our
+existing, henceforward, for one another only, we are well enough attuned
+to that music to be able to take it up and follow our partner, without
+hesitation, at the first pause in her voice.
+
+Odette de Cr�cy came again to see Swann; her visits grew more frequent,
+and doubtless each visit revived the sense of disappointment which he felt
+at the sight of a face whose details he had somewhat forgotten in the
+interval, not remembering it as either so expressive or, in spite of her
+youth, so faded; he used to regret, while she was talking to him, that her
+really considerable beauty was not of the kind which he spontaneously
+admired.  It must be remarked that Odette's face appeared thinner and more
+prominent than it actually was, because her forehead and the upper part of
+her cheeks, a single and almost plane surface, were covered by the masses
+of hair which women wore at that period, drawn forward in a fringe, raised
+in crimped waves and falling in stray locks over her ears; while as for
+her figure, and she was admirably built, it was impossible to make out its
+continuity (on account of the fashion then prevailing, and in spite of her
+being one of the best-dressed women in Paris) for the corset, jetting
+forwards in an arch, as though over an imaginary stomach, and ending in a
+sharp point, beneath which bulged out the balloon of her double skirts,
+gave a woman, that year, the appearance of being composed of different
+sections badly fitted together; to such an extent did the frills, the
+flounces, the inner bodice follow, in complete independence, controlled
+only by the fancy of their designer or the rigidity of their material, the
+line which led them to the knots of ribbon, falls of lace, fringes of
+vertically hanging jet, or carried them along the bust, but nowhere
+attached themselves to the living creature, who, according as the
+architecture of their fripperies drew them towards or away from her own,
+found herself either strait-laced to suffocation or else completely
+buried.
+
+But, after Odette had left him, Swann would think with a smile of her
+telling him how the time would drag until he allowed her to come again; he
+remembered the anxious, timid way in which she had once begged him that it
+might not be very long, and the way in which she had looked at him then,
+fixing upon him her fearful and imploring gaze, which gave her a touching
+air beneath the bunches of artificial pansies fastened in the front of her
+round bonnet of white straw, tied with strings of black velvet. "And won't
+you," she had ventured, "come just once and take tea with me?" He had
+pleaded pressure of work, an essay--which, in reality, he had abandoned
+years ago--on Vermeer of Delft. "I know that I am quite useless," she had
+replied, "a little wild thing like me beside a learned great man like you.
+I should be like the frog in the fable! And yet I should so much like to
+learn, to know things, to be initiated. What fun it would be to become a
+regular bookworm, to bury my nose in a lot of old papers!" she had gone
+on, with that self-satisfied air which a smart woman adopts when she
+insists that her one desire is to give herself up, without fear of soiling
+her fingers, to some unclean task, such as cooking the dinner, with her
+"hands right in the dish itself." "You will only laugh at me, but this
+painter who stops you from seeing me," she meant Vermeer, "I have never
+even heard of him; is he alive still? Can I see any of his things in
+Paris, so as to have some idea of what is going on behind that great brow
+which works so hard, that head which I feel sure is always puzzling away
+about things; just to be able to say 'There, that's what he's thinking
+about!' What a dream it would be to be able to help you with your work."
+
+He had sought an excuse in his fear of forming new friendships, which he
+gallantly described as his fear of a hopeless passion. "You are afraid of
+falling in love? How funny that is, when I go about seeking nothing else,
+and would give my soul just to find a little love somewhere!" she had said,
+so naturally and with such an air of conviction that he had been genuinely
+touched. "Some woman must have made you suffer. And you think that the rest
+are all like her. She can't have understood you: you are so utterly
+different from ordinary men. That's what I liked about you when I first
+saw you; I felt at once that you weren't like everybody else."
+
+"And then, besides, there's yourself----" he had continued, "I know what
+women are; you must have a whole heap of things to do, and never any time
+to spare."
+
+"I? Why, I have never anything to do. I am always free, and I always will
+be free if you want me. At whatever hour of the day or night it may suit
+you to see me, just send for me, and I shall be only too delighted to
+come. Will you do that? Do you know what I should really like--to
+introduce you to Mme. Verdurin, where I go every evening. Just fancy my
+finding you there, and thinking that it was a little for my sake that you
+had gone."
+
+No doubt, in thus remembering their conversations, in thinking about her
+thus when he was alone, he did no more than call her image into being
+among those of countless other women in his romantic dreams; but if,
+thanks to some accidental circumstance (or even perhaps without that
+assistance, for the circumstance which presents itself at the moment when
+a mental state, hitherto latent, makes itself felt, may well have had no
+influence whatsoever upon that state), the image of Odette de Cr�cy came
+to absorb the whole of his dreams, if from those dreams the memory of her
+could no longer be eliminated, then her bodily imperfections would no
+longer be of the least importance, nor would the conformity of her body,
+more or less than any other, to the requirements of Swann's taste; since,
+having become the body of her whom he loved, it must henceforth be the
+only one capable of causing him joy or anguish.
+
+It so happened that my grandfather had known--which was more than could be
+said of any other actual acquaintance--the family of these Verdurins.
+But he had entirely severed his connection with what he called "young
+Verdurin," taking a general view of him as one who had fallen--though
+without losing hold of his millions--among the riff-raff of Bohemia.  One
+day he received a letter from Swann asking whether my grandfather could
+put him in touch with the Verdurins. "On guard! on guard!" he exclaimed as
+he read it, "I am not at all surprised; Swann was bound to finish up like
+this. A nice lot of people! I cannot do what he asks, because, in the
+first place, I no longer know the gentleman in question. Besides, there
+must be a woman in it somewhere, and I don't mix myself up in such
+matters.  Ah, well, we shall see some fun if Swann begins running after
+the little Verdurins."
+
+And on my grandfather's refusal to act as sponsor, it was Odette herself
+who had taken Swann to the house.
+
+The Verdurins had had dining with them, on the day when Swann made his
+first appearance, Dr. and Mme. Cottard, the young pianist and his aunt,
+and the painter then in favour, while these were joined, in the course of
+the evening, by several more of the 'faithful.'
+
+Dr. Cottard was never quite certain of the tone in which he ought to reply
+to any observation, or whether the speaker was jesting or in earnest.  And
+so in any event he would embellish all his facial expressions with the
+offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose expectant subtlety would
+exonerate him from the charge of being a simpleton, if the remark
+addressed to him should turn out to have been facetious. But as he must
+also be prepared to face the alternative, he never dared to allow this
+smile a definite expression on his features, and you would see there a
+perpetually flickering uncertainty, in which you might decipher the
+question that he never dared to ask: "Do you really mean that?" He was no
+more confident of the manner in which he ought to conduct himself in the
+street, or indeed in life generally, than he was in a drawing-room; and he
+might be seen greeting passers-by, carriages, and anything that occurred
+with a malicious smile which absolved his subsequent behaviour of all
+impropriety, since it proved, if it should turn out unsuited to the
+occasion, that he was well aware of that, and that if he had assumed a
+smile, the jest was a secret of his own.
+
+On all those points, however, where a plain question appeared to him to be
+permissible, the Doctor was unsparing in his endeavours to cultivate the
+wilderness of his ignorance and uncertainty and so to complete his
+education.
+
+So it was that, following the advice given him by a wise mother on his
+first coming up to the capital from his provincial home, he would never
+let pass either a figure of speech or a proper name that was new to him
+without an effort to secure the fullest information upon it.
+
+As regards figures of speech, he was insatiable in his thirst for
+knowledge, for often imagining them to have a more definite meaning than
+was actually the case, he would want to know what, exactly, was intended
+by those which he most frequently heard used: 'devilish pretty,' 'blue
+blood,' 'a cat and dog life,' 'a day of reckoning,' 'a queen of
+fashion, 'to give a free hand,' 'to be at a deadlock,' and so forth; and
+in what particular circumstances he himself might make use of them in
+conversation. Failing these, he would adorn it with puns and other 'plays
+upon words' which he had learned by rote. As for the names of strangers
+which were uttered in his hearing, he used merely to repeat them to
+himself in a questioning tone, which, he thought, would suffice to furnish
+him with explanations for which he would not ostensibly seek.
+
+As the critical faculty, on the universal application of which he prided
+himself, was, in reality, completely lacking, that refinement of good
+breeding which consists in assuring some one whom you are obliging in any
+way, without expecting to be believed, that it is really yourself that is
+obliged to him, was wasted on Cottard, who took everything that he heard
+in its literal sense. However blind she may have been to his faults, Mme.
+Verdurin was genuinely annoyed, though she still continued to regard him
+as brilliantly clever, when, after she had invited him to see and hear
+Sarah Bernhardt from a stage box, and had said politely: "It is very good
+of you to have come, Doctor, especially as I'm sure you must often have
+heard Sarah Bernhardt; and besides, I'm afraid we're rather too near the
+stage," the Doctor, who had come into the box with a smile which waited
+before settling upon or vanishing from his face until some one in
+authority should enlighten him as to the merits of the spectacle, replied:
+"To be sure, we are far too near the stage, and one is getting sick of
+Sarah Bernhardt. But you expressed a wish that I should come. For me, your
+wish is a command.  I am only too glad to be able to do you this little
+service. What would one not do to please you, you are so good." And he
+went on, "Sarah Bernhardt; that's what they call the Voice of God, ain't
+it? You see, often, too, that she 'sets the boards on fire.' That's an odd
+expression, ain't it?" in the hope of an enlightening commentary, which,
+however, was not forthcoming.
+
+"D'you know," Mme. Verdurin had said to her husband, "I believe we are
+going the wrong way to work when we depreciate anything we offer the
+Doctor. He is a scientist who lives quite apart from our everyday
+existence; he knows nothing himself of what things are worth, and he
+accepts everything that we say as gospel."
+
+"I never dared to mention it," M. Verdurin had answered, "but I've noticed
+the same thing myself." And on the following New Year's Day, instead of
+sending Dr. Cottard a ruby that cost three thousand francs, and pretending
+that it was a mere trifle, M. Verdurin bought an artificial stone for
+three hundred, and let it be understood that it was something almost
+impossible to match.
+
+When Mme. Verdurin had announced that they were to see M. Swann that
+evening; "Swann!" the Doctor had exclaimed in a tone rendered brutal by
+his astonishment, for the smallest piece of news would always take utterly
+unawares this man who imagined himself to be perpetually in readiness for
+anything. And seeing that no one answered him, "Swann! Who on earth is
+Swann?" he shouted, in a frenzy of anxiety which subsided as soon as Mme.
+Verdurin had explained, "Why, Odette's friend, whom she told us about."
+
+"Ah, good, good; that's all right, then," answered the Doctor, at once
+mollified. As for the painter, he was overjoyed at the prospect of Swann's
+appearing at the Verdurins', because he supposed him to be in love with
+Odette, and was always ready to assist at lovers' meetings. "Nothing
+amuses me more than match-making," he confided to Cottard; "I have been
+tremendously successful, even with women!"
+
+In telling the Verdurins that Swann was extremely 'smart,' Odette had
+alarmed them with the prospect of another 'bore.' When he arrived,
+however, he made an excellent impression, an indirect cause of which,
+though they did not know it, was his familiarity with the best society. He
+had, indeed, one of those advantages which men who have lived and moved in
+the world enjoy over others, even men of intelligence and refinement, who
+have never gone into society, namely that they no longer see it
+transfigured by the longing or repulsion with which it fills the
+imagination, but regard it as quite unimportant. Their good nature, freed
+from all taint of snobbishness and from the fear of seeming too friendly,
+grown independent, in fact, has the ease, the grace of movement of a
+trained gymnast each of whose supple limbs will carry out precisely the
+movement that is required without any clumsy participation by the rest of
+his body. 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 shewed 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 Dr. Cottard; for seeing
+him close one eye with an ambiguous smile, before they had yet spoken to
+one another (a grimace which Cottard styled "letting 'em all come"), Swann
+supposed that the Doctor recognised him from having met him already
+somewhere, probably in some house of 'ill-fame,' though these he himself
+very rarely visited, never having made a habit of indulging in the
+mercenary sort of love. Regarding such an allusion as in bad taste,
+especially before Odette, whose opinion of himself it might easily alter
+for the worse, Swann assumed his most icy manner. But when he learned that
+the lady next to the Doctor was Mme. Cottard, he decided that so young a
+husband would not deliberately, in his wife's hearing, have made any
+allusion to amusements of that order, and so ceased to interpret the
+Doctor's expression in the sense which he had at first suspected. The
+painter at once invited Swann to visit his studio with Odette, and Swann
+found him very pleasant. "Perhaps you will be more highly favoured than I
+have been," Mme. Verdurin broke in, with mock resentment of the favour,
+"perhaps you will be allowed to see Cottard's portrait" (for which she had
+given the painter a commission).  "Take care, Master Biche," she reminded
+the painter, whom it was a time-honoured pleasantry to address as
+'Master,' "to catch that nice look in his eyes, that witty little twinkle.
+You know, what I want to have most of all is his smile; that's what I've
+asked you to paint--the portrait of his smile." And since the phrase
+struck her as noteworthy, she repeated it very loud, so as to make sure
+that as many as possible of her guests should hear it, and even made use
+of some indefinite pretext to draw the circle closer before she uttered it
+again. Swann begged to be introduced to everyone, even to an old friend of
+the Verdurins, called Saniette, whose shyness, simplicity and good-nature
+had deprived him of all the consideration due to his skill in
+palaeography, his large fortune, and the distinguished family to which he
+belonged. When he spoke, his words came with a confusion which was
+delightful to hear because one felt that it indicated not so much a defect
+in his speech as a quality of his soul, as it were a survival from the age
+of innocence which he had never wholly outgrown. All the cop-sonants which
+he did not manage to pronounce seemed like harsh utterances of which his
+gentle lips were incapable. By asking to be made known to M. Saniette,
+Swann made M. Verdurin reverse the usual form of introduction (saying, in
+fact, with emphasis on the distinction: "M. Swann, pray let me present to
+you our friend Saniette") but he aroused in Saniette himself a warmth of
+gratitude, which, however, the Verdurins never disclosed to Swann, since
+Saniette rather annoyed them, and they did not feel bound to provide him
+with friends. On the other hand the Verdurins were extremely touched by
+Swann's next request, for he felt that he must ask to be introduced to the
+pianist's aunt. She wore a black dress, as was her invariable custom, for
+she believed that a woman always looked well in black, and that nothing
+could be more distinguished; but her face was exceedingly red, as it
+always was for some time after a meal. She bowed to Swann with deference,
+but drew herself up again with great dignity.  As she was entirely
+uneducated, and was afraid of making mistakes in grammar and
+pronunciation, she used purposely to speak in an indistinct and garbling
+manner, thinking that if she should make a slip it would be so buried in
+the surrounding confusion that no one could be certain whether she had
+actually made it or not; with the result that her talk was a sort of
+continuous, blurred expectoration, out of which would emerge, at rare
+intervals, those sounds and syllables of which she felt positive. Swann
+supposed himself entitled to poke a little mild fun at her in conversation
+with M. Verdurin, who, however, was not at all amused.
+
+"She is such an excellent woman!" he rejoined. "I grant you that she is
+not exactly brilliant; but I assure you that she can talk most charmingly
+when you are alone with her."
+
+"I am sure she can," Swann hastened to conciliate him. "All I meant was
+that she hardly struck me as 'distinguished,'" he went on, isolating the
+epithet in the inverted commas of his tone, "and, after all, that is
+something of a compliment."
+
+"Wait a moment," said M. Verdurin, "now, this will surprise you; she
+writes quite delightfully. You have never heard her nephew play? It is
+admirable; eh, Doctor? Would you like me to ask him to play something, M.
+Swann?"
+
+"I should count myself most fortunate..." Swann was beginning, a trifle
+pompously, when the Doctor broke in derisively. Having once heard it said,
+and never having forgotten that in general conversation emphasis and the
+use of formal expressions were out of date, whenever he heard a solemn
+word used seriously, as the word 'fortunate' had been used just now by
+Swann, he at once assumed that the speaker was being deliberately
+pedantic. And if, moreover, the same word happened to occur, also, in what
+he called an old 'tag' or 'saw,' however common it might still be in
+current usage, the Doctor jumped to the conclusion that the whole thing
+was a joke, and interrupted with the remaining words of the quotation,
+which he seemed to charge the speaker with having intended to introduce at
+that point, although in reality it had never entered his mind.
+
+"Most fortunate for France!" he recited wickedly, shooting up both arms
+with great vigour. M. Verdurin could not help laughing.
+
+"What are all those good people laughing at over there? There's no sign of
+brooding melancholy down in your corner," shouted Mme. Verdurin.  "You
+don't suppose I find it very amusing to be stuck up here by myself on the
+stool of repentance," she went on peevishly, like a spoiled child.
+
+Mme. Verdurin was sitting upon a high Swedish chair of waxed pine-wood,
+which a violinist from that country had given her, and which she kept in
+her drawing-room, although in appearance it suggested a school 'form,' and
+'swore,' as the saying is, at the really good antique furniture which she
+had besides; but she made a point of keeping on view the presents which
+her 'faithful' were in the habit of making her from time to time, so that
+the donors might have the pleasure of seeing them there when they came to
+the house. She tried to persuade them to confine their tributes to flowers
+and sweets, which had at least the merit of mortality; but she was never
+successful, and the house was gradually filled with a collection of
+foot-warmers, cushions, clocks, screens, barometers and vases, a constant
+repetition and a boundless incongruity of useless but indestructible
+objects.
+
+From this lofty perch she would take her spirited part in the conversation
+of the 'faithful,' and would revel in all their fun; but, since the
+accident to her jaw, she had abandoned the effort involved in real
+hilarity, and had substituted a kind of symbolical dumb-show which
+signified, without endangering or even fatiguing her in any way, that she
+was 'laughing until she cried.' At the least witticism aimed by any of the
+circle against a 'bore,' or against a former member of the circle who was
+now relegated to the limbo of 'bores'--and to the utter despair of M.
+Verdurin, who had always made out that he was just as easily amused as his
+wife, but who, since his laughter was the 'real thing,' was out of breath
+in a moment, and so was overtaken and vanquished by her device of a
+feigned but continuous hilarity--she would utter a shrill cry, shut tight
+her little bird-like eyes, which were beginning to be clouded over by a
+cataract, and quickly, as though she had only just time to avoid some
+indecent sight or to parry a mortal blow, burying her face in her hands,
+which completely engulfed it, and prevented her from seeing anything at
+all, she would appear to be struggling to suppress, to eradicate a laugh
+which, were she to give way to it, must inevitably leave her inanimate.
+So, stupefied with the gaiety of the 'faithful,' drunken with comradeship,
+scandal and asseveration, Mme.  Verdurin, perched on her high seat like a
+cage-bird whose biscuit has been steeped in mulled wine, would sit aloft
+and sob with fellow-feeling.
+
+Meanwhile M. Verdurin, after first asking Swann's permission to light his
+pipe ("No ceremony here, you understand; we're all pals!"), went and
+begged the young musician to sit down at the piano.
+
+"Leave him alone; don't bother him; he hasn't come here to be tormented,"
+cried Mme. Verdurin. "I won't have him tormented."
+
+"But why on earth should it bother him?" rejoined M. Verdurin. "I'm sure
+M. Swann has never heard the sonata in F sharp which we discovered; he is
+going to play us the pianoforte arrangement."
+
+"No, no, no, not my sonata!" she screamed, "I don't want to be made to cry
+until I get a cold in the head, and neuralgia all down my face, like last
+time; thanks very much, I don't intend to repeat that performance; you are
+all very kind and considerate; it is easy to see that none of you will
+have to stay in bed, for a week."
+
+This little scene, which was re-enacted as often as the young pianist sat
+down to play, never failed to delight the audience, as though each of them
+were witnessing it for the first time, as a proof of the seductive
+originality of the 'Mistress' as she was styled, and of the acute
+sensitiveness of her musical 'ear.' Those nearest to her would attract the
+attention of the rest, who were smoking or playing cards at the other end
+of the room, by their cries of 'Hear, hear!' which, as in Parliamentary
+debates, shewed that something worth listening to was being said. And next
+day they would commiserate with those who had been prevented from coming
+that evening, and would assure them that the 'little scene' had never been
+so amusingly done.
+
+"Well, all right, then," said M. Verdurin, "he can play just the andante."
+
+"Just the _andante_! How you do go on," cried his wife. "As if it weren't
+'just the _andante_' that breaks every bone in my body. The 'Master' is
+really too priceless! Just as though, 'in the Ninth,' he said 'we need
+only have the _finale_,' or 'just the overture' of the _Meistersinger_."
+
+The Doctor, however, urged Mme. Verdurin to let the pianist play, not
+because he supposed her to be malingering when she spoke of the
+distressing effects that music always had upon her, for he recognised the
+existence of certain neurasthenic states--but from his habit, common to
+many doctors, of at once relaxing the strict letter of a prescription as
+soon as it appeared to jeopardise, what seemed to him far more important,
+the success of some social gathering at which he was present, and of which
+the patient whom he had urged for once to forget her dyspepsia or headache
+formed an essential factor.
+
+"You won't be ill this time, you'll find," he told her, seeking at the
+same time to subdue her mind by the magnetism of his gaze. "And, if you
+are ill, we will cure you."
+
+"Will you, really?" Mme. Verdurin spoke as though, with so great a favour
+in store for her, there was nothing for it but to capitulate. Perhaps,
+too, by dint of saying that she was going to be ill, she had worked
+herself into a state in which she forgot, occasionally, that it was all
+only a 'little scene,' and regarded things, quite sincerely, from an
+invalid's point of view.  For it may often be remarked that invalids grow
+weary of having the frequency of their attacks depend always on their own
+prudence in avoiding them, and like to let themselves think that they are
+free to do everything that they most enjoy doing, although they are always
+ill after doing it, provided only that they place themselves in the hands
+of a higher authority which, without putting them to the least
+inconvenience, can and will, by uttering a word or by administering a
+tabloid, set them once again upon their feet.
+
+Odette had gone to sit on a tapestry-covered sofa near the piano, saying
+to Mme. Verdurin, "I have my own little corner, haven't I?"
+
+And Mme. Verdurin, seeing Swann by himself upon a chair, made him get up.
+"You're not at all comfortable there; go along and sit by Odette; you can
+make room for M. Swann there, can't you, Odette?"
+
+"What charming Beauvais!" said Swann, stopping to admire the sofa before
+he sat down on it, and wishing to be polite.
+
+"I am glad you appreciate my sofa," replied Mme. Verdurin, "and I warn you
+that if you expect ever to see another like it you may as well abandon the
+idea at once. They never made any more like it. And these little chairs,
+too, are perfect marvels. You can look at them in a moment.  The emblems
+in each of the bronze mouldings correspond to the subject of the tapestry
+on the chair; you know, you combine amusement with instruction when you
+look at them;--I can promise you a delightful time, I assure you. Just
+look at the little border around the edges; here, look, the little vine on
+a red background in this one, the Bear and the Grapes. Isn't it well
+drawn? What do you say? I think they knew a thing or two about design!
+Doesn't it make your mouth water, this vine? My husband makes out that I
+am not fond of fruit, because I eat less than he does. But not a bit of
+it, I am greedier than any of you, but I have no need to fill my mouth
+with them when I can feed on them with my eyes.  What are you all laughing
+at now, pray? Ask the Doctor; he will tell you that those grapes act on me
+like a regular purge. Some people go to Fontainebleau for cures; I take my
+own little Beauvais cure here. But, M. Swann, you mustn't run away without
+feeling the little bronze mouldings on the backs. Isn't it an exquisite
+surface? No, no, not with your whole hand like that; feel them property!"
+
+"If Mme. Verdurin is going to start playing about with her bronzes," said
+the painter, "we shan't get any music to-night."
+
+"Be quiet, you wretch! And yet we poor women," she went on, "are forbidden
+pleasures far less voluptuous than this. There is no flesh in the world as
+soft as these. None. When M. Verdurin did me the honour of being madly
+jealous... come, you might at least be polite. Don't say that you never
+have been jealous!"
+
+"But, my dear, I have said absolutely nothing. Look here, Doctor, I call
+you as a witness; did I utter a word?"
+
+Swann had begun, out of politeness, to finger the bronzes, and did not
+like to stop.
+
+"Come along; you can caress them later; now it is you that are going to be
+caressed, caressed in the ear; you'll like that, I think. Here's the young
+gentleman who will take charge of that."
+
+After the pianist had played, Swann felt and shewed more interest in him
+than in any of the other guests, for the following reason:
+
+The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music played
+on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the material
+quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a
+source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the violin-part,
+delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole, he had suddenly
+perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of
+sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent, level, and
+breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea,
+silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at a given
+moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a
+name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to
+collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony--he knew not
+which--that had just been played, and had opened and expanded his soul,
+just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of
+evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils. Perhaps it was owing to
+his own ignorance of music that he had been able to receive so confused an
+impression, one of those that are, notwithstanding, our only purely
+musical impressions, limited in their extent, entirely original, and
+irreducible into any other kind. An impression of this order, vanishing in
+an instant, is, so to speak, an impression _sine materia_. Presumably the
+notes which we hear at such moments tend to spread out before our eyes,
+over surfaces greater or smaller according to their pitch and volume; to
+trace arabesque designs, to give us the sensation of breath or tenuity,
+stability or caprice. But the notes themselves have vanished before these
+sensations have developed sufficiently to escape submersion under those
+which the following, or even simultaneous notes have already begun to
+awaken in us. And this indefinite perception would continue to smother in
+its molten liquidity the _motifs_ which now and then emerge, barely
+discernible, to plunge again and disappear and drown; recognised only by
+the particular kind of pleasure which they instil, impossible to describe,
+to recollect, to name; ineffable;--if our memory, like a labourer who
+toils at the laying down of firm foundations beneath the tumult of the
+waves, did not, by fashioning for us facsimiles of those fugitive phrases,
+enable us to compare and to contrast them with those that follow. And so,
+hardly had the delicious sensation, which Swann had experienced, died
+away, before his memory had furnished him with an immediate transcript,
+summary, it is true, and provisional, but one on which he had kept his
+eyes fixed while the playing continued, so effectively that, when the same
+impression suddenly returned, it was no longer uncapturable. He was able
+to picture to himself its extent, its symmetrical arrangement, its
+notation, the strength of its expression; he had before him that definite
+object which was no longer pure music, but rather design, architecture,
+thought, and which allowed the actual music to be recalled. This time he
+had distinguished, quite clearly, a phrase which emerged for a few moments
+from the waves of sound. It had at once held out to him an invitation to
+partake of intimate pleasures, of whose existence, before hearing it, he
+had never dreamed, into which he felt that nothing but this phrase could
+initiate him; and he had been filled with love for it, as with a new and
+strange desire.
+
+With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here, there, everywhere,
+towards a state of happiness noble, unintelligible, yet clearly indicated.
+And then, suddenly having reached a certain point from which he was
+prepared to follow it, after pausing for a moment, abruptly it changed its
+direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, multiform, melancholy,
+incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards a vista of joys
+unknown.  Then it vanished. He hoped, with a passionate longing, that he
+might find it again, a third time. And reappear it did, though without
+speaking to him more clearly, bringing him, indeed, a pleasure less
+profound. But when he was once more at home he needed it, he was like a
+man into whose life a woman, whom he has seen for a moment passing by, has
+brought a new form of beauty, which strengthens and enlarges his own power
+of perception, without his knowing even whether he is ever to see her
+again whom he loves already, although he knows nothing of her, not even
+her name.
+
+Indeed this passion for a phrase of music seemed, in the first few months,
+to be bringing into Swann's life the possibility of a sort of rejuvenation.
+He had so long since ceased to direct his course towards any
+ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of ephemeral
+satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally
+stating his belief even to himself, that he would remain all his life in
+that condition, which death alone could alter. More than this, since his
+mind no longer entertained any lofty ideals, he had ceased to believe in
+(although he could not have expressly denied) their reality. He had grown
+also into the habit of taking refuge in trivial considerations, which
+allowed him to set on one side matters of fundamental importance. Just as
+he had never stopped to ask himself whether he would not have done better
+by not going into society, knowing very well that if he had accepted an
+invitation he must put in an appearance, and that afterwards, if he did
+not actually call, he must at least leave cards upon his hostess; so in
+his conversation he took care never to express with any warmth a personal
+opinion about a thing, but instead would supply facts and details which
+had a value of a sort in themselves, and excused him from shewing how much
+he really knew. He would be extremely precise about the recipe for a dish,
+the dates of a painter's birth and death, and the titles of his works.
+Sometimes, in spite of himself, he would let himself go so far as to utter
+a criticism of a work of art, or of some one's interpretation of life, but
+then he would cloak his words in a tone of irony, as though he did not
+altogether associate himself with what he was saying. But now, like a
+confirmed invalid whom, all of a sudden, a change of air and surroundings,
+or a new course of treatment, or, as sometimes happens, an organic change
+in himself, spontaneous and unaccountable, seems to have so far recovered
+from his malady that he begins to envisage the possibility, hitherto
+beyond all hope, of starting to lead--and better late than never--a wholly
+different life, Swann found in himself, in the memory of the phrase that
+he had heard, in certain other sonatas which he had made people play over
+to him, to see whether he might not, perhaps, discover his phrase among
+them, the presence of one of those invisible realities in which he had
+ceased to believe, but to which, as though the music had had upon the
+moral barrenness from which he was suffering a sort of recreative
+influence, he was conscious once again of a desire, almost, indeed, of the
+power to consecrate his life. But, never having managed to find out whose
+work it was that he had heard played that evening, he had been unable to
+procure a copy, and finally had forgotten the quest. He had indeed, in the
+course of the next few days, encountered several of the people who had
+been at the party with him, and had questioned them; but most of them had
+either arrived after or left before the piece was played; some had indeed
+been in the house, but had gone into another room to talk, and those who
+had stayed to listen had no clearer impression than the rest.  As for his
+hosts, they knew that it was a recently published work which the musicians
+whom they had engaged for the evening had asked to be allowed to play;
+but, as these last were now on tour somewhere, Swann could learn nothing
+further. He had, of course, a number of musical friends, but, vividly as
+he could recall the exquisite and inexpressible pleasure which the little
+phrase had given him, and could see, still, before his eyes the forms that
+it had traced in outline, he was quite incapable of humming over to them
+the air. And so, at last, he ceased to think of it.
+
+But to-night, at Mme. Verdurin's, scarcely had the little pianist begun to
+play when, suddenly, after a high note held on through two whole bars,
+Swann saw it approaching, stealing forth from underneath that resonance,
+which was prolonged and stretched out over it, like a curtain of sound, to
+veil the mystery of its birth--and recognised, secret, whispering,
+articulate, the airy and fragrant phrase that he had loved. And it was so
+peculiarly itself, it had so personal a charm, which nothing else could
+have replaced, that Swann felt as though he had met, in a friend's
+drawing-room, a woman whom he had seen and admired, once, in the street,
+and had despaired of ever seeing her again. Finally the phrase withdrew
+and vanished, pointing, directing, diligent among the wandering currents
+of its fragrance, leaving upon Swann's features a reflection of its smile.
+But now, at last, he could ask the name of his fair unknown (and was told
+that it was the _andante_ movement of Vinteuil's sonata for the piano and
+violin), he held it safe, could have it again to himself, at home, as
+often as he would, could study its language and acquire its secret.
+
+And so, when the pianist had finished, Swann crossed the room and thanked
+him with a vivacity which delighted Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"Isn't he charming?" she asked Swann, "doesn't he just understand it, his
+sonata, the little wretch? You never dreamed, did you, that a piano could
+be made to express all that? Upon my word, there's everything in it except
+the piano! I'm caught out every time I hear it; I think I'm listening to
+an orchestra. Though it's better, really, than an orchestra, more
+complete."
+
+The young pianist bent over her as he answered, smiling and underlining
+each of his words as though he were making an epigram: "You are most
+generous to me."
+
+And while Mme. Verdurin was saying to her husband, "Run and fetch him a
+glass of orangeade; it's well earned!" Swann began to tell Odette how he
+had fallen in love with that little phrase. When their hostess, who was a
+little way off, called out, "Well! It looks to me as though some one was
+saying nice things to you, Odette!" she replied, "Yes, very nice," and he
+found her simplicity delightful. Then he asked for some information about
+this Vinteuil; what else he had done, and at what period in his life he
+had composed the sonata;--what meaning the little phrase could have had
+for him, that was what Swann wanted most to know.
+
+But none of these people who professed to admire this musician (when Swann
+had said that the sonata was really charming Mme. Verdurin had exclaimed,
+"I quite believe it! Charming, indeed! But you don't dare to confess that
+you don't know Vinteuil's sonata; you have no right not to know it!"--and
+the painter had gone on with, "Ah, yes, it's a very fine bit of work,
+isn't it? Not, of course, if you want something 'obvious,' something
+'popular,' but, I mean to say, it makes a very great impression on us
+artists."), none of them seemed ever to have asked himself these
+questions, for none of them was able to reply.
+
+Even to one or two particular remarks made by Swann on his favourite
+phrase, "D'you know, that's a funny thing; I had never noticed it; I may
+as well tell you that I don't much care about peering at things through a
+microscope, and pricking myself on pin-points of difference; no; we don't
+waste time splitting hairs in this house; why not? well, it's not a habit
+of ours, that's all," Mme. Verdurin replied, while Dr. Cottard gazed at
+her with open-mouthed admiration, and yearned to be able to follow her as
+she skipped lightly from one stepping-stone to another of her stock of
+ready-made phrases. Both he, however, and Mme. Cottard, with a kind of
+common sense which is shared by many people of humble origin, would always
+take care not to express an opinion, or to pretend to admire a piece of
+music which they would confess to each other, once they were safely at
+home, that they no more understood than they could understand the art of
+'Master' Biche. Inasmuch as the public cannot recognise the charm, the
+beauty, even the outlines of nature save in the stereotyped impressions of
+an art which they have gradually assimilated, while an original artist
+starts by rejecting those impressions, so M. and Mme.  Cottard, typical,
+in this respect, of the public, were incapable of finding, either in
+Vinteuil's sonata or in Biche's portraits, what constituted harmony, for
+them, in music or beauty in painting. It appeared to them, when the
+pianist played his sonata, as though he were striking haphazard from the
+piano a medley of notes which bore no relation to the musical forms to
+which they themselves were accustomed, and that the painter simply flung
+the colours haphazard upon his canvas. When, on one of these, they were
+able to distinguish a human form, they always found it coarsened and
+vulgarised (that is to say lacking all the elegance of the school of
+painting through whose spectacles they themselves were in the habit of
+seeing the people--real, living people, who passed them in the streets)
+and devoid of truth, as though M. Biche had not known how the human
+shoulder was constructed, or that a woman's hair was not, ordinarily,
+purple.
+
+And yet, when the 'faithful' were scattered out of earshot, the Doctor
+felt that the opportunity was too good to be missed, and so (while Mme.
+Verdurin was adding a final word of commendation of Vinteuil's sonata)
+like a would-be swimmer who jumps into the water, so as to learn, but
+chooses a moment when there are not too many people looking on: "Yes,
+indeed; he's what they call a musician _di primo cartello_!" he exclaimed,
+with a sudden determination.
+
+Swann discovered no more than that the recent publication of Vinteuil's
+sonata had caused a great stir among the most advanced school of
+musicians, but that it was still unknown to the general public.
+
+"I know some one, quite well, called Vinteuil," said Swann, thinking of
+the old music-master at Combray who had taught my grandmother's sisters.
+
+"Perhaps that's the man!" cried Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"Oh, no!" Swann burst out laughing. "If you had ever seen him for a moment
+you wouldn't put the question."
+
+"Then to put the question is to solve the problem?" the Doctor suggested.
+
+"But it may well be some relative," Swann went on. "That would be bad
+enough; but, after all, there is no reason why a genius shouldn't have a
+cousin who is a silly old fool. And if that should be so, I swear there's
+no known or unknown form of torture I wouldn't undergo to get the old fool
+to introduce me to the man who composed the sonata; starting with the
+torture of the old fool's company, which would be ghastly."
+
+The painter understood that Vinteuil was seriously ill at the moment, and
+that Dr. Potain despaired of his life.
+
+"What!" cried Mme. Verdurin, "Do people still call in Potain?"
+
+"Ah! Mme. Verdurin," Cottard simpered, "you forget that you are speaking
+of one of my colleagues--I should say, one of my masters."
+
+The painter had heard, somewhere, that Vinteuil was threatened with
+the loss of his reason. And he insisted that signs of this could be
+detected in certain passages in the sonata. This remark did not strike
+Swann as ridiculous; rather, it puzzled him. For, since a purely musical
+work contains none of those logical sequences, the interruption or
+confusion of which, in spoken or written language, is a proof of insanity,
+so insanity diagnosed in a sonata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as
+the insanity of a dog or a horse, although instances may be observed of
+these.
+
+"Don't speak to me about 'your masters'; you know ten times as much as he
+does!" Mme. Verdurin answered Dr. Cottard, in the tone of a woman who has
+the courage of her convictions, and is quite ready to stand up to anyone
+who disagrees with her. "Anyhow, you don't kill your patients!"
+
+"But, Madame, he is in the Academy." The Doctor smiled with bitter irony.
+"If a sick person prefers to die at the hands of one of the Princes of
+Science... It is far more smart to be able to say, 'Yes, I have Potain.'"
+
+"Oh, indeed! More smart, is it?" said Mme. Verdurin. "So there are
+fashions, nowadays, in illness, are there? I didn't know that.... Oh, you
+do make me laugh!" she screamed, suddenly, burying her face in her hands.
+"And here was I, poor thing, talking quite seriously, and never seeing
+that you were pulling my leg."
+
+As for M. Verdurin, finding it rather a strain to start laughing again
+over so small a matter, he was content with puffing out a cloud of smoke
+from his pipe, while he reflected sadly that he could never again hope to
+keep pace with his wife in her Atalanta-flights across the field of mirth.
+
+"D'you know; we like your friend so very much," said Mme. Verdurin, later,
+when Odette was bidding her good night. "He is so unaffected, quite
+charming. If they're all like that, the friends you want to bring here, by
+all means bring them."
+
+M. Verdurin remarked that Swann had failed, all the same, to appreciate
+the pianist's aunt.
+
+"I dare say he felt a little strange, poor man," suggested Mme. Verdurin.
+"You can't expect him to catch the tone of the house the first time he
+comes; like Cottard, who has been one of our little 'clan' now for years.
+The first time doesn't count; it's just for looking round and finding out
+things. Odette, he understands all right, he's to join us to-morrow at the
+Ch�telet. Perhaps you might call for him and bring him." "No, he doesn't
+want that."
+
+"Oh, very well; just as you like. Provided he doesn't fail us at the last
+moment."
+
+Greatly to Mme. Verdurin's surprise, he never failed them. He would go to
+meet them, no matter where, at restaurants outside Paris (not that they
+went there much at first, for the season had not yet begun), and more
+frequently at the play, in which Mme. Verdurin delighted. One evening,
+when they were dining at home, he heard her complain that she had not one
+of those permits which would save her the trouble of waiting at doors and
+standing in crowds, and say how useful it would be to them at
+first-nights, and gala performances at the Opera, and what a nuisance it
+had been, not having one, on the day of Gambetta's funeral. Swann never
+spoke of his distinguished friends, but only of such as might be regarded
+as detrimental, whom, therefore, he thought it snobbish, and in not very
+good taste to conceal; while he frequented the Faubourg Saint-Germain he
+had come to include, in the latter class, all his friends in the official
+world of the Third Republic, and so broke in, without thinking: "I'll see
+to that, all right. You shall have it in time for the _Danicheff_ revival.
+I shall be lunching with the Prefect of Police to-morrow, as it happens,
+at the Elys�e."
+
+"What's that? The Elys�e?" Dr. Cottard roared in a voice of thunder.
+
+"Yes, at M. Gr�vy's," replied Swann, feeling a little awkward at the
+effect which his announcement had produced.
+
+"Are you often taken like that?" the painter asked Cottard, with
+mock-seriousness.
+
+As a rule, once an explanation had been given, Cottard would say: "Ah,
+good, good; that's all right, then," after which he would shew not the
+least trace of emotion. But this time Swann's last words, instead of the
+usual calming effect, had that of heating, instantly, to boiling-point his
+astonishment at the discovery that a man with whom he himself was actually
+sitting at table, a man who had no official position, no honours or
+distinction of any sort, was on visiting terms with the Head of the State.
+
+"What's that you say? M. Gr�vy? Do you know M. Gr�vy?" he demanded of
+Swann, in the stupid and incredulous tone of a constable on duty at the
+palace, when a stranger has come up and asked to see the President of the
+Republic; until, guessing from his words and manner what, as the
+newspapers say, 'it is a case of,' he assures the poor lunatic that he
+will be admitted at once, and points the way to the reception ward of the
+police infirmary.
+
+"I know him slightly; we have some friends in common" (Swann dared not add
+that one of these friends was the Prince of Wales). "Anyhow, he is very
+free with his invitations, and, I assure you, his luncheon-parties are not
+the least bit amusing; they're very simple affairs, too, you know; never
+more than eight at table," he went on, trying desperately to cut out
+everything that seemed to shew off his relations with the President in a
+light too dazzling for the Doctor's eyes.
+
+Whereupon Cottard, at once conforming in his mind to the literal
+interpretation of what Swann was saying, decided that invitations from M.
+Gr�vy were very little sought after, were sent out, in fact, into the
+highways and hedge-rows. And from that moment he never seemed at all
+surprised to hear that Swann, or anyone else, was 'always at the Elys�e';
+he even felt a little sorry for a man who had to go to luncheon-parties
+which, he himself admitted, were a bore.
+
+"Ah, good, good; that's quite all right then," he said, in the tone of a
+customs official who has been suspicious up to now, but, after hearing
+your explanations, stamps your passport and lets you proceed on your
+journey without troubling to examine your luggage.
+
+"I can well believe you don't find them amusing, those parties; indeed,
+it's very good of you to go to them!" said Mme. Verdurin, who regarded the
+President of the Republic only as a 'bore' to be especially dreaded, since
+he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion, which,
+if employed to captivate her 'faithful,' might easily make them 'fail.'
+"It seems, he's as deaf as a post; and eats with his fingers."
+
+"Upon my word! Then it can't be much fun for you, going there." A note of
+pity sounded in the Doctor's voice; and then struck by the number--only
+eight at table--"Are these luncheons what you would describe as
+'intimate'?" he inquired briskly, not so much out of idle curiosity as in
+his linguistic zeal.
+
+But so great and glorious a figure was the President of the French
+Republic in the eyes of Dr. Cottard that neither the modesty of Swann nor
+the spite of Mme. Verdurin could ever wholly efface that first impression,
+and he never sat down to dinner with the Verdurins without asking
+anxiously, "D'you think we shall see M. Swann here this evening? He is a
+personal friend of M. Gr�vy's. I suppose that means he's what you'd call a
+'gentleman'?" He even went to the length of offering Swann a card of
+invitation to the Dental Exhibition.
+
+"This will let you in, and anyone you take with you," he explained, "but
+dogs are not admitted. I'm just warning you, you understand, because some
+friends of mine went there once, who hadn't been told, and there was the
+devil to pay."
+
+As for M. Verdurin, he did not fail to observe the distressing effect upon
+his wife of the discovery that Swann had influential friends of whom he
+had never spoken.
+
+If no arrangement had been made to 'go anywhere,' it was at the Verdurins'
+that Swann would find the 'little nucleus' assembled, but he never
+appeared there except in the evenings, and would hardly ever accept their
+invitations to dinner, in spite of Odette's entreaties.
+
+"I could dine with you alone somewhere, if you'd rather," she suggested.
+
+"But what about Mme. Verdurin?"
+
+"Oh, that's quite simple. I need only say that my dress wasn't ready, or
+that my cab came late. There is always some excuse."
+
+"How charming of you."
+
+But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette feel (by
+consenting to meet her only after dinner) that there were other pleasures
+which he preferred to that of her company, then the desire that she felt
+for his would be all the longer in reaching the point of satiety. Besides,
+as he infinitely preferred to Odette's style of beauty that of a little
+working girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with whom he happened to be
+simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the first part of the
+evening with her, knowing that he was sure to see Odette later on. For the
+same reason, he would never allow Odette to call for him at his house, to
+take him on to the Verdurins'. The little girl used to wait, not far from
+his door, at a street corner; R�mi, his coachman, knew where to stop; she
+would jump in beside him, and hold him in her arms until the carriage drew
+up at the Verdurins'. He would enter the drawing-room; and there, while
+Mme.  Verdurin, pointing to the roses which he had sent her that morning,
+said: "I am furious with you!" and sent him to the place kept for him, by
+the side of Odette, the pianist would play to them--for their two selves,
+and for no one else--that little phrase by Vinteuil which was, so to
+speak, the national anthem of their love. He began, always, with a
+sustained tremolo from the violin part, which, for several bars, was
+unaccompanied, and filled all the foreground; until suddenly it seemed to
+be drawn aside, and--just as in those interiors by Pieter de Hooch, where
+the subject is set back a long way through the narrow framework of a
+half-opened door--infinitely remote, in colour quite different, velvety
+with the radiance of some intervening light, the little phrase appeared,
+dancing, pastoral, interpolated, episodic, belonging to another world. It
+passed, with simple and immortal movements, scattering on every side the
+bounties of its grace, smiling ineffably still; but Swann thought that he
+could now discern in it some disenchantment. It seemed to be aware how
+vain, how hollow was the happiness to which it shewed the way. In its airy
+grace there was, indeed, something definitely achieved, and complete in
+itself, like the mood of philosophic detachment which follows an outburst
+of vain regret.  But little did that matter to him; he looked upon the
+sonata less in its own light--as what it might express, had, in fact,
+expressed to a certain musician, ignorant that any Swann or Odette,
+anywhere in the world, existed, when he composed it, and would express to
+all those who should hear it played in centuries to come--than as a
+pledge, a token of his love, which made even the Verdurins and their
+little pianist think of Odette and, at the same time, of himself--which
+bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that point he had (whimsically
+entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of getting some 'professional' to
+play over to him the whole sonata, of which he still knew no more than
+this one passage. "Why do you want the rest?" she had asked him. "Our
+little bit; that's all we need." He went farther; agonised by the
+reflection, at the moment when it passed by him, so near and yet so
+infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed to their ears, it knew
+them not, he would regret, almost, that it had a meaning of its own, an
+intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to themselves, just as in the
+jewels given to us, or even in the letters written to us by a woman with
+whom we are in love, we find fault with the 'water' of a stone, or with
+the words of a sentence because they are not fashioned exclusively from
+the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of a 'lass unparalleled.'
+
+It would happen, as often as not, that he had stayed so long outside, with
+his little girl, before going to the Verdurins' that, as soon as the
+little phrase had been rendered by the pianist, Swann would discover that
+it was almost time for Odette to go home. He used to take her back as far
+as the door of her little house in the Rue La P�rouse, behind the Arc de
+Triomphe. And it was perhaps on this account, and so as not to demand the
+monopoly of her favours, that he sacrificed the pleasure (not so essential
+to his well-being) of seeing her earlier in the evening, of arriving with
+her at the Verdurins', to the exercise of this other privilege, for which
+she was grateful, of their leaving together; a privilege which he valued
+all the more because, thanks to it, he had the feeling that no one else
+would see her, no one would thrust himself between them, no one could
+prevent him from remaining with her in spirit, after he had left her for
+the night.
+
+And so, night after night, she would be taken home in Swann's carriage;
+and one night, after she had got down, and while he stood at the gate and
+murmured "Till to-morrow, then!" she turned impulsively from him, plucked
+a last lingering chrysanthemum in the tiny garden which flanked the
+pathway from the street to her house, and as he went back to his carriage
+thrust it into his hand. He held it pressed to his lips during the drive
+home, and when, in due course, the flower withered, locked it away, like
+something very precious, in a secret drawer of his desk.
+
+He would escort her to her gate, but no farther. Twice only had he gone
+inside to take part in the ceremony--of such vital importance in her life
+--of 'afternoon tea.' The loneliness and emptiness of those short streets
+(consisting, almost entirely, of low-roofed houses, self-contained but not
+detached, their monotony interrupted here and there by the dark intrusion
+of some sinister little shop, at once an historical document and a sordid
+survival from the days when the district was still one of ill repute), the
+snow which had lain on the garden-beds or clung to the branches of the
+trees, the careless disarray of the season, the assertion, in this
+man-made city, of a state of nature, had all combined to add an element of
+mystery to the warmth, the flowers, the luxury which he had found inside.
+
+Passing by (on his left-hand side, and on what, although raised some way
+above the street, was the ground floor of the house) Odette's bedroom,
+which looked out to the back over another little street running parallel
+with her own, he had climbed a staircase that went straight up between
+dark painted walls, from which hung Oriental draperies, strings of Turkish
+beads, and a huge Japanese lantern, suspended by a silken cord from the
+ceiling (which last, however, so that her visitors should not have to
+complain of the want of any of the latest comforts of Western
+civilisation, was lighted by a gas-jet inside), to the two drawing-rooms,
+large and small. These were entered through a narrow lobby, the wall of
+which, chequered with the lozenges of a wooden trellis such as you see on
+garden walls, only gilded, was lined from end to end by a long rectangular
+box in which bloomed, as though in a hothouse, a row of large
+chrysanthemums, at that time still uncommon, though by no means so large
+as the mammoth blossoms which horticulturists have since succeeded in
+making grow. Swann was irritated, as a rule, by the sight of these
+flowers, which had then been 'the rage' in Paris for about a year, but it
+had pleased him, on this occasion, to see the gloom of the little lobby
+shot with rays of pink and gold and white by the fragrant petals of these
+ephemeral stars, which kindle their cold fires in the murky atmosphere of
+winter afternoons.  Odette had received him in a tea-gown of pink silk,
+which left her neck and arms bare. She had made him sit down beside her in
+one of the many mysterious little retreats which had been contrived in the
+various recesses of the room, sheltered by enormous palmtrees growing out
+of pots of Chinese porcelain, or by screens upon which were fastened
+photographs and fans and bows of ribbon. She had said at once, "You're not
+comfortable there; wait a minute, I'll arrange things for you," and with a
+titter of laughter, the complacency of which implied that some little
+invention of her own was being brought into play, she had installed behind
+his head and beneath his feet great cushions of Japanese silk, which she
+pummelled and buffeted as though determined to lavish on him all her
+riches, and regardless of their value. But when her footman began to come
+into the room, bringing, one after another, the innumerable lamps which
+(contained, mostly, in porcelain vases) burned singly or in pairs upon the
+different pieces of furniture as upon so many altars, rekindling in the
+twilight, already almost nocturnal, of this winter afternoon, the glow of
+a sunset more lasting, more roseate, more human--filling, perhaps, with
+romantic wonder the thoughts of some solitary lover, wandering in the
+street below and brought to a standstill before the mystery of the human
+presence which those lighted windows at once revealed and screened from
+sight--she had kept an eye sharply fixed on the servant, to see whether he
+set each of the lamps down in the place appointed it.  She felt that, if
+he were to put even one of them where it ought not to be, the general
+effect of her drawing-room would be destroyed, and that her portrait,
+which rested upon a sloping easel draped with plush, would not catch the
+light. And so, with feverish impatience, she followed the man's clumsy
+movements, scolding him severely when he passed too close to a pair of
+beaupots, which she made a point of always tidying herself, in case the
+plants should be knocked over--and went across to them now to make sure
+that he had not broken off any of the flowers. She found something
+'quaint' in the shape of each of her Chinese ornaments, and also in her
+orchids, the cattleyas especially (these being, with chrysanthemums, her
+favourite flowers), because they had the supreme merit of not looking in
+the least like other flowers, but of being made, apparently, out of scraps
+of silk or satin. "It looks just as though it had been cut out of the
+lining of my cloak," she said to Swann, pointing to an orchid, with a
+shade of respect in her voice for so 'smart' a flower, for this
+distinguished, unexpected sister whom nature had suddenly bestowed upon
+her, so far removed from her in the scale of existence, and yet so
+delicate, so refined, so much more worthy than many real women of
+admission to her drawing-room.  As she drew his attention, now to the
+fiery-tongued dragons painted upon a bowl or stitched upon a fire-screen,
+now to a fleshy cluster of orchids, now to a dromedary of inlaid
+silver-work with ruby eyes, which kept company, upon her mantelpiece, with
+a toad carved in jade, she would pretend now to be shrinking from the
+ferocity of the monsters or laughing at their absurdity, now blushing at
+the indecency of the flowers, now carried away by an irresistible desire
+to run across and kiss the toad and dromedary, calling them 'darlings.'
+And these affectations were in sharp contrast to the sincerity of some of
+her attitudes, notably her devotion to Our Lady of the Laghetto who had
+once, when Odette was living at Nice, cured her of a mortal illness, and
+whose medal, in gold, she always carried on her person, attributing to it
+unlimited powers. She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon or cream?"
+and, on his answering "Cream, please," went on, smiling, "A cloud!" And as
+he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you like it." This
+tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to her, something
+precious, and love is so far obliged to find some justification for
+itself, some guarantee of its duration in pleasures which, on the
+contrary, would have no existence apart from love and must cease with its
+passing, that when he left her, at seven o'clock, to go and dress for the
+evening, all the way home, sitting bolt upright in his brougham, unable to
+repress the happiness with which the afternoon's adventure had filled him,
+he kept on repeating to himself: "What fun it would be to have a little
+woman like that in a place where one could always be certain of finding,
+what one never can be certain of finding, a really good cup of tea." An
+hour or so later he received a note from Odette, and at once recognised
+that florid handwriting, in which an affectation of British stiffness
+imposed an apparent discipline upon its shapeless characters, significant,
+perhaps, to less intimate eyes than his, of an untidiness of mind, a
+fragmentary education, a want of sincerity and decision. Swann had left
+his cigarette-case at her house. "Why," she wrote, "did you not forget
+your heart also? I should never have let you have that back."
+
+More important, perhaps, was a second visit which he paid her, a little
+later. On his way to the house, as always when he knew that they were to
+meet, he formed a picture of her in his mind; and the necessity, if he was
+to find any beauty in her face, of fixing his eyes on the fresh and rosy
+protuberance of her cheekbones, and of shutting out all the rest of those
+cheeks which were so often languorous and sallow, except when they were
+punctuated with little fiery spots, plunged him in acute depression, as
+proving that one's ideal is always unattainable, and one's actual
+happiness mediocre. He was taking her an engraving which she had asked to
+see.  She was not very well; she received him, wearing a wrapper of mauve
+_cr�pe de Chine_, which draped her bosom, like a mantle, with a richly
+embroidered web. As she stood there beside him, brushing his cheek with
+the loosened tresses of her hair, bending one knee in what was almost a
+dancer's pose, so that she could lean without tiring herself over the
+picture, at which she was gazing, with bended head, out of those great
+eyes, which seemed so weary and so sullen when there was nothing to
+animate her, Swann was struck by her resemblance to the figure of
+Zipporah, Jethro's Daughter, which is to be seen in one of the Sixtine
+frescoes. He had always found a peculiar fascination in tracing in the
+paintings of the Old Masters, not merely the general characteristics of
+the people whom he encountered in his daily life, but rather what seems
+least susceptible of generalisation, the individual features of men and
+women whom he knew, as, for instance, in a bust of the Doge Loredan by
+Antonio Rizzo, the prominent cheekbones, the slanting eyebrows, in short,
+a speaking likeness to his own coachman R�mi; in the colouring of a
+Ghirlandaio, the nose of M.  de Palancy; in a portrait by Tintoretto, the
+invasion of the plumpness of the cheek by an outcrop of whisker, the
+broken nose, the penetrating stare, the swollen eyelids of Dr. du Boulbon.
+Perhaps because he had always regretted, in his heart, that he had
+confined his attention to the social side of life, had talked, always,
+rather than acted, he felt that he might find a sort of indulgence
+bestowed upon him by those great artists, in his perception of the fact
+that they also had regarded with pleasure and had admitted into the canon
+of their works such types of physiognomy as give those works the strongest
+possible certificate of reality and trueness to life; a modern, almost a
+topical savour; perhaps, also, he had so far succumbed to the prevailing
+frivolity of the world of fashion that he felt the necessity of finding in
+an old masterpiece some such obvious and refreshing allusion to a person
+about whom jokes could be made and repeated and enjoyed to-day. Perhaps,
+on the other hand, he had retained enough of the artistic temperament to
+be able to find a genuine satisfaction in watching these individual
+features take on a more general significance when he saw them, uprooted
+and disembodied, in the abstract idea of similarity between an historic
+portrait and a modern original, whom it was not intended to represent.
+However that might be, and perhaps because the abundance of impressions
+which he, for some time past, had been receiving--though, indeed, they had
+come to him rather through the channel of his appreciation of music--had
+enriched his appetite for painting as well, it was with an unusual
+intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon
+his character and conduct, that Swann remarked Odette's resemblance to the
+Zipporah of that Alessandro de Mariano, to whom one shrinks from giving
+his more popular surname, now that 'Botticelli' suggests not so much the
+actual work of the Master as that false and banal conception of it which
+has of late obtained common currency. He no longer based his estimate of
+the merit of Odette's face on the more or less good quality of her cheeks,
+and the softness and sweetness--as of carnation-petals--which, he
+supposed, would greet his lips there, should he ever hazard an embrace,
+but regarded it rather as a skein of subtle and lovely silken threads,
+which his gazing eyes collected and wound together, following the curving
+line from the skein to the ball, where he mingled the cadence of her neck
+with the spring of her hair and the droop of her eyelids, as though from a
+portrait of herself, in which her type was made clearly intelligible.
+
+He stood gazing at her; traces of the old fresco were apparent in her face
+and limbs, and these he tried incessantly, afterwards, to recapture, both
+when he was with Odette, and when he was only thinking of her in her
+absence; and, albeit his admiration for the Florentine masterpiece was
+probably based upon his discovery that it had been reproduced in her, the
+similarity enhanced her beauty also, and rendered her more precious in his
+sight. Swann reproached himself with his failure, hitherto, to estimate at
+her true worth a creature whom the great Sandro would have adored, and
+counted himself fortunate that his pleasure in the contemplation of Odette
+found a justification in his own system of aesthetic.  He told himself
+that, in choosing the thought of Odette as the inspiration of his dreams
+of ideal happiness, he was not, as he had until then supposed, falling
+back, merely, upon an expedient of doubtful and certainly inadequate
+value, since she contained in herself what satisfied the utmost refinement
+of his taste in art. He failed to observe that this quality would not
+naturally avail to bring Odette into the category of women whom he found
+desirable, simply because his desires had always run counter to his
+aesthetic taste. The words 'Florentine painting' were invaluable to Swann.
+They enabled him (gave him, as it were, a legal title) to introduce the
+image of Odette into a world of dreams and fancies which, until then, she
+had been debarred from entering, and where she assumed a new and nobler
+form. And whereas the mere sight of her in the flesh, by perpetually
+reviving his misgivings as to the quality of her face, her figure, the
+whole of her beauty, used to cool the ardour of his love, those misgivings
+were swept away and that love confirmed now that he could re-erect his
+estimate of her on the sure foundations of his aesthetic principles; while
+the kiss, the bodily surrender which would have seemed natural and but
+moderately attractive, had they been granted him by a creature of somewhat
+withered flesh and sluggish blood, coming, as now they came, to crown his
+adoration of a masterpiece in a gallery, must, it seemed, prove as
+exquisite as they would be supernatural.
+
+And when he was tempted to regret that, for months past, he had done
+nothing but visit Odette, he would assure himself that he was not
+unreasonable in giving up much of his time to the study of an inestimably
+precious work of art, cast for once in a new, a different, an especially
+charming metal, in an unmatched exemplar which he would contemplate at one
+moment with the humble, spiritual, disinterested mind of an artist, at
+another with the pride, the selfishness, the sensual thrill of a
+collector.
+
+On his study table, at which he worked, he had placed, as it were a
+photograph of Odette, a reproduction of Jethro's Daughter. He would gaze
+in admiration at the large eyes, the delicate features in which the
+imperfection of her skin might be surmised, the marvellous locks of hair
+that fell along her tired cheeks; and, adapting what he had already felt
+to be beautiful, on aesthetic grounds, to the idea of a living woman, he
+converted it into a series of physical merits which he congratulated
+himself on finding assembled in the person of one whom he might,
+ultimately, possess. The vague feeling of sympathy which attracts a
+spectator to a work of art, now that he knew the type, in warm flesh and
+blood, of Jethro's Daughter, became a desire which more than compensated,
+thenceforward, for that with which Odette's physical charms had at first
+failed to inspire him. When he had sat for a long time gazing at the
+Botticelli, he would think of his own living Botticelli, who seemed all
+the lovelier in contrast, and as he drew towards him the photograph of
+Zipporah he would imagine that he was holding Odette against his heart.
+
+It was not only Odette's indifference, however, that he must take pains to
+circumvent; it was also, not infrequently, his own; feeling that, since
+Odette had had every facility for seeing him, she seemed no longer to have
+very much to say to him when they did meet, he was afraid lest the
+manner--at once trivial, monotonous, and seemingly unalterable--which she
+now adopted when they were together should ultimately destroy in him that
+romantic hope, that a day might come when she would make avowal of her
+passion, by which hope alone he had become and would remain her lover. And
+so to alter, to give a fresh moral aspect to that Odette, of whose
+unchanging mood he was afraid of growing weary, he wrote, suddenly, a
+letter full of hinted discoveries and feigned indignation, which he sent
+off so that it should reach her before dinner-time. He knew that she would
+be frightened, and that she would reply, and he hoped that, when the fear
+of losing him clutched at her heart, it would force from her words such as
+he had never yet heard her utter: and he was right--by repeating this
+device he had won from her the most affectionate letters that she had, so
+far, written him, one of them (which she had sent to him at midday by a
+special messenger from the Maison Dor�e--it was the day of the
+Paris-Murcie F�te given for the victims of the recent floods in Murcia)
+beginning "My dear, my hand trembles so that I can scarcely write----";
+and these letters he had kept in the same drawer as the withered
+chrysanthemum. Or else, if she had not had time to write, when he arrived
+at the Verdurins' she would come running up to him with an "I've something
+to say to you!" and he would gaze curiously at the revelation in her face
+and speech of what she had hitherto kept concealed from him of her heart.
+
+Even as he drew near to the Verdurins' door, and caught sight of the great
+lamp-lit spaces of the drawing-room windows, whose shutters were never
+closed, he would begin to melt at the thought of the charming creature
+whom he would see, as he entered the room, basking in that golden light.
+Here and there the figures of the guests stood out, sharp and black,
+between lamp and window, shutting off the light, like those little
+pictures which one sees sometimes pasted here and there upon a glass
+screen, whose other panes are mere transparencies. He would try to make
+out Odette.  And then, when he was once inside, without thinking, his eyes
+sparkled suddenly with such radiant happiness that M. Verdurin said to the
+painter: "H'm. Seems to be getting warm." Indeed, her presence gave the
+house what none other of the houses that he visited seemed to possess: a
+sort of tactual sense, a nervous system which ramified into each of its
+rooms and sent a constant stimulus to his heart.
+
+And so the simple and regular manifestations of a social organism, namely
+the 'little clan,' were transformed for Swann into a series of daily
+encounters with Odette, and enabled him to feign indifference to the
+prospect of seeing her, or even a desire not to see her; in doing which he
+incurred no very great risk since, even although he had written to her
+during the day, he would of necessity see her in the evening and accompany
+her home.
+
+But one evening, when, irritated by the thought of that inevitable dark
+drive together, he had taken his other 'little girl' all the way to the
+Bois, so as to delay as long as possible the moment of his appearance at
+the Verdurins', he was so late in reaching them that Odette, supposing
+that he did not intend to come, had already left. Seeing the room bare of
+her, Swann felt his heart wrung by sudden anguish; he shook with the sense
+that he was being deprived of a pleasure whose intensity he began then for
+the first time to estimate, having always, hitherto, had that certainty of
+finding it whenever he would, which (as in the case of all our pleasures)
+reduced, if it did not altogether blind him to its dimensions.
+
+"Did you notice the face he pulled when he saw that she wasn't here?" M.
+Verdurin asked his wife. "I think we may say that he's hooked."
+
+"The face he pulled?" exploded Dr. Cottard who, having left the house for
+a moment to visit a patient, had just returned to fetch his wife and did
+not know whom they were discussing.
+
+"D'you mean to say you didn't meet him on the doorstep--the loveliest of
+Swanns?"
+
+"No. M. Swann has been here?"
+
+"Just for a moment. We had a glimpse of a Swann tremendously agitated.  In
+a state of nerves. You see, Odette had left."
+
+"You mean to say that she has gone the 'whole hog' with him; that she has
+'burned her boats'?" inquired the Doctor cautiously, testing the meaning
+of his phrases.
+
+"Why, of course not; there's absolutely nothing in it; in fact, between
+you and me, I think she's making a great mistake, and behaving like a
+silly little fool, which she is, incidentally."
+
+"Come, come, come!" said M. Verdurin, "How on earth do you know that
+there's 'nothing in it'? We haven't been there to see, have we now?"
+
+"She would have told me," answered Mme. Verdurin with dignity. "I may say
+that she tells me everything. As she has no one else at present, I told
+her that she ought to live with him. She makes out that she can't; she
+admits, she was immensely attracted by him, at first; but he's always shy
+with her, and that makes her shy with him. Besides, she doesn't care for
+him in that way, she says; it's an ideal love, 'Platonic,' you know; she's
+afraid of rubbing the bloom off--oh, I don't know half the things she
+says, how should I? And yet he's exactly the sort of man she wants."
+
+"I beg to differ from you," M. Verdurin courteously interrupted. "I am
+only half satisfied with the gentleman. I feel that he 'poses.'"
+
+Mme. Verdurin's whole body stiffened, her eyes stared blankly as though
+she had suddenly been turned into a statue; a device by means of which she
+might be supposed not to have caught the sound of that unutterable word
+which seemed to imply that it was possible for people to 'pose' in her
+house, and, therefore, that there were people in the world who 'mattered
+more' than herself.
+
+"Anyhow, if there is nothing in it, I don't suppose it's because our
+friend believes in her virtue. And yet, you never know; he seems to
+believe in her intelligence. I don't know whether you heard the way he
+lectured her the other evening about Vinteuil's sonata. I am devoted to
+Odette, but really--to expound theories of aesthetic to her--the man must
+be a prize idiot."
+
+"Look here, I won't have you saying nasty things about Odette," broke in
+Mme. Verdurin in her 'spoiled child' manner. "She is charming."
+
+"There's no reason why she shouldn't be charming; we are not saying
+anything nasty about her, only that she is not the embodiment of either
+virtue or intellect. After all," he turned to the painter, "does it matter
+so very much whether she is virtuous or not? You can't tell; she might be
+a great deal less charming if she were."
+
+On the landing Swann had run into the Verdurins' butler, who had been
+somewhere else a moment earlier, when he arrived, and who had been asked
+by Odette to tell Swann (but that was at least an hour ago) that she would
+probably stop to drink a cup of chocolate at Pr�vost's on her way home.
+Swann set off at once for Pr�vost's, but every few yards his carriage was
+held up by others, or by people crossing the street, loathsome obstacles
+each of which he would gladly have crushed beneath his wheels, were it not
+that a policeman fumbling with a note-book would delay him even longer
+than the actual passage of the pedestrian. He counted the minutes
+feverishly, adding a few seconds to each so as to be quite certain that he
+had not given himself short measure, and so, possibly, exaggerated
+whatever chance there might actually be of his arriving at Pr�vost's in
+time, and of finding her still there. And then, in a moment of
+illumination, like a man in a fever who awakes from sleep and is conscious
+of the absurdity of the dream-shapes among which his mind has been
+wandering without any clear distinction between himself and them, Swann
+suddenly perceived how foreign to his nature were the thoughts which he
+had been revolving in his mind ever since he had heard at the Verdurins'
+that Odette had left, how novel the heartache from which he was suffering,
+but of which he was only now conscious, as though he had just woken up.
+What! all this disturbance simply because he would not see Odette, now,
+till to-morrow, exactly what he had been hoping, not an hour before, as he
+drove toward Mme. Verdurin's. He was obliged to admit also that now, as he
+sat in the same carriage and drove to Pr�vost's, he was no longer the same
+man, was no longer alone even--but that a new personality was there beside
+him, adhering to him, amalgamated with him, a creature from whom he might,
+perhaps, be unable to liberate himself, towards whom he might have to
+adopt some such stratagem as one uses to outwit a master or a malady. And
+yet, during this last moment in which he had felt that another, a fresh
+personality was thus conjoined with his own, life had seemed, somehow,
+more interesting.
+
+It was in vain that he assured himself that this possible meeting at
+Pr�vost's (the tension of waiting for which so ravished, stripped so bare
+the intervening moments that he could find nothing, not one idea, not one
+memory in his mind beneath which his troubled spirit might take shelter
+and repose) would probably, after all, should it take place, be much the
+same as all their meetings, of no great importance. As on every other
+evening, once he was in Odette's company, once he had begun to cast
+furtive glances at her changing countenance, and instantly to withdraw his
+eyes lest she should read in them the first symbols of desire and believe
+no more in his indifference, he would cease to be able even to think of
+her, so busy would he be in the search for pretexts which would enable him
+not to leave her immediately, and to assure himself, without betraying his
+concern, that he would find her again, next evening, at the Verdurins';
+pretexts, that is to say, which would enable him to prolong for the time
+being, and to renew for one day more the disappointment, the torturing
+deception that must always come to him with the vain presence of this
+woman, whom he might approach, yet never dared embrace.
+
+She was not at Prevost's; he must search for her, then, in every
+restaurant upon the boulevards. To save time, while he went in one
+direction, he sent in the other his coachman R�mi (Rizzo's Doge Loredan)
+for whom he presently--after a fruitless search--found himself waiting at
+the spot where the carriage was to meet him. It did not appear, and Swann
+tantalised himself with alternate pictures of the approaching moment, as
+one in which R�mi would say to him: "Sir, the lady is there," or as one in
+which R�mi would say to him: "Sir, the lady was not in any of the caf�s."
+And so he saw himself faced by the close of his evening--a thing uniform,
+and yet bifurcated by the intervening accident which would either put an
+end to his agony by discovering Odette, or would oblige him to abandon any
+hope of finding her that night, to accept the necessity of returning home
+without having seen her.
+
+The coachman returned; but, as he drew up opposite him, Swann asked, not
+"Did you find the lady?" but "Remind me, to-morrow, to order in some more
+firewood. I am sure we must be running short." Perhaps he had persuaded
+himself that, if R�mi had at last found Odette in some caf�, where she was
+waiting for him still, then his night of misery was already obliterated by
+the realisation, begun already in his mind, of a night of joy, and that
+there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness
+already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his
+grasp again. But it was also by the force of inertia; there was in his
+soul that want of adaptability which can be seen in the bodies of certain
+people who, when the moment comes to avoid a collision, to snatch their
+clothes out of reach of a flame, or to perform any other such necessary
+movement, take their time (as the saying is), begin by remaining for a
+moment in their original position, as though seeking to find in it a
+starting-point, a source of strength and motion. And probably, if the
+coachman had interrupted him with, "I have found the lady," he would have
+answered, "Oh, yes, of course; that's what I told you to do.  I had quite
+forgotten," and would have continued to discuss his supply of firewood, so
+as to hide from his servant the emotion that he had felt, and to give
+himself time to break away from the thraldom of his anxieties and abandon
+himself to pleasure.
+
+The coachman came back, however, with the report that he could not find
+her anywhere, and added the advice, as an old and privileged servant, "I
+think, sir, that all we can do now is to go home."
+
+But the air of indifference which Swann could so lightly assume when R�mi
+uttered his final, unalterable response, fell from him like a cast-off
+cloak when he saw R�mi attempt to make him abandon hope and retire from
+the quest.
+
+"Certainly not!" he exclaimed. "We must find the lady. It is most
+important.  She would be extremely put out--it's a business matter--and
+vexed with me if she didn't see me."
+
+"But I do not see how the lady can be vexed, sir," answered R�mi, "since
+it was she that went away without waiting for you, sir, and said she was
+going to Pr�vost's, and then wasn't there."
+
+Meanwhile the restaurants were closing, and their lights began to go out.
+Under the trees of the boulevards there were still a few people strolling
+to and fro, barely distinguishable in the gathering darkness. Now and then
+the ghost of a woman glided up to Swann, murmured a few words in his ear,
+asked him to take her home, and left him shuddering. Anxiously he explored
+every one of these vaguely seen shapes, as though among the phantoms of
+the dead, in the realms of darkness, he had been searching for a lost
+Eurydice.
+
+Among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the
+agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious
+as the great gust of agitation which, now and then, sweeps over the human
+spirit. For then the creature in whose company we are seeking amusement at
+the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided, that is the
+creature whom we shall henceforward love. It is not necessary that she
+should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or even as much as others.
+All that is necessary is that our taste for her should become exclusive.
+And that condition is fulfilled so soon as--in the moment when she has
+failed to meet us--for the pleasure which we were on the point of enjoying
+in her charming company is abruptly substituted an anxious torturing
+desire, whose object is the creature herself, an irrational, absurd
+desire, which the laws of civilised society make it impossible to satisfy
+and difficult to assuage--the insensate, agonising desire to possess her.
+
+Swann made R�mi drive him to such restaurants as were still open; it was
+the sole hypothesis, now, of that happiness which he had contemplated so
+calmly; he no longer concealed his agitation, the price he set upon their
+meeting, and promised, in case of success, to reward his coachman, as
+though, by inspiring in him a will to triumph which would reinforce his
+own, he could bring it to pass, by a miracle, that Odette--assuming that
+she had long since gone home to bed,--might yet be found seated in some
+restaurant on the boulevards. He pursued the quest as far as the Maison
+Dor�e, burst twice into Tortoni's and, still without catching sight of
+her, was emerging from the Caf� Anglais, striding with haggard gaze
+towards his carriage, which was waiting for him at the corner of the
+Boulevard des Italiens, when he collided with a person coming in the
+opposite direction; it was Odette; she explained, later, that there had
+been no room at Pr�vost's, that she had gone, instead, to sup at the
+Maison Dor�e, and had been sitting there in an alcove where he must have
+overlooked her, and that she was now looking for her carriage.
+
+She had so little expected to see him that she started back in alarm. As
+for him, he had ransacked the streets of Paris, not that he supposed it
+possible that he should find her, but because he would have suffered even
+more cruelly by abandoning the attempt. But now the joy (which, his reason
+had never ceased to assure him, was not, that evening at least, to be
+realised) was suddenly apparent, and more real than ever before; for he
+himself had contributed nothing to it by anticipating probabilities,--it
+remained integral and external to himself; there was no need for him to
+draw on his own resources to endow it with truth--'twas from itself that
+there emanated, 'twas itself that projected towards him that truth whose
+glorious rays melted and scattered like the cloud of a dream the sense of
+loneliness which had lowered over him, that truth upon which he had
+supported, nay founded, albeit unconsciously, his vision of bliss. So will
+a traveller, who has come down, on a day of glorious weather, to the
+Mediterranean shore, and is doubtful whether they still exist, those lands
+which he has left, let his eyes be dazzled, rather than cast a backward
+glance, by the radiance streaming towards him from the luminous and
+unfading azure at his feet.
+
+He climbed after her into the carriage which she had kept waiting, and
+ordered his own to follow.
+
+She had in her hand a bunch of cattleyas, and Swann could see, beneath the
+film of lace that covered her head, more of the same flowers fastened to a
+swansdown plume. She was wearing, under her cloak, a flowing gown of black
+velvet, caught up on one side so as to reveal a large triangular patch of
+her white silk skirt, with an 'insertion,' also of white silk, in the
+cleft of her low-necked bodice, in which were fastened a few more
+cattleyas.  She had scarcely recovered from the shock which the sight of
+Swann had given her, when some obstacle made the horse start to one side.
+They were thrown forward from their seats; she uttered a cry, and fell
+back quivering and breathless.
+
+"It's all right," he assured her, "don't be frightened." And he slipped
+his arm round her shoulder, supporting her body against his own; then went
+on: "Whatever you do, don't utter a word; just make a sign, yes or no, or
+you'll be out of breath again. You won't mind if I put the flowers
+straight on your bodice; the jolt has loosened them. I'm afraid of their
+dropping out; I'm just going to fasten them a little more securely."
+
+She was not used to being treated with so much formality by men, and
+smiled as she answered: "No, not at all; I don't mind in the least."
+
+But he, chilled a little by her answer, perhaps, also, to bear out the
+pretence that he had been sincere in adopting the stratagem, or even
+because he was already beginning to believe that he had been, exclaimed:
+"No, no; you mustn't speak. You will be out of breath again. You can
+easily answer in signs; I shall understand. Really and truly now, you
+don't mind my doing this? Look, there is a little--I think it must be
+pollen, spilt over your dress,--may I brush it off with my hand? That's
+not too hard; I'm not hurting you, am I? I'm tickling you, perhaps, a
+little; but I don't want to touch the velvet in case I rub it the wrong
+way. But, don't you see, I really had to fasten the flowers; they would
+have fallen out if I hadn't.  Like that, now; if I just push them a little
+farther down.... Seriously, I'm not annoying you, am I? And if I just
+sniff them to see whether they've really lost all their scent? I don't
+believe I ever smelt any before; may I?  Tell the truth, now."
+
+Still smiling, she shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly, as who should
+say, "You're quite mad; you know very well that I like it."
+
+He slipped his other hand upwards along Odette's cheek; she fixed her eyes
+on him with that languishing and solemn air which marks the women of the
+old Florentine's paintings, in whose faces he had found the type of hers;
+swimming at the brink of her fringed lids, her brilliant eyes, large and
+finely drawn as theirs, seemed on the verge of breaking from her face and
+rolling down her cheeks like two great tears. She bent her neck, as all
+their necks may be seen to bend, in the pagan scenes as well as in the
+scriptural. And although her attitude was, doubtless, habitual and
+instinctive, one which she knew to be appropriate to such moments, and was
+careful not to forget to assume, she seemed to need all her strength to
+hold her face back, as though some invisible force were drawing it down
+towards Swann's. And Swann it was who, before she allowed her face, as
+though despite her efforts, to fall upon his lips, held it back for a
+moment longer, at a little distance between his hands. He had intended to
+leave time for her mind to overtake her body's movements, to recognise the
+dream which she had so long cherished and to assist at its realisation,
+like a mother invited as a spectator when a prize is given to the child
+whom she has reared and loves. Perhaps, moreover, Swann himself was fixing
+upon these features of an Odette not yet possessed, not even kissed by
+him, on whom he was looking now for the last time, that comprehensive gaze
+with which, on the day of his departure, a traveller strives to bear away
+with him in memory the view of a country to which he may never return.
+
+But he was so shy in approaching her that, after this evening which had
+begun by his arranging her cattleyas and had ended in her complete
+surrender, whether from fear of chilling her, or from reluctance to
+appear, even retrospectively, to have lied, or perhaps because he lacked
+the audacity to formulate a more urgent requirement than this (which could
+always be repeated, since it had not annoyed her on the first occasion),
+he resorted to the same pretext on the following days. If she had any
+cattleyas pinned to her bodice, he would say: "It is most unfortunate; the
+cattleyas don't need tucking in this evening; they've not been disturbed
+as they were the other night; I think, though, that this one isn't quite
+straight. May I see if they have more scent than the others?" Or else, if
+she had none: "Oh! no cattleyas this evening; then there's nothing for me
+to arrange." So that for some time there was no change from the procedure
+which he had followed on that first evening, when he had started by
+touching her throat, with his fingers first and then with his lips, but
+their caresses began invariably with this modest exploration. And long
+afterwards, when the arrangement (or, rather, the ritual pretence of an
+arrangement) of her cattleyas had quite fallen into desuetude, the
+metaphor "Do a cattleya," transmuted into a simple verb which they would
+employ without a thought of its original meaning when they wished to refer
+to the act of physical possession (in which, paradoxically, the possessor
+possesses nothing), survived to commemorate in their vocabulary the long
+forgotten custom from which it sprang. And yet possibly this particular
+manner of saying "to make love" had not the precise significance of its
+synonyms. However disillusioned we may be about women, however we may
+regard the possession of even the most divergent types as an invariable
+and monotonous experience, every detail of which is known and can be
+described in advance, it still becomes a fresh and stimulating pleasure if
+the women concerned be--or be thought to be--so difficult as to oblige us
+to base our attack upon some unrehearsed incident in our relations with
+them, as was originally for Swann the arrangement of the cattleyas. He
+trembled as he hoped, that evening, (but Odette, he told himself, if she
+were deceived by his stratagem, could not guess his intention) that it was
+the possession of this woman that would emerge for him from their large
+and richly coloured petals; and the pleasure which he already felt, and
+which Odette tolerated, he thought, perhaps only because she was not yet
+aware of it herself, seemed to him for that reason--as it might have
+seemed to the first man when he enjoyed it amid the flowers of the earthly
+paradise--a pleasure which had never before existed, which he was striving
+now to create, a pleasure--and the special name which he was to give to it
+preserved its identity--entirely individual and new.
+
+The ice once broken, every evening, when he had taken her home, he must
+follow her into the house; and often she would come out again in her
+dressing-gown, and escort him to his carriage, and would kiss him before
+the eyes of his coachman, saying: "What on earth does it matter what
+people see?" And on evenings when he did not go to the Verdurins' (which
+happened occasionally, now that he had opportunities of meeting Odette
+elsewhere), when--more and more rarely--he went into society, she would
+beg him to come to her on his way home, however late he might be. The
+season was spring, the nights clear and frosty. He would come away from an
+evening party, jump into his victoria, spread a rug over his knees, tell
+the friends who were leaving at the same time, and who insisted on his
+going home with them, that he could not, that he was not going in their
+direction; then the coachman would start off at a fast trot without
+further orders, knowing quite well where he had to go. His friends would
+be left marvelling, and, as a matter of fact, Swann was no longer the same
+man.  No one ever received a letter from him now demanding an introduction
+to a woman. He had ceased to pay any attention to women, and kept away
+from the places in which they were ordinarily to be met. In a restaurant,
+or in the country, his manner was deliberately and directly the opposite
+of that by which, only a few days earlier, his friends would have
+recognised him, that manner which had seemed permanently and unalterably
+his own. To such an extent does passion manifest itself in us as a
+temporary and distinct character, which not only takes the place of our
+normal character but actually obliterates the signs by which that
+character has hitherto been discernible. On the other hand, there was one
+thing that was, now, invariable, namely that wherever Swann might be
+spending the evening, he never failed to go on afterwards to Odette. The
+interval of space separating her from him was one which he must as
+inevitably traverse as he must descend, by an irresistible gravitation,
+the steep slope of life itself.  To be frank, as often as not, when he had
+stayed late at a party, he would have preferred to return home at once,
+without going so far out of his way, and to postpone their meeting until
+the morrow; but the very fact of his putting himself to such inconvenience
+at an abnormal hour in order to visit her, while he guessed that his
+friends, as he left them, were saying to one another: "He is tied hand and
+foot; there must certainly be a woman somewhere who insists on his going
+to her at all hours," made him feel that he was leading the life of the
+class of men whose existence is coloured by a love-affair, and in whom the
+perpetual sacrifice which they are making of their comfort and of their
+practical interests has engendered a spiritual charm. Then, though he may
+not consciously have taken this into consideration, the certainty that she
+was waiting for him, that she was not anywhere or with anyone else, that
+he would see her before he went home, drew the sting from that anguish,
+forgotten, it is true, but latent and ever ready to be reawakened, which
+he had felt on the evening when Odette had left the Verdurins' before his
+arrival, an anguish the actual cessation of which was so agreeable that it
+might even be called a state of happiness.  Perhaps it was to that hour of
+anguish that there must be attributed the importance which Odette had
+since assumed in his life. Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to
+us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so
+much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to
+belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, makes of our
+lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on which that person and
+ourselves are ever more or less in contact. Swann could not without
+anxiety ask himself what Odette would mean to him in the years that were
+to come. Sometimes, as he looked up from his victoria on those fine and
+frosty nights of early spring, and saw the dazzling moonbeams fall between
+his eyes and the deserted streets, he would think of that other face,
+gleaming and faintly roseate like the moon's, which had, one day, risen on
+the horizon of his mind and since then had shed upon the world that
+mysterious light in which he saw it bathed. If he arrived after the hour
+at which Odette sent her servants to bed, before ringing the bell at the
+gate of her little garden, he would go round first into the other street,
+over which, at the ground-level, among the windows (all exactly alike, but
+darkened) of the adjoining houses, shone the solitary lighted window of
+her room. He would rap upon the pane, and she would hear the signal, and
+answer, before running to meet him at the gate. He would find, lying open
+on the piano, some of her favourite music, the _Valse des Roses_, the
+_Pauvre Fou_ of Tagliafico (which, according to the instructions embodied
+in her will, was to be played at her funeral); but he would ask her,
+instead, to give him the little phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. It was true
+that Odette played vilely, but often the fairest impression that remains
+in our minds of a favourite air is one which has arisen out of a jumble of
+wrong notes struck by unskilful fingers upon a tuneless piano. The little
+phrase was associated still, in Swann's mind, with his love for Odette. He
+felt clearly that this love was something to which there were no
+corresponding external signs, whose meaning could not be proved by any but
+himself; he realised, too, that Odette's qualities were not such as to
+justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in her company.
+And often, when the cold government of reason stood unchallenged, he would
+readily have ceased to sacrifice so many of his intellectual and social
+interests to this imaginary pleasure. But the little phrase, as soon as it
+struck his ear, had the power to liberate in him the room that was needed
+to contain it; the proportions of Swann's soul were altered; a margin was
+left for a form of enjoyment which corresponded no more than his love for
+Odette to any external object, and yet was not, like his enjoyment of that
+love, purely individual, but assumed for him an objective reality superior
+to that of other concrete things. This thirst for an untasted charm, the
+little phrase would stimulate it anew in him, but without bringing him
+any definite gratification to assuage it. With the result that those parts
+of Swann's soul in which the little phrase had obliterated all care for
+material interests, those human considerations which affect all men alike,
+were left bare by it, blank pages on which he was at liberty to inscribe
+the name of Odette.  Moreover, where Odette's affection might seem ever so
+little abrupt and disappointing, the little phrase would come to
+supplement it, to amalgamate with it its own mysterious essence. Watching
+Swann's face while he listened to the phrase, one would have said that he
+was inhaling an anaesthetic which allowed him to breathe more deeply. And
+the pleasure which the music gave him, which was shortly to create in him
+a real longing, was in fact closely akin, at such moments, to the pleasure
+which he would have derived from experimenting with perfumes, from
+entering into contract with a world for which we men were not created,
+which appears to lack form because our eyes cannot perceive it, to lack
+significance because it escapes our intelligence, to which we may attain
+by way of one sense only. Deep repose, mysterious refreshment for
+Swann,--for him whose eyes, although delicate interpreters of painting,
+whose mind, although an acute observer of manners, must bear for ever the
+indelible imprint of the barrenness of his life,--to feel himself
+transformed into a creature foreign to humanity, blinded, deprived of his
+logical faculty, almost a fantastic unicorn, a chimaera-like creature
+conscious of the world through his two ears alone. And as,
+notwithstanding, he sought in the little phrase for a meaning to which his
+intelligence could not descend, with what a strange frenzy of intoxication
+must he strip bare his innermost soul of the whole armour of reason, and
+make it pass, unattended, through the straining vessel, down into the dark
+filter of sound. He began to reckon up how much that was painful, perhaps
+even how much secret and unappeased sorrow underlay the sweetness of the
+phrase; and yet to him it brought no suffering. What matter though the
+phrase repeated that love is frail and fleeting, when his love was so
+strong! He played with the melancholy which the phrase diffused, he felt
+it stealing over him, but like a caress which only deepened and sweetened
+his sense of his own happiness.  He would make Odette play him the phrase
+again, ten, twenty times on end, insisting that, while she played, she
+must never cease to kiss him.  Every kiss provokes another. Ah, in those
+earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring into life. How
+closely, in their abundance, are they pressed one against another; until
+lovers would find it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour, as
+to count the flowers in a meadow in May. Then she would pretend to stop,
+saying: "How do you expect me to play when you keep on holding me? I can't
+do everything at once. Make up your mind what you want; am I to play the
+phrase or do you want to play with me?" Then he would become annoyed, and
+she would burst out with a laugh which, was transformed, as it left her
+lips, and descended upon him in a shower of kisses. Or else she would look
+at him sulkily, and he would see once again a face worthy to figure in
+Botticelli's 'Life of Moses,' he would place it there, giving to Odette's
+neck the necessary inclination; and when he had finished her portrait in
+distemper, in the fifteenth century, on the wall of the Sixtine, the idea
+that she was, none the less, in the room with him still, by the piano, at
+that very moment, ready to be kissed and won, the idea of her material
+existence, of her being alive, would sweep over him with so violent an
+intoxication that, with eyes starting from his head and jaws that parted
+as though to devour her, he would fling himself upon this Botticelli
+maiden and kiss and bite her cheeks. And then, as soon as he had left the
+house, not without returning to kiss her once again, because he had
+forgotten to take away with him, in memory, some detail of her fragrance
+or of her features, while he drove home in his victoria, blessing the name
+of Odette who allowed him to pay her these daily visits, which, although
+they could not, he felt, bring any great happiness to her, still, by
+keeping him immune from the fever of jealousy--by removing from him every
+possibility of a fresh outbreak of the heart-sickness which had manifested
+itself in him that evening, when he had failed to find her at the
+Verdurins'--might help him to arrive, without any recurrence of those
+crises, of which the first had been so distressing that it must also be
+the last, at the termination of this strange series of hours in his life,
+hours almost enchanted, in the same manner as these other, following
+hours, in which he drove through a deserted Paris by the light of the
+moon: noticing as he drove home that the satellite had now changed its
+position, relatively to his own, and was almost touching the horizon;
+feeling that his love, also, was obedient to these immutable laws of
+nature, he asked himself whether this period, upon which he had entered,
+was to last much longer, whether presently his mind's eye would cease to
+behold that dear countenance, save as occupying a distant and diminished
+position, and on the verge of ceasing to shed on him the radiance of its
+charm. For Swann was finding in things once more, since he had fallen in
+love, the charm that he had found when, in his adolescence, he had fancied
+himself an artist; with this difference, that what charm lay in them now
+was conferred by Odette alone. He could feel reawakening in himself the
+inspirations of his boyhood, which had been dissipated among the
+frivolities of his later life, but they all bore, now, the reflection, the
+stamp of a particular being; and during the long hours which he now found
+a subtle pleasure in spending at home, alone with his convalescent spirit,
+he became gradually himself again, but himself in thraldom to another.
+
+He went to her only in the evenings, and knew nothing of how she spent her
+time during the day, any more than he knew of her past; so little, indeed,
+that he had not even the tiny, initial clue which, by allowing us to
+imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire foreknowledge. And so he
+never asked himself what she might be doing, or what her life had been.
+Only he smiled sometimes at the thought of how, some years earlier, when
+he still did not know her, some one had spoken to him of a woman who, if
+he remembered rightly, must certainly have been Odette, as of a 'tart,' a
+'kept' woman, one of those women to whom he still attributed (having lived
+but little in their company) the entire set of characteristics,
+fundamentally perverse, with which they had been, for many years, endowed
+by the imagination of certain novelists. He would say to himself that one
+has, as often as not, only to take the exact counterpart of the reputation
+created by the world in order to judge a person fairly, when with such a
+character he contrasted that of Odette, so good, so simple, so
+enthusiastic in the pursuit of ideals, so nearly incapable of not telling
+the truth that, when he had once begged her, so that they might dine
+together alone, to write to Mme. Verdurin, saying that she was unwell, the
+next day he had seen her, face to face with Mme. Verdurin, who asked
+whether she had recovered, blushing, stammering, and, in spite of herself,
+revealing in every feature how painful, what a torture it was to her to
+act a lie; and, while in her answer she multiplied the fictitious details
+of an imaginary illness, seeming to ask pardon, by her suppliant look and
+her stricken accents, for the obvious falsehood of her words.
+
+On certain days, however, though these came seldom, she would call upon
+him in the afternoon, to interrupt his musings or the essay on Ver-meer to
+which he had latterly returned. His servant would come in to say that Mme.
+de Cr�cy was in the small drawing-room. He would go in search of her, and,
+when he opened the door, on Odette's blushing countenance, as soon as she
+caught sight of Swann, would appear--changing the curve of her lips, the
+look in her eyes, the moulding of her cheeks--an all-absorbing smile. Once
+he was left alone he would see again that smile, and her smile of the day
+before, another with which she had greeted him sometime else, the smile
+which had been her answer, in the carriage that night, when he had asked
+her whether she objected to his rearranging her cattleyas; and the life of
+Odette at all other times, since he knew nothing of it, appeared to him
+upon a neutral and colourless background, like those sheets of sketches by
+Watteau upon which one sees, here and there, in every corner and in all
+directions, traced in three colours upon the buff paper, innumerable
+smiles. But, once in a while, illuminating a chink of that existence which
+Swann still saw as a complete blank, even if his mind assured him that it
+was not so, because he was unable to imagine anything that might occupy
+it, some friend who knew them both, and suspecting that they were in love,
+had not dared to tell him anything about her that was of the least
+importance, would describe Odette's figure, as he had seen her, that very
+morning, going on foot up the Rue Abbattucci, in a cape trimmed with
+skunks, wearing a Rembrandt hat, and a bunch of violets in her bosom. This
+simple outline reduced Swann to utter confusion by enabling him suddenly
+to perceive that Odette had an existence which was not wholly subordinated
+to his own; he burned to know whom she had been seeking to fascinate by
+this costume in which he had never seen her; he registered a vow to insist
+upon her telling him where she had been going at that intercepted moment,
+as though, in all the colourless life--a life almost nonexistent, since
+she was then invisible to him--of his mistress, there had been but a
+single incident apart from all those smiles directed towards himself;
+namely, her walking abroad beneath a Rembrandt hat, with a bunch of
+violets in her bosom.
+
+Except when he asked her for Vinteuil's little phrase instead of the
+_Valse des Roses_, Swann made no effort to induce her to play the things
+that he himself preferred, nor, in literature any more than in music, to
+correct the manifold errors of her taste. He fully realised that she was
+not intelligent. When she said how much she would like him to tell her
+about the great poets, she had imagined that she would suddenly get to
+know whole pages of romantic and heroic verse, in the style of the Vicomte
+de Borelli, only even more moving. As for Vermeer of Delft, she asked
+whether he had been made to suffer by a woman, if it was a woman that had
+inspired him, and once Swann had told her that no one knew, she had lost
+all interest in that painter. She would often say: "I'm sure, poetry;
+well, of course, there'd be nothing like it if it was all true, if the
+poets really believed the things they said. But as often as not you'll
+find there's no one so mean and calculating as those fellows. I know
+something about poetry. I had a friend, once, who was in love with a poet
+of sorts. In his verses he never spoke of anything but love, and heaven,
+and the stars.  Oh! she was properly taken in! He had more than three
+hundred thousand francs out of her before he'd finished." If, then, Swann
+tried to shew her in what artistic beauty consisted, how one ought to
+appreciate poetry or painting, after a minute or two she would cease to
+listen, saying: "Yes...  I never thought it would be like that." And he
+felt that her disappointment was so great that he preferred to lie to her,
+assuring her that what he had said was nothing, that he had only touched
+the surface, that he had not time to go into it all properly, that there
+was more in it than that. Then she would interrupt with a brisk, "More in
+it? What?... Do tell me!", but he did not tell her, for he realised how
+petty it would appear to her, and how different from what she had
+expected, less sensational and less touching; he was afraid, too, lest,
+disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the same time be
+disillusioned in the greater matter of love.
+
+With the result that she found Swann inferior, intellectually, to what she
+had supposed. "You're always so reserved; I can't make you out." She
+marvelled increasingly at his indifference to money, at his courtesy to
+everyone alike, at the delicacy of his mind. And indeed it happens, often
+enough, to a greater man than Swann ever was, to a scientist or artist,
+when he is not wholly misunderstood by the people among whom he lives,
+that the feeling in them which proves that they have been convinced of the
+superiority of his intellect is created not by any admiration for his
+ideas--for those are entirely beyond them--but by their respect for what
+they term his good qualities. There was also the respect with which Odette
+was inspired by the thought of Swann's social position, although she had
+no desire that he should attempt to secure invitations for herself.
+Perhaps she felt that such attempts would be bound to fail; perhaps,
+indeed, she feared lest, merely by speaking of her to his friends, he
+should provoke disclosures of an unwelcome kind. The fact remains that she
+had consistently held him to his promise never to mention her name. Her
+reason for not wishing to go into society was, she had told him, a quarrel
+which she had had, long ago, with another girl, who had avenged herself by
+saying nasty things about her. "But," Swann objected, "surely, people
+don't all know your friend." "Yes, don't you see, it's like a spot of oil;
+people are so horrid." Swann was unable, frankly, to appreciate this
+point; on the other hand, he knew that such generalisations as "People are
+so horrid," and "A word of scandal spreads like a spot of oil," were
+generally accepted as true; there must, therefore, be cases to which they
+were literally applicable.  Could Odette's case be one of these? He teased
+himself with the question, though not for long, for he too was subject to
+that mental oppression which had so weighed upon his father, whenever he
+was faced by a difficult problem. In any event, that world of society
+which concealed such terrors for Odette inspired her, probably, with no
+very great longing to enter it, since it was too far removed from the
+world which she already knew for her to be able to form any clear
+conception of it. At the same time, while in certain respects she had
+retained a genuine simplicity (she had, for instance, kept up a friendship
+with a little dressmaker, now retired from business, up whose steep and
+dark and fetid staircase she clambered almost every day), she still
+thirsted to be in the fashion, though her idea of it was not altogether
+that held by fashionable people. For the latter, fashion is a thing that
+emanates from a comparatively small number of leaders, who project it to a
+considerable distance--with more or less strength according as one is
+nearer to or farther from their intimate centre--over the widening circle
+of their friends and the friends of their friends, whose names form a sort
+of tabulated index. People 'in society' know this index by heart, they are
+gifted in such matters with an erudition from which they have extracted a
+sort of taste, of tact, so automatic in its operation that Swann, for
+example, without needing to draw upon his knowledge of the world, if he
+read in a newspaper the names of the people who had been guests at a
+dinner, could tell at once how fashionable the dinner had been, just as a
+man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the
+literary merit of its author. But Odette was one of those persons (an
+extremely numerous class, whatever the fashionable world may think, and to
+be found in every section of society) who do not share this knowledge, but
+imagine fashion to be something of quite another kind, which assumes
+different aspects according to the circle to which they themselves belong,
+but has the special characteristic--common alike to the fashion of which
+Odette used to dream and to that before which Mme. Cottard bowed--of being
+directly accessible to all. The other kind, the fashion of 'fashionable
+people,' is, it must be admitted, accessible also; but there are
+inevitable delays. Odette would say of some one: "He never goes to any
+place that isn't really smart."
+
+And if Swann were to ask her what she meant by that, she would answer,
+with a touch of contempt, "Smart places! Why, good heavens, just fancy, at
+your age, having to be told what the smart places are in Paris! What do
+you expect me to say? Well, on Sunday mornings there's the Avenue de
+l'Imp�ratrice, and round the lake at five o'clock, and on Thursdays the
+Eden-Th��tre, and the Hippodrome on Fridays; then there are the balls..."
+
+"What balls?"
+
+"Why, silly, the balls people give in Paris; the smart ones, I mean.  Wait
+now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of the
+jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the
+best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears such
+swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a
+light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with that
+old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave a ball
+the other night, and all the smart people in Paris were there. I should
+have loved to go! but you had to shew your invitation at the door, and I
+couldn't get one anywhere. After all, I'm just as glad, now, that I didn't
+go; I should have been killed in the crush, and seen nothing. Still, just
+to be able to say one had been to Herbinger's ball. You know how vain I
+am! However, you may be quite certain that half the people who tell you
+they were there are telling stories.... But I am surprised that you
+weren't there, a regular 'tip-topper' like you."
+
+Swann made no attempt, however, to modify this conception of fashion;
+feeling that his own came no nearer to the truth, was just as fatuous,
+devoid of all importance, he saw no advantage to be gained by imparting it
+to his mistress, with the result that, after a few months, she ceased to
+take any interest in the people to whose houses he went, except when they
+were the means of his obtaining tickets for the paddock at race-meetings
+or first-nights at the theatre. She hoped that he would continue to
+cultivate such profitable acquaintances, but she had come to regard them
+as less smart since the day when she had passed the Marquise de
+Villeparisis in the street, wearing a black serge dress and a bonnet with
+strings.
+
+"But she looks like a pew-opener, like an old charwoman, darling!  That a
+marquise! Goodness knows I'm not a marquise, but you'd have to pay me a
+lot of money before you'd get me to go about Paris rigged out like that!"
+
+Nor could she understand Swann's continuing to live in his house on the
+Quai d'Orl�ans, which, though she dared not tell him so, she considered
+unworthy of him.
+
+It was true that she claimed to be fond of 'antiques,' and used to assume
+a rapturous and knowing air when she confessed how she loved to spend the
+whole day 'rummaging' in second-hand shops, hunting for 'bric-�-brac,' and
+things of the 'right date.' Although it was a point of honour, to which
+she obstinately clung, as though obeying some old family custom, that she
+should never answer any questions, never give any account of what she did
+during the daytime, she spoke to Swann once about a friend to whose house
+she had been invited, and had found that everything in it was 'of the
+period.' Swann could not get her to tell him what 'period' it was. Only
+after thinking the matter over she replied that it was 'mediaeval'; by
+which she meant that the walls were panelled. Some time later she spoke to
+him again of her friend, and added, in the hesitating but confident tone
+in which one refers to a person whom one has met somewhere, at dinner, the
+night before, of whom one had never heard until then, but whom one's hosts
+seemed to regard as some one so celebrated and important that one hopes
+that one's listener will know quite well who is meant, and will be duly
+impressed: "Her dining-room... is...  eighteenth century!" Incidentally,
+she had thought it hideous, all bare, as though the house were still
+unfinished; women looked frightful in it, and it would never become the
+fashion. She mentioned it again, a third time, when she shewed Swann a
+card with the name and address of the man who had designed the
+dining-room, and whom she wanted to send for, when she had enough money,
+to see whether he could not do one for her too; not one like that, of
+course, but one of the sort she used to dream of, one which,
+unfortunately, her little house would not be large enough to contain, with
+tall sideboards, Renaissance furniture and fireplaces like the Ch�teau at
+Blois. It was on this occasion that she let out to Swann what she really
+thought of his abode on the Quai d'Orl�ans; he having ventured the
+criticism that her friend had indulged, not in the Louis XVI style, for,
+he went on, although that was not, of course, done, still it might be made
+charming, but in the 'Sham-Antique.'
+
+"You wouldn't have her live, like you, among a lot of broken-down chairs
+and threadbare carpets!" she exclaimed, the innate respectability of the
+middle-class housewife rising impulsively to the surface through the
+acquired dilettantism of the 'light woman.'
+
+People who enjoyed 'picking-up' things, who admired poetry, despised
+sordid calculations of profit and loss, and nourished ideals of honour and
+love, she placed in a class by themselves, superior to the rest of
+humanity.  There was no need actually to have those tastes, provided one
+talked enough about them; when a man had told her at dinner that he loved
+to wander about and get his hands all covered with dust in the old
+furniture shops, that he would never be really appreciated in this
+commercial age, since he was not concerned about the things that
+interested it, and that he belonged to another generation altogether, she
+would come home saying: "Why, he's an adorable creature; so sensitive! I
+had no idea," and she would conceive for him a strong and sudden
+friendship. But, on the other hand, men who, like Swann, had these tastes
+but did not speak of them, left her cold. She was obliged, of course, to
+admit that Swann was most generous with his money, but she would add,
+pouting: "It's not the same thing, you see, with him," and, as a matter of
+fact, what appealed to her imagination was not the practice of
+disinterestedness, but its vocabulary.
+
+Feeling that, often, he could not give her in reality the pleasures of
+which she dreamed, he tried at least to ensure that she should be happy in
+his company, tried not to contradict those vulgar ideas, that bad taste
+which she displayed on every possible occasion, which all the same he
+loved, as he could not help loving everything that came from her, which
+even fascinated him, for were they not so many more of those
+characteristic features, by virtue of which the essential qualities of the
+woman emerged, and were made visible? And so, when she was in a happy mood
+because she was going to see the _Reine Topaze_, or when her eyes grew
+serious, troubled, petulant, if she was afraid of missing the flower-show,
+or merely of not being in time for tea, with muffins and toast, at the Rue
+Royale tea-rooms, where she believed that regular attendance was
+indispensable, and set the seal upon a woman's certificate of 'smartness,'
+Swann, enraptured, as all of us are, at times, by the natural behaviour of
+a child, or by the likeness of a portrait, which appears to be on the
+point of speaking, would feel so distinctly the soul of his mistress
+rising to fill the outlines of her face that he could not refrain from
+going across and welcoming it with his lips. "Oh, then, so little Odette
+wants us to take her to the flower-show, does she?  she wants to be
+admired, does she? very well, we will take her there, we can but obey her
+wishes." As Swann's sight was beginning to fail, he had to resign himself
+to a pair of spectacles, which he wore at home, when working, while to
+face the world he adopted a single eyeglass, as being less disfiguring.
+The first time that she saw it in his eye, she could not contain herself
+for joy: "I really do think--for a man, that is to say--it is tremendously
+smart! How nice you look with it! Every inch a gentleman.  All you want
+now is a title!" she concluded, with a tinge of regret in her voice. He
+liked Odette to say these things, just as, if he had been in love with a
+Breton girl, he would have enjoyed seeing her in her coif and hearing her
+say that she believed in ghosts. Always until then, as is common among men
+whose taste for the fine arts develops independently of their sensuality,
+a grotesque disparity had existed between the satisfactions which he would
+accord to either taste simultaneously; yielding to the seduction of works
+of art which grew more and more subtle as the women in whose company he
+enjoyed them grew more illiterate and common, he would take a little
+servant-girl to a screened box in a theatre where there was some decadent
+piece which he had wished to see performed, or to an exhibition of
+impressionist painting, with the conviction, moreover, that an
+educated, 'society' woman would have understood them no better, but would
+not have managed to keep quiet about them so prettily. But, now that he
+was in love with Odette, all this was changed; to share her sympathies, to
+strive to be one with her in spirit was a task so attractive that he tried
+to find satisfaction in the things that she liked, and did find a
+pleasure, not only in copying her habits but in adopting her opinions,
+which was all the deeper because, as those habits and opinions sprang from
+no roots in her intelligence, they suggested to him nothing except that
+love, for the sake of which he had preferred them to his own. If he went
+again to _Serge Panine_, if he looked out for opportunities of going to
+watch Olivier M�tra conducting, it was for the pleasure of being initiated
+into every one of the ideas in Odette's mind, of feeling that he had an
+equal share in all her tastes. This charm of drawing him closer to her,
+which her favourite plays and pictures and places possessed, struck him as
+being more mysterious than the intrinsic charm of more beautiful things
+and places, which appealed to him by their beauty, but without recalling
+her.  Besides, having allowed the intellectual beliefs of his youth to
+grow faint, until his scepticism, as a finished 'man of the world,' had
+gradually penetrated them unawares, he held (or at least he had held for
+so long that he had fallen into the habit of saying) that the objects
+which we admire have no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing
+is a matter of dates and castes, and consists in a series of fashions, the
+most vulgar of which are worth just as much as those which are regarded as
+the most refined.  And as he had decided that the importance which Odette
+attached to receiving cards tot a private view was not in itself any more
+ridiculous than the pleasure which he himself had at one time felt in
+going to luncheon with the Prince of Wales, so he did not think that the
+admiration which she professed for Monte-Carlo or for the Righi was any
+more unreasonable than his own liking for Holland (which she imagined as
+ugly) and for Versailles (which bored her to tears). And so he denied
+himself the pleasure of visiting those places, consoling himself with the
+reflection that it was for her sake that he wished to feel, to like
+nothing that was not equally felt and liked by her.
+
+Like everything else that formed part of Odette's environment, and was no
+more, in a sense, than the means whereby he might see and talk to her more
+often, he enjoyed the society of the Verdurins. With them, since, at the
+heart of all their entertainments, dinners, musical evenings, games,
+suppers in fancy dress, excursions to the country, theatre parties, even
+the infrequent 'big evenings' when they entertained 'bores,' there were
+the presence of Odette, the sight of Odette, conversation with Odette, an
+inestimable boon which the Verdurins, by inviting him to their house,
+bestowed on Swann, he was happier in the little 'nucleus' than anywhere
+else, and tried to find some genuine merit in each of its members,
+imagining that his tastes would lead him to frequent their society for the
+rest of his life. Never daring to whisper to himself, lest he should doubt
+the truth of the suggestion, that he would always be in love with Odette,
+at least when he tried to suppose that he would always go to the
+Verdurins' (a proposition which, a priori, raised fewer fundamental
+objections on the part of his intelligence), he saw himself for the future
+continuing to meet Odette every evening; that did not, perhaps, come quite
+to the same thing as his being permanently in love with her, but for the
+moment while he was in love with her, to feel that he would not, one day,
+cease to see her was all that he could ask.  "What a charming atmosphere!"
+he said to himself. "How entirely genuine life is to these people! They
+are far more intelligent, far more artistic, surely, than the people one
+knows. Mme. Verdurin, in spite of a few trifling exaggerations which are
+rather absurd, has a sincere love of painting and music! What a passion
+for works of art, what anxiety to give pleasure to artists! Her ideas
+about some of the people one knows are not quite right, but then their
+ideas about artistic circles are altogether wrong! Possibly I make no
+great intellectual demands upon conversation, but I am perfectly happy
+talking to Cottard, although he does trot out those idiotic puns. And as
+for the painter, if he is rather unpleasantly affected when he tries to be
+paradoxical, still he has one of the finest brains that I have ever come
+across. Besides, what is most important, one feels quite free there, one
+does what one likes without constraint or fuss. What a flow of humour
+there is every day in that drawing-room! Certainly, with a few rare
+exceptions, I never want to go anywhere else again. It will become more
+and more of a habit, and I shall spend the rest of my life among them."
+
+And as the qualities which he supposed to be an intrinsic part of the
+Verdurin character were no more, really, than their superficial reflection
+of the pleasure which had been enjoyed in their society by his love for
+Odette, those qualities became more serious, more profound, more vital, as
+that pleasure increased. Since Mme. Verdurin gave Swann, now and then,
+what alone could constitute his happiness; since, on an evening when he
+felt anxious because Odette had talked rather more to one of the party
+than to another, and, in a spasm of irritation, would not take the
+initiative by asking her whether she was coming home, Mme. Verdurin
+brought peace and joy to his troubled spirit by the spontaneous
+exclamation: "Odette!  You'll see M. Swann home, won't you?"; since, when
+the summer holidays came, and after he had asked himself uneasily whether
+Odette might not leave Paris without him, whether he would still be able
+to see her every day, Mme. Verdurin was going to invite them both to spend
+the summer with her in the country; Swann, unconsciously allowing
+gratitude and self-interest to filter into his intelligence and to
+influence his ideas, went so far as to proclaim that Mme. Verdurin was "a
+great and noble soul." Should any of his old fellow-pupils in the Louvre
+school of painting speak to him of some rare or eminent artist, "I'd a
+hundred times rather," he would reply, "have the Verdurins." And, with a
+solemnity of diction which was new in him: "They are magnanimous
+creatures, and magnanimity is, after all, the one thing that matters, the
+one thing that gives us distinction here on earth. Look you, there are
+only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have reached
+an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all whom one is
+going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes, and, to make
+up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to leave them again
+as long as one lives. Very well!" he went on, with the slight emotion
+which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of what he is
+doing, he says something, not because it is true but because he enjoys
+saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words as though they
+came from some one else, "The die is now cast; I have elected to love none
+but magnanimous souls, and to live only in an atmosphere of magnanimity.
+You ask me whether Mme. Verdurin is really intelligent. I can assure you
+that she has given me proofs of a nobility of heart, of a loftiness of
+soul, to which no one could possibly attain--how could they?--without a
+corresponding loftiness of mind. Without question, she has a profound
+understanding of art. But it is not, perhaps, in that that she is most
+admirable; every little action, ingeniously, exquisitely kind, which she
+has performed for my sake, every friendly attention, simple little things,
+quite domestic and yet quite sublime, reveal a more profound comprehension
+of existence than all your textbooks of philosophy."
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+He might have reminded himself, all the same, that there were various old
+friends of his family who were just as simple as the Verdurins, companions
+of his early days who were just as fond of art, that he knew other
+'great-hearted creatures,' and that, nevertheless, since he had cast his
+vote in favour of simplicity, the arts, and magnanimity, he had entirely
+ceased to see them. But these people did not know Odette, and, if they had
+known her, would never have thought of introducing her to him.
+
+And so there was probably not, in the whole of the Verdurin circle, a
+single one of the 'faithful' who loved them, or believed that he loved
+them, as dearly as did Swann. And yet, when M. Verdurin said that he was
+not satisfied with Swann, he had not only expressed his own sentiments, he
+had unwittingly discovered his wife's. Doubtless Swann had too particular
+an affection for Odette, as to which he had failed to take Mme.  Verdurin
+daily into his confidence; doubtless the very discretion with which he
+availed himself of the Verdurins' hospitality, refraining, often, from
+coming to dine with them for a reason which they never suspected, and in
+place of which they saw only an anxiety on his part not to have to decline
+an invitation to the house of some 'bore' or other; doubtless, also, and
+despite all the precautions which he had taken to keep it from them, the
+gradual discovery which they were making of his brilliant position in
+society--doubtless all these things contributed to their general annoyance
+with Swann. But the real, the fundamental reason was quite different.
+What had happened was that they had at once discovered in him a locked
+door, a reserved, impenetrable chamber in which he still professed
+silently to himself that the Princesse de Sagan was not grotesque, and
+that Cottard's jokes were not amusing; in a word (and for all that he
+never once abandoned his friendly attitude towards them all, or revolted
+from their dogmas), they had discovered an impossibility of imposing those
+dogmas upon him, of entirely converting him to their faith, the like of
+which they had never come across in anyone before. They would have
+forgiven his going to the houses of 'bores' (to whom, as it happened, in
+his heart of hearts he infinitely preferred the Verdurins and all their
+little 'nucleus') had he consented to set a good example by openly
+renouncing those 'bores' in the presence of the 'faithful.' But that was
+an abjuration which, as they well knew, they were powerless to extort.
+
+What a difference was there in a 'newcomer' whom Odette had asked them to
+invite, although she herself had met him only a few times, and on whom
+they were building great hopes--the Comte de Forcheville! (It turned out
+that he was nothing more nor less than the brother-in-law of Saniette, a
+discovery which filled all the 'faithful' with amazement: the manners of
+the old palaeographer were so humble that they had always supposed him to
+be of a class inferior, socially, to their own, and had never expected to
+learn that he came of a rich and relatively aristocratic family.) Of
+course, Forcheville was enormously the 'swell,' which Swann was not or had
+quite ceased to be; of course, he would never dream of placing, as Swann
+now placed, the Verdurin circle above any other. But he lacked that
+natural refinement which prevented Swann from associating himself with the
+criticisms (too obviously false to be worth his notice) that Mme. Verdurin
+levelled at people whom he knew. As for the vulgar and affected tirades in
+which the painter sometimes indulged, the bag-man's pleasantries which
+Cottard used to hazard,--whereas Swann, who liked both men sincerely,
+could easily find excuses for these without having either the courage or
+the hypocrisy to applaud them, Forcheville, on the other hand, was on an
+intellectual level which permitted him to be stupified, amazed by the
+invective (without in the least understanding what it all was about), and
+to be frankly delighted by the wit. And the very first dinner at the
+Verdurins' at which Forcheville was present threw a glaring light upon all
+the differences between them, made his qualities start into prominence and
+precipitated the disgrace of Swann.
+
+There was, at this dinner, besides the usual party, a professor from the
+Sorbonne, one Brichot, who had met M. and Mme. Verdurin at a
+watering-place somewhere, and, if his duties at the university and his
+other works of scholarship had not left him with very little time to
+spare, would gladly have come to them more often. For he had that
+curiosity, that superstitious outlook on life, which, combined with a
+certain amount of scepticism with regard to the object of their studies,
+earn for men of intelligence, whatever their profession, for doctors who
+do not believe in medicine, for schoolmasters who do not believe in Latin
+exercises, the reputation of having broad, brilliant, and indeed superior
+minds. He affected, when at Mme. Verdurin's, to choose his illustrations
+from among the most topical subjects of the day, when he spoke of
+philosophy or history, principally because he regarded those sciences as
+no more, really, than a preparation for life itself, and imagined that he
+was seeing put into practice by the 'little clan' what hitherto he had
+known only from books; and also, perhaps, because, having had drilled into
+him as a boy, and having unconsciously preserved, a feeling of reverence
+for certain subjects, he thought that he was casting aside the scholar's
+gown when he ventured to treat those subjects with a conversational
+licence, which seemed so to him only because the folds of the gown still
+clung.
+
+Early in the course of the dinner, when M. de Forcheville, seated on the
+right of Mme. Verdurin, who, in the 'newcomer's' honour, had taken great
+pains with her toilet, observed to her: "Quite original, that white
+dress," the Doctor, who had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was
+he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a "de," and was on
+the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as to come
+into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective
+'_blanche_' and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out,
+"_Blanche_? Blanche of Castile?" then, without moving his head, shot a
+furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the whole.
+While Swann, by the painful and futile effort which he made to smile,
+testified that he thought the pun absurd, Forcheville had shewn at once
+that he could appreciate its subtlety, and that he was a man of the world,
+by keeping within its proper limits a mirth the spontaneity of which had
+charmed Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"What are you to say of a scientist like that?" she asked Forcheville.
+"You can't talk seriously to him for two minutes on end. Is that the sort
+of thing you tell them at your hospital?" she went on, turning to the
+Doctor. "They must have some pretty lively times there, if that's the
+case. I can see that I shall have to get taken in as a patient!"
+
+"I think I heard the Doctor speak of that wicked old humbug, Blanche of
+Castile, if I may so express myself. Am I not right, Madame?" Brichot
+appealed to Mme. Verdurin, who, swooning with merriment, her eyes tightly
+closed, had buried her face in her two hands, from between which, now and
+then, escaped a muffled scream.
+
+"Good gracious, Madame, I would not dream of shocking the reverent-minded,
+if there are any such around this table, _sub rosa_... I recognise,
+moreover, that our ineffable and Athenian--oh, how infinitely
+Athenian--Republic is capable of honouring, in the person of that
+obscurantist old she-Capet, the first of our chiefs of police. Yes,
+indeed, my dear host, yes, indeed!" he repeated in his ringing voice,
+which sounded a separate note for each syllable, in reply to a protest by
+M.  Verdurin. "The Chronicle of Saint Denis, and the authenticity of its
+information is beyond question, leaves us no room for doubt on that point.
+No one could be more fitly chosen as Patron by a secularising proletariat
+than that mother of a Saint, who let him see some pretty fishy saints
+besides, as Suger says, and other great St. Bernards of the sort; for with
+her it was a case of taking just what you pleased."
+
+"Who is that gentleman?" Forcheville asked Mme. Verdurin. "He seems to
+speak with great authority."
+
+"What! Do you mean to say you don't know the famous Brichot? Why, he's
+celebrated all over Europe."
+
+"Oh, that's Br�chot, is it?" exclaimed Forcheville, who had not quite
+caught the name. "You must tell me all about him"; he went on, fastening a
+pair of goggle eyes on the celebrity. "It's always interesting to meet
+well-known people at dinner. But, I say, you ask us to very select parties
+here. No dull evenings in this house, I'm sure."
+
+"Well, you know what it is really," said Mme. Verdurin modestly.  "They
+feel safe here. They can talk about whatever they like, and the
+conversation goes off like fireworks. Now Brichot, this evening, is
+nothing.  I've seen him, don't you know, when he's been with me, simply
+dazzling; you'd want to go on your knees to him. Well, with anyone else
+he's not the same man, he's not in the least witty, you have to drag the
+words out of him, he's even boring."
+
+"That's strange," remarked Forcheville with fitting astonishment.
+
+A sort of wit like Brichot's would have been regarded as out-and-out
+stupidity by the people among whom Swann had spent his early life, for all
+that it is quite compatible with real intelligence. And the intelligence
+of the Professor's vigorous and well-nourished brain might easily have
+been envied by many of the people in society who seemed witty enough to
+Swann. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into him their likes
+and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained to their ordinary
+social existence, including that annex to social existence which belongs,
+strictly speaking, to the domain of intelligence, namely, conversation,
+that Swann could not see anything in Brichot's pleasantries; to him they
+were merely pedantic, vulgar, and disgustingly coarse. He was shocked,
+too, being accustomed to good manners, by the rude, almost barrack-room
+tone which this student-in-arms adopted, no matter to whom he was
+speaking.  Finally, perhaps, he had lost all patience that evening as he
+watched Mme.  Verdurin welcoming, with such unnecessary warmth, this
+Forcheville fellow, whom it had been Odette's unaccountable idea to bring
+to the house.  Feeling a little awkward, with Swann there also, she had
+asked him on her arrival: "What do you think of my guest?"
+
+And he, suddenly realising for the first time that Forcheville, whom he
+had known for years, could actually attract a woman, and was quite a good
+specimen of a man, had retorted: "Beastly!" He had, certainly, no idea of
+being jealous of Odette, but did not feel quite so happy as usual, and
+when Brichot, having begun to tell them the story of Blanche of Castile's
+mother, who, according to him, "had been with Henry Plantagenet for years
+before they were married," tried to prompt Swann to beg him to continue
+the story, by interjecting "Isn't that so, M. Swann?" in the martial
+accents which one uses in order to get down to the level of an
+unintelligent rustic or to put the 'fear of God' into a trooper, Swann cut
+his story short, to the intense fury of their hostess, by begging to be
+excused for taking so little interest in Blanche of Castile, as he had
+something that he wished to ask the painter. He, it appeared, had been
+that afternoon to an exhibition of the work of another artist, also a
+friend of Mme. Verdurin, who had recently died, and Swann wished to find
+out from him (for he valued his discrimination) whether there had really
+been anything more in this later work than the virtuosity which had struck
+people so forcibly in his earlier exhibitions.
+
+"From that point of view it was extraordinary, but it did not seem to me
+to be a form of art which you could call 'elevated,'" said Swann with a
+smile.
+
+"Elevated... to the height of an Institute!" interrupted Cottard, raising
+his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table burst out laughing.
+
+"What did I tell you?" said Mme. Verdurin to Forcheville. "It's simply
+impossible to be serious with him. When you least expect it, out he comes
+with a joke."
+
+But she observed that Swann, and Swann alone, had not unbent. For one
+thing he was none too well pleased with Cottard for having secured a laugh
+at his expense in front of Forcheville. But the painter, instead of
+replying in a way that might have interested Swann, as he would probably
+have done had they been alone together, preferred to win the easy
+admiration of the rest by exercising his wit upon the talent of their dead
+friend.
+
+"I went up to one of them," he began, "just to see how it was done; I
+stuck my nose into it. Yes, I don't think! Impossible to say whether it
+was done with glue, with soap, with sealing-wax, with sunshine, with
+leaven, with excrem..."
+
+"And one make twelve!" shouted the Doctor, wittily, but just too late, for
+no one saw the point of his interruption.
+
+"It looks as though it were done with nothing at all," resumed the
+painter. "No more chance of discovering the trick than there is in the
+'Night Watch,' or the 'Regents,' and it's even bigger work than either
+Rembrandt or Hals ever did. It's all there,--and yet, no, I'll take my
+oath it isn't."
+
+Then, just as singers who have reached the highest note in their compass,
+proceed to hum the rest of the air in falsetto, he had to be satisfied
+with murmuring, smiling the while, as if, after all, there had been
+something irresistibly amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting: "It
+smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your breath; you
+feel ticklish all over--and not the faintest clue to how it's done. The
+man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring-trick, it's a miracle," bursting
+outright into laughter, "it's dishonest!" Then stopping, solemnly raising
+his head, pitching his voice on a double-bass note which he struggled to
+bring into harmony, he concluded, "And it's so loyal!"
+
+Except at the moment when he had called it "bigger than the 'Night
+Watch,'" a blasphemy which had called forth an instant protest from Mme.
+Verdurin, who regarded the 'Night Watch' as the supreme masterpiece of the
+universe (conjointly with the 'Ninth' and the 'Samothrace'), and at the
+word "excrement," which had made Forcheville throw a sweeping glance round
+the table to see whether it was 'all right,' before he allowed his lips to
+curve in a prudish and conciliatory smile, all the party (save Swann) had
+kept their fascinated and adoring eyes fixed upon the painter.
+
+"I do so love him when he goes up in the air like that!" cried Mme.
+Verdurin, the moment that he had finished, enraptured that the table-talk
+should have proved so entertaining on the very night that Forcheville was
+dining with them for the first time. "Hallo, you!" she turned to her
+husband, "what's the matter with you, sitting there gaping like a great
+animal?  You know, though, don't you," she apologised for him to the
+painter, "that he can talk quite well when he chooses; anybody would think
+it was the first time he had ever listened to you. If you had only seen
+him while you were speaking; he was just drinking it all in. And to-morrow
+he will tell us everything you said, without missing a word."
+
+"No, really, I'm not joking!" protested the painter, enchanted by the
+success of his speech. "You all look as if you thought I was pulling your
+legs, that it was just a trick. I'll take you to see the show, and then
+you can say whether I've been exaggerating; I'll bet you anything you
+like, you'll come away more 'up in the air' than I am!"
+
+"But we don't suppose for a moment that you're exaggerating; we only want
+you to go on with your dinner, and my husband too. Give M. Biche some more
+sole, can't you see his has got cold? We're not in any hurry; you're
+dashing round as if the house was on fire. Wait a little; don't serve the
+salad just yet."
+
+Mme. Cottard, who was a shy woman and spoke but seldom, was not lacking,
+for all that, in self-assurance when a happy inspiration put the right
+word in her mouth. She felt that it would be well received; the thought
+gave her confidence, and what she was doing was done with the object not
+so much of shining herself, as of helping her husband on in his career.
+And so she did not allow the word 'salad,' which Mme. Verdurin had just
+uttered, to pass unchallenged.
+
+"It's not a Japanese salad, is it?" she whispered, turning towards Odette.
+
+And then, in her joy and confusion at the combination of neatness and
+daring which there had been in making so discreet and yet so unmistakable
+an allusion to the new and brilliantly successful play by Dumas, she broke
+down in a charming, girlish laugh, not very loud, but so irresistible that
+it was some time before she could control it.
+
+"Who is that lady? She seems devilish clever," said Forcheville.
+
+"No, it is not. But we will have one for you if you will all come to
+dinner on Friday."
+
+"You will think me dreadfully provincial, sir," said Mme. Cottard to
+Swann, "but, do you know, I haven't been yet to this famous _Francillon_
+that everybody's talking about. The Doctor has been (I remember now, he
+told me what a very great pleasure it had been to him to spend the evening
+with you there) and I must confess, I don't see much sense in spending
+money on seats for him to take me, when he's seen the play already. Of
+course an evening at the Th��tre-Fran�ais is never wasted, really; the
+acting's so good there always; but we have some very nice friends," (Mme.
+Cottard would hardly ever utter a proper name, but restricted herself to
+"some friends of ours" or "one of my friends," as being more
+'distinguished,' speaking in an affected tone and with all the importance
+of a person who need give names only when she chooses) "who often have a
+box, and are kind enough to take us to all the new pieces that are worth
+going to, and so I'm certain to see this _Francillon_ sooner or later, and
+then I shall know what to think. But I do feel such a fool about it, I
+must confess, for, whenever I pay a call anywhere, I find everybody
+talking--it's only natural--about that wretched Japanese salad. Really and
+truly, one's beginning to get just a little tired of hearing about it,"
+she went on, seeing that Swann seemed less interested than she had hoped
+in so burning a topic. "I must admit, though, that it's sometimes quite
+amusing, the way they joke about it: I've got a friend, now, who is most
+original, though she's really a beautiful woman, most popular in society,
+goes everywhere, and she tells me that she got her cook to make one of
+these Japanese salads, putting in everything that young M. Dumas says
+you're to put in, in the play. Then she asked just a few friends to come
+and taste it. I was not among the favoured few, I'm sorry to say. But she
+told us all about it on her next 'day'; it seems it was quite horrible,
+she made us all laugh till we cried. I don't know; perhaps it was the way
+she told it," Mme. Cottard added doubtfully, seeing that Swann still
+looked grave.
+
+And, imagining that it was, perhaps, because he had not been amused by
+_Francillon_: "Well, I daresay I shall be disappointed with it, after all.
+I don't suppose it's as good as the piece Mme. de Cr�cy worships, _Serge
+Panine_. There's a play, if you like; so deep, makes you think! But just
+fancy giving a receipt for a salad on the stage of the Th��tre-Fran�ais!
+Now, _Serge Panine_--! But then, it's like everything that comes from the
+pen of M. Georges Ohnet, it's so well written. I wonder if you know the
+_Ma�tre des Forges_, which I like even better than _Serge Panine_."
+
+"Pardon me," said Swann with polite irony, "but I can assure you that my
+want of admiration is almost equally divided between those masterpieces."
+
+"Really, now; that's very interesting. And what don't you like about them?
+Won't you ever change your mind? Perhaps you think he's a little too sad.
+Well, well, what I always say is, one should never argue about plays or
+novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things, and what may be
+horrible to you is, perhaps, just what I like best."
+
+She was interrupted by Forcheville's addressing Swann. What had happened
+was that, while Mme. Cottard was discussing _Francillon_, Forcheville had
+been expressing to Mme. Verdurin his admiration for what he called the
+"little speech" of the painter. "Your friend has such a flow of language,
+such a memory!" he had said to her when the painter had come to a
+standstill, "I've seldom seen anything like it. He'd make a first-rate
+preacher. By Jove, I wish I was like that. What with him and M. Br�chot
+you've drawn two lucky numbers to-night; though I'm not so sure that,
+simply as a speaker, this one doesn't knock spots off the Professor. It
+comes more naturally with him, less like reading from a book.  Of course,
+the way he goes on, he does use some words that are a bit realistic, and
+all that; but that's quite the thing nowadays; anyhow, it's not often I've
+seen a man hold the floor as cleverly as that, 'hold the spittoon,' as we
+used to say in the regiment, where, by the way, we had a man he rather
+reminds me of. You could take anything you liked--I don't know what--this
+glass, say; and he'd talk away about it for hours; no, not this glass;
+that's a silly thing to say, I'm sorry; but something a little bigger,
+like the battle of Waterloo, or anything of that sort, he'd tell you
+things you simply wouldn't believe. Why, Swann was in the regiment then;
+he must have known him."
+
+"Do you see much of M. Swann?" asked Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"Oh dear, no!" he answered, and then, thinking that if he made himself
+pleasant to Swann he might find favour with Odette, he decided to take
+this opportunity of flattering him by speaking of his fashionable friends,
+but speaking as a man of the world himself, in a tone of good-natured
+criticism, and not as though he were congratulating Swann upon some
+undeserved good fortune: "Isn't that so, Swann? I never see anything of
+you, do I?--But then, where on earth is one to see him? The creature
+spends all his time shut up with the La Tr�mo�lles, with the Laumes and
+all that lot!" The imputation would have been false at any time, and was
+all the more so, now that for at least a year Swann had given up going to
+almost any house but the Verdurins'. But the mere names of families whom
+the Verdurins did not know were received by them in a reproachful silence.
+M. Verdurin, dreading the painful impression which the mention of these
+'bores,' especially when flung at her in this tactless fashion, and in
+front of all the 'faithful,' was bound to make on his wife, cast a covert
+glance at her, instinct with anxious solicitude. He saw then that in her
+fixed resolution to take no notice, to have escaped contact, altogether,
+with the news which had just been addressed to her, not merely to remain
+dumb but to have been deaf as well, as we pretend to be when a friend who
+has been in the wrong attempts to slip into his conversation some excuse
+which we should appear to be accepting, should we appear to have heard it
+without protesting, or when some one utters the name of an enemy, the very
+mention of whom in our presence is forbidden; Mme. Verdurin, so that her
+silence should have the appearance, not of consent but of the unconscious
+silence which inanimate objects preserve, had suddenly emptied her face of
+all life, of all mobility; her rounded forehead was nothing, now, but an
+exquisite study in high relief, which the name of those La Tr�mo�lles,
+with whom Swann was always 'shut up,' had failed to penetrate; her nose,
+just perceptibly wrinkled in a frown, exposed to view two dark cavities
+that were, surely, modelled from life. You would have said that her
+half-opened lips were just about to speak. It was all no more, however,
+than a wax cast, a mask in plaster, the sculptor's design for a monument,
+a bust to be exhibited in the Palace of Industry, where the public would
+most certainly gather in front of it and marvel to see how the sculptor,
+in expressing the unchallengeable dignity of the Verdurins, as opposed to
+that of the La Tr�mo�lles or Laumes, whose equals (if not, indeed, their
+betters) they were, and the equals and betters of all other 'bores' upon
+the face of the earth, had managed to invest with a majesty that was
+almost Papal the whiteness and rigidity of his stone. But the marble at
+last grew animated and let it be understood that it didn't do to be at all
+squeamish if one went to that house, since the woman was always tipsy and
+the husband so uneducated that he called a corridor a 'collidor'!
+
+"You'd need to pay me a lot of money before I'd let any of that lot set
+foot inside my house," Mme. Verdurin concluded, gazing imperially down on
+Swann.
+
+She could scarcely have expected him to capitulate so completely as to
+echo the holy simplicity of the pianist's aunt, who at once exclaimed: "To
+think of that, now! What surprises me is that they can get anybody to go
+near them; I'm sure I should be afraid; one can't be too careful. How can
+people be so common as to go running after them?"
+
+But he might, at least, have replied, like Forcheville: "Gad, she's a
+duchess; there are still plenty of people who are impressed by that sort
+of thing," which would at least have permitted Mme. Verdurin the final
+retort, "And a lot of good may it do them!" Instead of which, Swann merely
+smiled, in a manner which shewed, quite clearly, that he could not, of
+course, take such an absurd suggestion seriously. M. Verdurin, who was
+still casting furtive and intermittent glances at his wife, could see with
+regret, and could understand only too well that she was now inflamed with
+the passion of a Grand Inquisitor who cannot succeed in stamping out a
+heresy; and so, in the hope of bringing Swann round to a retractation (for
+the courage of one's opinions is always a form of calculating cowardice in
+the eyes of the 'other side'), he broke in:
+
+"Tell us frankly, now, what you think of them yourself. We shan't repeat
+it to them, you may be sure."
+
+To which Swann answered: "Why, I'm not in the least afraid of the Duchess
+(if it is of the La Tr�mo�lles that you're speaking). I can assure you
+that everyone likes going to see her. I don't go so far as to say that
+she's at all 'deep'--" he pronounced the word as if it meant something
+ridiculous, for his speech kept the traces of certain mental habits which
+the recent change in his life, a rejuvenation illustrated by his passion
+for music, had inclined him temporarily to discard, so that at times he
+would actually state his views with considerable warmth--"but I am quite
+sincere when I say that she is intelligent, while her husband is
+positively a bookworm.  They are charming people."
+
+His explanation was terribly effective; Mme. Verdurin now realised that
+this one state of unbelief would prevent her 'little nucleus' from ever
+attaining to complete unanimity, and was unable to restrain herself, in
+her fury at the obstinacy of this wretch who could not see what anguish
+his words were causing her, but cried aloud, from the depths of her
+tortured heart, "You may think so if you wish, but at least you need not
+say so to us."
+
+"It all depends upon what you call intelligence." Forcheville felt that it
+was his turn to be brilliant. "Come now, Swann, tell us what you mean by
+intelligence."
+
+"There," cried Odette, "that's one of the big things I beg him to tell me
+about, and he never will."
+
+"Oh, but..." protested Swann.
+
+"Oh, but nonsense!" said Odette.
+
+"A water-butt?" asked the Doctor.
+
+"To you," pursued Forcheville, "does intelligence mean what they call
+clever talk; you know, the sort of people who worm their way into
+society?"
+
+"Finish your sweet, so that they can take your plate away!" said Mme.
+Verdurin sourly to Saniette, who was lost in thought and had stopped
+eating.  And then, perhaps a little ashamed of her rudeness, "It doesn't
+matter; take your time about it; there's no hurry; I only reminded you
+because of the others, you know; it keeps the servants back."
+
+"There is," began Brichot, with a resonant smack upon every syllable, "a
+rather curious definition of intelligence by that pleasing old anarchist
+F�nelon..."
+
+"Just listen to this!" Mme. Verdurin rallied Forcheville and the Doctor.
+"He's going to give us F�nelon's definition of intelligence. That's
+interesting.  It's not often you get a chance of hearing that!"
+
+But Brichot was keeping F�nelon's definition until Swann should have given
+his own. Swann remained silent, and, by this fresh act of recreancy,
+spoiled the brilliant tournament of dialectic which Mme. Verdurin was
+rejoicing at being able to offer to Forcheville.
+
+"You see, it's just the same as with me!" Odette was peevish. "I'm not at
+all sorry to see that I'm not the only one he doesn't find quite up to his
+level."
+
+"These de La Tr�mouailles whom Mme. Verdurin has exhibited to us as so
+little to be desired," inquired Brichot, articulating vigorously, "are
+they, by any chance, descended from the couple whom that worthy old snob,
+S�vign�, said she was delighted to know, because it was so good for her
+peasants? True, the Marquise had another reason, which in her case
+probably came first, for she was a thorough journalist at heart, and
+always on the look-out for 'copy.' And, in the journal which she used to
+send regularly to her daughter, it was Mme. de La Tr�mouaille, kept
+well-informed through all her grand connections, who supplied the foreign
+politics."
+
+"Oh dear, no. I'm quite sure they aren't the same family," said Mme.
+Verdurin desperately.
+
+Saniette who, ever since he had surrendered his untouched plate to the
+butler, had been plunged once more in silent meditation, emerged finally
+to tell them, with a nervous laugh, a story of how he had once dined with
+the Duc de La Tr�mo�lle, the point of which was that the Duke did not know
+that George Sand was the pseudonym of a woman. Swann, who really liked
+Saniette, felt bound to supply him with a few facts illustrative of the
+Duke's culture, which would prove that such ignorance on his part was
+literally impossible; but suddenly he stopped short; he had realised, as
+he was speaking, that Saniette needed no proof, but knew already that the
+story was untrue for the simple reason that he had at that moment invented
+it. The worthy man suffered acutely from the Verdurins' always finding him
+so dull; and as he was conscious of having been more than ordinarily
+morose this evening, he had made up his mind that he would succeed in
+being amusing, at least once, before the end of dinner. He surrendered so
+quickly, looked so wretched at the sight of his castle in ruins, and
+replied in so craven a tone to Swann, appealing to him not to persist in a
+refutation which was already superfluous, "All right; all right; anyhow,
+even if I have made a mistake that's not a crime, I hope," that Swann
+longed to be able to console him by insisting that the story was
+indubitably true and exquisitely funny. The Doctor, who had been
+listening, had an idea that it was the right moment to interject "_Se non
+� vero_," but he was not quite certain of the words, and was afraid of
+being caught out.
+
+After dinner, Forcheville went up to the Doctor. "She can't have been at
+all bad looking, Mme. Verdurin; anyhow, she's a woman you can really talk
+to; that's all I want. Of course she's getting a bit broad in the beam.
+But Mme. de Cr�cy! There's a little woman who knows what's what, all
+right. Upon my word and soul, you can see at a glance she's got the
+American eye, that girl has. We are speaking of Mme. de Cr�cy," he
+explained, as M. Verdurin joined them, his pipe in his mouth. "I should
+say that, as a specimen of the female form--"
+
+"I'd rather have it in my bed than a clap of thunder!" the words came
+tumbling from Cottard, who had for some time been waiting in vain until
+Forcheville should pause for breath, so that he might get in his hoary old
+joke, a chance for which might not, he feared, come again, if the
+conversation should take a different turn; and he produced it now with
+that excessive spontaneity and confidence which may often be noticed
+attempting to cover up the coldness, and the slight flutter of emotion,
+inseparable from a prepared recitation. Forcheville knew and saw the joke,
+and was thoroughly amused. As for M. Verdurin, he was unsparing of his
+merriment, having recently discovered a way of expressing it by a symbol,
+different from his wife's, but equally simple and obvious. Scarcely had he
+begun the movement of head and shoulders of a man who was 'shaking with
+laughter' than he would begin also to cough, as though, in laughing too
+violently, he had swallowed a mouthful of smoke from his pipe. And by
+keeping the pipe firmly in his mouth he could prolong indefinitely the
+dumb-show of suffocation and hilarity. So he and Mme. Verdurin (who, at
+the other side of the room, where the painter was telling her a story, was
+shutting her eyes preparatory to flinging her face into her hands)
+resembled two masks in a theatre, each representing Comedy, but in a
+different way.
+
+M. Verdurin had been wiser than he knew in not taking his pipe out of his
+mouth, for Cottard, having occasion to leave the room for a moment,
+murmured a witty euphemism which he had recently acquired and repeated now
+whenever he had to go to the place in question: "I must just go and see
+the Duc d'Aumale for a minute," so drolly, that M. Verdurin's cough began
+all over again.
+
+"Now, then, take your pipe out of your mouth; can't you see, you'll choke
+if you try to bottle up your laughter like that," counselled Mme.
+Verdurin, as she came round with a tray of liqueurs.
+
+"What a delightful man your husband is; he has the wit of a dozen!"
+declared Forcheville to Mme. Cottard. "Thank you, thank you, an old
+soldier like me can never say 'No' to a drink."
+
+"M. de Forcheville thinks Odette charming," M. Verdurin told his wife.
+
+"Why, do you know, she wants so much to meet you again some day at
+luncheon. We must arrange it, but don't on any account let Swann hear
+about it. He spoils everything, don't you know. I don't mean to say that
+you're not to come to dinner too, of course; we hope to see you very
+often.  Now that the warm weather's coming, we're going to have dinner out
+of doors whenever we can. That won't bore you, will it, a quiet little
+dinner, now and then, in the Bois? Splendid, splendid, that will be quite
+delightful.  ...
+
+"Aren't you going to do any work this evening, I say?" she screamed
+suddenly to the little pianist, seeing an opportunity for displaying,
+before a 'newcomer' of Forcheville's importance, at once her unfailing wit
+and her despotic power over the 'faithful.'
+
+"M. de Forcheville was just going to say something dreadful about you,"
+Mme. Cottard warned her husband as he reappeared in the room.  And he,
+still following up the idea of Forcheville's noble birth, which had
+obsessed him all through dinner, began again with: "I am treating a
+Baroness just now, Baroness Putbus; weren't there some Putbuses in the
+Crusades? Anyhow they've got a lake in Pomerania that's ten times the size
+of the Place de la Concorde. I am treating her for dry arthritis; she's a
+charming woman. Mme. Verdurin knows her too, I believe."
+
+Which enabled Forcheville, a moment later, finding himself alone with Mme.
+Cottard, to complete his favourable verdict on her husband with: "He's an
+interesting man, too; you can see that he knows some good people. Gad! but
+they get to know a lot of things, those doctors."
+
+"D'you want me to play the phrase from the sonata for M. Swann?" asked the
+pianist.
+
+"What the devil's that? Not the sonata-snake, I hope!" shouted M. de
+Forcheville, hoping to create an effect. But Dr. Cottard, who had never
+heard this pun, missed the point of it, and imagined that M. de
+Forcheville had made a mistake. He dashed in boldly to correct it: "No,
+no. The word isn't _serpent-�-sonates_, it's _serpent-�-sonnettes_!" he
+explained in a tone at once zealous, impatient, and triumphant.
+
+Forcheville explained the joke to him. The Doctor blushed.
+
+"You'll admit it's not bad, eh, Doctor?"
+
+"Oh! I've known it for ages."
+
+Then they were silenced; heralded by the waving tremolo of the
+violin-part, which formed a bristling bodyguard of sound two octaves above
+it--and as in a mountainous country, against the seeming immobility of a
+vertically falling torrent, one may distinguish, two hundred feet below,
+the tiny form of a woman walking in the valley--the little phrase had just
+appeared, distant but graceful, protected by the long, gradual unfurling
+of its transparent, incessant and sonorous curtain. And Swann, in his
+heart of hearts, turned to it, spoke to it as to a confidant in the secret
+of his love, as to a friend of Odette who would assure him that he need
+pay no attention to this Forcheville.
+
+"Ah! you've come too late!" Mme. Verdurin greeted one of the 'faithful,'
+whose invitation had been only 'to look in after dinner,' "we've been
+having a simply incomparable Brichot! You never heard such eloquence! But
+he's gone. Isn't that so, M. Swann? I believe it's the first time you've
+met him," she went on, to emphasize the fact that it was to her that Swann
+owed the introduction. "Isn't that so; wasn't he delicious, our Brichot?"
+
+Swann bowed politely.
+
+"No? You weren't interested?" she asked dryly.
+
+"Oh, but I assure you, I was quite enthralled. He is perhaps a little too
+peremptory, a little too jovial for my taste. I should like to see him a
+little less confident at times, a little more tolerant, but one feels that
+he knows a great deal, and on the whole he seems a very sound fellow."
+
+The party broke up very late. Cottard's first words to his wife were: "I
+have rarely seen Mme. Verdurin in such form as she was to-night."
+
+"What exactly is your Mme. Verdurin? A bit of a bad hat, eh?" said
+Forcheville to the painter, to whom he had offered a 'lift.' Odette
+watched his departure with regret; she dared not refuse to let Swann take
+her home, but she was moody and irritable in the carriage, and, when he
+asked whether he might come in, replied, "I suppose so," with an impatient
+shrug of her shoulders. When they had all gone, Mme. Verdurin said to her
+husband: "Did you notice the way Swann laughed, such an idiotic laugh,
+when we spoke about Mme. La Tr�mo�lle?"
+
+She had remarked, more than once, how Swann and Forcheville suppressed the
+particle 'de' before that lady's name. Never doubting that it was done on
+purpose, to shew that they were not afraid of a title, she had made up her
+mind to imitate their arrogance, but had not quite grasped what
+grammatical form it ought to take. Moreover, the natural corruptness of
+her speech overcoming her implacable republicanism, she still said
+instinctively "the de La Tr�mo�lles," or, rather (by an abbreviation
+sanctified by the usage of music-hall singers and the writers of the
+'captions' beneath caricatures, who elide the 'de'), "the d'La
+Tr�mo�lles," but she corrected herself at once to "Madame La
+Tr�mo�lle.--The _Duchess_, as Swann calls her," she added ironically, with
+a smile which proved that she was merely quoting, and would not, herself,
+accept the least responsibility for a classification so puerile and
+absurd.
+
+"I don't mind saying that I thought him extremely stupid."
+
+M. Verdurin took it up. "He's not sincere. He's a crafty customer, always
+hovering between one side and the other. He's always trying to run with
+the hare and hunt with the hounds. What a difference between him and
+Forcheville. There, at least, you have a man who tells you straight out
+what he thinks. Either you agree with him or you don't. Not like the other
+fellow, who's never definitely fish or fowl. Did you notice, by the way,
+that Odette seemed all out for Forcheville, and I don't blame her, either.
+And then, after all, if Swann tries to come the man of fashion over us,
+the champion of distressed Duchesses, at any rate the other man has got a
+title; he's always Comte de Forcheville!" he let the words slip delicately
+from his lips, as though, familiar with every page of the history of that
+dignity, he were making a scrupulously exact estimate of its value, in
+relation to others of the sort.
+
+"I don't mind saying," Mme. Verdurin went on, "that he saw fit to utter
+some most venomous, and quite absurd insinuations against Brichot.
+Naturally, once he saw that Brichot was popular in this house, it was a
+way of hitting back at us, of spoiling our party. I know his sort, the
+dear, good friend of the family, who pulls you all to pieces on the stairs
+as he's going away."
+
+"Didn't I say so?" retorted her husband. "He's simply a failure; a poor
+little wretch who goes through life mad with jealousy of anything that's
+at all big."
+
+Had the truth been known, there was not one of the 'faithful' who was not
+infinitely more malicious than Swann; but the others would all take the
+precaution of tempering their malice with obvious pleasantries, with
+little sparks of emotion and cordiality; while the least indication of
+reserve on Swann's part, undraped in any such conventional formula as "Of
+course, I don't want to say anything--" to which he would have scorned to
+descend, appeared to them a deliberate act of treachery. There are certain
+original and distinguished authors in whom the least 'freedom of speech'
+is thought revolting because they have not begun by flattering the public
+taste, and serving up to it the commonplace expressions to which it is
+used; it was by the same process that Swann infuriated M. Verdurin.  In
+his case as in theirs it was the novelty of his language which led his
+audience to suspect the blackness of his designs.
+
+Swann was still unconscious of the disgrace that threatened him at the
+Verdurins', and continued to regard all their absurdities in the most rosy
+light, through the admiring eyes of love.
+
+As a rule he made no appointments with Odette except for the evenings; he
+was afraid of her growing tired of him if he visited her during the day as
+well; at the same time he was reluctant to forfeit, even for an hour, the
+place that he held in her thoughts, and so was constantly looking out for
+an opportunity of claiming her attention, in any way that would not be
+displeasing to her. If, in a florist's or a jeweller's window, a plant or
+an ornament caught his eye, he would at once think of sending them to
+Odette, imagining that the pleasure which the casual sight of them had
+given him would instinctively be felt, also, by her, and would increase
+her affection for himself; and he would order them to be taken at once to
+the Rue La p�rouse, so as to accelerate the moment in which, as she
+received an offering from him, he might feel himself, in a sense,
+transported into her presence.  He was particularly anxious, always, that
+she should receive these presents before she went out for the evening, so
+that her sense of gratitude towards him might give additional tenderness
+to her welcome when he arrived at the Verdurins', might even--for all he
+knew--if the shopkeeper made haste, bring him a letter from her before
+dinner, or herself, in person, upon his doorstep, come on a little
+extraordinary visit of thanks.  As in an earlier phase, when he had
+experimented with the reflex action of anger and contempt upon her
+character, he sought now by that of gratification to elicit from her fresh
+particles of her intimate feelings, which she had never yet revealed.
+
+Often she was embarrassed by lack of money, and under pressure from a
+creditor would come to him for assistance. He enjoyed this, as he enjoyed
+everything which could impress Odette with his love for herself, or merely
+with his influence, with the extent of the use that she might make of him.
+Probably if anyone had said to him, at the beginning, "It's your position
+that attracts her," or at this stage, "It's your money that she's really
+in love with," he would not have believed the suggestion, nor would he
+have been greatly distressed by the thought that people supposed her to be
+attached to him, that people felt them, to be united by any ties so
+binding as those of snobbishness or wealth. But even if he had accepted
+the possibility, it might not have caused him any suffering to discover
+that Odette's love for him was based on a foundation more lasting than
+mere affection, or any attractive qualities which she might have found in
+him; on a sound, commercial interest; an interest which would postpone for
+ever the fatal day on which she might be tempted to bring their relations
+to an end. For the moment, while he lavished presents upon her, and
+performed all manner of services, he could rely on advantages not
+contained in his person, or in his intellect, could forego the endless,
+killing effort to make himself attractive. And this delight in being a
+lover, in living by love alone, of the reality of which he was inclined to
+be doubtful, the price which, in the long run, he must pay for it, as a
+dilettante in immaterial sensations, enhanced its value in his eyes--as
+one sees people who are doubtful whether the sight of the sea and the
+sound of its waves are really enjoyable, become convinced that they
+are, as also of the rare quality and absolute detachment of their own
+taste, when they have agreed to pay several pounds a day for a room in an
+hotel, from which that sight and that sound may be enjoyed.
+
+One day, when reflections of this order had brought him once again to the
+memory of the time when some one had spoken to him of Odette as of a
+'kept' woman, and when, once again, he had amused himself with contrasting
+that strange personification, the 'kept' woman--an iridescent mixture of
+unknown and demoniacal qualities, embroidered, as in some fantasy of
+Gustave Moreau, with poison-dripping flowers, interwoven with precious
+jewels--with that Odette upon whose face he had watched the passage of the
+same expressions of pity for a sufferer, resentment of an act of
+injustice, gratitude for an act of kindness, which he had seen, in earlier
+days, on his own mother's face, and on the faces of friends; that Odette,
+whose conversation had so frequently turned on the things that he himself
+knew better than anyone, his collections, his room, his old servant, his
+banker, who kept all his title-deeds and bonds;--the thought of the banker
+reminded him that he must call on him shortly, to draw some money. And
+indeed, if, during the current month, he were to come less liberally to
+the aid of Odette in her financial difficulties than in the month before,
+when he had given her five thousand francs, if he refrained from offering
+her a diamond necklace for which she longed, he would be allowing her
+admiration for his generosity to decline, that gratitude which had made
+him so happy, and would even be running the risk of her imagining that his
+love for her (as she saw its visible manifestations grow fewer) had itself
+diminished. And then, suddenly, he asked himself whether that was not
+precisely what was implied by 'keeping' a woman (as if, in fact, that idea
+of 'keeping' could be derived from elements not at all mysterious nor
+perverse, but belonging to the intimate routine of his daily life, such as
+that thousand-franc note, a familiar and domestic object, torn in places
+and mended with gummed paper, which his valet, after paying the household
+accounts and the rent, had locked up hi a drawer in the old writing-desk
+whence he had extracted it to send it, with four others, to Odette) and
+whether it was not possible to apply to Odette, since he had known her
+(for he never imagined for a moment that she could ever have taken a penny
+from anyone else, before), that title, which he had believed so wholly
+inapplicable to her, of 'kept' woman. He could not explore the idea
+further, for a sudden access of that mental lethargy which was, with him,
+congenital, intermittent and providential, happened, at that moment, to
+extinguish every particle of light in his brain, as instantaneously as, at
+a later period, when electric lighting had been everywhere installed, it
+became possible, merely by fingering a switch, to cut off all the supply
+of light from a house.  His mind fumbled, for a moment, in the darkness,
+he took off his spectacles, wiped the glasses, passed his hands over his
+eyes, but saw no light until he found himself face to face with a wholly
+different idea, the realisation that he must endeavour, in the coming
+month, to send Odette six or seven thousand-franc notes instead of five,
+simply as a surprise for her and to give her pleasure.
+
+In the evening, when he did not stay at home until it was time to meet
+Odette at the Verdurins', or rather at one of the open-air restaurants
+which they liked to frequent in the Bois and especially at Saint-Cloud, he
+would go to dine in one of those fashionable houses in which, at one time,
+he had been a constant guest. He did not wish to lose touch with people
+who, for all that he knew, might be of use, some day, to Odette, and
+thanks to whom he was often, in the meantime, able to procure for her some
+privilege or pleasure. Besides, he had been used for so long to the
+refinement and comfort of good society that, side by side with his
+contempt, there had grown up also a desperate need for it, with the result
+that, when he had reached the point after which the humblest lodgings
+appeared to him as precisely on a par with the most princely mansions, his
+senses were so thoroughly accustomed to the latter that he could not enter
+the former without a feeling of acute discomfort. He had the same
+regard--to a degree of identity which they would never have suspected--for
+the little families with small incomes who asked him to dances in their
+flats ("straight upstairs to the fifth floor, and the door on the left")
+as for the Princesse de Parme, who gave the most splendid parties in
+Paris; but he had not the feeling of being actually 'at the ball' when he
+found himself herded with the fathers of families in the bedroom of the
+lady of the house, while the spectacle of wash-hand-stands covered over
+with towels, and of beds converted into cloak-rooms, with a mass of hats
+and great-coats sprawling over their counterpanes, gave him the same
+stifling sensation that, nowadays, people who have been used for half a
+lifetime to electric light derive from a smoking lamp or a candle that
+needs to be snuffed. If he were dining out, he would order his carriage
+for half-past seven; while he changed his clothes, he would be wondering,
+all the time, about Odette, and in this way was never alone, for the
+constant thought of Odette gave to the moments in which he was separated
+from her the same peculiar charm as to those in which she was at his side.
+He would get into his carriage and drive off, but he knew that this
+thought had jumped in after him and had settled down upon his knee, like a
+pet animal which he might take everywhere, and would keep with him at the
+dinner-table, unobserved by his fellow-guests.  He would stroke and fondle
+it, warm himself with it, and, as a feeling of languor swept over him,
+would give way to a slight shuddering movement which contracted his throat
+and nostrils--a new experience, this,--as he fastened the bunch of
+columbines in his buttonhole. He had for some time been feeling neither
+well nor happy, especially since Odette had brought Forcheville to the
+Verdurins', and he would have liked to go away for a while to rest in the
+country. But he could never summon up courage to leave Paris, even for a
+day, while Odette was there. The weather was warm; it was the finest part
+of the spring. And for all that he was driving through a city of stone to
+immure himself in a house without grass or garden, what was incessantly
+before his eyes was a park which he owned, near Combray, where, at four in
+the afternoon, before coming to the asparagus-bed, thanks to the breeze
+that was wafted across the fields from M�s�glise, he could enjoy the
+fragrant coolness of the air as well beneath an arbour of hornbeams in the
+garden as by the bank of the pond, fringed with forget-me-not and iris;
+and where, when he sat down to dinner, trained and twined by the
+gardener's skilful hand, there ran all about his table currant-bush and
+rose.
+
+After dinner, if he had an early appointment in the Bois or at
+Saint-Cloud, he would rise from table and leave the house so
+abruptly--especially if it threatened to rain, and so to scatter the
+'faithful' before their normal time--that on one occasion the Princesse
+des Laumes (at whose house dinner had been so late that Swann had left
+before the coffee came in, to join the Verdurins on the Island in the
+Bois) observed:
+
+"Really, if Swann were thirty years older, and had diabetes, there might
+be some excuse for his running away like that. He seems to look upon us
+all as a joke."
+
+He persuaded himself that the spring-time charm, which he could not go
+down to Combray to enjoy, he would find at least on the He des Cygnes or
+at Saint-Cloud. But as he could think only of Odette, he would return home
+not knowing even if he had tasted the fragrance of the young leaves, or if
+the moon had been shining. He would be welcomed by the little phrase from
+the sonata, played in the garden on the restaurant piano. If there was
+none in the garden, the Verdurins would have taken immense pains to have a
+piano brought out either from a private room or from the restaurant
+itself; not because Swann was now restored to favour; far from it. But the
+idea of arranging an ingenious form of entertainment for some one, even
+for some one whom they disliked, would stimulate them, during the time
+spent in its preparation, to a momentary sense of cordiality and
+affection. Now and then he would remind himself that another fine spring
+evening was drawing to a close, and would force himself to notice the
+trees and the sky. But the state of excitement into which Odette's
+presence never failed to throw him, added to a feverish ailment which, for
+some time now, had scarcely left him, robbed him of that sense of quiet
+and comfort which is an indispensable background to the impressions that
+we derive from nature.
+
+One evening, when Swann had consented to dine with the Verdurins, and had
+mentioned during dinner that he had to attend, next day, the annual
+banquet of an old comrades' association, Odette had at once exclaimed
+across the table, in front of everyone, in front of Forcheville, who was
+now one of the 'faithful,' in front of the painter, in front of Cottard:
+
+"Yes, I know, you have your banquet to-morrow; I sha'n't see you, then,
+till I get home; don't be too late."
+
+And although Swann had never yet taken offence, at all seriously, at
+Odette's demonstrations of friendship for one or other of the 'faithful,'
+he felt an exquisite pleasure on hearing her thus avow, before them all,
+with that calm immodesty, the fact that they saw each other regularly
+every evening, his privileged position in her house, and her own
+preference for him which it implied. It was true that Swann had often
+reflected that Odette was in no way a remarkable woman; and in the
+supremacy which he wielded over a creature so distinctly inferior to
+himself there was nothing that especially flattered him when he heard it
+proclaimed to all the 'faithful'; but since he had observed that, to
+several other men than himself, Odette seemed a fascinating and desirable
+woman, the attraction which her body held for him had aroused a painful
+longing to secure the absolute mastery of even the tiniest particles of
+her heart. And he had begun to attach an incalculable value to those
+moments passed in her house in the evenings, when he held her upon his
+knee, made her tell him what she thought about this or that, and counted
+over that treasure to which, alone of all his earthly possessions, he
+still clung. And so, after this dinner, drawing her aside, he took care to
+thank her effusively, seeking to indicate to her by the extent of his
+gratitude the corresponding intensity of the pleasures which it was in her
+power to bestow on him, the supreme pleasure being to guarantee him
+immunity, for as long as his love should last and he remain vulnerable,
+from the assaults of jealousy.
+
+When he came away from his banquet, the next evening, it was pouring rain,
+and he had nothing but his victoria. A friend offered to take him home in
+a closed carriage, and as Odette, by the fact of her having invited him to
+come, had given him an assurance that she was expecting no one else, he
+could, with a quiet mind and an untroubled heart, rather than set off thus
+in the rain, have gone home and to bed. But perhaps, if she saw that he
+seemed not to adhere to his resolution to end every evening, without
+exception, in her company, she might grow careless, and fail to keep free
+for him just the one evening on which he particularly desired it.
+
+It was after eleven when he reached her door, and as he made his apology
+for having been unable to come away earlier, she complained that it was
+indeed very late; the storm had made her unwell, her head ached, and she
+warned him that she would not let him stay longer than half an hour, that
+at midnight she would send him away; a little while later she felt tired
+and wished to sleep.
+
+"No cattleya, then, to-night?" he asked, "and I've been looking forward so
+to a nice little cattleya."
+
+But she was irresponsive; saying nervously: "No, dear, no cattleya
+tonight.  Can't you see, I'm not well?"
+
+"It might have done you good, but I won't bother you."
+
+She begged him to put out the light before he went; he drew the curtains
+close round her bed and left her. But, when he was in his own house again,
+the idea suddenly struck him that, perhaps, Odette was expecting some one
+else that evening, that she had merely pretended to be tired, that she had
+asked him to put the light out only so that he should suppose that she was
+going to sleep, that the moment he had left the house she had lighted it
+again, and had reopened her door to the stranger who was to be her guest
+for the night. He looked at his watch. It was about an hour and a half
+since he had left her; he went out, took a cab, and stopped it close to
+her house, in a little street running at right angles to that other
+street, which lay at the back of her house, and along which he used to go,
+sometimes, to tap upon her bedroom window, for her to let him in. He left
+his cab; the streets were all deserted and dark; he walked a few yards and
+came out almost opposite her house. Amid the glimmering blackness of all
+the row of windows, the lights in which had long since been put out, he
+saw one, and only one, from which overflowed, between the slats of its
+shutters, dosed like a wine-press over its mysterious golden juice, the
+light that filled the room within, a light which on so many evenings, as
+soon as he saw it, far off, as he turned into the street, had rejoiced his
+heart with its message: "She is there--expecting you," and now tortured
+him with: "She is there with the man she was expecting." He must know who;
+he tiptoed along by the wall until he reached the window, but between the
+slanting bars of the shutters he could see nothing; he could hear, only,
+in the silence of the night, the murmur of conversation. What agony he
+suffered as he watched that light, in whose golden atmosphere were moving,
+behind the closed sash, the unseen and detested pair, as he listened to
+that murmur which revealed the presence of the man who had crept in after
+his own departure, the perfidy of Odette, and the pleasures which she was
+at that moment tasting with the stranger.
+
+And yet he was not sorry that he had come; the torment which had forced
+him to leave his own house had lost its sharpness when it lost its
+uncertainty, now that Odette's other life, of which he had had, at that
+first moment, a sudden helpless suspicion, was definitely there, almost
+within his grasp, before his eyes, in the full glare of the lamp-light,
+caught and kept there, an unwitting prisoner, in that room into which,
+when he would, he might force his way to surprise and seize it; or rather
+he would tap upon the shutters, as he had often done when he had come
+there very late, and by that signal Odette would at least learn that he
+knew, that he had seen the light and had heard the voices; while he
+himself, who a moment ago had been picturing her as laughing at him, as
+sharing with that other the knowledge of how effectively he had been
+tricked, now it was he that saw them, confident and persistent in their
+error, tricked and trapped by none other than himself, whom they believed
+to be a mile away, but who was there, in person, there with a plan, there
+with the knowledge that he was going, in another minute, to tap upon the
+shutter. And, perhaps, what he felt (almost an agreeable feeling) at that
+moment was something more than relief at the solution of a doubt, at the
+soothing of a pain; was an intellectual pleasure. If, since he had fallen
+in love, things had recovered a little of the delicate attraction that
+they had had for him long ago--though only when a light was shed upon them
+by a thought, a memory of Odette--now it was another of the faculties,
+prominent in the studious days of his youth, that Odette had quickened
+with new life, the passion for truth, but for a truth which, too, was
+interposed between himself and his mistress, receiving its light from her
+alone, a private and personal truth the sole object of which (an
+infinitely precious object, and one almost impersonal in its absolute
+beauty) was Odette--Odette in her activities, her environment, her
+projects, and her past. At every other period in his life, the little
+everyday words and actions of another person had always seemed wholly
+valueless to Swann; if gossip about such things were repeated to him, he
+would dismiss it as insignificant, and while he listened it was only the
+lowest, the most commonplace part of his mind that was interested; at such
+moments he felt utterly dull and uninspired. But in this strange phase of
+love the personality of another person becomes so enlarged, so deepened,
+that the curiosity which he could now feel aroused in himself, to know the
+least details of a woman's daily occupation, was the same thirst for
+knowledge with which he had once studied history. And all manner of
+actions, from which, until now, he would have recoiled in shame, such as
+spying, to-night, outside a window, to-morrow, for all he knew, putting
+adroitly provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants,
+listening at doors, seemed to him, now, to be precisely on a level with
+the deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the
+interpretation of old monuments, that was to say, so many different
+methods of scientific investigation, each one having a definite
+intellectual value and being legitimately employable in the search for
+truth.
+
+As his hand stole out towards the shutters he felt a pang of shame at the
+thought that Odette would now know that he had suspected her, that he had
+returned, that he had posted himself outside her window. She had often
+told him what a horror she had of jealous men, of lovers who spied.  What
+he was going to do would be extremely awkward, and she would detest him
+for ever after, whereas now, for the moment, for so long as he refrained
+from knocking, perhaps even in the act of infidelity, she loved him still.
+How often is not the prospect of future happiness thus sacrificed to one's
+impatient insistence upon an immediate gratification. But his desire to
+know the truth was stronger, and seemed to him nobler than his desire for
+her. He knew that the true story of certain events, which he would have
+given his life to be able to reconstruct accurately and in full, was to be
+read within that window, streaked with bars of light, as within the
+illuminated, golden boards of one of those precious manuscripts, by whose
+wealth of artistic treasures the scholar who consults them cannot remain
+unmoved. He yearned for the satisfaction of knowing the truth which so
+impassioned him in that brief, fleeting, precious transcript, on that
+translucent page, so warm, so beautiful. And besides, the advantage which
+he felt--which he so desperately wanted to feel--that he had over them,
+lay perhaps not so much in knowing as in being able to shew them that he
+knew. He drew himself up on tiptoe. He knocked. They had not heard; he
+knocked again; louder; their conversation ceased. A man's voice--he
+strained his ears to distinguish whose, among such of Odette's friends as
+he knew, the voice could be--asked:
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+He could not be certain of the voice. He knocked once again. The window
+first, then the shutters were thrown open. It was too late, now, to
+retire, and since she must know all, so as not to seem too contemptible,
+too jealous and inquisitive, he called out in a careless, hearty,
+welcoming tone:
+
+"Please don't bother; I just happened to be passing, and saw the light.  I
+wanted to know if you were feeling better."
+
+He looked up. Two old gentlemen stood facing him, in the window, one of
+them with a lamp in his hand; and beyond them he could see into the room,
+a room that he had never seen before. Having fallen into the habit, When
+he came late to Odette, of identifying her window by the fact that it was
+the only one still lighted in a row of windows otherwise all alike, he had
+been misled, this time, by the light, and had knocked at the window beyond
+hers, in the adjoining house. He made what apology he could and hurried
+home, overjoyed that the satisfaction of his curiosity had preserved their
+love intact, and that, having feigned for so long, when in Odette's
+company, a sort of indifference, he had not now, by a demonstration of
+jealousy, given her that proof of the excess of his own passion which, in
+a pair of lovers, fully and finally dispenses the recipient from the
+obligation to love the other enough. He never spoke to her of this
+misadventure, he ceased even to think of it himself. But now and then his
+thoughts in their wandering course would come upon this memory where it
+lay unobserved, would startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down
+into his consciousness, and leave him aching with a sharp, far-rooted
+pain. As though this had been a bodily pain, Swann's mind was powerless to
+alleviate it; in the case of bodily pain, however, since it is independent
+of the mind, the mind can dwell upon it, can note that it has diminished,
+that it has momentarily ceased. But with this mental pain, the mind,
+merely by recalling it, created it afresh. To determine not to think of it
+was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still. And when, in
+conversation with his friends, he forgot his sufferings, suddenly a word
+casually uttered would make him change countenance as a wounded man does
+when a clumsy hand has touched his aching limb. When he came away from
+Odette, he was happy, he felt calm, he recalled the smile with which, in
+gentle mockery, she had spoken to him of this man or of that, a smile
+which was all tenderness for himself; he recalled the gravity of her head
+which she seemed to have lifted from its axis to let it droop and fall, as
+though against her will, upon his lips, as she had done on that first
+evening in the carriage; her languishing gaze at him while she lay
+nestling in his arms, her bended head seeming to recede between her
+shoulders, as though shrinking from the cold.
+
+But then, at once, his jealousy, as it had been the shadow of his love,
+presented him with the complement, with the converse of that new smile
+with which she had greeted him that very evening,--with which, now,
+perversely, she was mocking Swann while she tendered her love to another
+--of that lowering of her head, but lowered now to fall on other lips, and
+(but bestowed upon a stranger) of all the marks of affection that she had
+shewn to him. And all these voluptuous memories which he bore away from
+her house were, as one might say, but so many sketches, rough plans, like
+the schemes of decoration which a designer submits to one in outline,
+enabling Swann to form an idea of the various attitudes, aflame or faint
+with passion, which she was capable of adopting for others. With the
+result that he came to regret every pleasure that he tasted in her
+company, every new caress that he invented (and had been so imprudent as
+to point out to her how delightful it was), every fresh charm that he
+found in her, for he knew that, a moment later, they would go to enrich
+the collection of instruments in his secret torture-chamber.
+
+A fresh turn was given to the screw when Swann recalled a sudden
+expression which he had intercepted, a few days earlier, and for the first
+time, in Odette's eyes. It was after dinner at the Verdurins'. Whether it
+was because Forcheville, aware that Saniette, his brother-in-law, was not
+in favour with them, had decided to make a butt of him, and to shine at
+his expense, or because he had been annoyed by some awkward remark which
+Saniette had made to him, although it had passed unnoticed by the rest of
+the party who knew nothing of whatever tactless allusion it might conceal,
+or possibly because he had been for some time looking out for an
+opportunity of securing the expulsion from the house of a fellow-guest who
+knew rather too much about him, and whom he knew to be so nice-minded that
+he himself could not help feeling embarrassed at times merely by his
+presence in the room, Forcheville replied to Saniette's tactless utterance
+with such a volley of abuse, going out of his way to insult him,
+emboldened, the louder he shouted, by the fear, the pain, the entreaties
+of his victim, that the poor creature, after asking Mme. Verdurin whether
+he should stay and receiving no answer, had left the house in stammering
+confusion and with tears in his eyes. Odette had looked on, impassive, at
+this scene; but when the door had closed behind Saniette, she had forced
+the normal expression of her face down, as the saying is, by several pegs,
+so as to bring herself on to the same level of vulgarity as Forcheville;
+her eyes had sparkled with a malicious smile of congratulation upon his
+audacity, of ironical pity for the poor wretch who had been its victim;
+she had darted at him a look of complicity in the crime, which so clearly
+implied: "That's finished him off, or I'm very much mistaken. Did you see
+what a fool he looked? He was actually crying," that Forcheville, when his
+eyes met hers, sobered in a moment from the anger, or pretended anger with
+which he was still flushed, smiled as he explained: "He need only have
+made himself pleasant and he'd have been here still; a good scolding does
+a man no harm, at any time."
+
+One day when Swann had gone out early in the afternoon to pay a call, and
+had failed to find the person at home whom he wished to see, it occurred
+to him to go, instead, to Odette, at an hour when, although he never went
+to her house then as a rule, he knew that she was always at home, resting
+or writing letters until tea-time, and would enjoy seeing her for a
+moment, if it did not disturb her. The porter told him that he believed
+Odette to be in; Swann rang the bell, thought that he heard a sound, that
+he heard footsteps, but no one came to the door. Anxious and annoyed, he
+went round to the other little street, at the back of her house, and stood
+beneath her bedroom window; the curtains were drawn and he could see
+nothing; he knocked loudly upon the pane, he shouted; still no one came.
+He could see that the neighbours were staring at him. He turned away,
+thinking that, after all, he had perhaps been mistaken in believing that
+he heard footsteps; but he remained so preoccupied with the suspicion that
+he could turn his mind to nothing else. After waiting for an hour, he
+returned.  He found her at home; she told him that she had been in the
+house when he rang, but had been asleep; the bell had awakened her; she
+had guessed that it must be Swann, and had run out to meet him, but he had
+already gone. She had, of course, heard him knocking at the window.  Swann
+could at once detect in this story one of those fragments of literal truth
+which liars, when taken by surprise, console themselves by introducing
+into the composition of the falsehood which they have to invent, thinking
+that it can be safely incorporated, and will lend the whole story an air
+of verisimilitude. It was true that, when Odette had just done something
+which she did not wish to disclose, she would take pains to conceal it in
+a secret place in her heart. But as soon as she found herself face to face
+with the man to whom she was obliged to lie, she became uneasy, all her
+ideas melted like wax before a flame, her inventive and her reasoning
+faculties were paralysed, she might ransack her brain but would find only
+a void; still, she must say something, and there lay within her reach
+precisely the fact which she had wished to conceal, which, being the
+truth, was the one thing that had remained. She broke off from it a tiny
+fragment, of no importance in itself, assuring herself that, after all, it
+was the best thing to do, since it was a detail of the truth, and less
+dangerous, therefore, than a falsehood. "At any rate, this is true," she
+said to herself; "that's always something to the good; he may make
+inquiries; he will see that this is true; it won't be this, anyhow, that
+will give me away." But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she had
+not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth had sharp
+edges which could not: be made to fit in, except to those contiguous
+fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily detached it, edges
+which, whatever the fictitious details in which she might embed it, would
+continue to shew, by their overlapping angles and by the gaps which she
+had forgotten to fill, that its proper place was elsewhere.
+
+"She admits that she heard me ring, and then knock, that she knew it was
+myself, that she wanted to see me," Swann thought to himself. "But that
+doesn't correspond with the fact that she did not let me in."
+
+He did not, however, draw her attention to this inconsistency, for he
+thought that, if left to herself, Odette might perhaps produce some
+falsehood which would give him a faint indication of the truth; she spoke;
+he did not interrupt her, he gathered up, with an eager and sorrowful
+piety, the words that fell from her lips, feeling (and rightly feeling,
+since she was hiding the truth behind them as she spoke) that, like the
+veil of a sanctuary, they kept a vague imprint, traced a faint outline of
+that infinitely precious and, alas, undiscoverable truth;--what she had
+been doing, that afternoon, at three o'clock, when he had called,--a truth
+of which he would never possess any more than these falsifications,
+illegible and divine traces, a truth which would exist henceforward only
+in the secretive memory of this creature, who would contemplate it in
+utter ignorance of its value, but would never yield it up to him. It was
+true that he had, now and then, a strong suspicion that Odette's daily
+activities were not hi themselves passionately interesting, and that such
+relations as she might have with other men did not exhale, naturally, in a
+universal sense, or for every rational being, a spirit of morbid gloom
+capable of infecting with fever or of inciting to suicide. He realised, at
+such moments, that that interest, that gloom, existed in him only as a
+malady might exist, and that, once he was cured of the malady, the actions
+of Odette, the kisses that she might have bestowed, would become once
+again as innocuous as those of countless other women. But the
+consciousness that the painful curiosity with which Swann now studied them
+had its origin only in himself was not enough to make him decide that it
+was unreasonable to regard that curiosity as important, and to take every
+possible step to satisfy it. Swann had, in fact, reached an age the
+philosophy of which--supported, in his case, by the current philosophy of
+the day, as well as by that of the circle in which he had spent most of
+his life, the group that surrounded the Princesse des Laumes, in which
+one's intelligence was understood to increase with the strength of one's
+disbelief in everything, and nothing real and incontestable was to be
+discovered, except the individual tastes of each of its members--is no
+longer that of youth, but a positive, almost a medical philosophy, the
+philosophy of men who, instead of fixing their aspirations upon external
+objects, endeavour to separate from the accumulation of the years already
+spent a definite residue of habits and passions which they can regard as
+characteristic and permanent, and with which they will deliberately
+arrange, before anything else, that the kind of existence which they
+choose to adopt shall not prove inharmonious.  Swann deemed it wise to
+make allowance in his life for the suffering which he derived from not
+knowing what Odette had done, just as he made allowance for the impetus
+which a damp climate always gave to his eczema; to anticipate in his
+budget the expenditure of a considerable sum on procuring, with regard to
+the daily occupations of Odette, information the lack of which would make
+him unhappy, just as he reserved a margin for the gratification of other
+tastes from which he knew that pleasure was to be expected (at least,
+before he had fallen in love) such as his taste for collecting things, or
+for good cooking.
+
+When he proposed to take leave of Odette, and to return home, she begged
+him to stay a little longer, and even detained him forcibly, seizing him
+by the arm as he was opening the door to go. But he gave no thought to
+that, for, among the crowd of gestures and speeches and other little
+incidents which go to make up a conversation, it is inevitable that we
+should pass (without noticing anything that arouses our interest) by those
+that hide a truth for which our suspicions are blindly searching, whereas
+we stop to examine others beneath which nothing lies concealed. She kept
+on saying: "What a dreadful pity; you never by any chance come in the
+afternoon, and the one time you do come then I miss you." He knew very
+well that she was not sufficiently in love with him to be so keenly
+distressed merely at having missed his visit, but as she was a
+good-natured woman, anxious to give him pleasure, and often sorry when she
+had done anything that annoyed him, he found it quite natural that she
+should be sorry, on this occasion, that she had deprived him of that
+pleasure of spending an hour in her company, which was so very great a
+pleasure, if not to herself, at any rate to him. All the same, it was a
+matter of so little importance that her air of unrelieved sorrow began at
+length to bewilder him. She reminded him, even more than was usual, of the
+faces of some of the women created by the painter of the Primavera.' She
+had, at that moment, their downcast, heartbroken expression, which seems
+ready to succumb beneath the burden of a grief too heavy to be borne, when
+they are merely allowing the Infant Jesus to play with a pomegranate, or
+watching Moses pour water into a trough. He had seen the same sorrow once
+before on her face, but when, he could no longer say. Then, suddenly, he
+remembered it; it was when Odette had lied, in apologising to Mme.
+Verdurin on the evening after the dinner from which she had stayed away on
+a pretext of illness, but really so that she might be alone with Swann.
+Surely, even had she been the most scrupulous of women, she could hardly
+have felt remorse for so innocent a lie. But the lies which Odette
+ordinarily told were less innocent, and served to prevent discoveries
+which might have involved her in the most terrible difficulties with one
+or another of her friends. And so, when she lied, smitten with fear,
+feeling herself to be but feebly armed for her defence, unconfident of
+success, she was inclined to weep from sheer exhaustion, as children weep
+sometimes when they have not slept. She knew, also, that her lie, as a
+rule, was doing a serious injury to the man to whom she was telling it,
+and that she might find herself at his mercy if she told it badly.
+Therefore she felt at once humble and culpable in his presence. And when
+she had to tell an insignificant, social lie its hazardous associations,
+and the memories which it recalled, would leave her weak with a sense of
+exhaustion and penitent with a consciousness of wrongdoing.
+
+What depressing lie was she now concocting for Swann's benefit, to give
+her that pained expression, that plaintive voice, which seemed to falter
+beneath the effort that she was forcing herself to make, and to plead for
+pardon? He had an idea that it was not merely the truth about what had
+occurred that afternoon that she was endeavouring to hide from him, but
+something more immediate, something, possibly, which had not yet happened,
+but might happen now at any time, and, when it did, would throw a light
+upon that earlier event. At that moment, he heard the front-door bell
+ring. Odette never stopped speaking, but her words dwindled into an
+inarticulate moan. Her regret at not having seen Swann that afternoon, at
+not having opened the door to him, had melted into a universal despair.
+
+He could hear the gate being closed, and the sound of a carriage, as
+though some one were going away--probably the person whom Swann must on no
+account meet--after being told that Odette was not at home.  And then,
+when he reflected that, merely by coming at an hour when he was not in the
+habit of coming, he had managed to disturb so many arrangements of which
+she did not wish him to know, he had a feeling of discouragement that
+amounted, almost, to distress. But since he was in love with Odette, since
+he was in the habit of turning all his thoughts towards her, the pity with
+which he might have been inspired for himself he felt for her only, and
+murmured: "Poor darling!" When finally he left her, she took up several
+letters which were lying on the table, and asked him if he would be so
+good as to post them for her. He walked along to the post-office, took the
+letters from his pocket, and, before dropping each of them into the box,
+scanned its address. They were all to tradesmen, except the last, which
+was to Forcheville. He kept it in his hand. "If I saw what was in this,"
+he argued, "I should know what she calls him, what she says to him,
+whether there really is anything between them. Perhaps, if I don't look
+inside, I shall be lacking in delicacy towards Odette, since in this way
+alone I can rid myself of a suspicion which is, perhaps, a calumny on her,
+which must, in any case, cause her suffering, and which can never possibly
+be set at rest, once the letter is posted."
+
+He left the post-office and went home, but he had kept the last letter in
+his pocket. He lighted a candle, and held up close to its flame the
+envelope which he had not dared to open. At first he could distinguish
+nothing, but the envelope was thin, and by pressing it down on to the
+stiff card which it enclosed he was able, through the transparent paper,
+to read the concluding words. They were a coldly formal signature. If,
+instead of its being himself who was looking at a letter addressed to
+Forcheville, it had been Forcheville who had read a letter addressed to
+Swann, he might have found words in it of another, a far more tender kind!
+He took a firm hold of the card, which was sliding to and fro, the
+envelope being too large for it and then, by moving it with his finger and
+thumb, brought one line after another beneath the part of the envelope
+where the paper was not doubled, through which alone it was possible to
+read.
+
+In spite of all these manoeuvres he could not make it out clearly. Not
+that it mattered, for he had seen enough to assure himself that the letter
+was about some trifling incident of no importance, and had nothing at all
+to do with love; it was something to do with Odette's uncle. Swann had
+read quite plainly at the beginning of the line "I was right," but did not
+understand what Odette had been right in doing, until suddenly a word
+which he had not been able, at first, to decipher, came to light and made
+the whole sentence intelligible: "I was right to open the door; it was my
+uncle." To open the door! Then Forcheville had been there when Swann rang
+the bell, and she had sent him away; hence the sound that Swann had heard.
+
+After that he read the whole letter; at the end she apologised for having
+treated Forcheville with so little ceremony, and reminded him that he had
+left his cigarette-case at her house, precisely what she had written to
+Swann after one of his first visits. But to Swann she had added: "Why did
+you not forget your heart also? I should never have let you have that
+back." To Forcheville nothing of that sort; no allusion that could suggest
+any intrigue between them. And, really, he was obliged to admit that in
+all this business Forcheville had been worse treated than himself, since
+Odette was writing to him to make him believe that her visitor had been an
+uncle. From which it followed that he, Swann, was the man to whom she
+attached importance, and for whose sake she had sent the other away.  And
+yet, if there had been nothing between Odette and Forcheville, why not
+have opened the door at once, why have said, "I was right to open the
+door; it was my uncle." Right? if she was doing nothing wrong at that
+moment how could Forcheville possibly have accounted for her not opening
+the door? For a time Swann stood still there, heartbroken, bewildered, and
+yet happy; gazing at this envelope which Odette had handed to him without
+a scruple, so absolute was her trust in his honour; through its
+transparent window there had been disclosed to him, with the secret
+history of an incident which he had despaired of ever being able to learn,
+a fragment of the life of Odette, seen as through a narrow, luminous
+incision, cut into its surface without her knowledge. Then his jealousy
+rejoiced at the discovery, as though that jealousy had had an independent
+existence, fiercely egotistical, gluttonous of every thing that would feed
+its vitality, even at the expense of Swann himself. Now it had food in
+store, and Swann could begin to grow uneasy afresh every evening, over the
+visits that Odette had received about five o'clock, and could seek to
+discover where Forcheville had been at that hour. For Swann's affection
+for Odette still preserved the form which had been imposed on it, from the
+beginning, by his ignorance of the occupations in which she passed her
+days, as well as by the mental lethargy which prevented him from
+supplementing that ignorance by imagination. He was not jealous, at first,
+of the whole of Odette's life, but of those moments only in which an
+incident, which he had perhaps misinterpreted, had led him to suppose that
+Odette might have played him false. His jealousy, like an octopus which
+throws out a first, then a second, and finally a third tentacle, fastened
+itself irremovably first to that moment, five o'clock in the afternoon,
+then to another, then to another again. But Swann was incapable of
+inventing his sufferings. They were only the memory, the perpetuation of a
+suffering that had come to him from without.
+
+From without, however, everything brought him fresh suffering. He decided
+to separate Odette from Forcheville, by taking her away for a few days to
+the south. But he imagined that she was coveted by every male person in
+the hotel, and that she coveted them in return. And so he, who, in old
+days, when he travelled, used always to seek out new people and crowded
+places, might now be seen fleeing savagely from human society as if it had
+cruelly injured him. And how could he not have turned misanthrope, when in
+every man he saw a potential lover for Odette?  Thus his jealousy did even
+more than the happy, passionate desire which he had originally felt for
+Odette had done to alter Swann's character, completely changing, in the
+eyes of the world, even the outward signs by which that character had been
+intelligible.
+
+A month after the evening on which he had intercepted and read Odette's
+letter to Forcheville, Swann went to a dinner which the Verdurins were
+giving in the Bois. As the party was breaking up he noticed a series of
+whispered discussions between Mme. Verdurin and several of her guests, and
+thought that he heard the pianist being reminded to come next day to a
+party at Chatou; now he, Swann, had not been invited to any party.
+
+The Verdurins had spoken only in whispers, and in vague terms, but the
+painter, perhaps without thinking, shouted out: "There must be no lights
+of any sort, and he must play the Moonlight Sonata in the dark, for us to
+see by."
+
+Mme. Verdurin, seeing that Swann was within earshot, assumed that
+expression in which the two-fold desire to make the speaker be quiet and
+to preserve, oneself, an appearance of guilelessness in the eyes of the
+listener, is neutralised in an intense vacuity; in which the unflinching
+signs of intelligent complicity are overlaid by the smiles of innocence,
+an expression invariably adopted by anyone who has noticed a blunder, the
+enormity of which is thereby at once revealed if not to those who have
+made it, at any rate to him in whose hearing it ought not to have been
+made. Odette seemed suddenly to be in despair, as though she had decided
+not to struggle any longer against the crushing difficulties of life, and
+Swann was anxiously counting the minutes that still separated him from the
+point at which, after leaving the restaurant, while he drove her home, he
+would be able to ask for an explanation, to make her promise, either that
+she would not go to Chatou next day, or that she would procure an
+invitation for him also, and to lull to rest in her arms the anguish that
+still tormented him. At last the carriages were ordered. Mme. Verdurin
+said to Swann:
+
+"Good-bye, then. We shall see you soon, I hope," trying, by the
+friendliness of her manner and the constraint of her smile, to prevent him
+from noticing that she Was not saying, as she would always have until
+then:
+
+"To-morrow, then, at Chatou, and at my house the day after." M. and Mme.
+Verdurin made Forcheville get into their carriage; Swann's was drawn up
+behind it, and he waited for theirs to start before helping Odette into
+his own.
+
+"Odette, we'll take you," said Mme. Verdurin, "we've kept a little corner
+specially for you, beside M. de Forcheville."
+
+"Yes, Mme. Verdurin," said Odette meekly.
+
+"What! I thought I was to take you home," cried Swann, flinging discretion
+to the winds, for the carriage-door hung open, time was precious, and he
+could not, in his present state, go home without her.
+
+"But Mme. Verdurin has asked me..."
+
+"That's all right, you can quite well go home alone; we've left you like
+this dozens of times," said Mme. Verdurin.
+
+"But I had something important to tell Mme. de Cr�cy."
+
+"Very well, you can write it to her instead."
+
+"Good-bye," said Odette, holding out her hand.
+
+He tried hard to smile, but could only succeed in looking utterly
+dejected.
+
+"What do you think of the airs that Swann is pleased to put on with us?"
+Mme. Verdurin asked her husband when they had reached home.  "I was afraid
+he was going to eat me, simply because we offered to take Odette back. It
+really is too bad, that sort of thing. Why doesn't he say, straight out,
+that we keep a disorderly house? I can't conceive how Odette can stand
+such manners. He positively seems to be saying, all the time, 'You belong
+to me!' I shall tell Odette exactly what I think about it all, and I hope
+she will have the sense to understand me." A moment later she added,
+inarticulate with rage: "No, but, don't you see, the filthy creature ..."
+using unconsciously, and perhaps in satisfaction of the same obscure need
+to justify herself--like Fran�oise at Combray when the chicken refused to
+die--the very words which the last convulsions of an inoffensive animal in
+its death agony wring from the peasant who is engaged in taking its life.
+And when Mme. Verdurin's carriage had moved on, and Swann's took its
+place, his coachman, catching sight of his face, asked whether he was
+unwell, or had heard bad news.
+
+Swann sent him away; he preferred to walk, and it was on foot, through the
+Bois, that he came home. He talked to himself, aloud, and in the same
+slightly affected tone which he had been used to adopt when describing the
+charms of the 'little nucleus' and extolling the magnanimity of the
+Verdurins. But just as the conversation, the smiles, the kisses of Odette
+became as odious to him as he had once found them charming, if they were
+diverted to others than himself, so the Verdurins' drawing-room, which,
+not an hour before, had still seemed to him amusing, inspired with a
+genuine feeling for art and even with a sort of moral aristocracy, now
+that it was another than himself whom Odette was going to meet there, to
+love there without restraint, laid bare to him all its absurdities, its
+stupidity, its shame.
+
+He drew a fanciful picture, at which he shuddered in disgust, of the party
+next evening at Chatou. "Imagine going to Chatou, of all places!  Like a
+lot of drapers after closing time! Upon my word, these people are sublime
+in their smugness; they can't really exist; they must all have come out of
+one of Labiche's plays!"
+
+The Cottards would be there; possibly Brichot. "Could anything be more
+grotesque than the lives of these little creatures, hanging on to one
+another like that. They'd imagine they were utterly lost, upon my soul
+they would, if they didn't all meet again to-morrow at _Chatou_!" Alas!
+there would be the painter there also, the painter who enjoyed
+match-making, who would invite Forcheville to come with Odette to his
+studio. He could see Odette, in a dress far too smart for the country,
+"for she is so vulgar in that way, and, poor little thing, she is such a
+fool!"
+
+He could hear the jokes that Mme. Verdurin would make after dinner, jokes
+which, whoever the 'bore' might be at whom they were aimed, had always
+amused him because he could watch Odette laughing at them, laughing with
+him, her laughter almost a part of his. Now he felt that it was possibly
+at him that they would make Odette laugh. "What a fetid form of humour!"
+he exclaimed, twisting his mouth into an expression of disgust so violent
+that he could feel the muscles of his throat stiffen against his collar.
+"How, in God's name, can a creature made in His image find anything to
+laugh at in those nauseating witticisms? The least sensitive nose must be
+driven away in horror from such stale exhalations. It is really impossible
+to believe that any human being is incapable of understanding that, in
+allowing herself merely to smile at the expense of a fellow-creature who
+has loyally held out his hand to her, she is casting herself into a mire
+from which it will be impossible, with the best will in the world, ever to
+rescue her. I dwell so many miles above the puddles in which these filthy
+little vermin sprawl and crawl and bawl their cheap obscenities, that I
+cannot possibly be spattered by the witticisms of a Verdurin!" he cried,
+tossing up his head and arrogantly straightening his body. "God knows that
+I have honestly attempted to pull Odette out of that sewer, and to teach
+her to breathe a nobler and a purer air. But human patience has its
+limits, and mine is at an end," he concluded, as though this sacred
+mission to tear Odette away from an atmosphere of sarcasms dated from
+longer than a few minutes ago, as though he had not undertaken it only
+since it had occurred to him that those sarcasms might, perchance, be
+directed at himself, and might have the effect of detaching Odette from
+him.
+
+He could see the pianist sitting down to play the Moonlight Sonata, and
+the grimaces of Mme. Verdurin, in terrified anticipation of the wrecking
+of her nerves by Beethoven's music. "Idiot, liar!" he shouted, "and a
+creature like that imagines that she's fond of _Art_!" She would say to
+Odette, after deftly insinuating a few words of praise for Forcheville, as
+she had so often done for himself: "You can make room for M. de
+Forcheville there, can't you, Odette?"... '"In the dark!' Codfish!
+Pander!" ... 'Pander' was the name he applied also to the music which
+would invite them to sit in silence, to dream together, to gaze in each
+other's eyes, to feel for each other's hands. He felt that there was much
+to be said, after all, for a sternly censorous attitude towards the arts,
+such as Plato adopted, and Bossuet, and the old school of education in
+France.
+
+In a word, the life which they led at the Verdurins', which he had so
+often described as 'genuine,' seemed to him now the worst possible form of
+life, and their 'little nucleus' the most degraded class of society. "It
+really is," he repeated, "beneath the lowest rung of the social ladder,
+the nethermost circle of Dante. Beyond a doubt, the august words of the
+Florentine refer to the Verdurins! When one comes to think of it, surely
+people 'in society' (and, though one may find fault with them now and
+then, still, after all they are a very different matter from that gang of
+blackmailers) shew a profound sagacity in refusing to know them, or even
+to dirty the tips of their fingers with them. What a sound intuition there
+is in that '_Noli me tangere_' motto of the Faubourg Saint-Germain."
+
+He had long since emerged from the paths and avenues of the Bois, he had
+almost reached his own house, and still, for he had not yet thrown off the
+intoxication of grief, or his whim of insincerity, but was ever more and
+more exhilarated by the false intonation, the artificial sonority of his
+own voice, he continued to perorate aloud in the silence of the night:
+"People 'in society' have their failings, as no one knows better than I;
+but, after all, they are people to whom some things, at least, are
+impossible.  So-and-so" (a fashionable woman whom he had known) "was far
+from being perfect, but, after all, one did find in her a fundamental
+delicacy, a loyalty in her conduct which made her, whatever happened,
+incapable of a felony, which fixes a vast gulf between her and an old hag
+like Verdurin. Verdurin! What a name! Oh, there's something complete about
+them, something almost fine in their trueness to type; they're the most
+perfect specimens of their disgusting class! Thank God, it was high time
+that I stopped condescending to promiscuous intercourse with such infamy,
+such dung."
+
+But, just as the virtues which he had still attributed, an hour or so
+earlier, to the Verdurins, would not have sufficed, even although the
+Verdurins had actually possessed them, if they had not also favoured and
+protected his love, to excite Swann to that state of intoxication in which
+he waxed tender over their magnanimity, an intoxication which, even when
+disseminated through the medium of other persons, could have come to him
+from Odette alone;--so the immorality (had it really existed) which he now
+found in the Verdurins would have been powerless, if they had not invited
+Odette with Forcheville and without him, to unstop the vials of his wrath
+and to make him scarify their 'infamy.' Doubtless Swann's voice shewed a
+finer perspicacity than his own when it refused to utter those words full
+of disgust at the Verdurins and their circle, and of joy at his having
+shaken himself free of it, save in an artificial and rhetorical tone, and
+as though his words had been chosen rather to appease his anger than to
+express his thoughts. The latter, in fact, while he abandoned himself to
+invective, were probably, though he did not know it, occupied with a
+wholly different matter, for once he had reached his house, no sooner had
+he closed the front-door behind him than he suddenly struck his forehead,
+and, making his servant open the door again, dashed out into the street
+shouting, in a voice which, this time, was quite natural; "I believe I
+have found a way of getting invited to the dinner at Chatou to-morrow!"
+But it must have been a bad way, for M. Swann was not invited; Dr.
+Cottard, who, having been summoned to attend a serious case in the
+country, had not seen the Verdurins for some days, and had been prevented
+from appearing at Chatou, said, on the evening after this dinner, as he
+sat down to table at their house:
+
+"Why, aren't we going to see M. Swann this evening? He is quite what you
+might call a personal friend..." "I sincerely trust that we sha'n't!"
+cried Mme. Verdurin. "Heaven preserve us from him; he's too deadly for
+words, a stupid, ill-bred boor."
+
+On hearing these words Cottard exhibited an intense astonishment blended
+with entire submission, as though in the face of a scientific truth which
+contradicted everything that he had previously believed, but was supported
+by an irresistible weight of evidence; with timorous emotion he bowed his
+head over his plate, and merely replied: "Oh--oh--oh--oh--oh!" traversing,
+in an orderly retirement of his forces, into the depths of his being,
+along a descending scale, the whole compass of his voice. After which
+there was no more talk of Swann at the Verdurins'.
+
+    -   -   -
+
+And so that drawing-room which had brought Swann and Odette together
+became an obstacle in the way of their meeting. She no longer said to him,
+as she had said in the early days of their love: "We shall meet, anyhow,
+to-morrow evening; there's a supper-party at the Verdurins'," but "We
+sha'n't be able to meet to-morrow evening; there's a supper-party at the
+Verdurins'." Or else the Verdurins were taking her to the Op�ra-Comique,
+to see _Une Nuit de Cl�op�tre_, and Swann could read in her eyes that
+terror lest he should ask her not to go, which, but a little time before,
+he could not have refrained from greeting with a kiss as it flitted across
+the face of his mistress, but which now exasperated him. "Yet I'm not
+really angry," he assured himself, "when I see how she longs to run away
+and scratch from maggots in that dunghill of cacophony. I'm disappointed;
+not for myself, but for her; disappointed to find that, after living for
+more than six months in daily contact with myself, she has not been
+capable of improving her mind even to the point of spontaneously
+eradicating from it a taste for Victor Mass�! More than that, to find that
+she has not arrived at the stage of understanding that there are evenings
+on which anyone with the least shade of refinement of feeling should be
+willing to forego an amusement when she is asked to do so. She ought to
+have the sense to say: 'I shall not go,' if it were only from policy,
+since it is by what she answers now that the quality of her soul will be
+determined once and for all." And having persuaded himself that it was
+solely, after all, in order that he might arrive at a favourable estimate
+of Odette's spiritual worth that he wished her to stay at home with him
+that evening instead of going to the Op�ra-Comique, he adopted the same
+line of reasoning with her, with the same degree of insincerity as he had
+used with himself, or even with a degree more, for in her case he was
+yielding also to the desire to capture her by her own self-esteem.
+
+"I swear to you," he told her, shortly before she was to leave for the
+theatre, "that, in asking you not to go, I should hope, were I a selfish
+man, for nothing so much as that you should refuse, for I have a thousand
+other things to do this evening, and I shall feel that I have been tricked
+and trapped myself, and shall be thoroughly annoyed, if, after all, you
+tell me that you are not going. But my occupations, my pleasures are not
+everything; I must think of you also. A day may come when, seeing me
+irrevocably sundered from you, you will be entitled to reproach me with
+not having warned you at the decisive hour in which I felt that I was
+going to pass judgment on you, one of those stern judgments which love
+cannot long resist. You see, your _Nuit de Cl�op�tre_ (what a title!) has
+no bearing on the point. What I must know is whether you are indeed one of
+those creatures in the lowest grade of mentality and even of charm, one of
+those contemptible creatures who are incapable of foregoing a pleasure.
+For if you are such, how could anyone love you, for you are not even a
+person, a definite, imperfect, but at least perceptible entity. You are a
+formless water that will trickle down any slope that it may come upon, a
+fish devoid of memory, incapable of thought, which all its life long in
+its aquarium will continue to dash itself, a hundred times a day, against
+a wall of glass, always mistaking it for water. Do you realise that your
+answer will have the effect--I do not say of making me cease from that
+moment to love you, that goes without saying, but of making you less
+attractive to my eyes when I realise that you are not a person, that you
+are beneath everything in the world and have not the intelligence to raise
+yourself one inch higher? Obviously, I should have preferred to ask you,
+as though it had been a matter of little or no importance, to give up your
+_Nuit de Cl�op�tre_ (since you compel me to sully my lips with so abject a
+name), in the hope that you would go to it none the less. But, since I had
+resolved to weigh you in the balance, to make so grave an issue depend
+upon your answer, I considered it more honourable to give you due
+warning."
+
+Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emotion and uncertainty.
+Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it was
+to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes which
+her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying any heed
+to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not make unless
+they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in love, it was
+superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in love later on.
+And so, she would have heard Swann out with the utmost tranquillity had
+she not noticed that it was growing late, and that if he went on speaking
+for any length of time she would "never" as she told him with a fond
+smile, obstinate but slightly abashed, "get there in time for the
+Overture."
+
+On other occasions he had assured himself that the one thing which, more
+than anything else, would make him cease to love her, would be her refusal
+to abandon the habit of lying. "Even from the point of view of coquetry,
+pure and simple," he had told her, "can't you see how much of your
+attraction you throw away when you stoop to lying? By a frank
+admission--how many faults you might redeem! Really, you are far less
+intelligent than I supposed!" In vain, however, did Swann expound to her
+thus all the reasons that she had for not lying; they might have succeeded
+in overthrowing any universal system of mendacity, but Odette had no such
+system; she contented herself, merely, whenever she wished Swann to remain
+in ignorance of anything that she had done, with not telling him of it. So
+that a lie was, to her, something to be used only as a special expedient;
+and the one thing that could make her decide whether she should avail
+herself of a lie or not was a reason which, too, was of a special and
+contingent order, namely the risk of Swann's discovering that she had not
+told him the truth.
+
+Physically, she was passing through an unfortunate phase; she was growing
+stouter, and the expressive, sorrowful charm, the surprised, wistful
+expressions which she had formerly had, seemed to have vanished with her
+first youth, with the result that she became most precious to Swann at the
+very moment when he found her distinctly less good-looking. He would gaze
+at her for hours on end, trying to recapture the charm which he had once
+seen in her and could not find again. And yet the knowledge that, within
+this new and strange chrysalis, it was still Odette that lurked, still the
+same volatile temperament, artful and evasive, was enough to keep Swann
+seeking, with as much passion as ever, to captivate her. Then he would
+look at photographs of her, taken two years before, and would remember how
+exquisite she had been. And that would console him, a little, for all the
+sufferings that he voluntarily endured on her account.
+
+When the Verdurins took her off to Saint-Germain, or to Chatou, or to
+Meulan, as often as not, if the weather was fine, they would propose to
+remain there for the night, and not go home until next day. Mme.  Verdurin
+would endeavour to set at rest the scruples of the pianist, whose aunt had
+remained in Paris: "She will be only too glad to be rid of you for a day.
+How on earth could she be anxious, when she knows you're with us? Anyhow,
+I'll take you all under my wing; she can put the blame on me."
+
+If this attempt failed, M. Verdurin would set off across country until he
+came to a telegraph office or some other kind of messenger, after first
+finding out which of the 'faithful' had anyone whom they must warn. But
+Odette would thank him, and assure him that she had no message for anyone,
+for she had told Swann, once and for all, that she could not possibly send
+messages to him, before all those people, without compromising herself.
+Sometimes she would be absent for several days on end, when the Verdurins
+took her to see the tombs at Dreux, or to Compi�gne, on the painter's
+advice, to watch the sun setting through the forest--after which they went
+on to the Ch�teau of Pierrefonds.
+
+"To think that she could visit really historic buildings with me, who have
+spent ten years in the study of architecture, who am constantly bombarded,
+by people who really count, to take them over Beauvais or
+Saint-Loup-de-Naud, and refuse to take anyone but her; and instead of that
+she trundles off with the lowest, the most brutally degraded of creatures,
+to go into ecstasies over the petrified excretions of Louis-Philippe and
+Viollet-le-Duc!  One hardly needs much knowledge of art, I should say, to
+do that; though, surely, even without any particularly refined sense of
+smell, one would not deliberately choose to spend a holiday in the
+latrines, so as to be within range of their fragrant exhalations."
+
+But when she had set off for Dreux or Pierrefonds--alas, without allowing
+him to appear there, as though by accident, at her side, for, as she said,
+that would "create a dreadful impression,"--he would plunge into the most
+intoxicating romance in the lover's library, the railway timetable, from
+which he learned the ways of joining her there in the afternoon, in the
+evening, even in the morning. The ways? More than that, the authority, the
+right to join her. For, after all, the time-table, and the trains
+themselves, were not meant for dogs. If the public were carefully
+informed, by means of printed advertisements, that at eight o'clock in the
+morning a train started for Pierrefonds which arrived there at ten, that
+could only be because going to Pierrefonds was a lawful act, for which
+permission from Odette would be superfluous; an act, moreover, which might
+be performed from a motive altogether different from the desire to see
+Odette, since persons who had never even heard of her performed it daily,
+and in such numbers as justified the labour and expense of stoking the
+engines.
+
+So it came to this; that she could not prevent him from going to
+Pierrefonds if he chose to do so. Now that was precisely what he found
+that he did choose to do, and would at that moment be doing were he, like
+the travelling public, not acquainted with Odette. For a long time past he
+had wanted to form a more definite impression of Viollet-le-Duc's work as
+a restorer. And the weather being what it was, he felt an overwhelming
+desire to spend the day roaming in the forest of Compi�gne.
+
+It was, indeed, a piece of bad luck that she had forbidden him access to
+the one spot that tempted him to-day. To-day! Why, if he went down there,
+in defiance of her prohibition, he would be able to see her that very day!
+But then, whereas, if she had met, at Pierrefonds, some one who did not
+matter, she would have hailed him with obvious pleasure: "What, you here?"
+and would have invited him to come and see her at the hotel where she was
+staying with the Verdurins, if, on the other hand, it was himself, Swann,
+that she encountered there, she would be annoyed, would complain that she
+was being followed, would love him less in consequence, might even turn
+away in anger when she caught sight of him. "So, then, I am not to be
+allowed to go away for a day anywhere!" she would reproach him on her
+return, whereas in fact it was he himself who was not allowed to go.
+
+He had had the sudden idea, so as to contrive to visit Compi�gne and
+Pierrefonds without letting it be supposed that his object was to meet
+Odette, of securing an invitation from one of his friends, the Marquis de
+Forestelle, who had a country house in that neighbourhood. This friend, to
+whom Swann suggested the plan without disclosing its ulterior purpose, was
+beside himself with joy; he did not conceal his astonishment at Swann's
+consenting at last, after fifteen years, to come down and visit his
+property, and since he did not (he told him) wish to stay there, promised
+to spend some days, at least, in taking him for walks and excursions in
+the district.  Swann imagined himself down there already with M. de
+Forestelle. Even before he saw Odette, even if he did not succeed in
+seeing her there, what a joy it would be to set foot on that soil where,
+not knowing the exact spot in which, at any moment, she was to be found,
+he would feel all around him the thrilling possibility of her suddenly
+appearing: in the courtyard of the Ch�teau, now beautiful in his eyes
+since it was on her account that he had gone to visit it; in all the
+streets of the town, which struck him as romantic; down every ride of the
+forest, roseate with the deep and tender glow of sunset;--innumerable and
+alternative hiding-places, to which would fly simultaneously for refuge,
+in the uncertain ubiquity of his hopes, his happy, vagabond and divided
+heart. "We mustn't, on any account," he would warn M. de Forestelle, "run
+across Odette and the Verdurins. I have just heard that they are at
+Pierrefonds, of all places, to-day. One has plenty of time to see them in
+Paris; it would hardly be worth while coming down here if one couldn't go
+a yard without meeting them." And his host would fail to understand why,
+once they had reached the place, Swann would change his plans twenty times
+in an hour, inspect the dining-rooms of all the hotels in Compi�gne
+without being able to make up his mind to settle down in any of them,
+although he had found no trace anywhere of the Verdurins, seeming to be in
+search of what he had claimed to be most anxious to avoid, and would in
+fact avoid, the moment he found it, for if he had come upon the little
+'group,' he would have hastened away at once with studied indifference,
+satisfied that he had seen Odette and she him, especially that she had
+seen him when he was not, apparently, thinking about her. But no; she
+would guess at once that it was for her sake that he had come there. And
+when M. de Forestelle came to fetch him, and it was time to start, he
+excused himself: "No, I'm afraid not; I can't go to Pierrefonds to-day.
+You see, Odette is there." And Swann was happy in spite of everything in
+feeling that if he, alone among mortals, had not the right to go to
+Pierrefonds that day, it was because he was in fact, for Odette, some one
+who differed from all other mortals, her lover; and because that
+restriction which for him alone was set upon the universal right to travel
+freely where one would, was but one of the many forms of that slavery,
+that love which was so dear to him. Decidedly, it was better not to risk a
+quarrel with her, to be patient, to wait for her return. He spent his days
+in poring over a map of the forest of Compi�gne, as though it had been
+that of the 'Pays du Tendre'; he surrounded himself with photographs of
+the Ch�teau of Pierrefonds. When the day dawned on which it was possible
+that she might return, he opened the time-table again, calculated what
+train she must have taken, and, should she have postponed her departure,
+what trains were still left for her to take. He did not leave the house,
+for fear of missing a telegram, he did not go to bed, in case, having
+come by the last train, she decided to surprise him with a midnight visit.
+Yes! The front-door bell rang. There seemed some delay in opening the
+door, he wanted to awaken the porter, he leaned out of the window to shout
+to Odette, if it was Odette, for in spite of the orders which he had gone
+downstairs a dozen times to deliver in person, they were quite capable of
+telling her that he was not at home. It was only a servant coming in. He
+noticed the incessant rumble of passing carriages, to which he had never
+before paid any attention.  He could hear them, one after another, a long
+way off, coming nearer, passing his door without stopping, and bearing
+away into the distance a message which was not for him. He waited all
+night, to no purpose, for the Verdurins had returned unexpectedly, and
+Odette had been in Paris since midday; it had not occurred to her to tell
+him; not knowing what to do with herself she had spent the evening alone
+at a theatre, had long since gone home to bed, and was peacefully asleep.
+
+As a matter of fact, she had never given him a thought. And such moments
+as these, in which she forgot Swann's very existence, were of more value
+to Odette, did more to attach him to her, than all her infidelities.  For
+in this way Swann was kept in that state of painful agitation which had
+once before been effective in making his interest blossom into love, on
+the night when he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins' and had
+hunted for her all evening. And he did not have (as I had, afterwards, at
+Combray in my childhood) happy days in which to forget the sufferings that
+would return with the night. For his days, Swann must pass them without
+Odette; and as he told himself, now and then, to allow so pretty a woman
+to go out by herself in Paris was just as rash as to leave a case filled
+with jewels in the middle of the street. In this mood he would scowl
+furiously at the passers-by, as though they were so many pickpockets.  But
+their faces--a collective and formless mass--escaped the grasp of his
+imagination, and so failed to feed the flame of his jealousy. The effort
+exhausted Swann's brain, until, passing his hand over his eyes, he cried
+out: "Heaven help me!" as people, after lashing themselves into an
+intellectual frenzy in their endeavours to master the problem of the
+reality of the external world, or that of the immortality of the soul,
+afford relief to their weary brains by an unreasoning act of faith. But
+the thought of his absent mistress was incessantly, indissolubly blended
+with all the simplest actions of Swann's daily life--when he took his
+meals, opened his letters, went for a walk or to bed--by the fact of his
+regret at having to perform those actions without her; like those initials
+of Philibert the Fair which, in the church of Brou, because of her grief,
+her longing for him, Margaret of Austria intertwined everywhere with her
+own. On some days, instead of staying at home, he would go for luncheon to
+a restaurant not far off, to which he had been attracted, some time
+before, by the excellence of its cookery, but to which he now went only
+for one of those reasons, at once mystical and absurd, which people call
+'romantic'; because this restaurant (which, by the way, still exists) bore
+the same name as the street in which Odette lived: the Lap�rouse.
+Sometimes, when she had been away on a short visit somewhere, several days
+would elapse before she thought of letting him know that she had returned
+to Paris. And then she would say quite simply, without taking (as she
+would once have taken) the precaution of covering herself, at all costs,
+with a little fragment borrowed from the truth, that she had just, at that
+very moment, arrived by the morning train.  What she said was a falsehood;
+at least for Odette it was a falsehood, inconsistent, lacking (what it
+would have had, if true) the support of her memory of her actual arrival
+at the station; she was even prevented from forming a mental picture of
+what she was saying, while she said it, by the contradictory picture, in
+her mind, of whatever quite different thing she had indeed been doing at
+the moment when she pretended to have been alighting from the train. In
+Swann's mind, however, these words, meeting no opposition, settled and
+hardened until they assumed the indestructibility of a truth so
+indubitable that, if some friend happened to tell him that he had come by
+the same train and had not seen Odette, Swann would have been convinced
+that it was his friend who had made a mistake as to the day or hour, since
+his version did not agree with the words uttered by Odette. These words
+had never appeared to him false except when, before hearing them, he had
+suspected that they were going to be. For him to believe that she was
+lying, an anticipatory suspicion was indispensable. It was also, however,
+sufficient. Given that, everything that Odette might say appeared to him
+suspect. Did she mention a name: it was obviously that of one of her
+lovers; once this supposition had taken shape, he would spend weeks in
+tormenting himself; on one occasion he even approached a firm of 'inquiry
+agents' to find out the address and the occupation of the unknown rival
+who would give him no peace until he could be proved to have gone abroad,
+and who (he ultimately learned) was an uncle of Odette, and had been dead
+for twenty years.
+
+Although she would not allow him, as a rule, to meet her at public
+gatherings, saying that people would talk, it happened occasionally that,
+at an evening party to which he and she had each been invited--at
+Forcheville's, at the painter's, or at a charity ball given in one of the
+Ministries--he found himself in the same room with her. He could see her,
+but dared not remain for fear of annoying her by seeming to be spying upon
+the pleasures which she tasted in other company, pleasures which--while he
+drove home in utter loneliness, and went to bed, as anxiously as I myself
+was to go to bed, some years later, on the evenings when he came to dine
+with us at Combray--seemed illimitable to him since he had not been able
+to see their end. And, once or twice, he derived from such evenings that
+kind of happiness which one would be inclined (did it not originate in so
+violent a reaction from an anxiety abruptly terminated) to call peaceful,
+since it consists in a pacifying of the mind: he had looked in for a
+moment at a revel in the painter's studio, and was getting ready to go
+home; he was leaving behind him Odette, transformed into a brilliant
+stranger, surrounded by men to whom her glances and her gaiety, which were
+not for him, seemed to hint at some voluptuous pleasure to be enjoyed
+there or elsewhere (possibly at the Bal des Incoh�rents, to which he
+trembled to think that she might be going on afterwards) which made Swann
+more jealous than the thought of their actual physical union, since it was
+more difficult to imagine; he was opening the door to go, when he heard
+himself called back in these words (which, by cutting off from the party
+that possible ending which had so appalled him, made the party itself seem
+innocent in retrospect, made Odette's return home a thing no longer
+inconceivable and terrible, but tender and familiar, a thing that kept
+close to his side, like a part of his own daily life, in his carriage; a
+thing that stripped Odette herself of the excess of brilliance and gaiety
+in her appearance, shewed that it was only a disguise which she had
+assumed for a moment, for his sake and not in view of any mysterious
+pleasures, a disguise of which she had already wearied)--in these words,
+which Odette flung out after him as he was crossing the threshold: "Can't
+you wait a minute for me? I'm just going; we'll drive back together and
+you can drop me." It was true that on one occasion Forcheville had asked
+to be driven home at the same time, but when, on reaching Odette's gate,
+he had begged to be allowed to come in too, she had replied, with a finger
+pointed at Swann: "Ah! That depends on this gentleman. You must ask him.
+Very well, you may come in, just for a minute, if you insist, but you
+mustn't stay long, for, I warn you, he likes to sit and talk quietly with
+me, and he's not at all pleased if I have visitors when he's here. Oh, if
+you only knew the creature as I know him; isn't that so, my love, there's
+no one that really knows you, is there, except me?"
+
+And Swann was, perhaps, even more touched by the spectacle of her
+addressing him thus, in front of Forcheville, not only in these tender
+words of predilection, but also with certain criticisms, such as: "I feel
+sure you haven't written yet to your friends, about dining with them on
+Sunday.  You needn't go if you don't want to, but you might at least be
+polite," or "Now, have you left your essay on Vermeer here, so that you
+can do a little more to it to-morrow? What a lazy-bones! I'm going to make
+you work, I can tell you," which proved that Odette kept herself in touch
+with his social engagements and his literary work, that they had indeed a
+life in common. And as she spoke she bestowed on him a smile which he
+interpreted as meaning that she was entirely his.
+
+And then, while she was making them some orangeade, suddenly, just as when
+the reflector of a lamp that is badly fitted begins by casting all round
+an object, on the wall beyond it, huge and fantastic shadows which, in
+time, contract and are lost in the shadow of the object itself, all the
+terrible and disturbing ideas which he had formed of Odette melted away
+and vanished in the charming creature who stood there before his eyes. He
+had the sudden suspicion that this hour spent in Odette's house, in the
+lamp-light, was, perhaps, after all, not an artificial hour, invented for
+his special use (with the object of concealing that frightening and
+delicious thing which was incessantly in his thoughts without his ever
+being able to form a satisfactory impression of it, an hour of Odette's
+real life, of her life when he was not there, looking on) with theatrical
+properties and pasteboard fruits, but was perhaps a genuine hour of
+Odette's life; that, if he himself had not been there, she would have
+pulled forward the same armchair for Forcheville, would have poured out
+for him, not any unknown brew, but precisely that orangeade which she was
+now offering to them both; that the world inhabited by Odette was not that
+other world, fearful and supernatural, in which he spent his time in
+placing her--and which existed, perhaps, only in his imagination, but the
+real universe, exhaling no special atmosphere of gloom, comprising that
+table at which he might sit down, presently, and write, and this drink
+which he was being permitted, now, to taste; all the objects which he
+contemplated with as much curiosity and admiration as gratitude, for if,
+in absorbing his dreams, they had delivered him from an obsession, they
+themselves were, in turn, enriched by the absorption; they shewed him the
+palpable realisation of his fancies, and they interested his mind; they
+took shape and grew solid before-his eyes, and at the same time they
+soothed his troubled heart. Ah!  had fate but allowed him to share a
+single dwelling with Odette, so that in her house he should be in his own;
+if, when asking his servant what there would be for luncheon, it had been
+Odette's bill of fare that he had learned from the reply; if, when Odette
+wished to go for a walk, in the morning, along the Avenue du
+Bois-de-Boulogne, his duty as a good husband had obliged him, though he
+had no desire to go out, to accompany her, carrying her cloak when she was
+too warm; and in the evening, after dinner, if she wished to stay at home,
+and not to dress, if he had been forced to stay beside her, to do what she
+asked; then how completely would all the trivial details of Swann's life,
+which seemed to him now so gloomy, simply because they would, at the same
+time, have formed part of the life of Odette, have taken on--like that
+lamp, that orangeade, that armchair, which had absorbed so much of his
+dreams, which materialised so much of his longing,--a sort of
+superabundant sweetness and a mysterious solidity.
+
+And yet he was inclined to suspect that the state for which he so much
+longed was a calm, a peace, which would not have created an atmosphere
+favourable to his love. When Odette ceased to be for him a creature always
+absent, regretted, imagined; when the feeling that he had for her was no
+longer the same mysterious disturbance that was wrought in him by the
+phrase from the sonata, but constant affection and gratitude, when those
+normal relations were established between them which would put an end to
+his melancholy madness; then, no doubt, the actions of Odette's daily life
+would appear to him as being of but little intrinsic interest--as he had
+several times, already, felt that they might be, on the day, for instance,
+when he had read, through its envelope, her letter to Forcheville.
+Examining his complaint with as much scientific detachment as if he had
+inoculated himself with it in order to study its effects, he told himself
+that, when he was cured of it, what Odette might or might not do would be
+indifferent to him. But in his morbid state, to tell the truth, he feared
+death itself no more than such a recovery, which would, in fact, amount to
+the death of all that he then was.
+
+After these quiet evenings, Swann's suspicions would be temporarily
+lulled; he would bless the name of Odette, and next day, in the morning,
+would order the most attractive jewels to be sent to her, because her
+kindnesses to him overnight had excited either his gratitude, or the
+desire to see them repeated, or a paroxysm of love for her which had need
+of some such outlet.
+
+But at other times, grief would again take hold of him; he would imagine
+that Odette was Forcheville's mistress, and that, when they had both sat
+watching him from the depths of the Verdurins' landau, in the Bois, on the
+evening before the party at Chatou to which he had not been invited, while
+he implored her in vain, with that look of despair on his face which even
+his coachman had noticed, to come home with him, and then turned away,
+solitary, crushed,--she must have employed, to draw Forcheville's
+attention to him, while she murmured: "Do look at him, storming!" the same
+glance, brilliant, malicious, sidelong, cunning, as on the evening when
+Forcheville had driven Saniette from the Verdurins'.
+
+At such times Swann detested her. "But I've been a fool, too," he would
+argue. "I'm paying for other men's pleasures with my money. All the same,
+she'd better take care, and not pull the string too often, for I might
+very well stop giving her anything at all. At any rate, we'd better knock
+off supplementary favours for the time being. To think that, only
+yesterday, when she said she would like to go to Bayreuth for the season,
+I was such an ass as to offer to take one of those jolly little places the
+King of Bavaria has there, for the two of us. However she didn't seem
+particularly keen; she hasn't said yes or no yet. Let's hope that she'll
+refuse. Good God!  Think of listening to Wagner for a fortnight on end
+with her, who takes about as much interest in music as a fish does in
+little apples; it will be fun!" And his hatred, like his love, needing to
+manifest itself in action, he amused himself with urging his evil
+imaginings further and further, because, thanks to the perfidies with
+which he charged Odette, he detested her still more, and would be able, if
+it turned out--as he tried to convince himself--that she was indeed guilty
+of them, to take the opportunity of punishing her, emptying upon her the
+overflowing vials of his wrath. In this way, he went so far as to suppose
+that he was going to receive a letter from her, in which she would ask him
+for money to take the house at Bayreuth, but with the warning that he was
+not to come there himself, as she had promised Forcheville and the
+Verdurins to invite them. Oh, how he would have loved it, had it been
+conceivable that she would have that audacity. What joy he would have in
+refusing, in drawing up that vindictive reply, the terms of which he
+amused himself by selecting and declaiming aloud, as though he had
+actually received her letter.
+
+The very next day, her letter came. She wrote that the Verdurins and their
+friends had expressed a desire to be present at these performances of
+Wagner, and that, if he would be so good as to send her the money, she
+would be able at last, after going so often to their house, to have the
+pleasure of entertaining the Verdurins in hers. Of him she said not a
+word; it was to be taken for granted that their presence at Bayreuth would
+be a bar to his.
+
+Then that annihilating answer, every word of which he had carefully
+rehearsed overnight, without venturing to hope that it could ever be used,
+he had the satisfaction of having it conveyed to her. Alas! he felt only
+too certain that with the money which she had, or could easily procure,
+she would be able, all the same, to take a house at Bayreuth, since she
+wished to do so, she who was incapable of distinguishing between Bach and
+Clapisson.  Let her take it, then; she would have to live in it more
+frugally, that was all. No means (as there would have been if he had
+replied by sending her several thousand-franc notes) of organising, each
+evening, in her hired castle, those exquisite little suppers, after which
+she might perhaps be seized by the whim (which, it was possible, had
+never yet seized her) of falling into the arms of Forcheville. At any
+rate, this loathsome expedition, it would not be Swann who had to pay for
+it. Ah! if he could only manage to prevent it, if she could sprain her
+ankle before starting, if the driver of the carriage which was to take her
+to the station would consent (no matter how great the bribe) to smuggle
+her to some place where she could be kept for a time in seclusion, that
+perfidious woman, her eyes tinselled with a smile of complicity for
+Forcheville, which was what Odette had become for Swann in the last
+forty-eight hours.
+
+But she was never that for very long; after a few days the shining, crafty
+eyes lost their brightness and their duplicity, that picture of an
+execrable Odette saying to Forcheville: "Look at him storming!" began to
+grow pale and to dissolve. Then gradually reappeared and rose before him,
+softly radiant, the face of the other Odette, of that Odette who al^o
+turned with a smile to Forcheville, but with a smile in which there was
+nothing but affection for Swann, when she said: "You mustn't stay long,
+for this gentleman doesn't much like my having visitors when he's here.
+Oh! if you only knew the creature as I know him!" that same smile with
+which she used to thank Swann for some instance of his courtesy which she
+prized so highly, for some advice for which she had asked him in one of
+those grave crises in her life, when she could turn to him alone.
+
+Then, to this other Odette, he would ask himself what could have induced
+him to write that outrageous letter, of which, probably, until then, she
+had never supposed him capable, a letter which must have lowered him from
+the high, from the supreme place which, by his generosity, by his loyalty,
+he had won for himself in her esteem. He would become less dear to her,
+since it was for those qualities, which she found neither in Forcheville
+nor in any other, that she loved him. It was for them that Odette so often
+shewed him a reciprocal kindness, which counted for less than nothing in
+his moments of jealousy, because it was not a sign of reciprocal desire,
+was indeed a proof rather of affection than of love, but the importance of
+which he began once more to feel in proportion as the spontaneous
+relaxation of his suspicions, often accelerated by the distraction brought
+to him by reading about art or by the conversation of a friend, rendered
+his passion less exacting of reciprocities.
+
+Now that, after this swing of the pendulum, Odette had naturally returned
+to the place from which Swann's jealousy had for the moment driven her, in
+the angle in which he found her charming, he pictured her to himself as
+full of tenderness, with a look of consent in her eyes, and so beautiful
+that he could not refrain from moving his lips towards her, as though she
+had actually been in the room for him to kiss; and he preserved a sense of
+gratitude to her for that bewitching, kindly glance, as strong as though
+she had really looked thus at him, and it had not been merely his
+imagination that had portrayed it in order to satisfy his desire.
+
+What distress he must have caused her! Certainly he found adequate reasons
+for his resentment, but they would not have been sufficient to make him
+feel that resentment, if he had not so passionately loved her. Had he not
+nourished grievances, just as serious, against other women, to whom he
+would, none the less, render willing service to-day, feeling no anger
+towards them because he no longer loved them? If the day ever came when he
+would find himself in the same state of indifference with regard to
+Odette, he would then understand that it was his jealousy alone which had
+led him to find something atrocious, unpardonable, in this desire (after
+all, so natural a desire, springing from a childlike ingenuousness and
+also from a certain delicacy in her nature) to be able, in her turn, when
+an occasion offered, to repay the Verdurins for their hospitality, and to
+play the hostess in a house of her own.
+
+He returned to the other point of view--opposite to that of his love and
+of his jealousy, to which he resorted at times by a sort of mental equity,
+and in order to make allowance for different eventualities--from which he
+tried to form a fresh judgment of Odette, based on the supposition that he
+had never been in love with her, that she was to him just a woman like
+other women, that her life had not been (whenever he himself was not
+present) different, a texture woven in secret apart from him, and warped
+against him.
+
+Wherefore believe that she would enjoy down there with Forcheville or with
+other men intoxicating pleasures which she had never known with him, and
+which his jealousy alone had fabricated in all their elements? At
+Bayreuth, as in Paris, if it should happen that Forcheville thought of him
+at all, it would only be as of some one who counted for a great deal in
+the life of Odette, some one for whom he was obliged to make way, when
+they met in her house. If Forcheville and she scored a triumph by being
+down there together in spite of him, it was he who had engineered that
+triumph by striving in vain to prevent her from going there, whereas if he
+had approved of her plan, which for that matter was quite defensible, she
+would have had the appearance of being there by his counsel, she would
+have felt herself sent there, housed there by him, and for the pleasure
+which she derived from entertaining those people who had so often
+entertained her, it was to him that she would have had to acknowledge her
+indebtedness.
+
+And if--instead of letting her go off thus, at cross-purposes with him,
+without having seen him again--he were to send her this money, if he were
+to encourage her to take this journey, and to go out of his way to make it
+comfortable and pleasant for her, she would come running to him, happy,
+grateful, and he would have the joy--the sight of her face--which he had
+not known for nearly a week, a joy which none other could replace.  For
+the moment that Swann was able to form a picture of her without revulsion,
+that he could see once again the friendliness in her smile, and that the
+desire to tear her away from every rival was no longer imposed by his
+jealousy upon his love, that love once again became, more than anything, a
+taste for the sensations which Odette's person gave him, for the pleasure
+which he found in admiring, as one might a spectacle, or in questioning,
+as one might a phenomenon, the birth of one of her glances, the formation
+of one of her smiles, the utterance of an intonation of her voice. And
+this pleasure, different from every other, had in the end created in him a
+need of her, which she alone, by her presence or by her letters, could
+assuage, almost as disinterested, almost as artistic, as perverse as
+another need which characterised this new period in Swann's life, when the
+sereness, the depression of the preceding years had been followed by a
+sort of spiritual superabundance, without his knowing to what he owed this
+unlooked-for enrichment of his life, any more than a person in delicate
+health who from a certain moment grows stronger, puts on flesh, and seems
+for a time to be on the road to a complete recovery:--this other need,
+which, too, developed in him independently of the visible, material world,
+was the need to listen to music and to learn to know it.
+
+And so, by the chemical process of his malady, after he had created
+jealousy out of his love, he began again to generate tenderness, pity for
+Odette. She had become once more the old Odette, charming and kind. He was
+full of remorse for having treated her harshly. He wished her to come to
+him, and, before she came, he wished to have already procured for her some
+pleasure, so as to watch her gratitude taking shape in her face and
+moulding her smile.
+
+So, too, Odette, certain of seeing him come to her in a few days, as
+tender and submissive as before, and plead with her for a reconciliation,
+became inured, was no longer afraid of displeasing him, or even of making
+him angry, and refused him, whenever it suited her, the favours by which
+he set most store.
+
+Perhaps she did not realise how sincere he had been with her during their
+quarrel, when he had told her that he would not send her any money, but
+would do what he could to hurt her. Perhaps she did not realise, either,
+how sincere he still was, if not with her, at any rate with himself, on
+other occasions when, for the sake of their future relations, to shew
+Odette that he was capable of doing without her, that a rupture was still
+possible between them, he decided to wait some time before going to see
+her again.
+
+Sometimes several days had elapsed, during which she had caused him no
+fresh anxiety; and as, from the next few visits which he would pay her, he
+knew that he was likely to derive not any great pleasure, but, more
+probably, some annoyance which would put an end to the state of calm in
+which he found himself, he wrote to her that he was very busy, and would
+not be able to see her on any of the days that he had suggested.
+Meanwhile, a letter from her, crossing his, asked him to postpone one of
+those very meetings. He asked himself, why; his suspicions, his grief,
+again took hold of him. He could no longer abide, in the new state of
+agitation into which he found himself plunged, by the arrangements which
+he had made in his preceding state of comparative calm; he would run to
+find her, and would insist upon seeing her on each of the following days.
+And even if she had not written first, if she merely acknowledged his
+letter, it was enough to make him unable to rest without seeing her. For,
+upsetting all Swann's calculations, Odette's acceptance had entirely
+changed his attitude. Like everyone who possesses something precious, so
+as to know what would happen if he ceased for a moment to possess it, he
+had detached the precious object from his mind, leaving, as he thought,
+everything else in the same state as when it was there. But the absence of
+one part from a whole is not only that, it is not simply a partial
+omission, it is a disturbance of all the other parts, a new state which it
+was impossible to foresee from the old.
+
+But at other times--when Odette was on the point of going away for a
+holiday--it was after some trifling quarrel for which he had chosen the
+pretext, that he decided not to write to her and not to see her until her
+return, giving the appearance (and expecting the reward) of a serious
+rupture, which she would perhaps regard as final, to a separation, the
+greater part of which was inevitable, since she was going away, which, in
+fact, he was merely allowing to start a little sooner than it must. At
+once he could imagine Odette, puzzled, anxious, distressed at having
+received neither visit nor letter from him and this picture of her, by
+calming his jealousy, made it easy for him to break himself of the habit
+of seeing her.  At odd moments, no doubt, in the furthest recesses of his
+brain, where his determination had thrust it away, and thanks to the
+length of the interval, the three weeks' separation to which he had
+agreed, it was with pleasure that he would consider the idea that he would
+see Odette again on her return; but it was also with so little impatience
+that he began to ask himself whether he would not readily consent to the
+doubling of the period of so easy an abstinence. It had lasted, so far,
+but three days, a much shorter time than he had often, before, passed
+without seeing Odette, and without having, as on this occasion he had,
+premeditated a separation.  And yet, there and then, some tiny trace of
+contrariety in his mind, or of weakness in his body,--by inciting him to
+regard the present as an exceptional moment, one not to be governed by the
+rules, one in which prudence itself would allow him to take advantage of
+the soothing effects of a pleasure and to give his will (until the time
+should come when its efforts might serve any purpose) a holiday--suspended
+the action of his will, which ceased to exert its inhibitive control; or,
+without that even, the thought of some information for which he had
+forgotten to ask Odette, such as if she had decided in what colour she
+would have her carriage repainted, or, with regard to some investment,
+whether they were 'ordinary' or 'preference' shares that she wished him to
+buy (for it was all very well to shew her that he could live without
+seeing her, but if, after that, the carriage had to be painted over again,
+if the shares produced no dividend, a fine lot of good he would have
+done),--and suddenly, like a stretched piece of elastic which is let go,
+or the air in a pneumatic machine which is ripped open, the idea of seeing
+her again, from the remote point in time to which it had been attached,
+sprang back into the field of the present and of immediate possibilities.
+
+It sprang back thus without meeting any further resistance, so
+irresistible, in fact, that Swann had been far less unhappy in watching
+the end gradually approaching, day by day, of the fortnight which he must
+spend apart from Odette, than he was when kept waiting ten minutes while
+his coachman brought round the carriage which was to take him to her,
+minutes which he passed in transports of impatience and joy, in which he
+recaptured a thousand times over, to lavish on it all the wealth of his
+affection, that idea of his meeting with Odette, which, by so abrupt a
+repercussion, at a moment when he supposed it so remote, was once more
+present and on the very surface of his consciousness. The fact was that
+this idea no longer found, as an obstacle in its course, the desire to
+contrive without further delay to resist its coming, which had ceased to
+have any place in Swann's mind since, having proved to himself--or so, at
+least, he believed--that he was so easily capable of resisting it, he no
+longer saw any inconvenience in postponing a plan of separation which he
+was now certain of being able to put into operation whenever he would.
+Furthermore, this idea of seeing her again came back to him adorned with a
+novelty, a seductiveness, armed with a virulence, all of which long habit
+had enfeebled, but which had acquired new vigour during this privation,
+not of three days but of a fortnight (for a period of abstinence may be
+calculated, by anticipation, as having lasted already until the final date
+assigned to it), and had converted what had been, until then, a pleasure
+in store, which could easily be sacrificed, into an unlooked-for happiness
+which he was powerless to resist. Finally, the idea returned to him with
+its beauty enhanced by his own ignorance of what Odette might have
+thought, might, perhaps, have done on finding that he shewed no sign of
+life, with the result that he was going now to meet with the entrancing
+revelation of an Odette almost unknown.
+
+But she, just as she had supposed that his refusal to send her money was
+only a feint, saw nothing but a pretext in the question which he came,
+now, to ask her, about the repainting of her carriage, or the purchase of
+stock. For she could not reconstruct the several phases of these crises
+through which he passed, and in the general idea which she formed of them
+she made no attempt to understand their mechanism, looking only to what
+she knew beforehand, their necessary, never-failing and always identical
+termination. An imperfect idea (though possibly all the more profound in
+consequence), if one were to judge it from the point of view of Swann, who
+would doubtless have considered that Odette failed to understand him, just
+as a morphinomaniac or a consumptive, each persuaded that he has been
+thrown back, one by some outside event, at the moment when he was just
+going to shake himself free from his inveterate habit, the other by an
+accidental indisposition at the moment when he was just going to be
+finally cured, feels himself to be misunderstood by the doctor who does
+not attach the same importance to these pretended contingencies, mere
+disguises, according to him, assumed, so as to be perceptible by his
+patients, by the vice of one and the morbid state of the other, which in
+reality have never ceased to weigh heavily and incurably upon them while
+they were nursing their dreams of normality and health.  And, as a matter
+of fact, Swann's love had reached that stage at which the physician and
+(in the case of certain affections) the boldest of surgeons ask themselves
+whether to deprive a patient of his vice or to rid him of his malady is
+still reasonable, or indeed possible.
+
+Certainly, of the extent of this love Swann had no direct knowledge.  When
+he sought to measure it, it happened sometimes that he found it
+diminished, shrunken almost to nothing; for instance, the very moderate
+liking, amounting almost to dislike, which, in the days before he was in
+love with Odette, he had felt for her expressive features, her faded
+complexion, returned on certain days. "Really, I am making distinct
+headway," he would tell himself on the morrow, "when I come to think it
+over carefully, I find out that I got hardly any pleasure, last night, out
+of being in bed with her; it's an odd thing, but I actually thought her
+ugly." And certainly he was sincere, but his love extended a long way
+beyond the province of physical desire. Odette's person, indeed, no longer
+held any great place in it. When his eyes fell upon the photograph of
+Odette on his table, or when she came to see him, he had difficulty in
+identifying her face, either in the flesh or on the pasteboard, with the
+painful and continuous anxiety which dwelt in his mind. He would say to
+himself, almost with astonishment, "It is she!" as when suddenly some one
+shews us in a detached, externalised form one of our own maladies, and we
+find in it no resemblance to what we are suffering. "She?"--he tried to
+ask himself what that meant; for it is something like love, like death
+(rather than like those vague conceptions of maladies), a thing which one
+repeatedly calls in question, in order to make oneself probe further into
+it, in the fear that the question will find no answer, that the substance
+will escape our grasp--the mystery of personality. And this malady, which
+was Swann's love, had so far multiplied, was so closely interwoven with
+all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his
+sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so
+entirely one with him that it would have been impossible to wrest it away
+without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his case was past
+operation.
+
+By this love Swann had been so far detached from all other interests that
+when by chance he reappeared in the world of fashion, reminding himself
+that his social relations, like a beautifully wrought setting (although
+she would not have been able to form any very exact estimate of its
+worth), might, still, add a little to his own value in Odette's eyes (as
+indeed they might have done had they not been cheapened by his love
+itself, which for Odette depreciated everything that it touched by seeming
+to denounce such things as less precious than itself), he would feel
+there, simultaneously with his distress at being in places and among
+people that she did not know, the same detached sense of pleasure as he
+would have derived from a novel or a painting in which were depicted the
+amusements of a leisured class; just as, at home, he used to enjoy the
+thought of the smooth efficiency of his household, the smartness of his
+own wardrobe and of his servants' liveries, the soundness of his
+investments, with the same relish as when he read in Saint-Simon, who was
+one of his favourite authors, of the machinery of daily life at
+Versailles, what Mme. de Maintenon ate and drank, or the shrewd avarice
+and great pomp of Lulli. And in the small extent to which this detachment
+was not absolute, the reason for this new pleasure which Swann was tasting
+was that he could emigrate for a moment into those few and distant parts
+of himself which had remained almost foreign to his love and to his pain.
+In this respect the personality, with which my great-aunt endowed him, of
+'young Swann,' as distinct from the more individual personality of Charles
+Swann, was that in which he now most delighted. Once when, because it was
+the birthday of the Princesse de Parme (and because she could often be of
+use, indirectly, to Odette, by letting her have seats for galas and
+jubilees and all that sort of thing), he had decided to send her a basket
+of fruit, and was not quite sure where or how to order it, he had
+entrusted the task to a cousin of his mother who, delighted to be doing a
+commission for him, had written to him, laying stress on the fact that she
+had not chosen all the fruit at the same place, but the grapes from
+Crapote, whose speciality they were, the straw berries from Jauret, the
+pears from Chevet, who always had the best, am soon, "every fruit visited
+and examined, one by one, by myself." And ii the sequel, by the cordiality
+with which the Princess thanked him, hi had been able to judge of the
+flavour of the strawberries and of the ripe ness of the pears. But, most
+of all, that "every fruit visited and examinee one by one, by myself" had
+brought balm to his sufferings by carrying hi mind off to a region which
+he rarely visited, although it was his by right, as the heir of a rich and
+respectable middle-class family in which had been handed down from
+generation to generation the knowledge of the 'right places' and the art
+of ordering things from shops.
+
+Of a truth, he had too long forgotten that he was 'young Swann' not to
+feel, when he assumed that part again for a moment, a keener pleasure than
+he was capable of feeling at other times--when, indeed, he was grown sick
+of pleasure; and if the friendliness of the middle-class people, for whom
+he had never been anything else than 'young Swann,' was less animated than
+that of the aristocrats (though more flattering, for all that, since in
+the middle-class mind friendship is inseparable from respect), no letter
+from a Royal Personage, offering him some princely entertainment, could
+ever be so attractive to Swann as the letter which asked him to be a
+witness, or merely to be present at a wedding in the family of some old
+friends of his parents; some of whom had 'kept up' with him, like my
+grandfather, who, the year before these events, had invited him to my
+mother's wedding, while others barely knew him by sight, but were, they
+thought, in duty bound to shew civility to the son, to the worthy
+successor of the late M. Swann.
+
+But, by virtue of his intimacy, already time-honoured, with so many of
+them, the people of fashion, in a certain sense, were also a part of his
+house, his service, and his family. He felt, when his mind dwelt upon his
+brilliant connections, the same external support, the same solid comfort
+as when he looked at the fine estate, the fine silver, the fine
+table-linen which had come down to him from his forebears. And the thought
+that, if he were seized by a sudden illness and confined to the house, the
+people whom his valet would instinctively run to find would be the Duc de
+Chartres, the Prince de Reuss, the Duc de Luxembourg and the Baron de
+Charlus, brought him the same consolation as our old Fran�oise derived
+from the knowledge that she would, one day, be buried in her own fine
+clothes, marked with her name, not darned at all (or so exquisitely darned
+that it merely enhanced one's idea of the skill and patience of the
+seamstress), a shroud from the constant image of which in her mind's eye
+she drew a certain satisfactory sense, if not actually of wealth and
+prosperity, at any rate of self-esteem. But most of all,--since in every
+one of his actions and thoughts which had reference to Odette, Swann was
+constantly subdued and swayed by the unconfessed feeling that he was,
+perhaps not less dear, but at least less welcome to her than anyone, even
+the most wearisome of the Verdurins' 'faithful,'--when he betook himself
+to a world in which he was the paramount example of taste, a man whom no
+pains were spared to attract, whom people were genuinely sorry not to see,
+he began once again to believe in the existence of a happier life,
+almost to feel an appetite for it, as an invalid may feel who has been in
+bed for months and on a strict diet, when he picks up a newspaper and
+reads the account of an official banquet or the advertisement of a cruise
+round Sicily.
+
+If he was obliged to make excuses to his fashionable friends for not
+paying them visits, it was precisely for the visits that he did pay her
+that he sought to excuse himself to Odette. He still paid them (asking
+himself at the end of each month whether, seeing that he had perhaps
+exhausted her patience, and had certainly gone rather often to see her, it
+would be enough if he sent her four thousand francs), and for each visit
+he found a pretext, a present that he had to bring her, some information
+which she required, M. de Charlus, whom he had met actually going to her
+house, and who had insisted upon Swann's accompanying him. And, failing
+any excuse, he would beg M. de Charlus to go to her at once, and to tell
+her, as though spontaneously, in the course of conversation, that he had
+just remembered something that he had to say to Swann, and would she
+please send a message to Swann's house asking him to come to her then and
+there; but as a rule Swann waited at home in vain, and M. de Charlus
+informed him, later in the evening, that his device had not proved
+successful. With the result that, if she was now frequently away from
+Paris, even when she was there he scarcely saw her; that she who, when she
+was in love with him, used to say, "I am always free" and "What can it
+matter to me, what other people think?" now, whenever he wanted to see
+her, appealed to the proprieties or pleaded some engagement. When he spoke
+of going to a charity entertainment, or a private view, or a first-night
+at which she was to be present, she would expostulate that he wished to
+advertise their relations in public, that he was treating her like a woman
+off the streets.  Things came to such a pitch that, in an effort to save
+himself from being altogether forbidden to meet her anywhere, Swann,
+remembering that she knew and was deeply attached to my great-uncle
+Adolphe, whose friend he himself also had been, went one day to see him in
+his little flat in the Rue de Bellechasse, to ask him to use his influence
+with Odette. As it happened, she invariably adopted, when she spoke to
+Swann about my uncle, a poetical tone, saying: "Ah, he! He is not in the
+least like you; it is an exquisite thing, a great, a beautiful thing, his
+friendship for me. He's not the sort of man who would have so little
+consideration for me as to let himself be seen with me everywhere in
+public." This was embarrassing for Swann, who did not know quite to what
+rhetorical pitch he should screw himself up in speaking of Odette to my
+uncle. He began by alluding to her excellence, _a priori_, the axiom of
+her seraphic super-humanity, the revelation of her inexpressible virtues,
+no conception of which could possibly be formed. "I should like to speak
+to you about her," he went on, "you, who know what a woman supreme above
+all women, what an adorable being, what an angel Odette is. But you know,
+also, what life is in Paris.  Everyone doesn't see Odette in the light in
+which you and I have been Privileged to see her. And so there are people
+who think that I am behaving rather foolishly; she won't even allow me to
+meet her out of doors, at the theatre. Now you, in whom she has such
+enormous confidence, couldn't you say a few words for me to her, just to
+assure her that she exaggerate the harm which my bowing to her in the
+street might do her?"
+
+My uncle advised Swann not to see Odette for some days, after which she
+would love him all the more; he advised Odette to let Swann meet he;
+everywhere, and as often as he pleased. A few days later Odette told Swann
+that she had just had a rude awakening; she had discovered that my uncle
+was the same as other men; he had tried to take her by assault. She calmed
+Swann, who, at first, was for rushing out to challenge my uncle to a duel,
+but he refused to shake hands with him when they met again. He regretted
+this rupture all the more because he had hoped, if he had met my uncle
+Adolphe again sometimes and had contrived to talk things over with him in
+strict confidence, to be able to get him to throw a light on certain
+rumours with regard to the life that Odette had led, in the old days, at
+Nice. For my uncle Adolphe used to spend the winter there, and Swann
+thought that it might indeed have been there, perhaps, that he had first
+known Odette.  The few words which some one had let fall, in his hearing,
+about a man who, it appeared, had been Odette's lover, had left Swann dumb
+foundered.  But the very things which he would, before knowing them, have
+regarded as the most terrible to learn and the most impossible to believe,
+were, once he knew them, incorporated for all time in the general mass of
+his sorrow; he admitted them, he could no longer have understood their not
+existing.  Only, each one of them in its passage traced an indelible line,
+altering the picture that he had formed of his mistress. At one time
+indeed he felt that he could understand that this moral 'lightness,' of
+which he would never have suspected Odette, was perfectly well known, and
+that at Baden or Nice, when she had gone, in the past, to spend several
+months in one or the other place, she had enjoyed a sort of amorous
+notoriety. He attempted, in order to question them, to get into touch
+again with certain men of that stamp; but these were aware that he knew
+Odette, and, besides, he was afraid of putting the thought of her into
+their heads, of setting them once more upon her track. But he, to whom, up
+till then, nothing could have seemed so tedious as was all that pertained
+to the cosmopolitan life of Baden or of Nice, now that he learned that
+Odette had, perhaps, led a 'gay' life once in those pleasure-cities,
+although he could never find out whether it had been solely to satisfy a
+want of money which, thanks to himself, she no longer felt, or from some
+capricious instinct which might, at any moment, revive in her, he would
+lean, in impotent anguish, blinded and dizzy, over the bottomless abyss
+into which had passed, in which had been engulfed those years of his own,
+early in MacMahon's _Septennat_, in which one spent the winter on the
+Promenade des Anglais, the summer beneath the limes of Baden, and would
+find in those years a sad but splendid profundity, such as a poet might
+have lent to them; and he would have devoted to the reconstruction of all
+the insignificant details that made up the daily round on the C�te d'Azur
+in those days, if it could have helped him to understand something that
+still baffled him in the smile or in the eyes of Odette, more enthusiasm
+than does the aesthete who ransacks the extant documents of
+fifteenth-century Florence, so as to try to penetrate further into the
+soul of the Primavera, the fair Vanna or the Venus of Botticelli. He would
+sit, often, without saying a word to her, only gazing at her and dreaming;
+and she would comment: "You do look sad!" It was not very long since, from
+the idea that she was an excellent creature, comparable to the best women
+that he had known, he had passed to that of her being 'kept'; and yet
+already, by an inverse process, he had returned from the Odette de Cr�cy,
+perhaps too well known to the holiday-makers, to the 'ladies' men' of Nice
+and Baden, to this face, the expression on which was so often gentle, to
+this nature so eminently human. He would ask himself: "What does it mean,
+after all, to say that everyone at Nice knows who Odette de Cr�cy is?
+Reputations of that sort, even when they're true, are always based upon
+other people's ideas"; he would reflect that this legend--even if it were
+authentic--was something external to Odette, was not inherent in her like
+a mischievous and ineradicable personality; that the creature who might
+have been led astray was a woman with frank eyes, a heart full of pity for
+the sufferings of others, a docile body which he had pressed tightly in
+his arms and explored with his fingers, a woman of whom he might one day
+come into absolute possession if he succeeded in making himself
+indispensable to her. There she was, often tired, her face left blank for
+the nonce by that eager, feverish preoccupation with the unknown things
+which made Swann suffer; she would push back her hair with both hands; her
+forehead, her whole face would seem to grow larger; then, suddenly, some
+ordinary human thought, some worthy sentiment such as is to be found in
+all creatures when, in a moment of rest or meditation, they are free to
+express themselves, would flash out from her eyes like a ray of gold. And
+immediately the whole of her face would light up like a grey landscape,
+swathed in clouds which, suddenly, are swept away and the dull scene
+transfigured, at the moment of the sun's setting.  The life which occupied
+Odette at such times, even the future which she seemed to be dreamily
+regarding, Swann could have shared with her. No evil disturbance seemed to
+have left any effect on them. Rare as they became, those moments did not
+occur in vain. By the process of memory, Swann joined the fragments
+together, abolished the intervals between them, cast, as in molten gold,
+the image of an Odette compact of kindness and tranquillity, for whom he
+was to make, later on (as we shall see in the second part of this story)
+sacrifices which the other Odette would never have won from him. But how
+rare those moments were, and how seldom he now saw her! Even in regard to
+their evening meetings, she would never tell him until the last minute
+whether she would be able to see him, for, reckoning on his being always
+free, she wished first to be certain that no one else would offer to come
+to her. She would plead that she was obliged to wait for an answer which
+was of the very greatest importance, and if, even after she had made Swann
+come to her house, any of her friends asked her, half-way through the
+evening, to join them at some theatre, or at supper afterwards, she would
+jump for joy and dress herself with all speed.  As her toilet progressed,
+every movement that she made brought Swann nearer to the moment when he
+would have to part from her, when she would fly off with irresistible
+force; and when at length she was ready, and, Plunging into her mirror a
+last glance strained and brightened by her anxiety to look well, smeared a
+little salve on her lips, fixed a stray loci of hair over her brow, and
+called for her cloak of sky-blue silk with golden tassels, Swann would be
+looking so wretched that she would be unable to restrain a gesture of
+impatience as she flung at him: "So that is how you thank me for keeping
+you here till the last minute! And I thought I was being so nice to you.
+Well, I shall know better another time!" Sometime ... at the risk of
+annoying her, he made up his mind that he would find out where she had
+gone, and even dreamed of a defensive alliance with Forcheville, who might
+perhaps have been able to tell him. But anyhow, when he knew with whom she
+was spending the evening, it was very seldom that he could not discover,
+among all his innumerable acquaintance, some one who knew--if only
+indirectly--the man with whom she had gone out, and could easily obtain
+this or that piece of information about him. And while he was writing to
+one of his friends, asking him to try to get a little light thrown upon
+some point or other, he would feel a sense of relief on ceasing to vex
+himself with questions to which there was no answer and transferring to
+some one else the strain of interrogation. It is true that Swann was
+little the wiser for such information as he did receive. To know a thing
+does not enable us, always, to prevent its happening, but after all the
+things that we know we do hold, if not in our hands, at any rate in our
+minds, where we can dispose of them as we choose, which gives us the
+illusion of a sort of power to control them. He was quite happy whenever
+M. de Charlus was with Odette. He knew that between M. de Charlus and her
+nothing untoward could ever happen, that when M. de Charlus went anywhere
+with her, it was out of friendship for himself, and that he would make no
+difficulty about telling him everything that she had done.  Sometimes she
+had declared so emphatically to Swann that it was impossible for him to
+see her on a particular evening, she seemed to be looking forward so
+keenly to some outing, that Swann attached a very real importance to the
+fact that M. de Charlus was free to accompany her. Next day, without
+daring to put many questions to M. de Charlus, he would force him, by
+appearing not quite to understand his first answers, to give him more,
+after each of which he would feel himself increasingly relieved, for he
+very soon learned that Odette had spent her evening in the most innocent
+of dissipations.
+
+"But what do you mean, my dear M�m�, I don't quite understand....  You
+didn't go straight from her house to the Mus�e Gr�vin? Surely you went
+somewhere else first? No? That is very odd! You don't know how amusing you
+are, my dear M�m�. But what an odd idea of hers to go on to the Chat Noir
+afterwards; it was her idea, I suppose? No? Yours?  That's strange. After
+all, it wasn't a bad idea; she must have known dozens of people there? No?
+She never spoke to a soul? How extraordinary! Then you sat there like
+that, just you and she, all by yourselves? I can picture you, sitting
+there! You are a worthy fellow, my dear M�m�; I'm exceedingly fond of
+you."
+
+Swann was now quite at ease. To him, who had so often happened, when
+talking to friends who knew nothing of his love, friends to whom he hardly
+listened, to hear certain detached sentences (as, for instance, "I saw
+Mme.  de Cr�cy yesterday; she was with a man I didn't know."), sentences
+which dropped into his heart and passed at once into a solid state, grew
+hard as stalagmites, and seared and tore him as they lay there
+irremovable,--how charming, by way of contrast, were the words: "She didn't
+know a soul; she never spoke to a soul." How freely they coursed through
+him, how fluid they were, how vaporous, how easy to breathe! And yet, a
+moment later, he was telling himself that Odette must find him very dull
+if those were the pleasures that she preferred to his company. And their
+very insignificance, though it reassured him, pained him as if her
+enjoyment of them had been an act of treachery.
+
+Even when he could not discover where she had gone, it would have sufficed
+to alleviate the anguish that he then felt, for which Odette's presence,
+the charm of her company, was the sole specific (a specific which in the
+long run served, like many other remedies, to aggravate the disease, but
+at least brought temporary relief to his sufferings), it would have
+sufficed, had Odette only permitted him to remain in her house while she
+was out, to wait there until that hour of her return, into whose stillness
+and peace would flow, to be mingled and lost there, all memory of those
+intervening hours which some sorcery, some cursed spell had made him
+imagine as, somehow, different from the rest. But she would not; he must
+return home; he forced himself, on the way, to form various plans, ceased
+to think of Odette; he even reached the stage, while he undressed, of
+turning over all sorts of happy ideas in his mind: it was with a light
+heart, buoyed with the anticipation of going to see some favourite work of
+art on the morrow, that he jumped into bed and turned out the light; but
+no sooner had he made himself ready to sleep, relaxing a self-control of
+which he was not even conscious, so habitual had it become, than an icy
+shudder convulsed his body and he burst into sobs. He did not wish to know
+why, but dried his eyes, saying with a smile: "This is delightful; I'm
+becoming neurasthenic." After which he could not save himself from utter
+exhaustion at the thought that, next day, he must begin afresh his attempt
+to find out what Odette had been doing, must use all his influence to
+contrive to see her. This compulsion to an activity without respite,
+without variety, without result, was so cruel a scourge that one day,
+noticing a swelling over his stomach, he felt an actual joy in the idea
+that he had, perhaps, a tumour which would prove fatal, that he need not
+concern himself with anything further, that it was his malady which was
+going to govern his life, to make a plaything of him, until the
+not-distant end. If indeed, at this period, it often happened that, though
+without admitting it even to himself, he longed for death, it was in order
+to escape not so much from the keenness of his sufferings as from the
+monotony of his struggle.
+
+And yet he would have wished to live until the time came when he no longer
+loved her, when she would have no reason for lying to him, when at length
+he might learn from her whether, on the day when he had gone to see her in
+the afternoon, she had or had not been in the arms of Forcheville.  Often
+for several days on end the suspicion that she was in love with some one
+else would distract his mind from the question of Forcheville, making it
+almost immaterial to him, like those new developments of a continuous
+state of ill-health which seem for a little time to have delivered us from
+their predecessors. There were even days when he was not tormented by any
+suspicion. He fancied that he was cured. But next morning, when he awoke,
+he felt in the same place the same pain, a sensation which, the day
+before, he had, as it were, diluted in the torrent of different
+impressions.  But it had not stirred from its place. Indeed, it was the
+sharpness of this pain that had awakened him.
+
+Since Odette never gave him any information as to those vastly important
+matters which took up so much of her time every day (albeit he had lived
+long enough in the world to know that such matters are never anything else
+than pleasures) he could not sustain for any length of time the effort to
+imagine them; his brain would become a void; then he would pass a finger
+over his tired eyelids, in the same way as he might have wiped his
+eyeglass, and would cease altogether to think. There emerged, however,
+from this unexplored tract, certain occupations which reappeared from time
+to time, vaguely connected by Odette with some obligation towards distant
+relatives or old friends who, inasmuch as they were the only people whom
+she was in the habit of mentioning as preventing her from seeing him,
+seemed to Swann to compose the necessary, unalterable setting of her life.
+Because of the tone in which she referred, from time to time, to "the day
+when I go with my friend to the Hippodrome," if, when he felt unwell and
+had thought, "Perhaps Odette would be kind and come to see me," he
+remembered, suddenly, that it was one of those very days, he would correct
+himself with an "Oh, no! It's not worth while asking her to come; I should
+have thought of it before, this is the day when she goes with her friend
+to the Hippodrome. We must confine ourselves to what is possible; no use
+wasting our time in proposing things that can't be accepted and are
+declined in advance." And this duty that was incumbent upon Odette, of
+going to the Hippodrome, to which Swann thus gave way, seemed to him to be
+not merely ineluctable in itself; but the mark of necessity which stamped
+it seemed to make plausible and legitimate everything that was even
+remotely connected with it. If, when Odette, in the street, had
+acknowledged the salute of a passer-by, which had aroused Swann's
+jealousy, she replied to his questions by associating the stranger with
+any of the two or three paramount duties of which she had often spoken to
+him; if, for instance, she said: "That's a gentleman who was in my
+friend's box the other day; the one I go to the Hippodrome with," that
+explanation would set Swann's suspicions at rest; it was, after all,
+inevitable that this friend should have other guests than Odette in her
+box at the Hippodrome, but he had never sought to form or succeeded in
+forming any coherent impression of them. Oh! how he would have loved to
+know her, that friend who went to the Hippodrome, how he would have loved
+her to invite him there with Odette. How readily he would have sacrificed
+all his acquaintance for no matter what person who was in the habit of
+seeing Odette, were she but a manicurist or a girl out of a shop. He would
+have taken more trouble, incurred more expense for them than for queens.
+Would they not have supplied him, out of what was contained in their
+knowledge of the life of Odette, with the one potent anodyne for his pain?
+With what joy would he have hastened to spend his days with one or other
+of those humble folk with whom Odette kept up friendly relations, either
+with some ulterior motive or from genuine simplicity of nature. How
+willingly would he have fixed his abode for ever in the attics of some
+sordid but enviable house, where Odette went but never took him, and
+where, if he had lived with the little retired dressmaker, whose lover he
+would readily have pretended to be, he would have been visited by. Odette
+almost daily.  In those regions, that were almost slums, what a modest
+existence, abject, if you please, but delightful, nourished by
+tranquillity and happiness, he would have consented to lead indefinitely.
+
+It sometimes happened, again, that, when, after meeting Swann, she saw
+some man approaching whom he did not know, he could distinguish upon
+Odette's face that look of sorrow which she had worn on the day when he
+had come to her while Forcheville was there. But this was rare; for, on
+the days when, in spite of all that she had to do, and of her dread of
+what people would think, she did actually manage to see Swann, the
+predominant quality in her attitude, now, was self-assurance; a striking
+contrast, perhaps an unconscious revenge for, perhaps a natural reaction
+from the timorous emotion which, in the early days of their friendship,
+she had felt in his presence, and even in his absence, when she began a
+letter to him with the words: "My dear, my hand trembles so that I can
+scarcely write." (So, at least, she pretended, and a little of that
+emotion must have been sincere, or she would not have been anxious to
+enlarge and emphasise it.) So Swann had been pleasing to her then. Our
+hands do not tremble except for ourselves, or for those whom we love. When
+they have ceased to control our happiness how peaceful, how easy, how bold
+do we become in their presence! In speaking to him, in writing to him now,
+she no longer employed those words by which she had sought to give herself
+the illusion that he belonged to her, creating opportunities for saying
+"my" and "mine" when she referred to him: "You are all that I have in the
+world; it is the perfume of our friendship, I shall keep it," nor spoke to
+him of the future, of death itself, as of a single adventure which they
+would have to share.  In those early days, whatever he might say to her,
+she would answer admiringly: "You know, you will never be like other
+people!"--she would gaze at his long, slightly bald head, of which people
+who know only of his successes used to think: "He's not regularly
+good-looking, if you like, but he is smart; that tuft, that eyeglass, that
+smile!" and, with more curiosity perhaps to know him as he really was than
+desire to become his mistress, she would sigh:
+
+"I do wish I could find out what there is in that head of yours!"
+
+But, now, whatever he might say, she would answer, in a tone sometimes of
+irritation, sometimes indulgent: "Ah! so you never will be like other
+people!"
+
+She would gaze at his head, which was hardly aged at all by his recent
+anxieties (though people now thought of it, by the same mental process
+which enables one to discover the meaning of a piece of symphonic music of
+which one has read the programme, or the 'likenesses' in a child whose
+family one has known: "He's not positively ugly, if you like, but he is
+really rather absurd; that eyeglass, that tuft, that smile!" realising in
+their imagination, fed by suggestion, the invisible boundary which
+divides, at a few months' interval, the head of an ardent lover from a
+cuckold's), and would say:
+
+"Oh, I do wish I could change you; put some sense into that head of
+yours."
+
+Always ready to believe in the truth of what he hoped, if it was only
+Odette's way of behaving to him that left room for doubt, he would fling
+himself greedily upon her words: "You can if you like," he would tell her.
+
+And he tried to explain to her that to comfort him, to control him, to
+make him work would be a noble task, to which numbers of other women asked
+for nothing better than to be allowed to devote themselves, though it is
+only fair to add that in those other women's hands the noble task would
+have seemed to Swann nothing more than an indiscreet and intolerable
+usurpation of his freedom of action. "If she didn't love me, just a
+little," he told himself, "she would not wish to have me altered. To alter
+me, she will have to see me more often." And so he was able to trace, in
+these faults which she found in him, a proof at least of her interest,
+perhaps even of her love; and, in fact, she gave him so little, now, of
+the last, that he was obliged to regard as proofs of her interest in him
+the various things which, every now and then, she forbade him to do. One
+day she announced that she did not care for his coachman, who, she
+thought, was perhaps setting Swann against her, and, anyhow, did not shew
+that promptness and deference to Swann's orders which she would have liked
+to see. She felt that he wanted to hear her say: "Don't have him again
+when you come to me," just as he might have wanted her to kiss him. So,
+being in a good temper, she said it; and he was deeply moved. That
+evening, when talking to M. de Charlus, with whom he had the satisfaction
+of being able to speak of her openly (for the most trivial remarks that he
+uttered now, even to people who had never heard of her, had always some
+sort of reference to Odette), he said to him:
+
+"I believe, all the same, that she loves me; she is so nice to me now, and
+she certainly takes an interest in what I do."
+
+And if, when he was starting off for her house, getting into his carriage
+with a friend whom he was to drop somewhere on the way, his friend said:
+"Hullo! that isn't Loredan on the box?" with what melancholy joy would
+Swann answer him:
+
+"Oh! Good heavens, no! I can tell you, I daren't take Loredan when I go to
+the Rue La P�rouse; Odette doesn't like me to have Loredan, she thinks he
+doesn't suit me. What on earth is one to do? Women, you know, women. My
+dear fellow, she would be furious. Oh, lord, yes; I've only to take R�mi
+there; I should never hear the last of it!"
+
+These new manners, indifferent, listless, irritable, which Odette now
+adopted with Swann, undoubtedly made him suffer; but he did not realise
+how much he suffered; since it had been with a regular progression, day
+after day, that Odette had chilled towards him, it was only by directly
+contrasting what she was to-day with what she had been at first that he
+could have measured the extent of the change that had taken place. Now
+this change was his deep, his secret wound, which pained him day and
+night, and whenever he felt that his thoughts were straying too near it,
+he would quickly turn them into another channel for fear of being made to
+suffer too keenly. He might say to himself in a vague way: "There was a
+time when Odette loved me more," but he never formed any definite picture
+of that time. Just as he had in his study a cupboard at which he contrived
+never to look, which he turned aside to avoid passing whenever he entered
+or left the room, because in one of its drawers he had locked away the
+chrysanthemum which she had given him on one of those first evenings when
+he had taken her home in his carriage, and the letters in which she said:
+"Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never have let you have
+that back," and "At whatever hour of the day or night you may need me,
+just send me a word, and dispose of me as you please," so there was a
+place in his heart to which he would never allow his thoughts to trespass
+too near, forcing them, if need be, to evade it by a long course of
+reasoning so that they should not have to pass within reach of it; the
+place in which lingered his memories of happy days.
+
+But his so meticulous prudence was defeated one evening when he had gone
+out to a party.
+
+It was at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte's, on the last, for that season,
+of the evenings on which she invited people to listen to the musicians who
+would serve, later on, for her charity concerts. Swann, who had intended
+to go to each of the previous evenings in turn, but had never been able to
+make up his mind, received, while he was dressing for this party, a visit
+from the Baron de Charlus, who came with an offer to go with him to the
+Marquise's, if his company could be of any use in helping Swann not to
+feel quite so bored when he got there, to be a little less unhappy. But
+Swann had thanked him with:
+
+"You can't conceive how glad I should be of your company. But the greatest
+pleasure that you can give me will be if you will go instead to see
+Odette. You know what a splendid influence you have over her. I don't
+suppose she'll be going anywhere this evening, unless she goes to see her
+old dressmaker, and I'm sure she would be delighted if you went with her
+there. In any case, you'll find her at home before then. Try to keep her
+amused, and also to give her a little sound advice. If you could arrange
+something for to-morrow which would please her, something that we could
+all three do together. Try to put out a feeler, too, for the summer; see
+if there's anything she wants to do, a cruise that we might all three
+take; anything you can think of. I don't count upon seeing her to-night,
+myself; still if she would like me to come, or if you find a loophole,
+you've only to send me a line at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's up till midnight;
+after that I shall be here. Ever so many thanks for all you are doing for
+me--you know what I feel about you!"
+
+His friend promised to go and do as Swann wished as soon as he had
+deposited him at the door of the Saint-Euverte house, where he arrived
+soothed by the thought that M. de Charlus would be spending the evening in
+the Rue La P�rouse, but in a state of melancholy indifference to
+everything that did not involve Odette, and in particular to the details
+of fashionable life, a state which invested them with the charm that is to
+be found in anything which, being no longer an object of our desire,
+appears to us in its own guise. On alighting from his carriage, in the
+foreground of that fictitious summary of their domestic existence which
+hostesses are pleased to offer to their guests on ceremonial occasions,
+and in which they shew a great regard for accuracy of costume and setting,
+Swann was amused to discover the heirs and successors of Balzac's
+'tigers'--now 'grooms'--.  who normally followed their mistress when she
+walked abroad, but now, hatted and booted, were posted out of doors, in
+front of the house on the gravelled drive, or outside the stables, as
+gardeners might be drawn up for inspection at the ends of their several
+flower-beds. The peculiar tendency which he had always had to look for
+analogies between living people and the portraits in galleries reasserted
+itself here, but in a more positive and more general form; it was society
+as a whole, now that he was detached from it, which presented itself to
+him in a series of pictures. In the cloak-room, into which, in the old
+days, when he was still a man of fashion, he would have gone in his
+overcoat, to emerge from it in evening dress, but without any impression
+of what had occurred there, his mind having been, during the minute or two
+that he had spent in it, either still at the party which he had just left,
+or already at the party into which he was just about to be ushered, he now
+noticed, for the first time, roused by the unexpected arrival of so
+belated a guest, the scattered pack of splendid effortless animals, the
+enormous footmen who were drowsing here and there upon benches and chests,
+until, pointing their noble greyhound profiles, they towered upon their
+feet and gathered in a circle round about him.
+
+One of them, of a particularly ferocious aspect, and not unlike the
+headsman in certain Renaissance pictures which represent executions,
+tortures, and the like, advanced upon him with an implacable air to take
+his 'things.' But the harshness of his steely glare was compensated by the
+softness of his cotton gloves, so effectively that, as he approached
+Swann, he seemed to be exhibiting at once an utter contempt for his person
+and the most tender regard for his hat. He took it with a care to which
+the precision of his movements imparted something that was almost
+over-fastidious, and with a delicacy that was rendered almost touching by
+the evidence of his splendid strength. Then he passed it to one of his
+satellites, a novice and timid, who was expressing the panic that
+overpowered him by casting furious glances in every direction, and
+displayed all the dumb agitation of a wild animal in the first hours of
+its captivity.
+
+A few feet away, a strapping great lad in livery stood musing, motionless,
+statuesque, useless, like that purely decorative warrior whom one sees in
+the most tumultuous of Mantegna's paintings, lost in dreams, leaning upon
+his shield, while all around him are fighting and bloodshed and death;
+detached from the group of his companions who were thronging about Swann,
+he seemed as determined to remain unconcerned in the scene, which he
+followed vaguely with his cruel, greenish eyes, as if it had been the
+Massacre of the Innocents or the Martyrdom of Saint James. He seemed
+precisely to have sprung from that vanished race--if, indeed, it ever
+existed, save in the reredos of San Zeno and the frescoes of the
+Eremitani, where Swann had come in contact with it, and where it still
+dreams--fruit of the impregnation of a classical statue by some one of the
+Master's Paduan models, or of Albert Duerer's Saxons. And the locks of his
+reddish hair, crinkled by nature, but glued to his head by brilliantine,
+were treated broadly as they are in that Greek sculpture which the
+Mantuan painter never ceased to study, and which, if in its creator's
+purpose it represents but man, manages at least to extract from man's
+simple outlines such a variety of richness, borrowed, as it were, from the
+whole of animated nature, that a head of hair, by the glossy undulation
+and beak-like points of its curls, or in the overlaying of the florid
+triple diadem of its brushed tresses, can suggest at once a bunch of
+seaweed, a brood of fledgling doves, a bed of hyacinths and a serpent's
+writhing back. Others again, no less colossal, were disposed upon the
+steps of a monumental staircase which, by their decorative presence and
+marmorean immobility, was made worthy to be named, like that god-crowned
+ascent in the Palace of the Doges, the 'Staircase of the Giants,' and on
+which Swann now set foot, saddened by the thought that Odette had never
+climbed it. Ah, with what joy would he, on the other hand, have raced up
+the dark, evil-smelling, breakneck flights to the little dressmaker's, in
+whose attic he would so gladly have paid the price of a weekly stage-box
+at the Opera for the right to spend the evening there when Odette came,
+and other days too, for the privilege of talking about her, of living
+among people whom she was in the habit of seeing when he was not there,
+and who, on that account, seemed to keep secret among themselves some part
+of the life of his mistress more real, more inaccessible and more
+mysterious than anything that he knew. Whereas upon that pestilential,
+enviable staircase to the old dressmaker's, since there was no other, no
+service stair in the building, one saw in the evening outside every door
+an empty, unwashed milk-can set out, in readiness for the morning round,
+upon the door-mat; on the despicable, enormous staircase which Swann was
+at that moment climbing, on either side of him, at different levels,
+before each anfractuosity made in its walls by the window of the porter's
+lodge or the entrance to a set of rooms, representing the departments of
+indoor service which they controlled, and doing homage for them to the
+guests, a gate-keeper, a major-domo, a steward (worthy men who spent the
+rest of the week in semi-independence in their own domains, dined there by
+themselves like small shopkeepers, and might to-morrow lapse to the
+plebeian service of some successful doctor or industrial magnate),
+scrupulous in carrying out to the letter all the instructions that had
+been heaped upon them before they were allowed to don the brilliant livery
+which they wore only at long intervals, and in which they did not feel
+altogether at their ease, stood each in the arcade of his doorway, their
+splendid pomp tempered by a democratic good-fellowship, like saints in
+their niches, and a gigantic usher, dressed Swiss Guard fashion, like the
+beadle in a church, struck the pavement with his staff as each fresh
+arrival passed him. Coming to the top of the staircase, up which he had
+been followed by a servant with a pallid countenance and a small pigtail
+clubbed at the back of his head, like one of Goya's sacristans or a
+tabellion in an old play, Swann passed by an office in which the lackeys,
+seated like notaries before their massive registers, rose solemnly to
+their feet and inscribed his name. He next crossed a little hall
+which--just as certain rooms are arranged by their owners to serve as the
+setting for a single work of art (from which they take their name), and,
+in their studied bareness, contain nothing else besides--displayed to him
+as he entered it, like some priceless effigy by Benvenuto Cellini of an
+armed watchman, a young footman, his body slightly bent forward, rearing
+above his crimson gorget an even more crimson face, from which seemed to
+burst forth torrents of fire, timidity and zeal, who, as he pierced the
+Aubusson tapestries that screened the door of the room in which the music
+was being given with his impetuous, vigilant, desperate gaze, appeared,
+with a soldierly impassibility or a supernatural faith--an allegory of
+alarums, incarnation of alertness, commemoration of a riot--to be looking
+out, angel or sentinel, from the tower of dungeon or cathedral, for the
+approach of the enemy or for the hour of Judgment.  Swann had now only to
+enter the concert-room, the doors of which were thrown open to him by an
+usher loaded with chains, who bowed low before him as though tendering to
+him the keys of a conquered city.  But he thought of the house in which at
+that very moment he might have been, if Odette had but permitted, and the
+remembered glimpse of an empty milk-can upon a door-mat wrung his heart.
+
+He speedily recovered his sense of the general ugliness of the human male
+when, on the other side of the tapestry curtain, the spectacle of the
+servants gave place to that of the guests. But even this ugliness of
+faces, which of course were mostly familiar to him, seemed something new
+and uncanny, now that their features,--instead of being to him symbols of
+practical utility in the identification of this or that man, who until
+then had represented merely so many pleasures to be sought after, boredoms
+to be avoided, or courtesies to be acknowledged--were at rest, measurable
+by aesthetic co-ordinates alone, in the autonomy of their curves and
+angles.  And in these men, in the thick of whom Swann now found himself
+packed, there was nothing (even to the monocle which many of them wore,
+and which, previously, would, at the most, have enabled Swann to say that
+so-and-so wore a monocle) which, no longer restricted to the general
+connotation of a habit, the same in all of them, did not now strike him
+with a sense of individuality in each. Perhaps because he did not regard
+General de Froberville and the Marquis de Br�aute, who were talking
+together just inside the door, as anything more than two figures in a
+picture, whereas they were the old and useful friends who had put him up
+for the Jockey Club and had supported him in duels, the General's monocle,
+stuck like a shell-splinter in his common, scarred, victorious,
+overbearing face, in the middle of a forehead which it left half-blinded,
+like the single-eyed flashing front of the Cyclops, appeared to Swann as a
+monstrous wound which it might have been glorious to receive but which it
+was certainly not decent to expose, while that which M. de Br�aute wore,
+as a festive badge, with his pearl-grey gloves, his crush hat and white
+tie, substituting it for the familiar pair of glasses (as Swann himself
+did) when he went out to places, bore, glued to its other side, like a
+specimen prepared on a slide for the microscope, an infinitesimal gaze
+that swarmed with friendly feeling and never ceased to twinkle at the
+loftiness of ceilings, the delightfulness of parties, the interestingness
+of programmes and the excellence of refreshments.
+
+"Hallo! you here! why, it's ages since I've seen you," the General greeted
+Swann and, noticing the look of strain on his face and concluding that it
+was perhaps a serious illness that had kept him away, went on, "You're
+looking well, old man!" while M. de Br�aut� turned with, "My dear fellow,
+what on earth are you doing here?" to a 'society novelist' who had just
+fitted into the angle of eyebrow and cheek his own monocle, the sole
+instrument that he used in his psychological investigations and
+remorseless analyses of character, and who now replied, with an air of
+mystery and importance, rolling the 'r':--"I am observing!"
+
+The Marquis de Forestelle's monocle was minute and rimless, and, by
+enforcing an incessant and painful contraction of the eye over which it
+was incrusted like a superfluous cartilage, the presence of which there
+was inexplicable and its substance unimaginable, it gave to his face a
+melancholy refinement, and led women to suppose him capable of suffering
+terribly when in love. But that of M. de Saint-Cand�, girdled, like
+Saturn, with an enormous ring, was the centre of gravity of a face which
+composed itself afresh every moment in relation to the glass, while his
+thrusting red nose and swollen sarcastic lips endeavoured by their
+grimaces to rise to the level of the steady flame of wit that sparkled in
+the polished disk, and saw itself preferred to the most ravishing eyes in
+the world by the smart, depraved young women whom it set dreaming of
+artificial charms and a refinement of sensual bliss; and then, behind him,
+M. de Palancy, who with his huge carp's head and goggling eyes moved
+slowly up and down the stream of festive gatherings, unlocking his great
+mandibles at every moment as though in search of his orientation, had the
+air of carrying about upon his person only an accidental and perhaps
+purely symbolical fragment of the glass wall of his aquarium, a part
+intended to suggest the whole which recalled to Swann, a fervent admirer
+of Giotto's Vices and Virtues at Padua, that Injustice by whose side a
+leafy bough evokes the idea of the forests that enshroud his secret lair.
+
+Swann had gone forward into the room, under pressure from Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte and in order to listen to an aria from _Orfeo_ which was
+being rendered on the flute, and had taken up a position in a corner from
+which, unfortunately, his horizon was bounded by two ladies of 'uncertain'
+age, seated side by side, the Marquise de Cambremer and the Vicomtesse de
+Franquetot, who, because they were cousins, used to spend their time at
+parties in wandering through the rooms, each clutching her bag and
+followed by her daughter, hunting for one another like people at a railway
+station, and could never be at rest until they had reserved, by marking
+them with their fans or handkerchiefs, two adjacent chairs; Mme. de
+Cambremer, since she knew scarcely anyone, being all the more glad of a
+companion, while Mme. de Franquetot, who, on the contrary, was extremely
+popular, thought it effective and original to shew all her fine friends
+that she preferred to their company that of an obscure country cousin with
+whom she had childish memories in common. Filled with ironical melancholy,
+Swann watched them as they listened to the pianoforte inter, mezzo
+(Liszt's 'Saint Francis preaching to the birds') which came after the
+flute, and followed the virtuoso in his dizzy flight; Mme. de Franquetot
+anxiously, her eyes starting from her head, as though the keys over which
+his fingers skipped with such agility were a series of trapezes, from any
+one of which he might come crashing, a hundred feet, to the ground,
+stealing now and then a glance of astonishment and unbelief at her
+companion, as who should say: "It isn't possible, I would never have
+believed that a human being could do all that!"; Mme. de Cambremer, as a
+woman who had received a sound musical education, beating time with her
+head--transformed for the nonce into the pendulum of a metronome, the
+sweep and rapidity of whose movements from one shoulder to the other
+(performed with that look of wild abandonment in her eye which a sufferer
+shews who is no longer able to analyse his pain, nor anxious to master it,
+and says merely "I can't help it") so increased that at every moment her
+diamond earrings caught in the trimming of her bodice, and she was obliged
+to put straight the bunch of black grapes which she had in her hair,
+though without any interruption of her constantly accelerated motion. On
+the other side (and a little way in front) of Mme. de Franquetot, was the
+Marquise de Gallardon, absorbed in her favourite meditation, namely upon
+her own kinship with the Guermantes family, from which she derived both
+publicly and in private a good deal of glory no unmingled with shame, the
+most brilliant ornaments of that house remaining somewhat aloof from her,
+perhaps because she was just a tiresome old woman, or because she was a
+scandalous old woman, or because she came of an inferior branch of the
+family, or very possibly for no reason at all. When she found herself
+seated next to some one whom she did not know, as she was at this moment
+next to Mme. de Franquetot, she suffered acutely from the feeling that her
+own consciousness of her Guermantes connection could not be made
+externally manifest in visible character like those which, in the
+mosaics in Byzantine churches, placed one beneath another, inscribe in a
+vertical column by the side of some Sacred Personage the words which he is
+supposed to be uttering. At this moment she was pondering the fact that
+she had never received an invitation, or even call, from her young cousin
+the Princesse des Laumes, during the six years that had already elapsed
+since the latter's marriage. The thought filled her with anger--and with
+pride; for, by virtue of having told everyone who expressed surprise at
+never seeing her at Mme. des Laumes's, that it was because of the risk of
+meeting the Princesse Mathilde there--a degradation which her own family,
+the truest and bluest of Legitimists, would never have forgiven her, she
+had come gradually to believe that this actually was the reason for her
+not visiting her young cousin. She remembered, it is true, that she had
+several times inquired of Mme. des Laumes how they might contrive to meet,
+but she remembered it only in a confused way, and besides did more than
+neutralise this slightly humiliating reminiscence by murmuring, "After
+all, it isn't for me to take the first step; I am at least twenty years
+older than she is." And fortified by these unspoken words she flung her
+shoulders proudly back until they seemed to part company with her bust,
+while her head, which lay almost horizontally upon them, made one think of
+the 'stuck-on' head of a pheasant which is brought to the table regally
+adorned with its feathers. Not that she in the least degree resembled a
+pheasant, having been endowed by nature with a short and squat and
+masculine figure; but successive mortifications had given her a backward
+tilt, such as one may observe in trees which have taken root on the very
+edge of a precipice and are forced to grow backwards to preserve their
+balance. Since she was obliged, in order to console herself for not being
+quite on a level with the rest of the Guermantes, to repeat to herself
+incessantly that it was owing to the uncompromising rigidity of her
+principles and pride that she saw so little of them, the constant
+iteration had gradually remoulded her body, and had given her a sort of
+'bearing' which was accepted by the plebeian as a sign of breeding, and
+even kindled, at times, a momentary spark in the jaded eyes of old
+gentlemen in clubs. Had anyone subjected Mme. de Gallardon's conversation
+to that form of analysis which by noting the relative frequency of its
+several terms would furnish him with the key to a ciphered message, he
+would at once have remarked that no expression, not even the commonest
+forms of speech, occurred in it nearly so often as "at my cousins the
+Guermantes's," "at my aunt Guermantes's," "Elz�ar de Guermantes's health,"
+"my cousin Guermantes's box." If anyone spoke to her of a distinguished
+personage, she would reply that, although she was not personally
+acquainted with him, she had seen him hundreds of times at her aunt
+Guermantes's, but she would utter this reply in so icy a tone, with such a
+hollow sound, that it was at once quite clear that if she did not know the
+celebrity personally that was because of all the obstinate, ineradicable
+principles against which her arching shoulders were stretched back to
+rest, as on one of those ladders on which gymnastic instructors make us
+'extend' so as to develop the expansion of our chests.
+
+At this moment the Princesse des Laumes, who had not been expected to
+appear at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's that evening, did in fact arrive.  To
+shew that she did not wish any special attention, in a house to which she
+had come by an act of condescension, to be paid to her superior rank, she
+had entered the room with her arms pressed close to her sides, even when
+there was no crowd to be squeezed through, no one attempting to get past
+her; staying purposely at the back, with the air of being in her proper
+place, like a king who stands in the waiting procession at the doors of a
+theatre where the management have not been warned of his coming; and
+strictly limiting her field of vision--so as not to seem to be advertising
+her presence and claiming the consideration that was her due--to the study
+of a pattern in the carpet or of her own skirt, she stood there on the
+spot which had struck her as the most modest (and from which, as she very
+well knew, a cry of rapture from Mme. de Saint-Euverte would extricate her
+as soon as her presence there was noticed), next to Mme. de Cambremer,
+whom, however, she did not know. She observed the dumb-show by which her
+neighbour was expressing her passion for music, but she refrained from
+copying it. This was not to say that, for once that she had consented to
+spend a few minutes in Mme. de Saint-Euverte's house, the Princesse des
+Laumes would not have wished (so that the act of politeness to her hostess
+which she had performed by coming might, so to speak, 'count double') to
+shew herself as friendly and obliging as possible. But she had a natural
+horror of what she called 'exaggerating,' and always made a point of
+letting people see that she 'simply must not' indulge in any display of
+emotion that was not in keeping with the tone of the circle in which she
+moved, although such displays never failed to make an impression upon her,
+by virtue of that spirit of imitation, akin to timidity, which is
+developed in the most self-confident persons, by contact with an
+unfamiliar environment, even though it be inferior to their own. She began
+to ask herself whether these gesticulations might not, perhaps, be a
+necessary concomitant of the piece of music that was being played, a piece
+which, it might be, was in a different category from all the music that
+she had ever heard before; and whether to abstain from them was not a sign
+of her own inability to understand the music, and of discourtesy towards
+the lady of the house; with the result that, in order to express by a
+compromise both of her contradictory inclinations in turn, at one moment
+she would merely straighten her shoulder-straps or feel in her golden hair
+for the little balls of coral or of pink enamel, frosted with tiny
+diamonds, which formed its simple but effective ornament, studying, with a
+cold interest, her impassioned neighbour, while at another she would beat
+time for a few bars with her fan, but, so as not to forfeit her
+independence, she would beat a different time from the pianist's. When he
+had finished the Liszt Intermezzo and had begun a Prelude by Chopin, Mme.
+de Cambremer turned to Mme. de Franquetot with a tender smile, full of
+intimate reminiscence, as well as of satisfaction (that of a competent
+judge) with the performance. She had been taught in her girlhood to fondle
+and cherish those long-necked, sinuous creatures, the phrases of Chopin,
+so free, so flexible, so tactile, which begin by seeking their ultimate
+resting-place somewhere beyond and far wide of the direction in which they
+started, the point which one might have expected them to reach, phrases
+which divert themselves in those fantastic bypaths only to return more
+deliberately--with a more premeditated reaction, with more precision, as
+on a crystal bowl which, if you strike it, will ring and throb until you
+cry aloud in anguish--to clutch at one's heart.
+
+Brought up in a provincial household with few friends or visitors, hardly
+ever invited to a ball, she had fuddled her mind, in the solitude of her
+old manor-house, over setting the pace, now crawling-slow, now passionate,
+whirling, breathless, for all those imaginary waltzing couples, gathering
+them like flowers, leaving the ball-room for a moment to listen, where the
+wind sighed among the pine-trees, on the shore of the lake, and seeing of
+a sudden advancing towards her, more different from anything one had ever
+dreamed of than earthly lovers are, a slender young man, whose voice was
+resonant and strange and false, in white gloves. But nowadays the
+old-fashioned beauty of this music seemed to have become a trifle stale.
+Having forfeited, some years back, the esteem of 'really musical' people,
+it had lost its distinction and its charm, and even those whose taste was
+frankly bad had ceased to find in it more than a moderate pleasure to
+which they hardly liked to confess. Mme. de Cambremer cast a furtive
+glance behind her. She knew that her young daughter-in-law (full of
+respect for her new and noble family, except in such matters as related to
+the intellect, upon which, having 'got as far' as Harmony and the Greek
+alphabet, she was specially enlightened) despised Chopin, and fell quite
+ill when she heard him played. But finding herself free from the scrutiny
+of this Wagnerian, who was sitting, at some distance, in a group of her
+own contemporaries, Mme. de Cambremer let herself drift upon a stream of
+exquisite memories and sensations. The Princesse des Laumes was touched
+also. Though without any natural gift for music, she had received, some
+fifteen years earlier, the instruction which a music-mistress of the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain, a woman of genius who had been, towards the end of
+her life, reduced to penury, had started, at seventy, to give to the
+daughters and granddaughters of her old pupils. This lady was now dead.
+But her method, an echo of her charming touch, came to life now and then
+in the fingers of her pupils, even of those who had been in other respects
+quite mediocre, had given up music, and hardly ever opened a piano. And so
+Mme. des Laumes could let her head sway to and fro, fully aware of the
+cause, with a perfect appreciation of the manner in which the pianist was
+rendering this Prelude, since she knew it by heart. The closing notes of
+the phrase that he had begun sounded already on her lips.  And she
+murmured "How charming it is!" with a stress on the opening consonants of
+the adjective, a token of her refinement by which she felt her lips so
+romantically compressed, like the petals of a beautiful, budding flower,
+that she instinctively brought her eyes into harmony, illuminating them
+for a moment with a vague and sentimental gaze. Meanwhile Mme.  de
+Gallardon had arrived at the point of saying to herself how annoying it
+was that she had so few opportunities of meeting the Princesse des Laumes,
+for she meant to teach her a lesson by not acknowledging her bow. She did
+not know that her cousin was in the room. A movement of Mme. Franquetot's
+head disclosed the Princess. At once Mme. de Gallardon dashed towards her,
+upsetting all her neighbours; although determined to preserve a distant
+and glacial manner which should remind everyone present that she had no
+desire to remain on friendly terms with a person in whose house one might
+find oneself, any day, cheek by jowl with the Princesse Mathilde, and to
+whom it was not her duty to make advances since she was not 'of her
+generation,' she felt bound to modify this air of dignity and reserve by
+some non-committal remark which would justify her overture and would force
+the Princess to engage in conversation; and so, when she reached her
+cousin, Mme. de Gallardon, with a stern countenance and one hand thrust
+out as though she were trying to 'force' a card, began with: "How is your
+husband?" in the same anxious tone that she would have used if the Prince
+had been seriously ill. The Princess, breaking into a laugh which was one
+of her characteristics, and was intended at once to shew the rest of an
+assembly that she was making fun of some one and also to enhance her own
+beauty by concentrating her features around her animated lips and
+sparkling eyes, answered: "Why; he's never been better in his life!" And
+she went on laughing.
+
+Mme. de Gallardon then drew herself up and, chilling her expression still
+further, perhaps because she was still uneasy about the Prince's health,
+said to her cousin:
+
+"Oriane," (at once Mme. des Laumes looked with amused astonishment towards
+an invisible third, whom she seemed to call to witness that she had never
+authorised Mme. de Gallardon to use her Christian name) "I should be so
+pleased if you would look in, just for a minute, to-morrow evening, to
+hear a quintet, with the clarinet, by Mozart. I should like to have your
+opinion of it."
+
+She seemed not so much to be issuing an invitation as to be asking favour,
+and to want the Princess's opinion of the Mozart quintet just though it
+had been a dish invented by a new cook, whose talent it was most important
+that an epicure should come to judge.
+
+"But I know that quintet quite well. I can tell you now--that I adore it."
+
+"You know, my husband isn't at all well; it's his liver. He would like so
+much to see you," Mme. de Gallardon resumed, making it now a corporal work
+of charity for the Princess to appear at her party.
+
+The Princess never liked to tell people that she would not go to their
+houses. Every day she would write to express her regret at having been
+kept away--by the sudden arrival of her husband's mother, by an invitation
+from his brother, by the Opera, by some excursion to the country--from
+some party to which she had never for a moment dreamed of going.  In this
+way she gave many people the satisfaction of feeling that she was on
+intimate terms with them, that she would gladly have come to their houses,
+and that she had been prevented from doing so only by some princely
+occurrence which they were flattered to find competing with their own
+humble entertainment. And then, as she belonged to that witty 'Guermantes
+set'--in which there survived something of the alert mentality, stripped
+of all commonplace phrases and conventional sentiments, which dated from
+M�rim�e, and found its final expression in the plays of Meilhac and
+Hal�vy--she adapted its formula so as to suit even her social engagements,
+transposed it into the courtesy which was always struggling to be positive
+and precise, to approximate itself to the plain truth. She would never
+develop at any length to a hostess the expression of her anxiety to be
+present at her party; she found it more pleasant to disclose to her all
+the various little incidents on which it would depend whether it was or
+was not possible for her to come.
+
+"Listen, and I'll explain," she began to Mme. de Gallardon. "To-morrow
+evening I must go to a friend of mine, who has been pestering me to fix a
+day for ages. If she takes us to the theatre afterwards, then I can't
+possibly come to you, much as I should love to; but if we just stay in the
+house, I know there won't be anyone else there, so I can slip away."
+
+"Tell me, have you seen your friend M. Swann?"
+
+"No! my precious Charles! I never knew he was here. Where is he? I must
+catch his eye."
+
+"It's a funny thing that he should come to old Saint-Euverte's," Mme.  de
+Gallardon went on. "Oh, I know he's very clever," meaning by that 'very
+cunning,' "but that makes no difference; fancy a Jew here, and she the
+sister and sister-in-law of two Archbishops."
+
+"I am ashamed to confess that I am not in the least shocked," said the
+Princesse des Laumes.
+
+"I know he's a converted Jew, and all that, and his parents and
+grandparents before him. But they do say that the converted ones are worse
+about their religion than the practising ones, that it's all just a
+pretence; is that true, d'you think?"
+
+"I can throw no light at all on the matter."
+
+The pianist, who was 'down' to play two pieces by Chopin, after finishing
+the Prelude had at once attacked a Polonaise. But once Mme. de Gallardon
+had informed her cousin that Swann was in the room, Chopin himself might
+have risen from the grave and played all his works in turn without Mme.
+des Laumes's paying him the slightest attention. She belonged to that one
+of the two divisions of the human race in which the untiring curiosity
+which the other half feels about the people whom it does not know is
+replaced by an unfailing interest in the people whom it does. As with many
+women of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the presence, in any room in which
+she might find herself, of another member of her set, even although she
+had nothing in particular to say to him, would occupy her mind to the
+exclusion of every other consideration. From that moment, in the hope that
+Swann would catch sight of her, the Princess could do nothing but (like a
+tame white mouse when a lump of sugar is put down before its nose and then
+taken away) turn her face, in which were crowded a thousand signs of
+intimate connivance, none of them with the least relevance to the
+sentiment underlying Chopin's music, in the direction where Swann was,
+and, if he moved, divert accordingly the course of her magnetic smile.
+
+"Oriane, don't be angry with me," resumed Mme. de Gallardon, who could
+never restrain herself from sacrificing her highest social ambitions, and
+the hope that she might one day emerge into a light that would dazzle the
+world, to the immediate and secret satisfaction of saying something
+disagreeable, "people do say about your M. Swann that he's the sort of man
+one can't have in the house; is that true?"
+
+"Why, you, of all people, ought to know that it's true," replied the
+Princesse des Laumes, "for you must have asked him a hundred times, and
+he's never been to your house once."
+
+And leaving her cousin mortified afresh, she broke out again into a laugh
+which scandalised everyone who was trying to listen to the music, but
+attracted the attention of Mme. de Saint-Euverte, who had stayed, out of
+politeness, near the piano, and caught sight of the Princess now for the
+first time. Mme. de Saint-Euverte was all the more delighted to see Mme.
+des Laumes, as she imagined her to be still at Guermantes, looking after
+her father-in-law, who was ill.
+
+"My dear Princess, you here?"
+
+"Yes, I tucked myself away in a corner, and I've been hearing such lovely
+things."
+
+"What, you've been in the room quite a time?"
+
+"Oh, yes, quite a long time, which seemed very short; it was only long
+because I couldn't see you."
+
+Mme. de Saint-Euverte offered her own chair to the Princess, who declined
+it with:
+
+"Oh, please, no! Why should you? It doesn't matter in the least where
+I sit." And deliberately picking out, so as the better to display the
+simplicity of a really great lady, a low seat without a back: "There now,
+that hassock, that's all I want. It will make me keep my back straight.
+Oh!  Good heavens, I'm making a noise again; they'll be telling you to
+have me 'chucked out'."
+
+Meanwhile, the pianist having doubled his speed, the emotion of the
+music-lovers was reaching its climax, a servant was handing refreshments
+about on a salver, and was making the spoons rattle, and, as on every
+other 'party-night', Mme. de Saint-Euverte was making signs to him, which
+he never saw, to leave the room. A recent bride, who had been told that a
+young woman ought never to appear bored, was smiling vigorously, trying to
+catch her hostess's eye so as to flash a token of her gratitude for the
+other's having 'thought of her' in connection with so delightful an
+entertainment. And yet, although she remained more calm than Mme. de
+Franquetot, it was not without some uneasiness that she followed the
+flying fingers; what alarmed her being not the pianist's fate but the
+piano's, on which a lighted candle, jumping at each _fortissimo_,
+threatened, if not to set its shade on fire, at least to spill wax upon
+the ebony. At last she could contain herself no longer, and, running up
+the two steps of the platform on which the piano stood, flung herself on
+the candle to adjust its sconce. But scarcely had her hand come within
+reach of it when, on a final chord, the piece finished, and the pianist
+rose to his feet. Nevertheless the bold initiative shewn by this young
+woman and the moment of blushing confusion between her and the pianist
+which resulted from it, produced an impression that was favourable on the
+whole.
+
+"Did you see what that girl did just now, Princess?" asked General de
+Froberville, who had come up to Mme. des Laumes as her hostess left her
+for a moment. "Odd, wasn't it? Is she one of the performers?"
+
+"No, she's a little Mme. de Cambremer," replied the Princess carelessly,
+and then, with more animation: "I am only repeating what I heard just now,
+myself; I haven't the faintest notion who said it, it was some one behind
+me who said that they were neighbours of Mme. de Saint-Euverte in the
+country, but I don't believe anyone knows them, really. They must be
+'country cousins'! By the way, I don't know whether you're particularly
+'well-up' in the brilliant society which we see before us, because I've no
+idea who all these astonishing people can be. What do you suppose they do
+with themselves when they're not at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's parties? She
+must have ordered them in with the musicians and the chairs and the food.
+'Universal providers,' you know. You must admit, they're rather splendid,
+General. But can she really have the courage to hire the same 'supers'
+every week? It isn't possible!"
+
+"Oh, but Cambremer is quite a good name; old, too," protested the General.
+
+"I see no objection to its being old," the Princess answered dryly, "but
+whatever else it is it's not euphonious," she went on, isolating the word
+euphonious as though between inverted commas, a little affectation to
+which the Guermantes set were addicted.
+
+"You think not, eh! She's a regular little peach, though," said the
+General, whose eyes never strayed from Mme. de Cambremer. "Don't you agree
+with me, Princess?"
+
+"She thrusts herself forward too much; I think, in so young a woman,
+that's not very nice--for I don't suppose she's my generation," replied
+Mme. des Laumes (the last word being common, it appeared, to Gallardon and
+Guermantes). And then, seeing that M. de Froberville was still gazing at
+Mme. de Cambremer, she added, half out of malice towards the lady, half
+wishing to oblige the General: "Not very nice... for her husband!  I am
+sorry that I do not know her, since she seems to attract you so much; I
+might have introduced you to her," said the Princess, who, if she had
+known the young woman, would most probably have done nothing of the sort.
+"And now I must say good night, because one of my friends is having a
+birthday party, and I must go and wish her many happy returns," she
+explained, modestly and with truth, reducing the fashionable gathering to
+which she was going to the simple proportions of a ceremony which would be
+boring in the extreme, but at which she was obliged to be present, and
+there would be something touching about her appearance. "Besides, I must
+pick up Basin. While I've been here, he's gone to see those friends of
+his--you know them too, I'm sure,--who are called after a bridge--oh, yes,
+the I�nas."
+
+"It was a battle before it was a bridge, Princess; it was a victory!" said
+the General. "I mean to say, to an old soldier like me," he went on,
+wiping his monocle and replacing it, as though he were laying a fresh
+dressing on the raw wound underneath, while the Princess instinctively
+looked away, "that Empire nobility, well, of course, it's not the same
+thing, but, after all, taking it as it is, it's very fine of its kind;
+they were people who really did fight like heroes."
+
+"But I have the deepest respect for heroes," the Princess assented, though
+with a faint trace of irony. "If I don't go with Basin to see this
+Princesse d'I�na, it isn't for that, at all; it's simply because I don't
+know them. Basin knows them; he worships them. Oh, no, it's not what you
+think; he's not in love with her. I've nothing to set my face against!
+Besides, what good has it ever done when I have set my face against them?"
+she queried sadly, for the whole world knew that, ever since the day upon
+which the Prince des Laumes had married his fascinating cousin, he had
+been consistently unfaithful to her. "Anyhow, it isn't that at all.
+They're people he has known for ever so long, they do him very well, and
+that suits me down to the ground. But I must tell you what he's told me
+about their house; it's quite enough. Can you imagine it, all their
+furniture is 'Empire'!"
+
+"But, my dear Princess, that's only natural; it belonged to their
+grandparents."
+
+"I don't quite say it didn't, but that doesn't make it any less ugly. I
+quite understand that people can't always have nice things, but at least
+they needn't have things that are merely grotesque. What do you say? I can
+think of nothing more devastating, more utterly smug than that hideous
+style--cabinets covered all over with swans' heads, like bath-taps!"
+
+"But I believe, all the same, that they've got some lovely things; why,
+they must have that famous mosaic table on which the Treaty of..."
+
+"Oh, I don't deny, they may have things that are interesting enough from
+the historic point of view. But things like that can't, ever, be beautiful
+... because they're simply horrible! I've got things like that myself,
+that came to Basin from the Montesquious. Only, they're up in the attics
+at Guermantes, where nobody ever sees them. But, after all, that's not the
+point, I would fly to see them, with Basin; I would even go to see them
+among all their sphinxes and brasses, if I knew them, but--I don't know
+them! D'you know, I was always taught, when I was a little girl, that it
+was not polite to call on people one didn't know." She assumed a tone of
+childish gravity. "And so I am just doing what I was taught to do.  Can't
+you see those good people, with a totally strange woman bursting into
+their house? Why, I might get a most hostile reception."
+
+And she coquettishly enhanced the charm of the smile which the idea had
+brought to her lips, by giving to her blue eyes, which were fixed on the
+General, a gentle, dreamy expression.
+
+"My dear Princess, you know that they'd be simply wild with joy."
+
+"No, why?" she inquired, with the utmost vivacity, either so as to seem
+unaware that it would be because she was one of the first ladies in
+France, or so as to have the pleasure of hearing the General tell her so.
+"Why?  How can you tell? Perhaps they would think it the most unpleasant
+thing that could possibly happen. I know nothing about them, but if
+they're anything like me, I find it quite boring enough to see the people
+I do know; I'm sure if I had to see people I didn't know as well, even if
+they had 'fought like heroes,' I should go stark mad. Besides, except when
+it's an old friend like you, whom one knows quite apart from that, I'm not
+sure that 'heroism' takes one very far in society. It's often quite boring
+enough to have to give a dinner-party, but if one had to offer one's arm
+to Spartacus, to let him take one down...! Really, no; it would never be
+Vercingetorix I should send for, to make a fourteenth. I feel sure, I
+should keep him for really big 'crushes.' And as I never give any..."
+
+"Ah! Princess, it's easy to see you're not a Guermantes for nothing.  You
+have your share of it, all right, the 'wit of the Guermantes'!"
+
+"But people always talk about the wit of the Guermantes; I never could
+make out why. Do you really know any others who have it?" she rallied him,
+with a rippling flow of laughter, her features concentrated, yoked to the
+service of her animation, her eyes sparkling, blazing with a radiant
+sunshine of gaiety which could be kindled only by such speeches--even if
+the Princess had to make them herself--as were in praise of h wit or of
+her beauty. "Look, there's Swann talking to your Cambremer woman; over
+there, beside old Saint-Euverte, don't you see him? Ask him to introduce
+you. But hurry up, he seems to be just going!"
+
+"Did you notice how dreadfully ill he's looking?" asked the General.
+
+"My precious Charles? Ah, he's coming at last; I was beginning to think he
+didn't want to see me!"
+
+Swann was extremely fond of the Princesse des Laumes, and the sight of her
+recalled to him Guermantes, a property close to Combray, and all that
+country which he so dearly loved and had ceased to visit, so as not to be
+separated from Odette. Slipping into the manner, half-artistic,
+half-amorous--with which he could always manage to amuse the Princess--a
+manner which came to him quite naturally whenever he dipped for a moment
+into the old social atmosphere, and wishing also to express in words, for
+his own satisfaction, the longing that he felt for the country:
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, or rather intoned, in such a way as to be audible at
+once to Mme. de Saint-Euverte, to whom he spoke, and to Mme. des Laumes,
+for whom he was speaking, "Behold our charming Princess! See, she has come
+up on purpose from Guermantes to hear Saint Francis preach to the birds,
+and has only just had time, like a dear little tit-mouse, to go and pick a
+few little hips and haws and put them in her hair; there are even some
+drops of dew upon them still, a little of the hoar-frost which must be
+making the Duchess, down there, shiver. It is very pretty indeed, my dear
+Princess."
+
+"What! The Princess came up on purpose from Guermantes? But that's too
+wonderful! I never knew; I'm quite bewildered," Mme. de Saint-Euverte
+protested with quaint simplicity, being but little accustomed to Swann's
+way of speaking. And then, examining the Princess's headdress, "Why,
+you're quite right; it is copied from... what shall I say, not chestnuts,
+no,--oh, it's a delightful idea, but how can the Princess have known what
+was going to be on my programme? The musicians didn't tell me, even."
+
+Swann, who was accustomed, when he was with a woman whom he had kept up
+the habit of addressing in terms of gallantry, to pay her delicate
+compliments which most other people would not and need not understand, did
+not condescend to explain to Mme. de Saint-Euverte that he had been
+speaking metaphorically. As for the Princess, she was in fits of laughter,
+both because Swann's wit was highly appreciated by her set, and because
+she could never hear a compliment addressed to herself without finding it
+exquisitely subtle and irresistibly amusing.
+
+"Indeed! I'm delighted, Charles, if my little hips and haws meet with your
+approval. But tell me, why did you bow to that Cambremer person, are you
+also her neighbour in the country?"
+
+Mme. de Saint-Euverte, seeing that the Princess seemed quite happy talking
+to Swann, had drifted away.
+
+"But you are, yourself, Princess!"
+
+"I! Why, they must have 'countries' everywhere, those creatures! Don't I
+wish I had!"
+
+"No, not the Cambremers; her own people. She was a Legrandin, and used to
+come to Combray. I don't know whether you are aware that you are Comtesse
+de Combray, and that the Chapter owes you a due."
+
+"I don't know what the Chapter owes me, but I do know that I'm 'touched'
+for a hundred francs, every year, by the Cur�, which is a due that I could
+very well do without. But surely these Cambremers have rather a startling
+name. It ends just in time, but it ends badly!" she said with a laugh.
+
+"It begins no better." Swann took the point.
+
+"Yes; that double abbreviation!"
+
+"Some one very angry and very proper who didn't dare to finish the first
+word."
+
+"But since he couldn't stop himself beginning the second, he'd have done
+better to finish the first and be done with it. We are indulging in the
+most refined form of humour, my dear Charles, in the very best of
+taste--but how tiresome it is that I never see you now," she went on in a
+coaxing tone, "I do so love talking to you. Just imagine, I could not make
+that idiot Froberville see that there was anything funny about the name
+Cambremer.  Do agree that life is a dreadful business. It's only when I
+see you that I stop feeling bored."
+
+Which was probably not true. But Swann and the Princess had the same way
+of looking at the little things of life--the effect, if not the cause of
+which was a close analogy between their modes of expression and even of
+pronunciation. This similarity was not striking because no two things
+could have been more unlike than their voices. But if one took the trouble
+to imagine Swann's utterances divested of the sonority that enwrapped
+them, of the moustache from under which they emerged, one found that they
+were the same phrases, the same inflexions, that they had the 'tone' of
+the Guermantes set. On important matters, Swann and the Princess had not
+an idea in common. But since Swann had become so melancholy, and was
+always in that trembling condition which precedes a flood of tears, he had
+the same need to speak about his grief that a murderer has to tell some
+one about his crime. And when he heard the Princess say that life was a
+dreadful business, he felt as much comforted as if she had spoken to him
+of Odette.
+
+"Yes, life is a dreadful business! We must meet more often, my dear
+friend. What is so nice about you is that you are not cheerful. We could
+spend a most pleasant evening together."
+
+"I'm sure we could; why not come down to Guermantes? My mother-in-law
+would be wild with joy. It's supposed to be very ugly down there, but I
+must say, I find the neighborhood not at all unattractive; I have a horror
+of 'picturesque spots'."
+
+"I know it well, it's delightful!" replied Swann. "It's almost too
+beautiful, too much alive for me just at present; it's a country to be
+happy in. It's perhaps because I have lived there, but things there speak
+to me so. As soon as a breath of wind gets up, and the cornfields begin to
+stir, I feel that some one is going to appear suddenly, that I am going to
+hear some news; and those little houses by the water's edge... I should be
+quite wretched!"
+
+"Oh! my dearest Charles, do take care; there's that appalling Rampillon
+woman; she's seen me; hide me somewhere, do tell me again, quickly, what
+it was that happened to her; I get so mixed up; she's just married off her
+daughter, or her lover (I never can remember),--perhaps both--to each
+other! Oh, no, I remember now, she's been dropped by her Prince... Pretend
+to be talking, so that the poor old Berenice sha'n't come and invite me to
+dinner. Anyhow, I'm going. Listen, my dearest Charles, now that I have
+seen you, once in a blue moon, won't you let me carry you off and take you
+to the Princesse de Parme's, who would be so pleased to see you (you
+know), and Basin too, for that matter; he's meeting me there. If one
+didn't get news of you, sometimes, from M�m�...  Remember, I never see you
+at all now!"
+
+Swann declined. Having told M. de Charlus that, on leaving Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte's, he would go straight home, he did not care to run the
+risk, by going on now to the Princesse de Parme's, of missing a message
+which he had, all the time, been hoping to see brought in to him by one of
+the footmen, during the party, and which he was perhaps going to find left
+with his own porter, at home.
+
+"Poor Swann," said Mme. des Laumes that night to her husband; "he is
+always charming, but he does look so dreadfully unhappy. You will see for
+yourself, for he has promised to dine with us one of these days. I do feel
+that it's really absurd that a man of his intelligence should let himself
+be made to suffer by a creature of that kind, who isn't even interesting,
+for they tell me, she's an absolute idiot!" she concluded with the wisdom
+invariably shewn by people who, not being in love themselves, feel that a
+clever man ought to be unhappy only about such persons as are worth his
+while; which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend
+to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the
+common bacillus.
+
+Swann now wished to go home, but, just as he was making his escape,
+General de Froberville caught him and asked for an introduction to Mme.
+de Cambremer, and he was obliged to go back into the room to look for her.
+
+"I say, Swann, I'd rather be married to that little woman than killed by
+savages, what do you say?"
+
+The words 'killed by savages' pierced Swann's aching heart; and at once he
+felt the need of continuing the conversation. "Ah!" he began, "some fine
+lives have been lost in that way... There was, you remember, that explorer
+whose remains Dumont d'Urville brought back, La P�rouse..." (and he was at
+once happy again, as though he had named Odette). "He was a fine
+character, and interests me very much, does La P�rouse," he ended sadly.
+
+"Oh, yes, of course, La P�rouse," said the General. "It's quite a
+well-known name. There's a street called that."
+
+"Do you know anyone in the Rue La P�rouse?" asked Swann excitedly.
+
+"Only Mme. de Chanlivault, the sister of that good fellow Chaussepierre.
+She gave a most amusing theatre-party the other evening. That's a house
+that will be really smart some day, you'll see!"
+
+"Oh, so she lives in the Rue La P�rouse. It's attractive; I like that
+street; it's so sombre."
+
+"Indeed it isn't. You can't have been in it for a long time; it's not at
+all sombre now; they're beginning to build all round there."
+
+When Swann did finally introduce M. de Froberville to the young Mme.  de
+Cambremer, since it was the first time that she had heard the General's
+name, she hastily outlined upon her lips the smile of joy and surprise
+with which she would have greeted him if she had never, in the whole of
+her life, heard anything else; for, as she did not yet know all the
+friends of her new family, whenever anyone was presented to her, she
+assumed that he must be one of them, and thinking that she would shew her
+tact by appearing to have heard 'such a lot about him' since her marriage,
+she would hold out her hand with an air of hesitation which was meant as a
+proof at once of the inculcated reserve which she had to overcome and of
+the spontaneous friendliness which successfully overcame it. And so her
+parents-in-law, whom she still regarded as the most eminent pair in
+France, declared that she was an angel; all the more that they preferred
+to appear, in marrying her to their son, to have yielded to the attraction
+rather of her natural charm than of her considerable fortune.
+
+"It's easy to see that you're a musician heart and soul, Madame," said the
+General, alluding to the incident of the candle.
+
+Meanwhile the concert had begun again, and Swann saw that he could not now
+go before the end of the new number. He suffered greatly from being shut
+up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded him all
+the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love, incapable, had they
+known of it, of taking any interest, or of doing more than smile at it as
+at some childish joke, or deplore it as an act of insanity, they made it
+appear to him in the aspect of a subjective state which existed for
+himself alone, whose reality there was nothing external to confirm; he
+suffered overwhelmingly, to the point at which even the sound of the
+instruments made him want to cry, from having to prolong his exile in this
+place to which Odette would never come, in which no one, nothing was aware
+of her existence, from which she was entirely absent.
+
+But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition tore
+him with such anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart. What
+had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes, on
+which it rested as though expecting something, an expectancy which it
+prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes, in the exaltation with
+which it already saw the expected object approaching, and with a desperate
+effort to continue until its arrival, to welcome it before itself expired,
+to keep the way open for a moment longer, with all its remaining strength,
+that the stranger might enter in, as one holds a door open that would
+otherwise automatically close. And before Swann had had time to understand
+what was happening, to think: "It is the little phrase from Vinteuil's
+sonata. I mustn't listen!", all his memories of the days when Odette had
+been in love with him, which he had succeeded, up till that evening, in
+keeping invisible in the depths of his being, deceived by this sudden
+reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they supposed, had dawned
+again, had awakened from their slumber, had taken wing and risen to sing
+maddeningly in his ears, without pity for his present desolation, the
+forgotten strains of happiness.
+
+In place of the abstract expressions "the time when I was happy," "the
+time when I was loved," which he had often used until then, and without
+much suffering, for his intelligence had not embodied in them anything of
+the past save fictitious extracts which preserved none of the reality, he
+now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the peculiar, volatile
+essence of that lost happiness; he could see it all; the snowy, curled
+petals of the chrysanthemum which she had tossed after him into his
+carriage, which he had kept pressed to his lips, the address 'Maison
+Dor�e,' embossed on the note-paper on which he had read "My hand trembles
+so as I write to you," the frowning contraction of her eyebrows when she
+said pleadingly: "You won't let it be very long before you send for me?";
+he could smell the heated iron of the barber whom he used to have in to
+singe his hair while Loredan went to fetch the little working girl; could
+feel the torrents of rain which fell so often that spring, the ice-cold
+homeward drive in his victoria, by moonlight; all the network of mental
+habits, of seasonable impressions, of sensory reactions, which had
+extended over a series of weeks its uniform meshes, by which his body now
+found itself inextricably held. At that time he had been satisfying a
+sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures of those people who
+lived for love alone.  He had supposed that he could stop there, that he
+would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also; how small a thing the
+actual charm of Odette was now in comparison with that formidable terror
+which extended it like a cloudy halo all around her, that enormous anguish
+of not knowing at every hour of the day and night what she had been doing,
+of not possessing her wholly, at all times and in all places! Alas, he
+recalled the accents in which she had exclaimed: "But I can see you at any
+time; I am always free!"--she, who was never free now; the interest, the
+curiosity that she had shewn in his life, her passionate desire that he
+should do her the favour--of which it was he who, then, had felt
+suspicious, as of a possibly tedious waste of his time and disturbance of
+his arrangements--of granting her access to his study; how she had been
+obliged to beg that he would let her take him to the Verdurins'; and, when
+he did allow her to come to him once a month, how she had first, before he
+would let himself be swayed, had to repeat what a joy it would be to her,
+that custom of their seeing each other daily, for which she had longed at
+a time when to him it had seemed only a tiresome distraction, for which,
+since that time, she had conceived a distaste and had definitely broken
+herself of it, while it had become for him so insatiable, so dolorous a
+need. Little had he suspected how truly he spoke when, on their third
+meeting, as she repeated: "But why don't you let me come to you oftener?"
+he had told her, laughing, and in a vein of gallantry, that it was for
+fear of forming a hopeless passion.  Now, alas, it still happened at times
+that she wrote to him from a restaurant or hotel, on paper which bore a
+printed address, but printed in letters of fire that seared his heart.
+"Written from the H�tel Vouillemont.  What on earth can she have gone
+there for? With whom? What happened there?" He remembered the gas-jets
+that were being extinguished along the Boulevard des Italiens when he had
+met her, when all hope was gone among the errant shades upon that night
+which had seemed to him almost supernatural and which now (that night of a
+period when he had not even to ask himself whether he would be annoying
+her by looking for her and by finding her, so certain was he that she knew
+no greater happiness than to see him and to let him take her home)
+belonged indeed to a mysterious world to which one never may return again
+once its doors are closed. And Swann could distinguish, standing,
+motionless, before that scene of happiness in which it lived again, a
+wretched figure which filled him with such pity, because he did not at
+first recognise who it was, that he must lower his head, lest anyone
+should observe that his eyes were filled with tears.  It was himself.
+
+When he had realised this, his pity ceased; he was jealous, now, of that
+other self whom she had loved, he was jealous of those men of whom he had
+so often said, without much suffering: "Perhaps she's in love with them,"
+now that he had exchanged the vague idea of loving, in which there is no
+love, for the petals of the chrysanthemum and the 'letter-heading' of the
+Maison d'Or; for they were full of love. And then, his anguish becoming
+too keen, he passed his hand over his forehead, let the monocle drop from
+his eye, and wiped its glass. And doubtless, if he had caught sight of
+himself at that moment, he would have added to the collection of the
+monocles which he had already identified, this one which he removed, like
+an importunate, worrying thought, from his head, while from its misty
+surface, with his handkerchief, he sought to obliterate his cares.
+
+There are in the music of the violin--if one does not see the instrument
+itself, and so cannot relate what one hears to its form, which modifies
+the fullness of the sound--accents which are so closely akin to those of
+certain contralto voices, that one has the illusion that a singer has
+taken her place amid the orchestra. One raises one's eyes; one sees only
+the wooden case, magical as a Chinese box; but, at moments, one is still
+tricked by the deceiving appeal of the Siren; at times, too, one believes
+that one is listening to a captive spirit, struggling in the darkness of
+its masterful box, a box quivering with enchantment, like a devil immersed
+in a stoup of holy water; sometimes, again, it is in the air, at large,
+like a pure and supernatural creature that reveals to the ear, as it
+passes, its invisible message.
+
+As though the musicians were not nearly so much playing the little phrase
+as performing the rites on which it insisted before it would consent to
+appear, as proceeding to utter the incantations necessary to procure, and
+to prolong for a few moments, the miracle of its apparition, Swann, who
+was no more able now to see it than if it had belonged to a world of
+ultra-violet light, who experienced something like the refreshing sense of
+a metamorphosis in the momentary blindness with which he had been struck
+as he approached it, Swann felt that it was present, like a protective
+goddess, a confidant of his love, who, so as to be able to come to him
+through the crowd, and to draw him aside to speak to him, had disguised
+herself in this sweeping cloak of sound. And as she passed him, light,
+soothing, as softly murmured as the perfume of a flower, telling him what
+she had to say, every word of which he closely scanned, sorry to see them
+fly away so fast, he made involuntarily with his lips the motion of
+kissing, as it went by him, the harmonious, fleeting form.
+
+He felt that he was no longer in exile and alone since she, who addressed
+herself to him, spoke to him in a whisper of Odette. For he had no longer,
+as of old, the impression that Odette and he were not known to the little
+phrase. Had it not often been the witness of their joys? True that, as
+often, it had warned him of their frailty. And indeed, whereas, in that
+distant time, he had divined an element of suffering in its smile, in its
+limpid and disillusioned intonation, to-night he found there rather the
+charm of a resignation that was almost gay. Of those sorrows, of which the
+little phrase had spoken to him then, which he had seen it--without his
+being touched by them himself--carry past him, smiling, on its sinuous and
+rapid course, of those sorrows which were now become his own, without his
+having any hope of being, ever, delivered from them, it seemed to say to
+him, as once it had said of his happiness: "What does all that matter; it
+is all nothing." And Swann's thoughts were borne for the first time on a
+wave of pity and tenderness towards that Vinteuil, towards that unknown,
+exalted brother who also must have suffered so greatly; what could his
+life have been? From the depths of what well of sorrow could he have drawn
+that god-like strength, that unlimited power of creation?
+
+When it was the little phrase that spoke to him of the vanity of his
+sufferings, Swann found a sweetness in that very wisdom which, but a
+little while back, had seemed to him intolerable when he thought that he
+could read it on the faces of indifferent strangers, who would regard his
+love as a digression that was without importance. 'Twas because the little
+phrase, unlike them, whatever opinion it might hold on the short duration
+of these states of the soul, saw in them something not, as everyone else
+saw, less serious than the events of everyday life, but, on the contrary,
+so far superior to everyday life as to be alone worthy of the trouble of
+expressing it. Those graces of an intimate sorrow, 'twas them that the
+phrase endeavoured to imitate, to create anew; and even their essence, for
+all that it consists in being incommunicable and in appearing trivial to
+everyone save him who has experience of them, the little phrase had
+captured, had rendered visible. So much so that it made their value be
+confessed, their divine sweetness be tasted by all those same
+onlookers--provided only that they were in any sense musical--who, the
+next moment, would ignore, would disown them in real life, in every
+individual love that came into being beneath their eyes. Doubtless the
+form in which it had codified those graces could not be analysed into any
+logical elements. But ever since, more than a year before, discovering to
+him many of the riches of his own soul, the love of music had been born,
+and for a time at least had dwelt in him, Swann had regarded musical
+_motifs_ as actual ideas, of another world, of another order, ideas veiled
+in shadows, unknown, impenetrable by the human mind, which none the less
+were perfectly distinct one from another, unequal among themselves in
+value and in significance. When, after that first evening at the
+Verdurins', he had had the little phrase played over to him again, and had
+sought to disentangle from his confused impressions how it was that, like
+a perfume or a caress, it swept over and enveloped him, he had observed
+that it was to the closeness of the intervals between the five notes which
+composed it and to the constant repetition of two of them that was due
+that impression of a frigid, a contracted sweetness; but in reality he
+knew that he was basing this conclusion not upon the phrase itself, but
+merely upon certain equivalents, substituted (for his mind's convenience)
+for the mysterious entity of which he had become aware, before ever he
+knew the Verdurins, at that earlier party, when for the first time he had
+heard the sonata played. He knew that his memory of the piano falsified
+still further the perspective in which he saw the music, that the field
+open to the musician is not a miserable stave of seven notes, but an
+immeasurable keyboard (still, almost all of it, unknown), on which, here
+and there only, separated by the gross darkness of its unexplored tracts,
+some few among the millions of keys, keys of tenderness, of passion, of
+courage, of serenity, which compose it, each one differing from all the
+rest as one universe differs from another, have been discovered by certain
+great artists who do us the service, when they awaken in us the emotion
+corresponding to the theme which they have found, of shewing us what
+richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to us, in that great black
+impenetrable night, discouraging exploration, of our soul, which we have
+been content to regard as valueless and waste and void. Vinteuil had been
+one of those musicians. In his little phrase, albeit it presented to the
+mind's eye a clouded surface, there was contained, one felt, a matter so
+consistent, so explicit, to which the phrase gave so new, so original a
+force, that those who had once heard it preserved the memory of it in the
+treasure-chamber of their minds. Swann would repair to it as to a
+conception of love and happiness, of which at once he knew as well in what
+respects it was peculiar as he would know of the _Princesse de Cl�ves_, or
+of _Ren�_, should either of those titles occur to him. Even when he was
+not thinking of the little phrase, it existed, latent, in his mind, in the
+same way as certain other conceptions without material equivalent, such as
+our notions of light, of sound, of perspective, of bodily desire, the rich
+possessions wherewith our inner temple is diversified and adorned. Perhaps
+we shall lose them, perhaps they will be obliterated, if we return to
+nothing in the dust. But so long as we are alive, we can no more bring
+ourselves to a state in which we shall not have known them than we can
+with regard to any material object, than we can, for example, doubt the
+luminosity of a lamp that has just been lighted, in view of the changed
+aspect of everything in the room, from which has vanished even the memory
+of the darkness. In that way Vinteuil's phrase, like some theme, say, in
+_Tristan_, which represents to us also a certain acquisition of sentiment,
+has espoused our mortal state, had endued a vesture of humanity that was
+affecting enough. Its destiny was linked, for the future, with that of the
+human soul, of which it was one of the special, the most distinctive
+ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our
+dream of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be
+that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to
+our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our
+hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And
+death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps
+even less certain.
+
+So Swann was not mistaken in believing that the phrase of the sonata did,
+really, exist. Human as it was from this point of view, it belonged, none
+the less, to an order of supernatural creatures whom we have never seen,
+but whom, in spite of that, we recognise and acclaim with rapture when
+some explorer of the unseen contrives to coax one forth, to bring it down
+from that divine world to which he has access to shine for a brief moment
+in the firmament of ours. This was what Vinteuil had done for the little
+phrase. Swann felt that the composer had been content (with the musical
+instruments at his disposal) to draw aside its veil, to make it visible,
+following and respecting its outlines with a hand so loving, so prudent,
+so delicate and so sure, that the sound altered at every moment, blunting
+itself to indicate a shadow, springing back into life when it must follow
+the curve of some more bold projection. And one proof that Swann was not
+mistaken when he believed in the real existence of this phrase, was that
+anyone with an ear at all delicate for music would at once have detected
+the imposture had Vinteuil, endowed with less power to see and to render
+its forms, sought to dissemble (by adding a line, here and there, of his
+own invention) the dimness of his vision or the feebleness of his hand.
+
+The phrase had disappeared. Swann knew that it would come again at the end
+of the last movement, after a long passage which Mme. Verdurin's pianist
+always 'skipped.' There were in this passage some admirable ideas which
+Swann had not distinguished on first hearing the sonata, and which he now
+perceived, as if they had, in the cloakroom of his memory, divested
+themselves of their uniform disguise of novelty. Swann listened to all the
+scattered themes which entered into the composition of the phrase, as its
+premises enter into the inevitable conclusion of a syllogism; he was
+assisting at the mystery of its birth. "Audacity," he exclaimed to
+himself, "as inspired, perhaps, as a Lavoisier's or an Ampere's, the
+audacity of a Vinteuil making experiment, discovering the secret laws that
+govern an unknown force, driving across a region unexplored towards the
+one possible goal the invisible team in which he has placed his trust and
+which he never may discern!" How charming the dialogue which Swann now
+heard between piano and violin, at the beginning of the last passage. The
+suppression of human speech, so far from letting fancy reign there
+uncontrolled (as one might have thought), had eliminated it altogether.
+Never was spoken language of such inflexible necessity, never had it known
+questions so pertinent, such obvious replies. At first the piano
+complained alone, like a bird deserted by its mate; the violin heard and
+answered it, as from a neighbouring tree. It was as at the first beginning
+of the world, as if there were not yet but these twain upon the earth, or
+rather in this world closed against all the rest, so fashioned by the
+logic of its creator that in it there should never be any but themselves;
+the world of this sonata. Was it a bird, was it the soul, not yet made
+perfect, of the little phrase, was it a fairy, invisibly somewhere
+lamenting, whose plaint the piano heard and tenderly repeated? Its cries
+were so sudden that the violinist must snatch up his bow and race to catch
+them as they came. Marvellous bird! The violinist seemed to wish to charm,
+to tame, to woo, to win it. Already it had passed into his soul, already
+the little phrase which it evoked shook like a medium's the body of the
+violinist, 'possessed' indeed.  Swann knew that the phrase was going to
+speak to him once again.  And his personality was now so divided that the
+strain of waiting for the imminent moment when he would find himself face
+to face, once more, with the phrase, convulsed him in one of those sobs
+which a fine line of poetry or a piece of alarming news will wring from
+us, not when we are alone, but when we repeat one or the other to a
+friend, in whom we see ourselves reflected, like a third person, whose
+probable emotion softens him.  It reappeared, but this time to remain
+poised in the air, and to sport there for a moment only, as though
+immobile, and shortly to expire. And so Swann lost nothing of the precious
+time for which it lingered. It was still there, like an iridescent bubble
+that floats for a while unbroken. As a rainbow, when its brightness fades,
+seems to subside, then soars again and, before it is extinguished, is
+glorified with greater splendour than it has ever shewn; so to the two
+colours which the phrase had hitherto allowed to appear it added others
+now, chords shot with every hue in the prism, and made them sing. Swann
+dared not move, and would have liked to compel all the other people in the
+room to remain still also, as if the slightest movement might embarrass
+the magic presence, supernatural, delicious, frail, that would so easily
+vanish. But no one, as it happened, dreamed of speaking.  The ineffable
+utterance of one solitary man, absent, perhaps dead (Swann did not know
+whether Vinteuil were still alive), breathed out above the rites of those
+two hierophants, sufficed to arrest the attention of three hundred minds,
+and made of that stage on which a soul was thus called into being one of
+the noblest altars on which a supernatural ceremony could be performed. It
+followed that, when the phrase at last was finished, and only its
+fragmentary echoes floated among the subsequent themes which had already
+taken its place, if Swann at first was annoyed to see the Comtesse de
+Monteriender, famed for her imbecilities, lean over towards him to confide
+in him her impressions, before even the sonata had come to an end; he
+could not refrain from smiling, and perhaps also found an underlying
+sense, which she was incapable of perceiving, in the words that she used.
+Dazzled by the virtuosity of the performers, the Comtesse exclaimed to
+Swann: "It's astonishing! I have never seen anything to beat it..." But a
+scrupulous regard for accuracy making her correct her first assertion, she
+added the reservation: "anything to beat it... since the table-turning!"
+
+From that evening, Swann understood that the feeling which Odette had once
+had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would not be
+realised now. And the days on which, by a lucky chance, she had once more
+shewn herself kind and loving to him, or if she had paid him any
+attention, he recorded those apparent and misleading signs of a slight
+movement on her part towards him with the same tender and sceptical
+solicitude, the desperate joy that people reveal who, when they are
+nursing a friend in the last days of an incurable malady, relate, as
+significant facts of infinite value: "Yesterday he went through his
+accounts himself, and actually corrected a mistake that we had made in
+adding them up; he ate an egg to-day and seemed quite to enjoy it, if he
+digests it properly we shall try him with a cutlet to-morrow,"--although
+they themselves know that these things are meaningless on the eve of an
+inevitable death. No doubt Swann was assured that if he had now been
+living at a distance from Odette he would gradually have lost all interest
+in her, so that he would have been glad to learn that she was leaving
+Paris for ever; he would have had the courage to remain there; but he had
+not the courage to go.
+
+He had often thought of going. Now that he was once again at work upon his
+essay on Vermeer, he wanted to return, for a few days at least, to The
+Hague, to Dresden, to Brunswick. He was certain that a 'Toilet of Diana'
+which had been acquired by the Mauritshuis at the Goldschmidt sale as a
+Nicholas Maes was in reality a Vermeer. And he would have liked to be able
+to examine the picture on the spot, so as to strengthen his conviction.
+But to leave Paris while Odette was there, and even when she was not
+there--for in strange places where our sensations have not been numbed by
+habit, we refresh, we revive an old pain--was for him so cruel a project
+that he felt himself to be capable of entertaining it incessantly in his
+mind only because he knew himself to be resolute in his determination
+never to put it into effect. But it would happen that, while he was
+asleep, the intention to travel would reawaken in him (without his
+remembering that this particular tour was impossible) and would be
+realised. One night he dreamed that he was going away for a year; leaning
+from the window of the train towards a young man on the platform who wept
+as he bade him farewell, he was seeking to persuade this young man to come
+away also. The train began to move; he awoke in alarm, and remembered that
+he was not going away, that he would see Odette that evening, and next day
+and almost every day. And then, being still deeply moved by his dream, he
+would thank heaven for those special circumstances which made him
+independent, thanks to which he could remain in Odette's vicinity, and
+could even succeed in making her allow him to see her sometimes; and,
+counting over the list of his advantages: his social position--his
+fortune, from which she stood too often in need of assistance not to
+shrink from the prospect of a definite rupture (having even, so people
+said, an ulterior plan of getting him to marry her)--his friendship with
+M. de Charlus, which, it must be confessed, had never won him any very
+great favour from Odette, but which gave him the pleasant feeling that she
+was always hearing complimentary things said about him by this common
+friend for whom she had so great an esteem--and even his own intelligence,
+the whole of which he employed in weaving, every day, a fresh plot which
+would make his presence, if not agreeable, at any rate necessary to Odette
+--he thought of what might have happened to him if all these advantages
+had been lacking, he thought that, if he had been, like so many other men,
+poor and humble, without resources, forced to undertake any task that
+might be offered to him, or tied down by parents or by a wife, he might
+have been obliged to part from Odette, that that dream, the terror of
+which was still so recent, might well have been true; and he said to
+himself: "People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy
+as they think they are." But he reflected that this existence had lasted
+already for several years, that all that he could now hope for was that it
+should last for ever, that he would sacrifice his work, his pleasures, his
+friends, in fact the whole of his life to the daily expectation of a
+meeting which, when it occurred, would bring him no happiness; and he
+asked himself whether he was not mistaken, whether the circumstances that
+had favoured their relations and had prevented a final rupture had not
+done a disservice to his career, whether the outcome to be desired was not
+that as to which he rejoiced that it happened only in dreams--his own
+departure; and he said to himself that people did not know when they were
+unhappy, that they were never so happy as they supposed.
+
+Sometimes he hoped that she would die, painlessly, in some accident, she
+who was out of doors in the streets, crossing busy thoroughfares, from
+morning to night. And as she always returned safe and sound, he marvelled
+at the strength, at the suppleness of the human body, which was able
+continually to hold in check, to outwit all the perils that environed it
+(which to Swann seemed innumerable, since his own secret desire had strewn
+them in her path), and so allowed its occupant, the soul, to abandon
+itself, day after day, and almost with impunity, to its career of
+mendacity, to the pursuit of pleasure. And Swann felt a very cordial
+sympathy with that Mahomet II whose portrait by Bellini he admired, who,
+on finding that he had fallen madly in love with one of his wives, stabbed
+her, in order, as his Venetian biographer artlessly relates, to recover
+his spiritual freedom. Then he would be ashamed of thinking thus only of
+himself, and his own sufferings would seem to deserve no pity now that he
+himself was disposing so cheaply of Odette's very life.
+
+Since he was unable to separate himself from her without a subsequent
+return, if at least he had seen her continuously and without separations
+his grief would ultimately have been assuaged, and his love would,
+perhaps, have died. And from the moment when she did not wish to leave
+Paris for ever he had hoped that she would never go. As he knew that her
+one prolonged absence, every year, was in August and September, he had
+abundant opportunity, several months in advance, to dissociate from it the
+grim picture of her absence throughout Eternity which was lodged in him by
+anticipation, and which, consisting of days closely akin to the days
+through which he was then passing, floated in a cold transparency in his
+mind, which it saddened and depressed, though without causing him any
+intolerable pain. But that conception of the future, that flowing stream,
+colourless and unconfined, a single word from Odette sufficed to penetrate
+through all Swann's defences, and like a block of ice immobilised it,
+congealed its fluidity, made it freeze altogether; and Swann felt himself
+suddenly filled with an enormous and unbreakable mass which pressed on the
+inner walls of his consciousness until he was fain to burst asunder; for
+Odette had said casually, watching him with a malicious smile:
+"Forcheville is going for a fine trip at Whitsuntide. He's going to
+Egypt!" and Swann had at once understood that this meant: "I am going to
+Egypt at Whitsuntide with Forcheville." And, in fact, if, a few days
+later, Swann began: "About that trip that you told me you were going to
+take with Forcheville," she would answer carelessly: "Yes, my dear boy,
+we're starting on the 19th; we'll send you a 'view' of the Pyramids." Then
+he was determined to know whether she was Forcheville's mistress, to ask
+her point-blank, to insist upon her telling him. He knew that there were
+some perjuries which, being so superstitious, she would not commit, and
+besides, the fear, which had hitherto restrained his curiosity, of making
+Odette angry if he questioned her, of making himself odious, had ceased to
+exist now that he had lost all hope of ever being loved by her.
+
+One day he received an anonymous letter which told him that Odette had
+been the mistress of countless men (several of whom it named, among them
+Forcheville, M. de Br�aut� and the painter) and women, and that she
+frequented houses of ill-fame. He was tormented by the discovery that
+there was to be numbered among his friends a creature capable of sending
+him such a letter (for certain details betrayed in the writer a
+familiarity with his private life). He wondered who it could be. But he
+had never had any suspicion with regard to the unknown actions of other
+people, those which had no visible connection with what they said. And
+when he wanted to know whether it was rather beneath the apparent
+character of M. de Charlus, or of M. des Laumes, or of M. d'Orsan that he
+must place the untravelled region in which this ignoble action might have
+had its birth; as none of these men had ever, in conversation with Swann,
+suggested that he approved of anonymous letters, and as everything that
+they had ever said to him implied that they strongly disapproved, he saw
+no further reason for associating this infamy with the character of any
+one of them more than with the rest. M. de Charlus was somewhat inclined
+to eccentricity, but he was fundamentally good and kind; M. des Laumes was
+a trifle dry, but wholesome and straight. As for M. d'Orsan, Swann had
+never met anyone who, even in the most depressing circumstances, would
+come to him with a more heartfelt utterance, would act more properly or
+with more discretion. So much so that he was unable to understand the
+rather indelicate part commonly attributed to M. d'Orsan in his relations
+with a certain wealthy woman, and that whenever he thought of him he was
+obliged to set that evil reputation on one side, as irreconcilable with so
+many unmistakable proofs of his genuine sincerity and refinement.  For a
+moment Swann felt that his mind was becoming clouded, and he thought of
+something else so as to recover a little light; until he had the courage
+to return to those other reflections. But then, after not having been able
+to suspect anyone, he was forced to suspect everyone that he knew.  After
+all, M. de Charlus might be most fond of him, might be most good-natured;
+but he was a neuropath; to-morrow, perhaps, he would burst into tears on
+hearing that Swann was ill; and to-day, from jealousy, or in anger, or
+carried away by some sudden idea, he might have wished to do him a
+deliberate injury. Really, that kind of man was the worst of all. The
+Prince des Laumes was, certainly, far less devoted to Swann than was M. de
+Charlus. But for that very reason he had not the same susceptibility with
+regard to him; and besides, his was a nature which, though, no doubt, it
+was cold, was as incapable of a base as of a magnanimous action. Swann
+regretted that he had formed no attachments in his life except to such
+people. Then he reflected that what prevents men from doing harm to their
+neighbours is fellow-feeling, that he could not, in the last resort,
+answer for any but men whose natures were analogous to his own, as was, so
+far as the heart went, that of M. de Charlus. The mere thought of causing
+Swann so much distress would have been revolting to him. But with a man
+who was insensible, of another order of humanity, as was the Prince des
+Laumes, how was one to foresee the actions to which he might be led by the
+promptings of a different nature? To have a good heart was everything, and
+M. de Charlus had one. But M. d'Orsan was not lacking in that either, and
+his relations with Swann--cordial, but scarcely intimate, arising from the
+pleasure which, as they held the same views about everything, they found
+in talking together--were more quiescent than the enthusiastic affection
+of M. de Charlus, who was apt to be led into passionate activity, good or
+evil. If there was anyone by whom Swann felt that he had always been
+understood, and (with delicacy) loved, it was M. d'Orsan. Yes, but the
+life he led; it could hardly be called honourable. Swann regretted that he
+had never taken any notice of those rumours, that he himself had admitted,
+jestingly, that he had never felt so keen a sense of sympathy, or of
+respect, as when he was in thoroughly 'detrimental' society. "It is not
+for nothing," he now assured himself, "that when people pass judgment upon
+their neighbour, their finding is based upon his actions. It is those
+alone that are significant, and not at all what we say or what we think.
+Charlus and des Laumes may have this or that fault, but they are men of
+honour. Orsan, perhaps, has not the same faults, but he is not a man of
+honour. He may have acted dishonourably once again." Then he suspected
+R�mi, who, it was true, could only have inspired the letter, but he now
+felt himself, for a moment, to be on the right track. To begin with,
+Loredan had his own reasons for wishing harm to Odette. And then, how were
+we not to suppose that our servants, living in a situation inferior to our
+own, adding to our fortunes and to our frailties imaginary riches and
+vices for which they at once envied and despised us, should not find
+themselves led by fate to act in a manner abhorrent to people of our own
+class? He also suspected my grandfather. On every occasion when Swann had
+asked him to do him any service, had he not invariably declined? Besides,
+with his ideas of middle-class respectability, he might have thought that
+he was acting for Swann's good. He suspected, in turn, Bergotte, the
+painter, the Verdurins; paused for a moment to admire once again the
+wisdom of people in society, who refused to mix in the artistic circles in
+which such things were possible, were, perhaps, even openly avowed, as
+excellent jokes; but then he recalled the marks of honesty that were to be
+observed in those Bohemians, and contrasted them with the life of
+expedients, often bordering on fraudulence, to which the want of money,
+the craving for luxury, the corrupting influence of their pleasures often
+drove members of the aristocracy. In a word, this anonymous letter proved
+that he himself knew a human being capable of the most infamous conduct,
+but he could see no reason why that infamy should lurk in the
+depths--which no strange eye might explore--of the warm heart rather than
+the cold, the artist's rather than the business-man's, the noble's rather
+than the flunkey's. What criterion ought one to adopt, in order to judge
+one's fellows? After all, there was not a single one of the people whom he
+knew who might not, in certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful
+action. Must he then cease to see them all? His mind grew clouded; he
+passed his hands two or three times across his brow, wiped his glasses
+with his handkerchief, and remembering that, after all, men who were as
+good as himself frequented the society of M. de Charlus, the Prince des
+Laumes and the rest, he persuaded himself that this meant, if not that
+they were incapable of shameful actions, at least that it was a necessity
+in human life, to which everyone must submit, to frequent the society of
+people who were, perhaps, not incapable of such actions. And he continued
+to shake hands with all the friends whom he had suspected, with the purely
+formal reservation that each one of them had, possibly, been seeking to
+drive him to despair. As for the actual contents of the letter, they did
+not disturb him; for in not one of the charges which it formulated against
+Odette could he see the least vestige of fact. Like many other men, Swann
+had a naturally lazy mind, and was slow in invention. He knew quite well
+as a general truth, that human life is full of contrasts, but in the case
+of any one human being he imagined all that part of his or her life with
+which he was not familiar as being identical with the part with which he
+was. He imagined what was kept secret from him in the light of what was
+revealed. At such times as he spent with Odette, if their conversation
+turned upon an indelicate act committed, or an indelicate sentiment
+expressed by some third person, she would ruthlessly condemn the culprit
+by virtue of the same moral principles which Swann had always heard
+expressed by his own parents, and to which he himself had remained loyal;
+and then, she would arrange her flowers, would sip her tea, would shew an
+interest in his work. So Swann extended those habits to fill the rest of
+her life, he reconstructed those actions when he wished to form a picture
+of the moments in which he and she were apart. If anyone had portrayed her
+to him as she was, or rather as she had been for so long with himself, but
+had substituted some other man, he would have been distressed, for such a
+portrait would have struck him as lifelike. But to suppose that she went
+to bad houses, that she abandoned herself to orgies with other women, that
+she led the crapulous existence of the most abject, the most contemptible
+of mortals--would be an insane wandering of the mind, for the realisation
+of which, thank heaven, the chrysanthemums that he could imagine, the
+daily cups of tea, the virtuous indignation left neither time nor place.
+Only, now and again, he gave Odette to understand that people maliciously
+kept him informed of everything that she did; and making opportune use of
+some detail--insignificant but true--which he had accidentally learned, as
+though it were the sole fragment which he would allow, in spite of
+himself, to pass his lips, out of the numberless other fragments of that
+complete reconstruction of her daily life which he carried secretly in his
+mind, he led her to suppose that he was perfectly informed upon matters,
+which, in reality, he neither knew nor suspected, for if he often adjured
+Odette never to swerve from or make alteration of the truth, that was
+only, whether he realised it or no, in order that Odette should tell him
+everything that she did. No doubt, as he used to assure Odette, he loved
+sincerity, but only as he might love a pander who could keep him in touch
+with the daily life of his mistress.  Moreover, his love of sincerity, not
+being disinterested, had not improved his character. The truth which he
+cherished was that which Odette would tell him; but he himself, in order
+to extract that truth from her, was not afraid to have recourse to
+falsehood, that very falsehood which he never ceased to depict to Odette
+as leading every human creature down to utter degradation. In a word, he
+lied as much as did Odette, because, while more unhappy than she, he was
+no less egotistical. And she, when she heard him repeating thus to her the
+things that she had done, would stare at him with a look of distrust and,
+at all hazards, of indignation, so as not to appear to be humiliated, and
+to be blushing for her actions. One day, after the longest period of calm
+through which he had yet been able to exist without being overtaken by an
+attack of jealousy, he had accepted an invitation to spend the evening at
+the theatre with the Princesse des Laumes. Having opened his newspaper to
+find out what was being played, the sight of the title--_Les Filles de
+Marbre_, by Th�odore Barri�re,--struck him so cruel a blow that he
+recoiled instinctively from it and turned his head away. Illuminated, as
+though by a row of footlights, in the new surroundings in which it now
+appeared, that word 'marble,' which he had lost the power to distinguish,
+so often had it passed, in print, beneath his eyes, had suddenly become
+visible once again, and had at once brought back to his mind the story
+which Odette had told him, long ago, of a visit which she had paid to the
+Salon at the Palais d'Industrie with Mme. Verdurin, who had said to her,
+"Take care, now! I know how to melt you, all right. You're not made of
+marble." Odette had assured him that it was only a joke, and he had not
+attached any importance to it at the time. But he had had more confidence
+in her then than he had now.  And the anonymous letter referred explicitly
+to relations of that sort.  Without daring to lift his eyes to the
+newspaper, he opened it, turned the page so as not to see again the words,
+_Filles de Marbre_, and began to read mechanically the news from the
+provinces. There had been a storm in the Channel, and damage was reported
+from Dieppe, Cabourg, Beuzeval....  Suddenly he recoiled again in horror.
+
+The name of Beuzeval had suggested to him that of another place in the
+same district, Beuzeville, which carried also, bound to it by a hyphen, a
+second name, to wit Br�aut�, which he had often seen on maps, but without
+ever previously remarking that it was the same name as that borne by his
+friend M. de Br�aut�, whom the anonymous letter accused of having been
+Odette's lover. After all, when it came to M. de Br�aut�, there was
+nothing improbable in the charge; but so far as Mme. Verdurin was
+concerned, it was a sheer impossibility. From the fact that Odette did
+occasionally tell a lie, it was not fair to conclude that she never, by
+any chance, told the truth, and in these bantering conversations with Mme.
+Verdurin which she herself had repeated to Swann, he could recognize those
+meaningless and dangerous pleasantries which, in their inexperience of
+life and ignorance of vice, women often utter (thereby certifying their
+own innocence), who--as, for instance, Odette,--would be the last people
+in the world to feel any undue affection for one another. Whereas, on the
+other hand, the indignation with which she had scattered the suspicions
+which she had unintentionally brought into being, for a moment, in his
+mind by her story, fitted in with everything that he knew of the tastes,
+the temperament of his mistress. But at that moment, by an inspiration of
+jealousy, analogous to the inspiration which reveals to a poet or a
+philosopher, who has nothing, so far, but an odd pair of rhymes or a
+detached observation, the idea or the natural law which will give power,
+mastery to his work, Swann recalled for the first time a remark which
+Odette had made to him, at least two years before: "Oh, Mme. Verdurin, she
+won't hear of anything just now but me. I'm a 'love,' if you please, and
+she kisses me, and wants me to go with her everywhere, and call her by her
+Christian name." So far from seeing in these expressions any connection
+with the absurd insinuations, intended to create an atmosphere of vice,
+which Odette had since repeated to him, he had welcomed them as a proof of
+Mme. Verdurin's warm-hearted and generous friendship. But now this old
+memory of her affection for Odette had coalesced suddenly with his more
+recent memory of her unseemly conversation. He could no longer separate
+them in his mind, and he saw them blended in reality, the affection
+imparting a certain seriousness and importance to the pleasantries which,
+in return, spoiled the affection of its innocence. He went to see Odette.
+He sat down, keeping at a distance from her. He did not dare to embrace
+her, not knowing whether in her, in himself, it would be affection or
+anger that a kiss would provoke. He sat there silent, watching their love
+expire. Suddenly he made up his mind.
+
+"Odette, my darling," he began, "I know, I am being simply odious, but I
+must ask you a few questions. You remember what I once thought about you
+and Mme. Verdurin? Tell me, was it true? Have you, with her or anyone
+else, ever?"
+
+She shook her head, pursing her lips together; a sign which people
+commonly employ to signify that they are not going, because it would bore
+them to go, when some one has asked, "Are you coming to watch the
+procession go by?", or "Will you be at the review?". But this shake of the
+head, which is thus commonly used to decline participation in an event
+that has yet to come, imparts for that reason an element of uncertainty to
+the denial of participation in an event that is past. Furthermore, it
+suggests reasons of personal convenience, rather than any definite
+repudiation, any moral impossibility. When he saw Odette thus make him a
+sign that the insinuation was false, he realised that it was quite
+possibly true.
+
+"I have told you, I never did; you know quite well," she added, seeming
+angry and uncomfortable.
+
+"Yes, I know all that; but are you quite sure? Don't say to me, 'You know
+quite well'; say, 'I have never done anything of that sort with any
+woman.'"
+
+She repeated his words like a lesson learned by rote, and as though she
+hoped, thereby, to be rid of him: "I have never done anything of that sort
+with any woman."
+
+"Can you swear it to me on your Laghetto medal?"
+
+Swann knew that Odette would never perjure herself on that.
+
+"Oh, you do make me so miserable," she cried, with a jerk of her body as
+though to shake herself free of the constraint of his question. "Have you
+nearly done? What is the matter with you to-day? You seem to have made up
+your mind that I am to be forced to hate you, to curse you! Look, I was
+anxious to be friends with you again, for us to have a nice time together,
+like the old days; and this is all the thanks I get!"
+
+However, he would not let her go, but sat there like a surgeon who waits
+for a spasm to subside that has interrupted his operation but need not
+make him abandon it.
+
+"You are quite wrong in supposing that I bear you the least ill-will in
+the world, Odette," he began with a persuasive and deceitful gentleness.
+"I never speak to you except of what I already know, and I always know a
+great deal more than I say. But you alone can mollify by your confession
+what makes me hate you so long as it has been reported to me only by other
+people. My anger with you is never due to your actions--I can and do
+forgive you everything because I love you--but to your untruthfulness, the
+ridiculous untruthfulness which makes you persist in denying things which
+I know to be true. How can you expect that I shall continue to love you,
+when I see you maintain, when I hear you swear to me a thing which I know
+to be false? Odette, do not prolong this moment which is torturing us
+both. If you are willing to end it at once, you shall be free of it for
+ever.  Tell me, upon your medal, yes or no, whether you have ever done
+those things."
+
+"How on earth can I tell?" she was furious. "Perhaps I have, ever so long
+ago, when I didn't know what I was doing, perhaps two or three times."
+
+Swann had prepared himself for all possibilities. Reality must, therefore,
+be something which bears no relation to possibilities, any more than the
+stab of a knife in one's body bears to the gradual movement of the clouds
+overhead, since those words "two or three times" carved, as it were, a
+cross upon the living tissues of his heart. A strange thing, indeed, that
+those words, "two or three times," nothing more than a few words, words
+uttered in the air, at a distance, could so lacerate a man's heart, as if
+they had actually pierced it, could sicken a man, like a poison that he
+had drunk. Instinctively Swann thought of the remark that he had heard at
+Mme. de Saint-Euverte's: "I have never seen anything to beat it since the
+table-turning." The agony that he now suffered in no way resembled what he
+had supposed. Not only because, in the hours when he most entirely
+mistrusted her, he had rarely imagined such a culmination of evil, but
+because, even when he did imagine that offence, it remained vague,
+uncertain, was not clothed in the particular horror which had escaped with
+the words "perhaps two or three times," was not armed with that specific
+cruelty, as different from anything that he had known as a new malady by
+which one is attacked for the first time. And yet this Odette, from whom
+all this evil sprang, was no less dear to him, was, on the contrary, more
+precious, as if, in proportion as his sufferings increased, there
+increased at the same time the price of the sedative, of the antidote
+which this woman alone possessed. He wished to pay her more attention, as
+one attends to a disease which one discovers, suddenly, to have grown more
+serious. He wished that the horrible thing which, she had told him, she
+had done "two or three times" might be prevented from occurring again. To
+ensure that, he must watch over Odette. People often say that, by pointing
+out to a man the faults of his mistress, you succeed only in strengthening
+his attachment to her, because he does not believe you; yet how much more
+so if he does! But, Swann asked himself, how could he manage to protect
+her? He might perhaps be able to preserve her from the contamination of
+any one woman, but there were hundreds of other women; and he realised how
+insane had been his ambition when he had begun (on the evening when he had
+failed to find Odette at the Verdurins') to desire the possession--as if
+that were ever possible--of another person. Happily for Swann, beneath the
+mass of suffering which had invaded his soul like a conquering horde of
+barbarians, there lay a natural foundation, older, more placid, and
+silently laborious, like the cells of an injured organ which at once set
+to work to repair the damaged tissues, or the muscles of a paralysed limb
+which tend to recover their former movements. These older, these
+autochthonous in-dwellers in his soul absorbed all Swann's strength, for a
+while, in that obscure task of reparation which gives one an illusory
+sense of repose during convalescence, or after an operation. This time it
+was not so much--as it ordinarily was--in Swann's brain that the
+slackening of tension due to exhaustion took effect, it was rather in his
+heart. But all the things in life that have once existed tend to recur,
+and, like a dying animal that is once more stirred by the throes of a
+convulsion which was, apparently, ended, upon Swann's heart, spared for a
+moment only, the same agony returned of its own accord to trace the same
+cross again. He remembered those moonlit evenings, when, leaning back in
+the victoria that was taking him to the Rue La P�rouse, he would cultivate
+with voluptuous enjoyment the emotions of a man in love, ignorant of the
+poisoned fruit that such emotions must inevitably bear. But all those
+thoughts lasted for no more than a second, the time that it took him to
+raise his hand to his heart, to draw breath again and to contrive to
+smile, so as to dissemble his torment. Already he had begun to put further
+questions. For his jealousy, which had taken an amount of trouble, such as
+no enemy would have incurred, to strike him this mortal blow, to make him
+forcibly acquainted with the most cruel pain that he had ever known, his
+jealousy was not satisfied that he had yet suffered enough, and sought to
+expose his bosom to an even deeper wound. Like an evil deity, his jealousy
+was inspiring Swann, was thrusting him on towards destruction. It was not
+his fault, but Odette's alone, if at first his punishment was not more
+severe.
+
+"My darling," he began again, "it's all over now; was it with anyone I
+know?"
+
+"No, I swear it wasn't; besides, I think I exaggerated, I never really
+went as far as that."
+
+He smiled, and resumed with: "Just as you like. It doesn't really matter,
+but it's unfortunate that you can't give me any name. If I were able to
+form an idea of the person that would prevent my ever thinking of her
+again. I say it for your own sake, because then I shouldn't bother you any
+more about it. It's so soothing to be able to form a clear picture of
+things in one's mind. What is really terrible is what one cannot imagine.
+But you've been so sweet to me; I don't want to tire you. I do thank you,
+with all my heart, for all the good that you have done me. I've quite
+finished now.  Only one word more: how many times?"
+
+"Oh, Charles! can't you see, you're killing me? It's all ever so long ago.
+I've never given it a thought. Anyone would say that you were positively
+trying to put those ideas into my head again. And then you'd be a lot
+better off!" she concluded, with unconscious stupidity but with
+intentional malice.
+
+"I only wished to know whether it had been since I knew you. It's only
+natural. Did it happen here, ever? You can't give me any particular
+evening, so that I can remind myself what I was doing at the time? You
+understand, surely, that it's not possible that you don't remember with
+whom, Odette, my love."
+
+"But I don't know; really, I don't. I think it was in the Bois, one
+evening when you came to meet us on the Island. You had been dining with
+the Princesse des Laumes," she added, happy to be able to furnish him with
+an exact detail, which testified to her veracity. "At the next table there
+was a woman whom I hadn't seen for ever so long. She said to me, 'Come
+along round behind the rock, there, and look at the moonlight on the
+water!' At first I just yawned, and said, 'No, I'm too tired, and I'm
+quite happy where I am, thank you.' She swore there'd never been anything
+like it in the way of moonlight. 'I've heard that tale before,' I said to
+her; you see, I knew quite well what she was after." Odette narrated this
+episode almost as if it were a joke, either because it appeared to her to
+be quite natural, or because she thought that she was thereby minimising
+its importance, or else so as not to appear ashamed. But, catching sight
+of Swann's face, she changed her tone, and:
+
+"You are a fiend!" she flung at him, "you enjoy tormenting me, making me
+tell you lies, just so that you'll leave me in peace."
+
+This second blow struck at Swann was even more excruciating than the
+first. Never had he supposed it to have been so recent an affair, hidden
+from his eyes that had been too innocent to discern it, not in a past
+which he had never known, but in evenings which he so well remembered,
+which he had lived through with Odette, of which he had supposed himself
+to have such an intimate, such an exhaustive knowledge, and which now
+assumed, retrospectively, an aspect of cunning and deceit and cruelty. In
+the midst of them parted, suddenly, a gaping chasm, that moment on the
+Island in the Bois de Boulogne. Without being intelligent, Odette had the
+charm of being natural. She had recounted, she had acted the little scene
+with so much simplicity that Swann, as he gasped for breath, could vividly
+see it: Odette yawning, the "rock there,"... He could hear her
+answer--alas, how lightheartedly--"I've heard that tale before!" He felt
+that she would tell him nothing more that evening, that no further
+revelation was to be expected for the present. He was silent for a time,
+then said to her:
+
+"My poor darling, you must forgive me; I know, I am hurting you
+dreadfully, but it's all over now; I shall never think of it again."
+
+But she saw that his eyes remained fixed upon the things that he did not
+know, and on that past era of their love, monotonous and soothing in his
+memory because it was vague, and now rent, as with a sword-wound, by the
+news of that minute on the Island in the Bois, by moonlight, while he was
+dining with the Princesse des Laumes. But he had so far acquired the habit
+of finding life interesting--of marvelling at the strange discoveries that
+there were to be made in it--that even while he was suffering so acutely
+that he did not believe it possible to endure such agony for any length of
+time, he was saying to himself: "Life is indeed astonishing, and holds
+some fine surprises; it appears that vice is far more common than one has
+been led to believe. Here is a woman in whom I had absolute confidence,
+who looks so simple, so honest, who, in any case, even allowing that her
+morals are not strict, seemed quite normal and healthy in her tastes and
+inclinations. I receive a most improbable accusation, I question her, and
+the little that she admits reveals far more than I could ever have
+suspected." But he could not confine himself to these detached
+observations.  He sought to form an exact estimate of the importance of
+what she had just told him, so as to know whether he might conclude that
+she had done these things often, and was likely to do them again. He
+repeated her words to himself: "I knew quite well what she was after."
+"Two or three times." "I've heard that tale before." But they did not
+reappear in his memory unarmed; each of them held a knife with which it
+stabbed him afresh.  For a long time, like a sick man who cannot restrain
+himself from attempting, every minute, to make the movement that, he
+knows, will hurt him, he kept on murmuring to himself: "I'm quite happy
+where I am, thank you," "I've heard that tale before," but the pain was so
+intense that he was obliged to stop. He was amazed to find that actions
+which he had always, hitherto, judged so lightly, had dismissed, indeed,
+with a laugh, should have become as serious to him as a disease which
+might easily prove fatal. He knew any number of women whom he could ask to
+keep an eye on Odette, but how was he to expect them to adjust themselves
+to his new point of view, and not to remain at that which for so long had
+been his own, which had always guided him in his voluptuous existence; not
+to say to him with a smile: "You jealous monster, wanting to rob other
+people of their pleasure!" By what trap-door, suddenly lowered, had he
+(who had never found, in the old days, in his love for Odette, any but the
+most refined of pleasures) been precipitated into this new circle of hell
+from which he could not see how he was ever to escape. Poor Odette! He
+wished her no harm. She was but half to blame. Had he not been told that
+it was her own mother who had sold her, when she was still little more
+than a child, at Nice, to a wealthy Englishman? But what an agonising
+truth was now contained for him in those lines of Alfred de Vigny's
+_Journal d'un Po�te_ which he had previously read without emotion: "When
+one feels oneself smitten by love for a woman, one ought to say to
+oneself, 'What are 'her surroundings? What has been her life?' All one's
+future happiness lies in the answer." Swann was astonished that such
+simple phrases, spelt over in his mind as, "I've heard that tale before,"
+or "I knew quite well what she was after," could cause him so much pain.
+But he realised that what he had mistaken for simple phrases were indeed
+parts of the panoply which held and could inflict on him the anguish that
+he had felt while Odette was telling her story. For it was the same
+anguish that he now was feeling afresh. It was no good, his knowing
+now,--indeed, it was no good, as time went on, his having partly forgotten
+and altogether forgiven the offence--whenever he repeated her words his
+old anguish refashioned him as he had been before Odette began to speak:
+ignorant, trustful; his merciless jealousy placed him once again, so that
+he might be effectively wounded by Odette's admission, in the position of
+a man who does not yet know the truth; and after several months this old
+story would still dumbfounder him, like a sudden revelation. He marvelled
+at the terrible recreative power of his memory. It was only by the
+weakening of that generative force, whose fecundity diminishes as age
+creeps over one, that he could hope for a relaxation of his torments. But,
+as soon as the power that any one of Odette's sentences had to make Swann
+suffer seemed to be nearly exhausted, lo and behold another, one of those
+to which he had hitherto paid least attention, almost a new sentence, came
+to relieve the first, and to strike at him with undiminished force. The
+memory of the evening on which he had dined with the Princesse des Laumes
+was painful to him, but it was no more than the centre, the core of his
+pain. That radiated vaguely round about it, overflowing into all the
+preceding and following days. And on whatever point in it he might intend
+his memory to rest, it was the whole of that season, during which the
+Verdurins had so often gone to dine upon the Island in the Bois, that
+sprang back to hurt him.  So violently, that by slow degrees the curiosity
+which his jealousy was ever exciting in him was neutralised by his fear of
+the fresh tortures which he would be inflicting upon himself were he to
+satisfy it. He recognised that all the period of Odette's life which had
+elapsed before she first met him, a period of which he had never sought to
+form any picture in his mind, was not the featureless abstraction which he
+could vaguely see, but had consisted of so many definite, dated years,
+each crowded with concrete incidents. But were he to learn more of them,
+he feared lest her past, now colourless, fluid and supportable, might
+assume a tangible, an obscene form, with individual and diabolical
+features. And he continued to refrain from seeking a conception of it, not
+any longer now from laziness of mind, but from fear of suffering. He hoped
+that, some day, he might be able to hear the Island in the Bois, or the
+Princesse des Laumes mentioned without feeling any twinge of that old
+rending pain; meanwhile he thought it imprudent to provoke Odette into
+furnishing him with fresh sentences, with the names of more places and
+people and of different events, which, when his malady was still scarcely
+healed, would make it break out again in another form.
+
+But, often enough, the things that he did not know, that he dreaded, now,
+to learn, it was Odette herself who, spontaneously and without thought of
+what she did, revealed them to him; for the gap which her vices made
+between her actual life and the comparatively innocent life which Swann
+had believed, and often still believed his mistress to lead, was far wider
+than she knew. A vicious person, always affecting the same air of virtue
+before people whom he is anxious to keep from having any suspicion of his
+vices, has no register, no gauge at hand from which he may ascertain bow
+far those vices (their continuous growth being imperceptible by himself)
+have gradually segregated him from the normal ways of life. In the course
+of their cohabitation, in Odette's mind, with the memory of those of her
+actions which she concealed from Swann, her other, her innocuous actions
+were gradually coloured, infected by these, without her being able to
+detect anything strange in them, without their causing any explosion in
+the particular region of herself in which she made them live, but when she
+related them to Swann, he was overwhelmed by the revelation of the
+duplicity to which they pointed. One day, he was trying--without hurting
+Odette--to discover from her whether she had ever had any dealings with
+procuresses. He was, as a matter of fact, convinced that she had not; the
+anonymous letter had put the idea into his mind, but in a purely
+mechanical way; it had been received there with no credulity, but it had,
+for all that, remained there, and Swann, wishing to be rid of the
+burden--a dead weight, but none the less disturbing--of this suspicion,
+hoped that Odette would now extirpate it for ever.
+
+"Oh dear, no! Not that they don't simply persecute me to go to them," her
+smile revealed a gratified vanity which she no longer saw that it was
+impossible should appear legitimate to Swann. "There was one of them
+waited more than two hours for me yesterday, said she would give me any
+money I asked. It seems, there's an Ambassador who said to her, 'I'll kill
+myself if you don't bring her to me'--meaning me! They told her I'd gone
+out, but she waited and waited, and in the end I had to go myself and
+speak to her, before she'd go away. I do wish you could have seen the way
+I tackled her; my maid was in the next room, listening, and told me I
+shouted fit to bring the house down:--'But when you hear me say that I
+don't want to! The idea of such a thing, I don't like it at all! I should
+hope I'm still free to do as I please and when I please and where I
+please! If I needed the money, I could understand...' The porter has
+orders not to let her in again; he will tell her that I am out of town.
+Oh, I do wish I could have had you hidden somewhere in the room while I
+was talking to her.  I know, you'd have been pleased, my dear. There's
+some good in your little Odette, you see, after all, though people do say
+such dreadful things about her."
+
+Besides, her very admissions--when she made any--of faults which she
+supposed him to have discovered, rather served Swann as a starting-point
+for fresh doubts than they put an end to the old. For her admissions never
+exactly coincided with his doubts. In vain might Odette expurgate her
+confession of all its essential part, there would remain in the
+accessories something which Swann had never yet imagined, which crushed
+him anew, and was to enable him to alter the terms of the problem of his
+jealousy.  And these admissions he could never forget. His spirit carried
+them along, cast them aside, then cradled them again in its bosom, like
+corpses in a river. And they poisoned it.
+
+She spoke to him once of a visit that Forcheville had paid her on the day
+of the Paris-Murcie F�te. "What! you knew him as long ago as that?  Oh,
+yes, of course you did," he corrected himself, so as not to shew that he
+had been ignorant of the fact. And suddenly he began to tremble at the
+thought that, on the day of the Paris-Murcie F�te, when he had received
+that letter which he had so carefully preserved, she had been having
+luncheon, perhaps, with Forcheville at the Maison d'Or. She swore that she
+had not. "Still, the Maison d'Or reminds me of something or other which, I
+knew at the time, wasn't true," he pursued, hoping to frighten her. "Yes
+that I hadn't been there at all that evening when I told you I had just
+come from there, and you had been looking for me at Pr�vost's," she
+replied (judging by his manner that he knew) with a firmness that was
+based not so much upon cynicism as upon timidity, a fear of crossing
+Swann, which her own self-respect made her anxious to conceal, and a
+desire to shew him that she could be perfectly frank if she chose. And so
+she struck him with all the sharpness and force of a headsman wielding his
+axe, and yet could not be charged with cruelty, since she was quite
+unconscious of hurting him; she even began to laugh, though this may
+perhaps, it is true, have been chiefly to keep him from thinking that she
+was ashamed, at all, or confused. "It's quite true, I hadn't been to the
+Maison Dor�e. I was coming away from Forcheville's. I had, really, been to
+Pr�vost's--that wasn't a story--and he met me there and asked me to come
+in and look at his prints. But some one else came to see him. I told you
+that I was coming from the Maison d'Or because I was afraid you might be
+angry with me. It was rather nice of me, really, don't you see? I admit, I
+did wrong, but at least I'm telling you all about it now, a'n't I? What
+have I to gain by not telling you, straight, that I lunched with him on
+the day of the Paris-Murcie F�te, if it were true? Especially as at that
+time we didn't know one another quite so well as we do now, did we, dear?"
+
+He smiled back at her with the sudden, craven weakness of the utterly
+spiritless creature which these crushing words had made of him. And so,
+even in the months of which he had never dared to think again, because
+they had been too happy, in those months when she had loved him, she was
+already lying to him! Besides that moment (that first evening on which
+they had "done a cattleya") when she had told him that she was coming from
+the Maison Dor�e, how many others must there have been, each of them
+covering a falsehood of which Swann had had no suspicion.  He recalled how
+she had said to him once: "I need only tell Mme. Verdurin that my dress
+wasn't ready, or that my cab came late. There is always some excuse." From
+himself too, probably, many times when she had glibly uttered such words
+as explain a delay or justify an alteration of the hour fixed for a
+meeting, those moments must have hidden, without his having the least
+inkling of it at the time, an engagement that she had had with some other
+man, some man to whom she had said: "I need only tell Swann that my dress
+wasn't ready, or that my cab came late. There is always some excuse." And
+beneath all his most pleasant memories, beneath the simplest words that
+Odette had ever spoken to him in those old days, words which he had
+believed as though they were the words of a Gospel, beneath her daily
+actions which she had recounted to him, beneath the most ordinary places,
+her dressmaker's flat, the Avenue du Bois, the Hippodrome, he could feel
+(dissembled there, by virtue of that temporal superfluity which, after the
+most detailed account of how a day has been spent, always leaves something
+over, that may serve as a hiding place for certain unconfessed actions),
+he could feel the insinuation of a possible undercurrent of falsehood
+which debased for him all that had remained most precious, his happiest
+evenings, the Rue La P�rouse itself, which Odette must constantly have
+been leaving at other hours than those of which she told him; extending
+the power of the dark horror that had gripped him when he had heard her
+admission with regard to the Maison Dor�e, and, like the obscene creatures
+in the 'Desolation of Nineveh,' shattering, stone by stone, the whole
+edifice of his past.... If, now, he turned aside whenever his memory
+repeated the cruel name of the Maison Dor�e it was because that name
+recalled to him, no longer, as, such a little time since, at Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte's party, the good fortune which he long had lost, but a
+misfortune of which he was now first aware. Then it befell the Maison
+Dor�e, as it had befallen the Island in the Bois, that gradually its name
+ceased to trouble him. For what we suppose to be our love, our jealousy
+are, neither of them, single, continuous and individual passions. They are
+composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each
+of which is ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multitude they give
+us the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity.  The life of
+Swann's love, the fidelity of his jealousy, were formed out of death, of
+infidelity, of innumerable desires, innumerable doubts, all of which had
+Odette for their object. If he had remained for any length of time without
+seeing her, those that died would not have been replaced by others. But
+the presence of Odette continued to sow in Swann's heart alternate seeds
+of love and suspicion.
+
+On certain evenings she would suddenly resume towards him a kindness of
+which she would warn him sternly that he must take immediate advantage,
+under penalty of not seeing it repeated for years to come; he must
+instantly accompany her home, to "do a cattleya," and the desire which she
+pretended to have for him was so sudden, so inexplicable, so imperious,
+the kisses which she lavished on him were so demonstrative and so
+unfamiliar, that this brutal and unnatural fondness made Swann just as
+unhappy as any lie or unkind action. One evening when he had thus, in
+obedience to her command, gone home with her, and while she was
+interspersing her kisses with passionate words, in strange contrast to her
+habitual coldness, he thought suddenly that he heard a sound; he rose,
+searched everywhere and found nobody, but he had not the courage to return
+to his place by her side; whereupon she, in a towering rage, broke a vase,
+with "I never can do anything right with you, you impossible person!" And
+he was left uncertain whether she had not actually had some man concealed
+in the room, whose jealousy she had wished to wound, or else to inflame
+his senses.
+
+Sometimes he repaired to 'gay' houses, hoping to learn something about
+Odette, although he dared not mention her name. "I have a little thing
+here, you're sure to like," the 'manageress' would greet him, and he would
+stay for an hour or so, talking dolefully to some poor girl who sat there
+astonished that he went no further. One of them, who was still quite young
+and attractive, said to him once, "Of course, what I should like would be
+to find a real friend, then he might be quite certain, I should never go
+with any other men again." "Indeed, do you think it possible for a woman
+really to be touched by a man's being in love with her, and never to be
+unfaithful to him?" asked Swann anxiously. "Why, surely! It all depends on
+their characters!" Swann could not help making the same remarks to these
+girls as would have delighted the Princesse des Laumes. To the one who was
+in search of a friend he said, with a smile: "But how nice of you, you've
+put on blue eyes, to go with your sash." "And you too, you've got blue
+cuffs on." "What a charming conversation we are having, for a place of
+this sort! I'm not boring you, am I; or keeping you?" "No, I've nothing to
+do, thank you. If you bored me I should say so. But I love hearing you
+talk." "I am highly flattered.... Aren't we behaving prettily?" he asked
+the 'manageress,' who had just looked in. "Why, yes, that's just what I
+was saying to myself, how sensibly they're behaving! But that's how it is!
+People come to my house now, just to talk. The Prince was telling me, only
+the other day, that he's far more comfortable here than with his wife.  It
+seems that, nowadays, all the society ladies are like that; a perfect
+scandal, I call it. But I'll leave you in peace now, I know when I'm not
+wanted," she ended discreetly, and left Swann with the girl who had the
+blue eyes. But presently he rose and said good-bye to her. She had ceased
+to interest him. She did not know Odette.
+
+The painter having been ill, Dr. Cottard recommended a sea-voyage; several
+of the 'faithful' spoke of accompanying him; the Verdurins could not face
+the prospect of being left alone in Paris, so first of all hired, and
+finally purchased a yacht; thus Odette was constantly going on a cruise.
+Whenever she had been away for any length of time, Swann would feel that
+he was beginning to detach himself from her, but, as though this moral
+distance were proportionate to the physical distance between them,
+whenever he heard that Odette had returned to Paris, he could not rest
+without seeing her. Once, when they had gone away, as everyone thought,
+for a month only, either they succumbed to a series of temptations, or
+else M.  Verdurin had cunningly arranged everything beforehand, to please
+his wife, and disclosed his plans to the 'faithful' only as time went on;
+anyhow, from Algiers they flitted to Tunis; then to Italy, Greece,
+Constantinople, Asia Minor. They had been absent for nearly a year, and
+Swann felt perfectly at ease and almost happy. Albeit M. Verdurin had
+endeavoured to persuade the pianist and Dr. Cottard that their respective
+aunt and patients had no need of them, and that, in any event, it was most
+rash to allow Mme. Cottard to return to Paris, where, Mme. Verdurin
+assured him, a revolution had just broken out, he was obliged to grant
+them their liberty at Constantinople. And the painter came home with them.
+One day, shortly after the return of these four travellers, Swann, seeing
+an omnibus approach him, labelled 'Luxembourg,' and having some business
+there, had jumped on to it and had found himself sitting opposite Mme.
+Cottard, who was paying a round of visits to people whose 'day' it was, in
+full review order, with a plume in her hat, a silk dress, a muff, an
+umbrella (which do for a parasol if the rain kept off), a card-case, and a
+pair of white gloves fresh from the cleaners. Wearing these badges of
+rank, she would, in fine weather, go on foot from one house to another in
+the same neighbourhood, but when she had to proceed to another district,
+would make use of a transfer-ticket on the omnibus. For the first minute
+or two, until the natural courtesy of the woman broke through the starched
+surface of the doctor's-wife, not being certain, either, whether she ought
+to mention the Verdurins before Swann, she produced, quite naturally, in
+her slow and awkward, but not unattractive voice, which, every now and
+then, was completely drowned by the rattling of the omnibus, topics
+selected from those which she had picked up and would repeat in each of
+the score of houses up the stairs of which she clambered in the course of
+an afternoon.
+
+"I needn't ask you, M. Swann, whether a man so much in the movement as
+yourself has been to the Mirlitons, to see the portrait by Machard that
+the whole of Paris is running after. Well, and what do you think of it?
+Whose camp are you in, those who bless or those who curse? It's the same
+in every house in Paris now, no one will speak of anything else but
+Machard's portrait; you aren't smart, you aren't really cultured, you
+aren't up-to-date unless you give an opinion on Machard's portrait."
+
+Swann having replied that he had not seen this portrait, Mme. Cottard was
+afraid that she might have hurt his feelings by obliging him to confess
+the omission.
+
+"Oh, that's quite all right! At least you have the courage to be quite
+frank about it. You don't consider yourself disgraced because you haven't
+seen Machard's portrait. I do think that so nice of you. Well now, I have
+seen it; opinion is divided, you know, there are some people who find it
+rather laboured, like whipped cream, they say; but I think it's just
+ideal.  Of course, she's not a bit like the blue and yellow ladies that
+our friend Biche paints. That's quite clear. But I must tell you,
+perfectly frankly (you'll think me dreadfully old-fashioned, but I always
+say just what I think), that I don't understand his work. I can quite see
+the good points there are in his portrait of my husband; oh, dear me, yes;
+and it's certainly less odd than most of what he does, but even then he
+had to give the poor man a blue moustache! But Machard! Just listen to
+this now, the husband of my friend, I am on my way to see at this very
+moment (which has given me the very great pleasure of your company), has
+promised her that, if he is elected to the Academy (he is one of the
+Doctor's colleagues), he will get Machard to paint her portrait. So she's
+got something to look forward to! I have another friend who insists that
+she'd rather have Leloir.  I'm only a wretched Philistine, and I've no
+doubt Leloir has perhaps more knowledge of painting even than Machard. But
+I do think that the most important thing about a portrait, especially when
+it's going to cost ten thousand francs, is that it should be like, and a
+pleasant likeness, if you know what I mean."
+
+Having exhausted this topic, to which she had been inspired by the
+loftiness of her plume, the monogram on her card-case, the little number
+inked inside each of her gloves by the cleaner, and the difficulty of
+speaking to Swann about the Verdurins, Mme. Cottard, seeing that they had
+still a long way to go before they would reach the corner of the Rue
+Bonaparte, where the conductor was to set her down, listened to the
+promptings of her heart, which counselled other words than these.
+
+"Your ears must have been burning," she ventured, "while we were on the
+yacht with Mme. Verdurin. We were talking about you all the time."
+
+Swann was genuinely astonished, for he supposed that his name was never
+uttered in the Verdurins' presence.
+
+"You see," Mme. Cottard went on, "Mme. de Cr�cy was there; need I say
+more? When Odette is anywhere it's never long before she begins talking
+about you. And you know quite well, it isn't nasty things she says.  What!
+you don't believe me!" she went on, noticing that Svrann looked sceptical.
+And, carried away by the sincerity of her conviction, without putting any
+evil meaning into the word, which she used purely in the sense in which
+one employs it to speak of the affection that unites a pair of friends:
+"Why, she _adores_ you! No, indeed; I'm sure it would never do to say
+anything against you when she was about; one would soon be taught one's
+place! Whatever we might be doing, if we were looking at a picture, for
+instance, she would say, 'If only we had him here, he's the man who could
+tell us whether it's genuine or not. There's no one like him for that.'
+And all day long she would be saying, 'What can he be doing just now?  I
+do hope, he's doing a little work! It's too dreadful that a fellow with
+such gifts as he has should be so lazy.' (Forgive me, won't you.) 'I can
+see him this very moment; he's thinking of us, he's wondering where we
+are.' Indeed, she used an expression which I thought very pretty at the
+time.  M. Verdurin asked her, 'How in the world can you see what he's
+doing, when he's a thousand miles away?' And Odette answered, 'Nothing is
+impossible to the eye of a friend.'
+
+"No, I assure you, I'm not saying it just to flatter you; you have a true
+friend in her, such as one doesn't often find. I can tell you, besides, in
+case you don't know it, that you're the only one. Mme. Verdurin told me as
+much herself on our last day with them (one talks more freely, don't you
+know, before a parting), 'I don't say that Odette isn't fond of us, but
+anything that we may say to her counts for very little beside what Swann
+might say.' Oh, mercy, there's the conductor stopping for me; here have I
+been chatting away to you, and would have gone right past the Rue
+Bonaparte, and never noticed... Will you be so very kind as to tell me
+whether my plume is straight?"
+
+And Mme. Cottard withdrew from her muff, to offer it to Swann, a
+white-gloved hand from which there floated, with a transier-ticket, an
+atmosphere of fashionable life that pervaded the omnibus, blended with the
+harsher fragrance of newly cleaned kid. And Swann felt himself overflowing
+with gratitude to her, as well as to Mme. Verdurin (and almost to Odette,
+for the feeling that he now entertained for her was no longer tinged with
+pain, was scarcely even to be described, now, as love), while from the
+platform of the omnibus he followed her with loving eyes, as she gallantly
+threaded her way along the Rue Bonaparte, her plume erect, her skirt held
+up in one hand, while in the other she clasped her umbrella and her
+card-case, so that its monogram could be seen, her muff dancing in the air
+before her as she went.
+
+To compete with and so to stimulate the moribund feelings that Swann had
+for Odette, Mme. Cottard, a wiser physician, in this case, than ever her
+husband would have been, had grafted among them others more normal,
+feelings of gratitude, of friendship, which in Swann's mind were to make
+Odette seem again more human (more like other women, since other women
+could inspire the same feelings in him), were to hasten her final
+transformation back into that Odette, loved with an undisturbed affection,
+who had taken him home one evening after a revel at the painter's, to
+drink orangeade with Forcheville, that Odette with whom Swann had
+calculated that he might live in happiness.
+
+In former times, having often thought with terror that a day must come
+when he would cease to be in love with Odette, he had determined to keep a
+sharp look-out, and as soon as he felt that love was beginning to escape
+him, to cling tightly to it and to hold it back. But now, to the faintness
+of his love there corresponded a simultaneous faintness in his desire to
+remain her lover. For a man cannot change, that is to say become another
+person, while he continues to obey the dictates of the self which he has
+ceased to be. Occasionally the name, if it caught his eye in a newspaper,
+of one of the men whom he supposed to have been Odette's lovers,
+reawakened his jealousy. But it was very slight, and, inasmuch as it
+proved to him that he had not completely emerged from that period in which
+he had so keenly suffered--though in it he had also known a way of feeling
+so intensely happy--and that the accidents of his course might still
+enable him to catch an occasional glimpse, stealthily and at a distance,
+of its beauties, this jealousy gave him, if anything, an agreeable thrill,
+as to the sad Parisian, when he has left Venice behind him and must return
+to France, a last mosquito proves that Italy and summer are still not too
+remote. But, as a rule, with this particular period of his life from which
+he was emerging, when he made an effort, if not to remain in it, at least
+to obtain, while still he might, an uninterrupted view of it, he
+discovered that already it was too late; he would have looked back to
+distinguish, as it might be a landscape that was about to disappear, that
+love from which he had departed, but it is so difficult to enter into a
+state of complete duality and to present to oneself the lifelike spectacle
+of a feeling which one has ceased to possess, that very soon, the clouds
+gathering in his brain, he could see nothing, he would abandon the
+attempt, would take the glasses from his nose and wipe them; and he told
+himself that he would do better to rest for a little, that there would be
+time enough later on, and settled back into his corner with as little
+curiosity, with as much torpor as the drowsy traveller who pulls his cap
+down over his eyes so as to get some sleep in the railway-carriage that is
+drawing him, he feels, faster and faster, out of the country in which he
+has lived for so long, and which he vowed that he would not allow to slip
+away from him without looking out to bid it a last farewell. Indeed, like
+the same traveller, if he does not awake until he has crossed the frontier
+and is again in France, when Swann happened to alight, close at hand, upon
+something which proved that Forcheville had been Odette's lover, he
+discovered that it caused him no pain, that love was now utterly remote,
+and he regretted that he had had no warning of the moment in which he had
+emerged from it for ever. And just as, before kissing Odette for the first
+time, he had sought to imprint upon his memory the face that for so long
+had been familiar, before it was altered by the additional memory of their
+kiss, so he could have wished--in thought at least--to have been in a
+position to bid farewell, while she still existed, to that Odette who had
+inspired love in him and jealousy, to that Odette who had caused him so to
+suffer, and whom now he would never see again.  He was mistaken. He was
+destined to see her once again, a few weeks later.  It was while he was
+asleep, in the twilight of a dream. He was walking with Mme. Verdurin, Dr.
+Cottard, a young man in a fez whom he failed to identify, the painter,
+Odette, Napoleon III and my grandfather, along a path which followed the
+line of the coast, and overhung the sea, now at a great height, now by a
+few feet only, so that they were continually going up and down; those of
+the party who had reached the downward slope were no longer visible to
+those who were still climbing; what little daylight yet remained was
+failing, and it seemed as though a black night was immediately to fall on
+them. Now and then the waves dashed against the cliff, and Swann could
+feel on his cheek a shower of freezing spray. Odette told him to wipe this
+off, but he could not, and felt confused and helpless in her company, as
+well as because he was in his nightshirt. He hoped that, in the darkness,
+this might pass unnoticed; Mme. Verdurin, however, fixed her astonished
+gaze upon him for an endless moment, in which he saw her face change its
+shape, her nose grow longer, while beneath it there sprouted a heavy
+moustache. He turned away to examine Odette; her cheeks were pale, with
+little fiery spots, her features drawn and ringed with shadows; but she
+looked back at him with eyes welling with affection, ready to detach
+themselves like tears and to fall upon his face, and he felt that he loved
+her so much that he would have liked to carry her off with him at once.
+Suddenly Odette turned her wrist, glanced at a tiny watch, and said: "I
+must go." She took leave of everyone, in the same formal manner, without
+taking Swann aside, without telling him where they were to meet that
+evening, or next day. He dared not ask, he would have liked to follow her,
+he was obliged, without turning back in her direction, to answer with a
+smile some question by Mme. Verdurin; but his heart was frantically
+beating, he felt that he now hated Odette, he would gladly have crushed
+those eyes which, a moment ago, he had loved so dearly, have torn the
+blood into those lifeless cheeks. He continued to climb with Mme.
+Verdurin, that is to say that each step took him farther from Odette, who
+was going downhill, and in the other direction. A second passed and it was
+many hours since she had left him. The painter remarked to Swann that
+Napoleon III had eclipsed himself immediately after Odette. "They had
+obviously arranged it between them," he added; "they must have agreed to
+meet at the foot of the cliff, but they wouldn't say good-bye together; it
+might have looked odd. She is his mistress." The strange young man burst
+into tears. Swann endeavoured to console him. "After all, she is quite
+right," he said to the young man, drying his eyes for him and taking off
+the fez to make him feel more at ease. "I've advised her to do that,
+myself, a dozen times. Why be so distressed? He was obviously the man to
+understand her." So Swann reasoned with himself, for the young man whom he
+had failed, at first, to identify, was himself also; like certain
+novelists, he had distributed his own personality between two characters,
+him who was the 'first person' in the dream, and another whom he saw
+before him, capped with a fez.
+
+As for Napoleon III, it was to Forcheville that some vague association of
+ideas, then a certain modification of the Baron's usual physiognomy, and
+lastly the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honour across his breast, had
+made Swann give that name; but actually, and in everything that the person
+who appeared in his dream represented and recalled to him, it was indeed
+Forcheville. For, from an incomplete and changing set of images, Swann in
+his sleep drew false deductions, enjoying, at the same time, such creative
+power that he was able to reproduce himself by a simple act of division,
+like certain lower organisms; with the warmth that he felt in his own palm
+he modelled the hollow of a strange hand which he thought that he was
+clasping, and out of feelings and impressions of which he was not yet
+conscious, he brought about sudden vicissitudes which, by a chain of
+logical sequences, would produce, at definite points in his dream, the
+person required to receive his love or to startle him awake. In an instant
+night grew black about him; an alarum rang, the inhabitants ran past him,
+escaping from their blazing houses; he could hear the thunder of the
+surging waves, and also of his own heart, which, with equal violence, was
+anxiously beating in his breast. Suddenly the speed of these palpitations
+redoubled, he felt a pain, a nausea that were inexplicable; a peasant,
+dreadfully burned, flung at him as he passed: "Come and ask Charlus where
+Odette spent the night with her friend. He used to go about with her, and
+she tells him everything. It was they that started the fire." It was his
+valet, come to awaken him, and saying:---
+
+"Sir, it is eight o'clock, and the barber is here. I have told him to call
+again in an hour."
+
+But these words, as they dived down through the waves of sleep in which
+Swann was submerged, did not reach his consciousness without undergoing
+that refraction which turns a ray of light, at the bottom of a bowl of
+water, into another sun; just as, a moment earlier, the sound of the
+door-bell, swelling in the depths of his abyss of sleep into the clangour
+of an alarum, had engendered the episode of the fire. Meanwhile the
+scenery of his dream-stage scattered in dust, he opened his eyes, heard
+for the last time the boom of a wave in the sea, grown very distant. He
+touched his cheek. It was dry. And yet he could feel the sting of the cold
+spray, and the taste of salt on his lips. He rose, and dressed himself. He
+had made the barber come early because he had written, the day before, to
+my grandfather, to say that he was going, that afternoon, to Combray,
+having learned that Mme. de Cambremer--Mlle. Legrandin that had been--was
+spending a few days there. The association in his memory of her young and
+charming face with a place in the country which he had not visited for so
+long, offered him a combined attraction which had made him decide at last
+to leave Paris for a while. As the different changes and chances that
+bring us into the company of certain other people in this life do not
+coincide with the periods in which we are in love with those people, but,
+overlapping them, may occur before love has begun, and may be repeated
+after love is ended, the earliest appearances, in our life, of a creature
+who is destined to afford us pleasure later on, assume retrospectively in
+our eyes a certain value as an indication, a warning, a presage. It was in
+this fashion that Swann had often carried back his mind to the image of
+Odette, encountered in the theatre, on that first evening when he had no
+thought of ever seeing her again--and that he now recalled the party at
+Mme. de Saint-Euverte's, at which he had introduced General de
+Frober-ville to Mme. de Cambremer. So manifold are our interests in life
+that it is not uncommon that, on a single occasion, the foundations of a
+happiness which does not yet exist are laid down simultaneously with
+aggravations of a grief from which we are still suffering. And, no doubt,
+that might have occurred to Swann elsewhere than at Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte's. Who, indeed, can say whether, in the event of his having
+gone, that evening, somewhere else, other happinesses, other griefs would
+not have come to him, which, later, would have appeared to have been
+inevitable? But what did seem to him to have been inevitable was what had
+indeed taken place, and he was not far short of seeing something
+providential in the fact that he had at last decided to go to Mme. de
+Saint-Euverte's that evening, because his mind, anxious to admire the
+richness of invention that life shews, and incapable of facing a difficult
+problem for any length of time, such as to discover what, actually, had
+been most to be wished for, came to the conclusion that the sufferings
+through which he had passed that evening, and the pleasures, at that time
+unsuspected, which were already being brought to birth,--the exact balance
+between which was too difficult to establish--were linked by a sort of
+concatenation of necessity.
+
+But while, an hour after his awakening, he was giving instructions to the
+barber, so that his stiffly brushed hair should not become disarranged on
+the journey, he thought once again of his dream; he saw once again, as he
+had felt them close beside him, Odette's pallid complexion, her too thin
+cheeks, her drawn features, her tired eyes, all the things which--in the
+course of those successive bursts of affection which had made of his
+enduring love for Odette a long oblivion of the first impression that he
+had formed of her--he had ceased to observe after the first few days of
+their intimacy, days to which, doubtless, while he slept, his memory had
+returned to seek the exact sensation of those things. And with that old,
+intermittent fatuity, which reappeared in him now that he was no longer
+unhappy, and lowered, at the same time, the average level of his morality,
+he cried out in his heart: "To think that I have wasted years of my life,
+that I have longed for death, that the greatest love that I have ever
+known has been for a woman who did not please me, who was not in my
+style!"
+
+
+
+
+PLACE-NAMES: THE NAME
+
+
+Among the rooms which used most commonly to take shape in my mind during
+my long nights of sleeplessness, there was none that differed more utterly
+from the rooms at Combray, thickly powdered with the motes of an
+atmosphere granular, pollenous, edible and instinct with piety, than my
+room in the Grand H�tel de la Plage, at Balbec, the walls of which, washed
+with ripolin, contained, like the polished sides of a basin in which the
+water glows with a blue, lurking fire, a finer air, pure, azure-tinted,
+saline.  The Bavarian upholsterer who had been entrusted with the
+furnishing of this hotel had varied his scheme of decoration in different
+rooms, and in that which I found myself occupying had set against the
+walls, on three sides of it, a series of low book-cases with glass fronts,
+in which, according to where they stood, by a law of nature which he had,
+perhaps, forgotten to take into account, was reflected this or that
+section of the ever-changing view of the sea, so that the walls were lined
+with a frieze of seascapes, interrupted only by the polished mahogany of
+the actual shelves. And so effective was this that the whole room had the
+appearance of one of those model bedrooms which you see nowadays in
+Housing Exhibitions, decorated with works of art which are calculated by
+their designer to refresh the eyes of whoever may ultimately have to sleep
+in the rooms, the subjects being kept in some degree of harmony with the
+locality and surroundings of the houses for which the rooms are planned.
+
+And yet nothing could have differed more utterly, either, from the real
+Balbec than that other Balbec of which I had often dreamed, on stormy
+days, when the wind was so strong that Fran�oise, as she took me to the
+Champs-Elys�es, would warn me not to walk too near the side of the street,
+or I might have my head knocked off by a falling slate, and would recount
+to me, with many lamentations, the terrible disasters and shipwrecks that
+were reported in the newspaper. I longed for nothing more than to behold a
+storm at sea, less as a mighty spectacle than as a momentary revelation of
+the true life of nature; or rather there were for me no mighty spectacles
+save those which I knew to be not artificially composed for my
+entertainment, but necessary and unalterable,--the beauty of landscapes or
+of great works of art. I was not curious, I did not thirst to know
+anything save what I believed to be more genuine than myself, what had for
+me the supreme merit of shewing me a fragment of the mind of a great
+genius, or of the force or the grace of nature as she appeared when left
+entirely to herself, without human interference. Just as the lovely sound
+of her voice, reproduced, all by itself, upon the phonograph, could never
+console a man for the loss of his mother, so a mechanical imitation of a
+storm would have left me as cold as did the illuminated fountains at the
+Exhibition. I required also, if the storm was to be absolutely genuine,
+that the shore from which I watched it should be a natural shore, not an
+embankment recently constructed by a municipality. Besides, nature, by all
+the feelings that she aroused in me, seemed to me the most opposite thing
+in the world to the mechanical inventions of mankind The less she bore
+their imprint, the more room she offered for the expansion of my heart.
+And, as it happened, I had preserved the name of Balbec, which Legrandin
+had cited to us, as that of a sea-side place in the very midst of "that
+funereal coast, famed for the number of its wrecks, swathed, for six
+months in the year, in a shroud of fog and flying foam from the waves.
+
+"You feel, there, below your feet still," he had told me, "far more even
+than at Finist�re (and even though hotels are now being superimposed upon
+it, without power, however, to modify that oldest bone in the earth's
+skeleton) you feel there that you are actually at the land's end of
+France, of Europe, of the Old World. And it is the ultimate encampment of
+the fishermen, precisely like the fishermen who have lived since the
+world's beginning, facing the everlasting kingdom of the sea-fogs and
+shadows of the night." One day when, at Combray, I had spoken of this
+coast, this Balbec, before M. Swann, hoping to learn from him whether it
+was the best point to select for seeing the most violent storms, he had
+replied: "I should think I did know Balbec! The church at Balbec, built in
+the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and still half romanesque, is
+perhaps the most curious example to be found of our Norman gothic, and so
+exceptional that one is tempted to describe it as Persian in its
+inspiration." And that region, which, until then, had seemed to me to be
+nothing else than a part of immemorial nature, that had remained
+contemporaneous with the great phenomena of geology--and as remote from
+human history as the Ocean itself, or the Great Bear, with its wild race
+of fishermen for whom, no more than for their whales, had there been any
+Middle Ages--it had been a great joy to me to see it suddenly take its
+place in the order of the centuries, with a stored consciousness of the
+romanesque epoch, and to know that the gothic trefoil had come to
+diversify those wild rocks also, at the appointed hour, like those frail
+but hardy plants which, in the Polar regions, when the spring returns,
+scatter their stars about the eternal snows. And if gothic art brought to
+those places and people a classification which, otherwise, they lacked,
+they too conferred one upon it in return. I tried to form a picture in my
+mind of how those fishermen had lived, the timid and unsuspected essay
+towards social intercourse which they had attempted there, clustered upon
+a promontory of the shores of Hell, at the foot of the cliffs of death;
+and gothic art seemed to me a more living thing now that, detaching it
+from the towns in which, until then, I had always imagined it, I could see
+how, in a particular instance, upon a reef of savage rocks, it had taken
+root and grown until it flowered in a tapering spire. I was taken to see
+reproductions of the most famous of the statues at Balbec,--shaggy,
+blunt-faced Apostles, the Virgin from the porch,--and I could scarcely
+breathe for joy at the thought that I might myself, one day, see them take
+a solid form against their eternal background of salt fog. Thereafter, on
+dear, tempestuous February nights, the wind--- breathing into my heart,
+which it shook no less violently than the chimney of my bedroom, the
+project of a visit to Balbec--blended in me the desire for gothic
+architecture with that for a storm upon the sea.
+
+I should have liked to take, the very next day, the good, the generous
+train at one twenty-two, of which never without a palpitating heart could
+I read, in the railway company's bills or in advertisements of circular
+tours, the hour of departure: it seemed to me to cut, at a precise point
+in every afternoon, a most fascinating groove, a mysterious mark, from
+which the diverted hours still led one on, of course, towards evening,
+towards to-morrow morning, but to an evening and morning which one would
+behold, not in Paris but in one of those towns through which the train
+passed and among which it allowed one to choose; for it stopped at Bayeux,
+at Coutances, at Vitr�, at Questambert, at Pontorson, at Balbec, at
+Lannion, at Lamballe, at Benodet, at Pont-Aven, at Quimperle, and
+progressed magnificently surcharged with names which it offered me, so
+that, among them all, I did not know which to choose, so impossible was it
+to sacrifice any. But even without waiting for the train next day, I
+could, by rising and dressing myself with all speed, leave Paris that very
+evening, should my parents permit, and arrive at Balbec as dawn spread
+westward over the raging sea, from whose driven foam I would seek shelter
+in that church in the Persian manner. But at the approach of the Easter
+holidays, when my parents bad promised to let me spend them, for once, in
+the North of Italy, lo! in place of those dreams of tempests, by which I
+had been entirely possessed, not wishing to see anything but waves dashing
+in from all sides, mounting always higher, upon the wildest of coasts,
+beside churches as rugged and precipitous as cliffs, in whose towers the
+sea-birds would be wailing; suddenly, effacing them, taking away all their
+charm, excluding them because they were its opposite and could only have
+weakened its effect, was substituted in me the converse dream of the most
+variegated of springs, not the spring of Combray, still pricking with all
+the needle-points of the winter's frost, but that which already covered
+with lilies and anemones the meadows of Fiesole, and gave Florence a
+dazzling golden background, like those in Fra Angelico's pictures. From
+that moment, only sunlight, perfumes, colours, seemed to me to have any
+value; for this alternation of images had effected a change of front in my
+desire, and--as abrupt as those that occur sometimes in music,--a complete
+change of tone in my sensibility. Thus it came about that a mere
+atmospheric variation would be sufficient to provoke in me that
+modulation, without there being any need for me to await the return of a
+season. For often we find a day, in one, that has strayed from another
+season, and makes us live in that other, summons at once into our presence
+and makes us long for its peculiar pleasures, and interrupts the dreams
+that we were in process of weaving, by inserting, out of its turn, too
+early or too late, this leaf, torn from another chapter, in the
+interpolated calendar of Happiness. But soon it happened that, like those
+natural phenomena from which our comfort or our health can derive but an
+accidental and all too modest benefit, until the day when science takes
+control of them, and, producing them at will, places in our hands the
+power to order their appearance, withdrawn from the tutelage and
+independent of the consent of chance; similarly the production of these
+dreams of the Atlantic and of Italy ceased to depend entirely upon the
+changes of the seasons and of the weather. I need only, to make them
+reappear, pronounce the names: Balbec, Venice, Florence, within whose
+syllables had gradually accumulated all the longing inspired in me by the
+places for which they stood. Even in spring, to come in a book upon the
+name of Balbec sufficed to awaken in me the desire for storms at sea and
+for the Norman gothic; even on a stormy day the name of Florence or of
+Venice would awaken the desire for sunshine, for lilies, for the Palace of
+the Doges and for Santa Maria del Fiore.
+
+But if their names thus permanently absorbed the image that I had formed
+of these towns, it was only by transforming that image, by subordinating
+its reappearance in me to their own special laws; and in consequence of
+this they made it more beautiful, but at the same time more different from
+anything that the towns of Normandy or Tuscany could in reality be, and,
+by increasing the arbitrary delights of my imagination, aggravated the
+disenchantment that was in store for me when I set out upon my travels.
+They magnified the idea that I formed of certain points on the earth's
+surface, making them more special, and in consequence more real. I did not
+then represent to myself towns, landscapes, historic buildings, as
+pictures more or less attractive, cut out here and there of a substance
+that was common to them all, but looked on each of them as on an unknown
+thing, different from all the rest, a thing for which my soul was athirst,
+by the knowledge of which it would benefit. How much more individual still
+was the character that they assumed from being designated by names, names
+that were only for themselves, proper names such as people have. Words
+present to us little pictures of things, lucid and normal, like the
+pictures that are hung on the walls of schoolrooms to give children an
+illustration of what is meant by a carpenter's bench, a bird, an ant-hill;
+things chosen as typical of everything else of the same sort. But names
+present to us--of persons and of towns which they accustom us to regard as
+individual, as unique, like persons--a confused picture, which draws from
+the names, from the brightness or darkness of their sound, the colour in
+which it is uniformly painted, like one of those posters, entirely blue or
+entirely red, in which, on account of the limitations imposed by the
+process used in their reproduction, or by a whim on the designer's part,
+are blue or red not only the sky and the sea, but the ships and the church
+and the people in the streets. The name of Parma, one of the towns that I
+most longed to visit, after reading the _Chartreuse_, seeming to me
+compact and glossy, violet-tinted, soft, if anyone were to speak of such
+or such a house in Parma, in which I should be lodged, he would give me
+the pleasure of thinking that I was to inhabit a dwelling that was compact
+and glossy, violet-tinted, soft, and that bore no relation to the houses
+in any other town in Italy, since I could imagine it only by the aid of
+that heavy syllable of the name of Parma, in which no breath of air
+stirred, and of all that I had made it assume of Stendhalian sweetness and
+the reflected hue of violets. And when I thought of Florence, it was of a
+town miraculously embalmed, and flower-like, since it was called the City
+of the Lilies, and its Cathedral, Our Lady of the Flower. As for Balbec,
+it was one of those names in which, as on an old piece of Norman pottery
+that still keeps the colour of the earth from which it was fashioned, one
+sees depicted still the representation of some long-abolished custom, of
+some feudal right, of the former condition of some place, of an obsolete
+way of pronouncing the language, which had shaped and wedded its
+incongruous syllables and which I never doubted that I should find spoken
+there at once, even by the inn-keeper who would pour me out coffee and
+milk on my arrival, taking me down to watch the turbulent sea, unchained,
+before the church; to whom I lent the aspect, disputatious, solemn and
+mediaeval, of some character in one of the old romances.
+
+Had my health definitely improved, had my parents allowed me, if not
+actually to go down to stay at Balbec, at least to take, just once, so as
+to become acquainted with the architecture and landscapes of Normandy or
+of Brittany, that one twenty-two train into which I had so often clambered
+in imagination, I should have preferred to stop, and to alight from it, at
+the most beautiful of its towns; but in vain might I compare and contrast
+them; how was one to choose, any more than between individual people, who
+are not interchangeable, between Bayeux, so lofty in its noble coronet of
+rusty lace, whose highest point caught the light of the old gold of its
+second syllable; Vitr�, whose acute accent barred its ancient glass with
+wooden lozenges; gentle Lamballe, whose whiteness ranged from egg-shell
+yellow to a pearly grey; Coutances, a Norman Cathedral, which its final
+consonants, rich and yellowing, crowned with a tower of butter; Lannion
+with the rumble and buzz, in the silence of its village street, of the fly
+on the wheel of the coach; Questambert, Pontorson, ridiculously silly and
+simple, white feathers and yellow beaks strewn along the road to those
+well-watered and poetic spots; Benodet, a name scarcely moored that seemed
+to be striving to draw the river down into the tangle of its seaweeds;
+Pont-Aven, the snowy, rosy flight of the wing of a lightly poised coif,
+tremulously reflected in the greenish waters of a canal; Quimperl�, more
+firmly attached, this, and since the Middle Ages, among the rivulets with
+which it babbled, threading their pearls upon a grey background, like the
+pattern made, through the cobwebs upon a window, by rays of sunlight
+changed into blunt points of tarnished silver?
+
+These images were false for another reason also; namely, that they were
+necessarily much simplified; doubtless the object to which my imagination
+aspired, which my senses took in but incompletely and without any
+immediate pleasure, I had committed to the safe custody of names;
+doubtless because I had accumulated there a store of dreams, those names
+now magnetised my desires; but names themselves are not very
+comprehensive; the most that I could do was to include in each of them two
+or three of the principal curiosities of the town, which would lie there
+side by side, without interval or partition; in the name of Balbec, as in
+the magnifying glasses set in those penholders which one buys at sea-side
+places, I could distinguish waves surging round a church built in the
+Persian manner.  Perhaps, indeed, the enforced simplicity of these images
+was one of the reasons for the hold that they had over me. When my father
+had decided, one year, that we should go for the Easter holidays to
+Florence and Venice, not finding room to introduce into the name of
+Florence the elements that ordinarily constitute a town, I was obliged to
+let a supernatural city emerge from the impregnation by certain vernal
+scenes of what I supposed to be, in its essentials, the genius of Giotto.
+All the more--and because one cannot make a name extend much further in
+time than in space--like some of Giotto's paintings themselves which shew
+us at two separate moments the same person engaged in different actions,
+here lying on his bed, there just about to mount his horse, the name of
+Florence was divided into two compartments. In one, beneath an
+architectural dais, I gazed upon a fresco over which was partly drawn a
+curtain of morning sunlight, dusty, aslant, and gradually spreading; in
+the other (for, since I thought of names not as an inaccessible ideal but
+as a real and enveloping substance into which I was about to plunge, the
+life not yet lived, the life intact and pure which I enclosed in them,
+gave to the most material pleasures, to the simplest scenes, the same
+attraction that they have in the works of the Primitives), I moved
+swiftly--so as to arrive, as soon as might be, at the table that was
+spread for me, with fruit and a flask of Chianti--across a Ponte Vecchio
+heaped with jonquils, narcissi and anemones.  That (for all that I was
+still in Paris) was what I saw, and not what was actually round about me.
+Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries
+for which we long occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our
+true life than the country in which we may happen to be. Doubtless, if, at
+that time, I had paid more attention to what was in my mind when I
+pronounced the words "going to Florence, to Parma, to Pisa, to Venice," I
+should have realised that what I saw was in no sense a town, but something
+as different from anything that I knew, something as delicious as might be
+for a human race whose whole existence had passed in a series of late
+winter afternoons, that inconceivable marvel, a morning in spring. These
+images, unreal, fixed, always alike, filling all my nights and days,
+differentiated this period in my life from those which had gone before it
+(and might easily have been confused with it by an observer who saw things
+only from without, that is to say, who saw nothing), as in an opera a
+fresh melody introduces a novel atmosphere which one could never have
+suspected if one had done no more than read the libretto, still less if
+one had remained outside the theatre, counting only the minutes as they
+passed. And besides, even from the point of view of mere quantity, in our
+life the days are not all equal. To reach the end of a day, natures that
+are slightly nervous, as mine was, make use, like motor-cars, of different
+'speeds.' There are mountainous, uncomfortable days, up which one takes an
+infinite time to pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can go
+at full tilt, singing as one goes. During this month--in which I went
+laboriously over, as over a tune, though never to my satisfaction, these
+visions of Florence, Venice, Pisa, from which the desire that they excited
+in me drew and kept something as profoundly personal as if it had been
+love, love for another person--I never ceased to believe that they
+corresponded to a reality independent of myself, and they made me
+conscious of as glorious a hope as could have been cherished by a
+Christian in the primitive age of faith, on the eve of his entry into
+Paradise. Moreover, without my paying any heed to the contradiction that
+there was in my wishing to look at and to touch with my organs of sense
+what had been elaborated by the spell of my dreams and not perceived by my
+senses at all--though all the more tempting to them, in consequence, more
+different from anything that they knew--it was that which recalled to me
+the reality of these visions, which inflamed my desire all the more by
+seeming to hint a promise that my desire should be satisfied. And for all
+that the motive force of my exaltation was a longing for aesthetic
+enjoyments, the guide-books ministered even more to it than books on
+aesthetics, and, more again than the guide-books, the railway time-tables.
+What moved me was the thought that this Florence which I could see, so
+near and yet inaccessible, in my imagination, if the tract which separated
+it from me, in myself, was not one that I might cross, could yet be
+reached by a circuit, by a digression, were I to take the plain,
+terrestrial path. When I repeated to myself, giving thus a special value
+to what I was going to see, that Venice was the "School of Giorgione, the
+home of Titian, the most complete museum of the domestic architecture of
+the Middle Ages," I felt happy indeed. As I was even more when, on one of
+my walks, as I stepped out briskly on account of the weather, which, after
+several days of a precocious spring, had relapsed into winter (like the
+weather that we had invariably found awaiting us at Combray, in Holy
+Week),--seeing upon the boulevards that the chestnut-trees, though plunged
+in a glacial atmosphere that soaked through them like a stream of water,
+were none the less beginning, punctual guests, arrayed already for the
+party, and admitting no discouragement, to shape and chisel and curve in
+its frozen lumps the irrepressible verdure whose steady growth the
+abortive power of the cold might hinder but could not succeed in
+restraining--I reflected that already the Ponte Vecchio was heaped high
+with an abundance of hyacinths and anemones, and that the spring sunshine
+was already tinging the waves of the Grand Canal with so dusky an azure,
+with emeralds so splendid that when they washed and were broken against
+the foot of one of Titian's paintings they could vie with it in the
+richness of their colouring. I could no longer contain my joy when my
+father, in the intervals of tapping the barometer and complaining of the
+cold, began to look out which were the best trains, and when I understood
+that by making one's way, after luncheon, into the coal-grimed laboratory,
+the wizard's cell that undertook to contrive a complete transmutation of
+its surroundings, one could awaken, next morning, in the city of marble
+and gold, in which "the building of the wall was of jasper and the
+foundation of the wall an emerald." So that it and the City of the Lilies
+were not just artificial scenes which I could set up at my pleasure in
+front of my imagination, but did actually exist at a certain distance from
+Paris which must inevitably be traversed if I wished to see them, at their
+appointed place on the earth's surface, and at no other; in a word they
+were entirely real. They became even more real to me when my father, by
+saying: "Well, you can stay in Venice from the 20th to the 29th, and reach
+Florence on Easter morning," made them both emerge, no longer only from
+the abstraction of Space, but from that imaginary Time in which we place
+not one, merely, but several of our travels at once, which do not greatly
+tax us since they are but possibilities,--that Time which reconstructs
+itself so effectively that one can spend it again in one town after one
+has already spent it in another--and consecrated to them some of those
+actual, calendar days which are certificates of the genuineness of what
+one does on them, for those unique days are consumed by being used, they
+do not return, one cannot live them again here when one has lived them
+elsewhere; I felt that it was towards the week that would begin with the
+Monday on which the laundress was to bring back the white waistcoat that I
+had stained with ink, that they were hastening to busy themselves with the
+duty of emerging from that ideal Time in which they did not, as yet,
+exist, those two Queen Cities of which I was soon to be able, by the most
+absorbing kind of geometry, to inscribe the domes and towers on a page of
+my own life. But I was still on the way, only, to the supreme pinnacle of
+happiness; I reached it finally (for not until then did the revelation
+burst upon me that on the clattering streets, reddened by the light
+reflected from Giorgione's frescoes, it was not, as I had, despite so many
+promptings, continued to imagine, the men "majestic and terrible as the
+sea, bearing armour that gleamed with bronze beneath the folds of their
+blood-red cloaks," who would be walking in Venice next week, on the Easter
+vigil; but that I myself might be the minute personage whom, in an
+enlarged photograph of St. Mark's that had been lent to me, the operator
+had portrayed, in a bowler hat, in front of the portico), when I heard my
+father say: "It must be pretty cold, still, on the Grand Canal; whatever
+you do, don't forget to pack your winter greatcoat and your thick suit."
+At these words I was raised to a sort of ecstasy; a thing that I had until
+then deemed impossible, I felt myself to be penetrating indeed between
+those "rocks of amethyst, like a reef in the Indian Ocean"; by a supreme
+muscular effort, a long way in excess of my real strength, stripping
+myself, as of a shell that served no purpose, of the air in my own room
+which surrounded me, I replaced it by an equal quantity of Venetian air,
+that marine atmosphere, indescribable and peculiar as the atmosphere of
+the dreams which my imagination had secreted in the name of Venice; I
+could feel at work within me a miraculous disincarnation; it was at once
+accompanied by that vague desire to vomit which one feels when one has a
+very sore throat; and they had to put me to bed with a fever so persistent
+that the doctor not only assured my parents that a visit, that spring, to
+Florence and Venice was absolutely out of the question, but warned their
+that, even when I should have completely recovered, I must, for at least a
+year, give up all idea of travelling, and be kept from anything that wa;
+liable to excite me.
+
+And, alas, he forbade also, most categorically, my being allowed to go to
+the theatre, to hear Berma; the sublime artist, whose genius Bergotte had
+proclaimed, might, by introducing me to something else that was, perhaps,
+as important and as beautiful, have consoled me for not having been to
+Florence and Venice, for not going to Balbec. My parents had to be content
+with sending me, every day, to the Champs-Elys�es, in the custody of a
+person who would see that I did not tire myself; this person was none
+other than Fran�oise, who had entered our service after the death of my
+aunt L�onie. Going to the Champs-Elys�es I found unendurable.  If only
+Bergotte had described the place in one of his books, I should, no doubt,
+have longed to see and to know it, like so many things else of which a
+simulacrum had first found its way into my imagination.  That kept things
+warm, made them live, gave them personality, and I sought then to find
+their counterpart in reality, but in this public garden there was nothing
+that attached itself to my dreams.
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+One day, as I was weary of our usual place, beside the wooden horses,
+Fran�oise had taken me for an excursion--across the frontier guarded at
+regular intervals by the little bastions of the barley-sugar women--into
+those neighbouring but foreign regions, where the faces of the passers-by
+were strange, where the goat-carriage went past; then she had gone away to
+lay down her things on a chair that stood with its back to a shrubbery of
+laurels; while I waited for her I was pacing the broad lawn, of meagre
+close-cropped grass already faded by the sun, dominated, at its far end,
+by a statue rising from a fountain, in front of which a little girl with
+reddish hair was playing with a shuttlecock; when, from the path, another
+little girl, who was putting on her cloak and covering up her battledore,
+called out sharply: "Good-bye, Gilberte, I'm going home now; don't forget,
+we're coming to you this evening, after dinner." The name Gilberte passed
+close by me, evoking all the more forcibly her whom it labelled in that it
+did not merely refer to her, as one speaks of a man in his absence, but
+was directly addressed to her; it passed thus close by me, in action, so
+to speak, with a force that increased with the curve of its trajectory and
+as it drew near to its target;--carrying in its wake, I could feel, the
+knowledge, the impression of her to whom it was addressed that belonged
+not to me but to the friend who called to her, everything that, while she
+uttered the words, she more or less vividly reviewed, possessed in her
+memory, of their daily intimacy, of the visits that they paid to each
+other, of that unknown existence which was all the more inaccessible, all
+the more painful to me from being, conversely, so familiar, so tractable
+to this happy girl who let her message brush past me without my being able
+to penetrate its surface, who flung it on the air with a light-hearted
+cry: letting float in the atmosphere the delicious attar which that
+message had distilled, by touching them with precision, from certain
+invisible points in Mlle.  Swann's life, from the evening to come, as it
+would be, after dinner, at her home,--forming, on its celestial passage
+through the midst of the children and their nursemaids, a little cloud,
+exquisitely coloured, like the cloud that, curling over one of Poussin's
+gardens, reflects minutely, like a cloud in the opera, teeming with
+chariots and horses, some apparition of the life of the gods; casting,
+finally, on that ragged grass, at the spot on which she stood (at once a
+scrap of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the fair player,
+who continued to beat up and catch her shuttlecock until a governess, with
+a blue feather in her hat, had called her away) a marvellous little band
+of light, of the colour of heliotrope, spread over the lawn like a carpet
+on which I could not tire of treading to and fro with lingering feet,
+nostalgic and profane, while Fran�oise shouted: "Come on, button up your
+coat, look, and let's get away!" and I remarked for the first time how
+common her speech was, and that she had, alas, no blue feather in her hat.
+
+Only, would _she_ come again to the Champs-Elys�es? Next day she was not
+there; but I saw her on the following days; I spent all my time revolving
+round the spot where she was at play with her friends, to such effect that
+once, when, they found, they were not enough to make up a prisoner's base,
+she sent one of them to ask me if I cared to complete their side, and from
+that day I played with her whenever she came. But this did not happen
+every day; there were days when she had been prevented from coming by her
+lessons, by her catechism, by a luncheon-party, by the whole of that life,
+separated from my own, which twice only, condensed into the name of
+Gilberte, I had felt pass so painfully close to me, in the hawthorn lane
+near Combray and on the grass of the Champs-Elys�es.  On such days she
+would have told us beforehand that we should not see her; if it were
+because of her lessons, she would say: "It is too tiresome, I sha'n't be
+able to come to-morrow; you will all be enjoying yourselves here without
+me," with an air of regret which to some extent consoled me; if, on the
+other hand, she had been invited to a party, and I, not knowing this,
+asked her whether she was coming to play with us, she would reply: "Indeed
+I hope not! Indeed I hope Mamma will let me go to my friend's." But on
+these days I did at least know that I should not see her, whereas on
+others, without any warning, her mother would take her for a drive, or
+some such thing, and next day she would say: "Oh, yes! I went out with
+Mamma," as though it had been the most natural thing in the world, and not
+the greatest possible misfortune for some one else. There were also the
+days of bad weather on which her governess, afraid, on her own account, of
+the rain, would not bring Gilberte to the Champs-Elys�es.
+
+And so, if the heavens were doubtful, from early morning I would not cease
+to interrogate them, observing all the omens. If I saw the lady opposite,
+just inside her window, putting on her hat, I would say to myself: "That
+lady is going out; it must, therefore, be weather in which one can go out.
+Why should not Gilberte do the same as that lady?" But the day grew dark.
+My mother said that it might clear again, that one burst of sunshine would
+be enough, but that more probably it would rain; and if it rained, of what
+use would it be to go to the Champs-Elys�es? And so, from breakfast-time,
+my anxious eyes never left the uncertain, clouded sky.  It remained dark:
+Outside the window, the balcony was grey. Suddenly, on its sullen stone, I
+did not indeed see a less negative colour, but I felt as it were an effort
+towards a less negative colour, the pulsation of a hesitating ray that
+struggled to discharge its light. A moment later the balcony was as pale
+and luminous as a standing water at dawn, and a thousand shadows from the
+iron-work of its balustrade had come to rest on it. A breath of wind
+dispersed them; the stone grew dark again, but, like tamed creatures, they
+returned; they began, imperceptibly, to grow lighter, and by one of those
+continuous crescendos, such as, in music, at the end of an overture, carry
+a single note to the extreme fortissimo, making it pass rapidly through
+all the intermediate stages, I saw it attain to that fixed, unalterable
+gold of fine days, on which the sharply cut shadows of the wrought iron of
+the balustrade were outlined in black like a capricious vegetation, with a
+fineness in the delineation of their smallest details which seemed to
+indicate a deliberate application, an artist's satisfaction, and with so
+much relief, so velvety a bloom in the restfulness of their sombre and
+happy mass that in truth those large and leafy shadows which lay reflected
+on that lake of sunshine seemed aware that they were pledges of happiness
+and peace of mind.
+
+Brief, fading ivy, climbing, fugitive flora, the most colourless, the most
+depressing, to many minds, of all that creep on walls or decorate windows;
+to me the dearest of them all, from the day when it appeared upon our
+balcony, like the very shadow of the presence of Gilberte, who was perhaps
+already in the Champs-Elys�es, and as soon as I arrived there would greet
+me with: "Let's begin at once. You are on my side." Frail, swept away by a
+breath, but at the same time in harmony, not with the season, with the
+hour; a promise of that immediate pleasure which the day will deny or
+fulfil, and thereby of the one paramount immediate pleasure, the pleasure
+of loving and of being loved; more soft, more warm upon tie stone than
+even moss is; alive, a ray of sunshine sufficing for its birth, and for
+the birth of joy, even in the heart of winter.
+
+And on those days when all other vegetation had disappeared, when the fine
+jerkins of green leather which covered the trunks of the old trees were
+hidden beneath the snow; after the snow had ceased to fall, but when the
+sky was still too much overcast for me to hope that Gilberte would venture
+out, then suddenly--inspiring my mother to say: "Look, it's quite fine
+now; I think you might perhaps try going to the Champs-Elys�es after
+all."--On the mantle of snow that swathed the balcony, the sun had
+appeared and was stitching seams of gold, with embroidered patches of dark
+shadow. That day we found no one there, or else a solitary girl, on the
+point of departure, who assured me that Gilberte was not coming. The
+chairs, deserted by the imposing but uninspiring company of governesses,
+stood empty. Only, near the grass, was sitting a lady of uncertain age who
+came in all weathers, dressed always in an identical style, splendid and
+sombre, to make whose acquaintance I would have, at that period,
+sacrificed, had it lain in my power, all the greatest opportunities in my
+life to come. For Gilberte went up every day to speak to her; she used to
+ask Gilberte for news of her "dearest mother" and it struck me that, if I
+had known her, I should have been for Gilberte some one wholly different,
+some one who knew people in her parents' world. While her grandchildren
+played together at a little distance, she would sit and read the D�bats,
+which she called "My old _D�bats_!" as, with an aristocratic familiarity,
+she would say, speaking of the police-sergeant or the woman who let the
+chairs, "My old friend the police-sergeant," or "The chair-keeper and I,
+who are old friends."
+
+Fran�oise found it too cold to stand about, so we walked to the Pont de la
+Concorde to see the Seine frozen over, on to which everyone, even
+children, walked fearlessly, as though upon an enormous whale, stranded,
+defenceless, and about to be cut up. We returned to the Champs-Elys�es; I
+was growing sick with misery between the motionless wooden horses and the
+white lawn, caught in a net of black paths from which the snow had been
+cleared, while the statue that surmounted it held in its hand a long
+pendent icicle which seemed to explain its gesture. The old lady herself,
+having folded up her _D�bats_, asked a passing nursemaid the time,
+thanking her with "How very good of you!" then begged the road-sweeper to
+tell her grandchildren to come, as she felt cold, adding "A thousand
+thanks. I am sorry to give you so much trouble!" Suddenly the sky was rent
+in two: between the punch-and-judy and the horses, against the opening
+horizon, I had just seen, like a miraculous sign, Mademoiselle's blue
+feather. And now Gilberte was running at full speed towards me, sparkling
+and rosy beneath a cap trimmed with fur, enlivened by the cold, by being
+late, by her anxiety for a game; shortly before she reached me, she
+slipped on a piece of ice and, either to regain her balance, or because it
+appeared to her graceful, or else pretending that she was on skates, it
+was with outstretched arms that she smilingly advanced, as though to
+embrace me. "Bravo! bravo! that's splendid; 'topping,' I should say, like
+you--'sporting,' I suppose I ought to say, only I'm a hundred-and-one, a
+woman of the old school," exclaimed the lady, uttering, on behalf of the
+voiceless Champs-Elys�es, their thanks to Gilberte for having come,
+without letting herself be frightened away by the weather. "You are like
+me, faithful at all costs to our old Champs-Elys�es; we are two brave
+souls!  You wouldn't believe me, I dare say, if I told you that I love
+them, even like this. This snow (I know, you'll laugh at me), it makes me
+think of ermine!" And the old lady began to laugh herself.
+
+The first of these days--to which the snow, a symbol of the powers that
+were able to deprive me of the sight of Gilberte, imparted the sadness of
+a day of separation, almost the aspect of a day of departure, because it
+changed the outward form and almost forbade the use of the customary scene
+of our only encounters, now altered, covered, as it were, in
+dust-sheets--that day, none the less, marked a stage in the progress of my
+love, for it was, in a sense, the first sorrow that she was to share with
+me. There were only our two selves of our little company, and to be thus
+alone with her was not merely like a beginning of intimacy, but also on
+her part--as though she had come there solely to please me, and in such
+weather--it seemed to me as touching as if, on one of those days on which
+she had been invited to a party, she had given it up in order to come to
+me in the Champs-Elys�es; I acquired more confidence in the vitality, in
+the future of a friendship which could remain so much alive amid the
+torpor, the solitude, the decay of our surroundings; and while she dropped
+pellets of snow down my neck, I smiled lovingly at what seemed to me at
+once a predilection that she shewed for me in thus tolerating me as her
+travelling companion in this new, this wintry land, and a sort of loyalty
+to me which she preserved through evil times. Presently, one after
+another, like shyly bopping sparrows, her friends arrived, black against
+the snow. We got ready to play and, since this day which had begun so
+sadly was destined to end in joy, as I went up, before the game started,
+to the friend with the sharp voice whom I had heard, that first day,
+calling Gilberte by name, she said to me: "No, no, I'm sure you'd much
+rather be in Gilberte's camp; besides, look, she's signalling to you." She
+was in fact summoning me to cross the snowy lawn to her camp, to 'take the
+field,' which the sun, by casting over it a rosy gleam, the metallic
+lustre of old and worn brocades, had turned into a Field of the Cloth of
+Gold.
+
+This day, which I had begun with so many misgivings, was, as it happened,
+one of the few on which I was not unduly wretched.
+
+For, although I no longer thought, now, of anything save not to let a
+single day pass without seeing Gilberte (so much so that once, when my
+grandmother had not come home by dinner-time, I could not resist the
+instinctive reflection that, if she had been run over in the street and
+killed, I should not for some time be allowed to play in the
+Champs-Elys�es; when one is in love one has no love left for anyone), yet
+those moments which I spent in her company, for which I had waited with so
+much impatience all night and morning, for which I had quivered with
+excitement, to which I would have sacrificed everything else in the world,
+were by no means happy moments; well did I know it, for they were the only
+moments in my life on which I concentrated a scrupulous, undistracted
+attention, and yet I could not discover in them one atom of pleasure. All
+the time that I was away from Gilberte, I wanted to see her, because,
+having incessantly sought to form a mental picture of her, I was unable,
+in the end, to do so, and did not know exactly to what my love
+corresponded.  Besides, she had never yet told me that she loved me. Far
+from it, she had often boasted that she knew other little boys whom she
+preferred to myself, that I was a good companion, with whom she was always
+willing to play, although I was too absent-minded, not attentive enough to
+the game. Moreover, she had often shewn signs of apparent coldness towards
+me, which might have shaken my faith that I was for her a creature
+different from the rest, had that faith been founded upon a love that
+Gilberte had felt for me, and not, as was the case, upon the love that I
+felt for her, which strengthened its resistance to the assaults of doubt
+by making it depend entirely upon the manner in which I was obliged, by an
+internal compulsion, to think of Gilberte. But my feelings with regard to
+her I had never yet ventured to express to her in words. Of course, on
+every page of my exercise-books, I wrote out, in endless repetition, her
+name and address, but at the sight of those vague lines which I might
+trace, without her having to think, on that account, of me, I felt
+discouraged, because they spoke to me, not of Gilberte, who would never so
+much as see them, but of my own desire, which they seemed to shew me in
+its true colours, as something purely personal, unreal, tedious and
+ineffective. The most important thing was that we should see each other,
+Gilberte and I, and should have an opportunity of making a mutual
+confession of our love which, until then, would not officially (so to
+speak) have begun. Doubtless the various reasons which made me so
+impatient to see her would have appeared less urgent to a grown man. As
+life goes on, we acquire such adroitness in the culture of our pleasures,
+that we content ourselves with that which we derive from thinking of a
+woman, as I was thinking of Gilberte, without troubling ourselves to
+ascertain whether the image corresponds to the reality,--and with the
+pleasure of loving her, without needing to be sure, also, that she loves
+us; or again that we renounce the pleasure of confessing our passion for
+her, so as to preserve and enhance the passion that she has for us, like
+those Japanese gardeners who, to obtain one perfect blossom, will
+sacrifice the rest. But at the period when I was in love with Gilberte, I
+still believed that Love did really exist, apart from ourselves; that,
+allowing us, at the most, to surmount the obstacles in our way, it offered
+us its blessings in an order in which we were not free to make the least
+alteration; it seemed to me that if I had, on my own initiative,
+substituted for the sweetness of a confession a pretence of indifference,
+I should not only have been depriving myself of one of the joys of which I
+had most often dreamed, I should have been fabricating, of my own free
+will, a love that was artificial and without value, that bore no relation
+to the truth, whose mysterious and foreordained ways I should thus have
+been declining to follow.
+
+But when I arrived at the Champs-Elys�es,--and, as at first sight it
+appeared, was in a position to confront my love, so as to make it undergo
+the necessary modifications, with its living and independent cause--as
+soon as I was in the presence of that Gilberte Swann on the sight of whom
+I had counted to revive the images that my tired memory had lost and could
+not find again, of that Gilberte Swann with whom I had been playing the
+day before, and whom I had just been prompted to greet, and then to
+recognise, by a blind instinct like that which, when we are walking, sets
+one foot before the other, without giving us time to think what we are
+doing, then at once it became as though she and the little girl who had
+inspired my dreams had been two different people. If, for instance, I had
+retained in my memory overnight two fiery eyes above plump and rosy
+cheeks, Gilberte's face would now offer me (and with emphasis) something
+that I distinctly had not remembered, a certain sharpening and
+prolongation of the nose which, instantaneously associating itself with
+certain others of her features, assumed the importance of those
+characteristics which, in natural history, are used to define a species,
+and transformed her into a little girl of the kind that have sharpened
+profiles.  While I was making myself ready to take advantage of this long
+expected moment, and to surrender myself to the impression of Gilberte
+which I had prepared beforehand but could no longer find in my head, to an
+extent which would enable me, during the long hours which I must spend
+alone, to be certain that it was indeed herself whom I had in mind, that
+it was indeed my love for her that I was gradually making grow, as a book
+grows when one is writing it, she threw me a ball; and, like the idealist
+philosopher whose body takes account of the external world in the reality
+of which his intellect declines to believe, the same self which had made
+me salute her before I had identified her now urged me to catch the ball
+that she tossed to me (as though she had been a companion, with whom I had
+come to play, and not a sister-soul with whom my soul had come to be
+limited), made me, out of politeness, until the time came when she had to
+I go, address a thousand polite and trivial remarks to her, and so
+prevented me both from keeping a silence in which I might at last have
+laid my hand upon the indispensable, escaped idea, and from uttering the
+words which might have made that definite progress in the course of our
+love on which I was always obliged to count only for the following
+afternoon. There was, however, an occasional development. One day, we had
+gone with Gilberte to the stall of our own special vendor, who was always
+particularly nice to us, since it was to her that M. Swann used to send
+for his gingerbread, of which, for reasons of health (he suffered from a
+racial eczema, and from the constipation of the prophets), he consumed a
+great quantity,--Gilberte pointed out to me with a laugh two little boys
+who were like the little artist and the little naturalist in the
+children's storybooks. For one of them would not have a red stick of rock
+because he preferred the purple, while the other, with tears in his eyes,
+refused a plum which his nurse was buying for him, because, as he finally
+explained in passionate tones: "I want the other plum; it's got a worm in
+it!" I purchased two ha'penny marbles. With admiring eyes I saw, luminous
+and imprisoned in a bowl by themselves, the agate marbles which seemed
+precious to me because they were as fair and smiling as little girls, and
+because they cost five-pence each. Gilberte, who was given a great deal
+more pocket money than I ever had, asked me which I thought the prettiest.
+They were as transparent, as liquid-seeming as life itself. I would not
+have had her sacrifice a single one of them. I should have liked her to be
+able to buy them, to liberate them all. Still, I pointed out one that had
+the same colour as her eyes. Gilberte took it, turned it about until it
+shone with a ray of gold, fondled it, paid its ransom, but at once handed
+me her captive, saying: "Take it; it is for you, I give it to you, keep it
+to remind yourself of me."
+
+Another time, being still obsessed by the desire to hear Berma in classic
+drama, I had asked her whether she had not a copy of a pamphlet in which
+Bergotte spoke of Racine, and which was now out of print. She had told me
+to let her know the exact title of it, and that evening I had sent her a
+little telegram, writing on its envelope the name, Gilberte Swann, which I
+had so often, traced in my exercise-books.  Next day she brought me in a
+parcel tied with pink bows and sealed with white wax, the pamphlet, a copy
+of which she had managed to find. "You see, it is what you asked me for,"
+she said, taking from her muff the telegram that I had sent her.  But in
+the address on the pneumatic message--which, only yesterday, was nothing,
+was merely a 'little blue' that I had written, and, after a messenger had
+delivered it to Gilberte's porter and a servant had taken it to her in her
+room, had become a thing without value or distinction, one of the 'little
+blues' that she had received in the course of the day--I had difficulty in
+recognising the futile, straggling lines of my own handwriting beneath the
+circles stamped on it at the post-office, the inscriptions added in pencil
+by a postman, signs of effectual realisation, seals of the external world,
+violet bands symbolical of life itself, which for the first time came to
+espouse, to maintain, to raise, to rejoice my dream.
+
+And there was another day on which she said to me: "You know, you may call
+me 'Gilberte'; in any case, I'm going to call you by your first name. It's
+too silly not to." Yet she continued for a while to address me by the more
+formal '_vous_,' and, when I drew her attention to this, smiled, and
+composing, constructing a phrase like those that are put into the
+grammar-books of foreign languages with no other object than to teach us
+to make use of a new word, ended it with my Christian name. And when I
+recalled, later, what I had felt at the time, I could distinguish the
+impression of having been held, for a moment, in her mouth, myself, naked,
+without, any longer, any of the social qualifications which belonged
+equally to her other companions and, when she used my surname, to my
+parents, accessories of which her lips--by the effort that she made, a
+little after her father's manner, to articulate the words to which she
+wished to give a special value--had the air of stripping, of divesting me,
+as one peels the skin from a fruit of which one is going to put only the
+pulp into one's mouth, while her glance, adapting itself to the same new
+degree of intimacy as her speech, fell on me also more directly, not
+without testifying to the consciousness, the pleasure, even the gratitude
+that it felt, accompanying itself with a smile.
+
+But at that actual moment, I was not able to appreciate the worth of these
+new pleasures. They were given, not by the little girl whom I loved, to me
+who loved her, but by the other, her with whom I used to play, to my other
+self, who possessed neither the memory of the true Gilberte, nor the fixed
+heart which alone could have known the value of a happiness for which it
+alone had longed. Even after I had returned home I did not taste them,
+since, every day, the necessity which made me hope that on the morrow I
+should arrive at the clear, calm, happy contemplation of Gilberte, that
+she would at last confess her love for me, explaining to me the reasons by
+which she had been obliged, hitherto, to conceal it, that same necessity
+forced me to regard the past as of no account, to look ahead of me only,
+to consider the little advantages that she had given me not in themselves
+and as if they were self-sufficient, but like fresh rungs of the ladder on
+which I might set my feet, which were going to allow me to advance a step
+further and finally to attain the happiness which I had not yet
+encountered.
+
+If, at times, she shewed me these marks of her affection, she troubled me
+also by seeming not to be pleased to see me, and this happened often on
+the very days on which I had most counted for the realisation of my hopes.
+I was sure that Gilberte was coming to the Champs-Elys�es, and I felt an
+elation which seemed merely the anticipation of a great happiness
+when--going into the drawing-room in the morning to kiss Mamma, who was
+already dressed to go out, the coils of her black hair elaborately built
+up, and her beautiful hands, plump and white, fragrant still with soap--I
+had been apprised, by seeing a column of dust standing by itself in the
+air above the piano, and by hearing a barrel-organ playing, beneath the
+window, _En revenant de la revue_, that the winter had received, until
+nightfall, an unexpected, radiant visit from a day of spring. While we sat
+at luncheon, by opening her window, the lady opposite had sent packing, in
+the twinkling of an eye, from beside my chair--to sweep in a single stride
+over the whole width of our dining-room--a sunbeam which had lain down
+there for its midday rest and returned to continue it there a moment
+later.  At school, during the one o'clock lesson, the sun made me sick
+with impatience and boredom as it let fall a golden stream that crept to
+the edge of my desk, like an invitation to the feast at which I could not
+myself arrive before three o'clock, until the moment when Fran�oise came
+to fetch me at the school-gate, and we made our way towards the
+Champs-Elys�es through streets decorated with sunlight, dense with people,
+over which the balconies, detached by the sun and made vaporous, seemed to
+float in front of the houses like clouds of gold. Alas! in the
+Champs-Elys�es I found no Gilberte; she had not yet arrived. Motionless,
+on the lawn nurtured by the invisible sun which, here and there, kindled
+to a flame the point of a blade of grass, while the pigeons that had
+alighted upon it had the appearance of ancient sculptures which the
+gardener's pick had heaved to the surface of a hallowed soil, I stood with
+my eyes fixed on the horizon, expecting at every moment to see appear the
+form of Gilberte following that of her governess, behind the statue that
+seemed to be holding out the child, which it had in its arms, and which
+glistened in the stream of light, to receive benediction from the sun. The
+old lady who read the D�bats was sitting on her chair, in her invariable
+place, and had just accosted a park-keeper, with a friendly wave of her
+hands towards him as she exclaimed "What a lovely day!" And when the
+chair-woman came up to collect her penny, with an infinity of smirks and
+affectations she folded the ticket away inside her glove, as though it had
+been a posy of flowers, for which she had sought, in gratitude to the
+donor, the most becoming place upon her person. When she had found it, she
+performed a circular movement with her neck, straightened her boa, and
+fastened upon the collector, as she shewed her the end of yellow paper
+that stuck out over her bare wrist, the bewitching smile with which a
+woman says to a young man, pointing to her bosom: "You see, I'm wearing
+your roses!"
+
+I dragged Fran�oise, on the way towards Gilberte, as far as the Arc de
+Triomphe; we did not meet her, and I was returning towards the lawn
+convinced, now, that she was not coming, when, in front of the wooden
+horses, the little girl with the sharp voice flung herself upon me:
+"Quick, quick, Gilberte's been here a quarter of an hour. She's just
+going. We've been waiting for you, to make up a prisoner's base."
+
+While I had been going up the Avenue des Champs-Elys�es, Gilberte had
+arrived by the Rue Boissy-d'Anglas, Mademoiselle having taken advantage of
+the fine weather to go on some errand of her own; and M. Swann was coming
+to fetch his daughter. And so it was my fault; I ought not to have strayed
+from the lawn; for one never knew for certain from what direction Gilberte
+would appear, whether she would be early or late, and this perpetual
+tension succeeded in making more impressive not only the Champs-Elys�es in
+their entirety, and the whole span of the afternoon, like a vast expanse
+of space and time, on every point and at every moment of which it was
+possible that the form of Gilberte might appear, but also that form
+itself, since behind its appearance I felt that there lay concealed the
+reason for which it had shot its arrow into my heart at four o'clock
+instead of at half-past two; crowned with a smart hat, for paying calls,
+instead of the plain cap, for games; in front of the Ambassadeurs and not
+between the two puppet-shows; I divined one of those occupations in which
+I might not follow Gilberte, occupations that forced her to go out or to
+stay at home, I was in contact with the mystery of her unknown life.  It
+was this mystery, too, which troubled me when, running at the sharp-voiced
+girl's bidding, so as to begin our game without more delay, I saw
+Gilberte, so quick and informal with us, make a ceremonious bow to the old
+lady with the _D�bats_ (who acknowledged it with "What a lovely sun!
+You'd think there was a fire burning.") speaking to her with a shy smile,
+with an air of constraint which called to my mind the other little girl
+that Gilberte must be when at home with her parents, or with friends of
+her parents, paying visits, in all the rest, that escaped me, of her
+existence. But of that existence no one gave me so strong an impression as
+did M. Swann, who came a little later to fetch his daughter. That was
+because he and Mme.  Swann--inasmuch as their daughter lived with them, as
+her lessons, her games, her friendships depended upon them--contained for
+me, like Gilberte, perhaps even more than Gilberte, as befitted subjects
+that had an all-powerful control over her in whom it must have had its
+source, an undefined, an inaccessible quality of melancholy charm.
+Everything that concerned them was on my part the object of so constant a
+preoccupation that the days on which, as on this day, M. Swann (whom I had
+seen so often, long ago, without his having aroused my curiosity, when he
+was still on good terms with my parents) came for Gilberte to the
+Champs-Elys�es, once the pulsations to which my heart had been excited by
+the appearance of his grey hat and hooded cape had subsided, the sight of
+him still impressed me as might that of an historic personage, upon whom
+one had just been studying a series of books, and the smallest details of
+whose life one learned with enthusiasm. His relations with the Comte de
+Paris, which, when I heard them discussed at Combray, seemed to me
+unimportant, became now in my eyes something marvellous, as if no one else
+had ever known the House of Orleans; they set him in vivid detachment
+against the vulgar background of pedestrians of different classes, who
+encumbered that particular path in the Champs-Elys�es, in the midst of
+whom I admired his condescending to figure without claiming any special
+deference, which as it happened none of them dreamed of paying him, so
+profound was the incognito in which he was wrapped.
+
+He responded politely to the salutations of Gilberte's companions, even to
+mine, for all that he was no longer on good terms with my family, but
+without appearing to know who I was. (This reminded me that he had
+constantly seen me in the country; a memory which I had retained, but kept
+out of sight, because, since I had seen Gilberte again, Swann had become
+to me pre-eminently her father, and no longer the Combray Swann; as the
+ideas which, nowadays, I made his name connote were different from the
+ideas in the system of which it was formerly comprised, which I utilised
+not at all now when I had occasion to think of him, he had become a new,
+another person; still I attached him by an artificial thread, secondary
+and transversal, to our former guest; and as nothing had any longer any
+value for me save in the extent to which my love might profit by it, it
+was with a spasm of shame and of regret at not being able to erase them
+from my memory that I recaptured the years in which, in the eyes of this
+same Swann who was at this moment before me in the Champs-Elys�es, and to
+whom, fortunately, Gilberte had perhaps not mentioned my name, I had so
+often, in the evenings, made myself ridiculous by sending to ask Mamma to
+come upstairs to my room to say good-night to me, while she was drinking
+coffee with him and my father and my grandparents at the table in the
+garden.) He told Gilberte that she might play one game; he could wait for
+a quarter of an hour; and, sitting down, just like anyone else, on an iron
+chair, paid for his ticket with that hand which Philippe VII had so often
+held in his own, while we began our game upon the lawn, scattering the
+pigeons, whose beautiful, iridescent bodies (shaped like hearts and,
+surely, the lilacs of the feathered kingdom) took refuge as in so many
+sanctuaries, one on the great basin of stone, on which its beak, as it
+disappeared below the rim, conferred the part, assigned the purpose of
+offering to the bird in abundance the fruit or grain at which it appeared
+to be pecking, another on the head of the statue, which it seemed to crown
+with one of those enamelled objects whose polychrome varies in certain
+classical works the monotony of the stone, and with an attribute which,
+when the goddess bears it, entitles her to a particular epithet and makes
+of her, as a different Christian name makes of a mortal, a fresh divinity.
+
+On one of these sunny days which had not realised my hopes, I had not the
+courage to conceal my disappointment from Gilberte.
+
+"I had ever so many things to ask you," I said to her; "I thought that
+to-day was going to mean so much in our friendship. And no sooner have you
+come than you go away! Try to come early to-morrow, so that I can talk to
+you."
+
+Her face lighted up and she jumped for joy as she answered: "Tomorrow, you
+may make up your mind, my dear friend, I sha'n't come!
+
+"First of all I've a big luncheon-party; then in the afternoon I am going
+to a friend's house to see King Theodosius arrive from her windows; won't
+that be splendid?--and then, next day, I'm going to _Michel Strogoff_, and
+after that it will soon be Christmas, and the New Year holidays! Perhaps
+they'll take me south, to the Riviera; won't that be nice? Though I should
+miss the Christmas-tree here; anyhow, if I do stay in Paris, I sha'n't be
+coming here, because I shall be out paying calls with Mamma.
+Good-bye--there's Papa calling me."
+
+I returned home with Fran�oise through streets that were still gay with
+sunshine, as on the evening of a holiday when the merriment is over. I
+could scarcely drag my legs along.
+
+"I'm not surprised;" said Fran�oise, "it's not the right weather for the
+time of year; it's much too warm. Oh dear, oh dear, to think of all the
+poor sick people there must be everywhere; you would think that up there,
+too, everything's got out of order."
+
+I repeated to myself, stifling my sobs, the words in which Gilberte had
+given utterance to her joy at the prospect of not coming back, for a long
+time, to the Champs-Elys�es. But already the charm with which, by the mere
+act of thinking, my mind was filled as soon as it thought of her, the
+privileged position, unique even if it were painful, in which I was
+inevitably placed in relation to Gilberte by the contraction of a scar in
+my mind, had begun to add to that very mark of her indifference something
+romantic, and in the midst of my tears my lips would shape themselves in a
+smile which was indeed the timid outline of a kiss. And when the time came
+for the postman I said to myself, that evening as on every other: "I am
+going to have a letter from Gilberte, she is going to tell me, at last,
+that she has never ceased to love me, and to explain to me the mysterious
+reason by which she has been forced to conceal her love from me until now,
+to put on the appearance of being able to be happy without seeing me; the
+reason for which she has assumed the form of the other Gilberte, who is
+simply a companion."
+
+Every evening I would beguile myself into imagining this letter, believing
+that I was actually reading it, reciting each of its sentences in turn.
+Suddenly I would stop, in alarm. I had realised that, if I was to receive
+a letter from Gilberte, it could not, in any case, be this letter, since
+it was I myself who had just composed it. And from that moment I would
+strive to keep my thoughts clear of the words which I should have liked
+her to write to me, from fear lest, by first selecting them myself, I
+should be excluding just those identical words,--the dearest, the most
+desired--from the field of possible events. Even if, by an almost
+impossible coincidence, it had been precisely the letter of my invention
+that Gilberte had addressed to me of her own accord, recognising my own
+work in it I should not have had the impression that I was receiving
+something that had not originated in myself, something real, something
+new, a happiness external to my mind, independent of my will, a gift
+indeed from love.
+
+While I waited I read over again a page which, although it had not been
+written to me by Gilberte, came to me, none the less, from her, that page
+by Bergotte upon the beauty of the old myths from which Racine drew his
+inspiration, which (with the agate marble) I always kept within reach.  I
+was touched by my friend's kindness in having procured the book for me;
+and as everyone is obliged to find some reason for his passion, so much so
+that he is glad to find in the creature whom he loves qualities which (he
+has learned by reading or in conversation) are worthy to excite a man's
+love, that he assimilates them by imitation and makes out of them fresh
+reasons for his love, even although these qualities be diametrically
+opposed to those for which his love would have sought, so long as it was
+spontaneous--as Swann, before my day, had sought to establish the
+aesthetic basis of Odette's beauty--I, who had at first loved Gilberte, in
+Combray days, on account of all the unknown element in her life into which
+I would fain have plunged headlong, have undergone reincarnation,
+discarding my own separate existence as a thing that no longer mattered, I
+thought now, as of an inestimable advantage, that of this, my own, my too
+familiar, my contemptible existence Gilberte might one day become the
+humble servant, the kindly, the comforting collaborator, who in the
+evenings, helping me in my work, would collate for me the texts of rare
+pamphlets. As for Bergotte, that infinitely wise, almost divine old man,
+because of whom I had first, before I had even seen her, loved Gilberte,
+now it was for Gilberte's sake, chiefly, that I loved him. With as much
+pleasure as the pages that he had written about Racine, I studied the
+wrapper, folded under great seals of white wax and tied with billows of
+pink ribbon, in which she had brought those pages to me. I kissed the
+agate marble, which was the better part of my love's heart, the part that
+was not frivolous but faithful, and, for all that it was adorned with the
+mysterious charm of Gilberte's life, dwelt close beside me, inhabited my
+chamber, shared my bed. But the beauty of that stone, and the beauty also
+of those pages of Bergotte which I was glad to associate with the idea of
+my love for Gilberte, as if, in the moments when my love seemed no longer
+to have any existence, they gave it a kind of consistency, were, I
+perceived, anterior to that love, which they in no way resembled; their
+elements had been determined by the writer's talent, or by geological
+laws, before ever Gilberte had known me, nothing in book or stone would
+have been different if Gilberte had not loved me, and there was nothing,
+consequently, that authorised me to read in them a message of happiness.
+And while my love, incessantly waiting for the morrow to bring a
+confession of Gilberte's love for me, destroyed, unravelled every evening,
+the ill-done work of the day, in some shadowed part of my being was an
+unknown weaver who would not leave where they lay the severed threads, but
+collected and rearranged them, without any thought of pleasing me, or of
+toiling for my advantage, in the different order which she gave to all her
+handiwork.  Without any special interest in my love, not beginning by
+deciding that I was loved, she placed, side by side, those of Gilberte's
+actions that had seemed to me inexplicable and her faults which I had
+excused. Then, one with another, they took on a meaning. It seemed to tell
+me, this new arrangement, that when I saw Gilberte, instead of coming to
+me in the Champs-Elys�es, going to a party, or on errands with her
+governess, when I saw her prepared for an absence that would extend over
+the New Year holidays, I was wrong in thinking, in saying: "It is because
+she is frivolous," or "easily lead." For she would have ceased to be
+either if she had loved me, and if she had been forced to obey it would
+have been with the same despair in her heart that I felt on the days when
+I did not see her. It shewed me further, this new arrangement, that I
+ought, after all, to know what it was to love, since I loved Gilberte; it
+drew my attention to the constant anxiety that I had to 'shew off' before
+her, by reason of which I tried to persuade my mother to get for Fran�oise
+a waterproof coat and a hat with a blue feather, or, better still, to stop
+sending with me to the Champs-Elys�es an attendant with whom I blushed to
+be seen (to all of which my mother replied that I was not fair to
+Fran�oise, that she was an excellent woman and devoted to us all) and also
+that sole, exclusive need to see Gilberte, the result of which was that,
+months in advance, I could think of nothing but how to find out at what
+date she would be leaving Paris and where she was going, feeling that the
+most attractive country in the world would be but a place of exile if she
+were not to be there, and asking only to be allowed to stay for ever in
+Paris, so long as I might see her in the Champs-Elys�es; and it had little
+difficulty in making me see that neither my anxiety nor my need could be
+justified by anything in Gilberte's conduct. She, on the contrary, was
+genuinely fond of her governess, without troubling herself over what I
+might choose to think about it. It seemed quite natural to her not to come
+to the Champs-Elys�es if she had to go shopping with Mademoiselle,
+delightful if she had to go out somewhere with her mother. And even
+supposing that she would ever have allowed me to spend my holidays in the
+same place as herself, when it came to choosing that place she considered
+her parents' wishes, a thousand different amusements of which she had been
+told, and not at all that it should be the place to which my family were
+proposing to send me. When she assured me (as sometimes happened) that she
+liked me less than some other of her friends, less than she had liked me
+the day before, because by my clumsiness I had made her side lose a game,
+I would beg her pardon, I would beg her to tell me what I must do in order
+that she should begin again to like me as much as, or more than the rest;
+I hoped to hear her say that that was already my position; I besought her;
+as though she had been able to modify her affection for me as she or I
+chose, to give me pleasure, merely by the words that she would utter, as
+my good or bad conduct should deserve. Was I, then, not yet aware that
+what I felt, myself, for her, depended neither upon her actions nor upon
+my desires?
+
+It shewed me finally, the new arrangement planned by my unseen weaver,
+that, if we find ourselves hoping that the actions of a person who has
+hitherto caused us anxiety may prove not to have been sincere, they shed
+in their wake a light which our hopes are powerless to extinguish, a light
+to which, rather than to our hopes, we must put the question, what will be
+that person's actions on the morrow.
+
+These new counsels, my love listened and heard them; they persuaded it
+that the morrow would not be different from all the days that had gone
+before; that Gilberte's feeling for me, too long established now to be
+capable of alteration, was indifference; that hi my friendship with
+Gilberte, it was I alone who loved. "That is true," my love responded,
+"there is nothing more to be made of that friendship. It will not alter
+now." And so the very next day (unless I were to wait for a public
+holiday, if there was one approaching, some anniversary, the New Year,
+perhaps, one of those days which are not like other days, on which time
+starts afresh, casting aside the heritage of the past, declining its
+legacy of sorrows) I would appeal to Gilberte to terminate our old and to
+join me in laying the foundations of a new friendship.
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+I had always, within reach, a plan of Paris, which, because I could see
+drawn on it the street in which M. and Mme. Swann lived, seemed to me to
+contain a secret treasure. And to please myself, as well as by a sort of
+chivalrous loyalty, in any connection or with no relevance at all, I would
+repeat the name of that street until my father, not being, like my mother
+and grandmother, in the secret of my love, would ask: "But why are you
+always talking about that street? There's nothing wonderful about it. It
+is an admirable street to live in because it's only a few minutes' walk
+from the Bois, but there are a dozen other streets just the same."
+
+I made every effort to introduce the name of Swann into my conversation
+with my parents; in my own mind, of course, I never ceased to murmur it;
+but I needed also to hear its exquisite sound, and to make myself play
+that chord, the voiceless rendering of which did not suffice me. Moreover,
+that name of Swann, with which I had for so long been familiar, was to me
+now (as happens at times to people suffering from aphasia, in the case of
+the most ordinary words) the name of something new. It was for ever
+present in my mind, which could not, however, grow accustomed to it. I
+analysed it, I spelt it; its orthography came to me as a surprise.  And
+with its familiarity it had simultaneously lost its innocence. The
+pleasure that I derived from the sound of it I felt to be so guilty, that
+it seemed to me as though the others must read my thoughts, and would
+change the conversation if I endeavoured to guide it in that direction. I
+fell back upon subjects which still brought me into touch with Gilberte, I
+eternally repeated the same words, and it was no use my knowing that they
+were but words--words uttered in her absence, which she could not hear,
+words without virtue in themselves, repeating what were, indeed, facts,
+but powerless to modify them--for still it seemed to me that by dint of
+handling, of stirring in this way everything that had reference to
+Gilberte, I might perhaps make emerge from it something that would bring
+me happiness. I told my parents again that Gilberte was very fond of her
+governess, as if the statement, when repeated for the hundredth time,
+would at last have the effect of making Gilberte suddenly burst into the
+room, come to live with us for ever. I had already sung the praises of the
+old lady who read the _D�bats_ (I had hinted to my parents that she must
+at least be an Ambassador's widow, if not actually a Highness) and I
+continued to descant on her beauty, her splendour, her nobility, until the
+day on which I mentioned that, by what I had heard Gilberte call her, she
+appeared to be a Mme. Blatin.
+
+"Oh, now I know whom you mean," cried my mother, while I felt myself grow
+red all over with shame. "On guard! on guard!--as your grandfather says.
+And so it's she that you think so wonderful? Why, she's perfectly
+horrible, and always has been. She's the widow of a bailiff. You can't
+remember, when you were little, all the trouble I used to have to avoid
+her at your gymnastic lessons, where she was always trying to get hold of
+me--I didn't know the woman, of course--to tell me that you were 'much too
+nice-looking for a boy.' She has always had an insane desire to get to
+know people, and she must be quite insane, as I have always thought, if
+she really does know Mme. Swann. For even if she does come of very common
+people, I have never heard anything said against her character. But she
+must always be forcing herself upon strangers. She is, really, a horrible
+woman, frightfully vulgar, and besides, she is always creating awkward
+situations."
+
+As for Swann, in my attempts to resemble him, I spent the whole time, when
+I was at table, in drawing my finger along my nose and in rubbing my eyes.
+My father would exclaim: "The child's a perfect idiot, he's becoming quite
+impossible." More than all else I should have liked to be as bald as
+Swann. He appeared to me to be a creature so extraordinary that I found it
+impossible to believe that people whom I knew and often saw knew him also,
+and that in the course of the day anyone might run against him. And once
+my mother, while she was telling us, as she did every evening at dinner,
+where she had been and what she had done that afternoon, merely by the
+words: "By the way, guess whom I saw at the Trois Quartiers--at the
+umbrella counter--Swann!" caused to burst open in the midst of her
+narrative (an arid desert to me) a mystic blossom. What a melancholy
+satisfaction to learn that, that very afternoon, threading through the
+crowd his supernatural form, Swann had gone to buy an umbrella.  Among the
+events of the day, great and small, but all equally unimportant, that one
+alone aroused in me those peculiar vibrations by which my love for
+Gilberte was invariably stirred. My father complained that I took no
+interest in anything, because I did not listen while he was speaking of
+the political developments that might follow the visit of King
+Theo-dosius, at that moment in France as the nation's guest and (it was
+hinted) ally. And yet how intensely interested I was to know whether Swann
+had been wearing his hooded cape!
+
+"Did you speak to him?" I asked.
+
+"Why, of course I did," answered my mother, who always seemed afraid lest,
+were she to admit that we were not on the warmest of terms with Swann,
+people would seek to reconcile us more than she cared for, in view of the
+existence of Mme. Swann, whom she did not wish to know. "It was he who
+came up and spoke to me. I hadn't seen him."
+
+"Then you haven't quarrelled?"
+
+"Quarrelled? What on earth made you think that we had quarrelled?" she
+briskly parried, as though I had cast doubt on the fiction of her friendly
+relations with Swann, and was planning an attempt to 'bring them
+together.'
+
+"He might be cross with you for never asking him here."
+
+"One isn't obliged to ask everyone to one's house, you know; has he ever
+asked me to his? I don't know his wife."
+
+"But he used often to come, at Combray."
+
+"I should think he did! He used to come at Combray, and now, in Paris, he
+has something better to do, and so have I. But I can promise you, we
+didn't look in the least like people who had quarrelled. We were kept
+waiting there for some time, while they brought him his parcel. He asked
+after you; he told me you had been playing with his daughter--" my mother
+went on, amazing me with the portentous revelation of my own existence in
+Swann's mind; far more than that, of my existence in so complete, so
+material a form that when I stood before him, trembling with love, in the
+Champs-Elys�es, he had known my name, and who my mother was, and had been
+able to blend with my quality as his daughter's playmate certain facts
+with regard to my grandparents and their connections, the place in which
+we lived, certain details of our past life, all of which I myself perhaps
+did not know. But my mother did not seem to have noticed anything
+particularly attractive in that counter at the Trois Quartiers where she
+had represented to Swann, at the moment in which he caught sight of her, a
+definite person with whom he had sufficient memories in common to impel
+him to come up to her and to speak.
+
+Nor did either she or my father seem to find any occasion now to mention
+Swann's family, the grandparents of Gilberte, nor to use the title of
+stockbroker, topics than which nothing else gave me so keen a pleasure.
+My imagination had isolated and consecrated in the social Paris a certain
+family, just as it had set apart in the structural Paris a certain house,
+on whose porch it had fashioned sculptures and made its windows precious.
+But these ornaments I alone had eyes to see. Just as my father and mother
+looked upon the house in which Swann lived as one that closely resembled
+the other houses built at the same period in the neighbourhood of the
+Bois, so Swann's family seemed to them to be in the same category as many
+other families of stockbrokers. Their judgment was more or less favourable
+according to the extent to which the family in question shared in merits
+that were common to the rest of the universe, and there was about it
+nothing that they could call unique. What, on the other hand, they did
+appreciate in the Swanns they found in equal, if not in greater measure
+elsewhere.  And so, after admitting that the house was in a good position,
+they would go on to speak of some other house that was in a better, but
+had nothing to do with Gilberte, or of financiers on a larger scale than
+her grandfather had been; and if they had appeared, for a moment, to be of
+my opinion, that was a mistake which was very soon corrected. For in order
+to distinguish in all Gilberte's surroundings an indefinable quality
+analogous, in the scale of emotions, to what in the scale of colours is
+called infra-red, a supplementary sense of perception was required, with
+which love, for the time being, had endowed me; and this my parents
+lacked.
+
+On the days when Gilberte had warned me that she would not be coming to
+the Champs-Elys�es, I would try to arrange my walks so that I should be
+brought into some kind of contact with her. Sometimes I would lead
+Fran�oise on a pilgrimage to the house in which the Swanns lived, making
+her repeat to me unendingly all that she had learned from the governess
+with regard to Mme. Swann. "It seems, she puts great faith in medals. She
+would never think of starting on a journey if she had heard an owl hoot,
+or the death-watch in the wall, or if she had seen a cat at midnight, or
+if the furniture had creaked. Oh yes! she's a most religious lady, she
+is!" I was so madly in love with Gilberte that if, on our way, I caught
+sight of their old butler taking the dog out, my emotion would bring me to
+a standstill, I would fasten on his white whiskers eyes that melted with
+passion. And Fran�oise would rouse me with: "What's wrong with you now,
+child?" and we would continue on our way until we reached their gate,
+where a porter, different from every other porter in the world, and
+saturated, even to the braid on his livery, with the same melancholy charm
+that I had felt to be latent in the name of Gilberte, looked at me as
+though he knew that I was one of those whose natural unworthiness would
+for ever prevent them from penetrating into the mysteries of the life
+inside, which it was his duty to guard, and over which the ground-floor
+windows appeared conscious of being protectingly closed, with far less
+resemblance, between the nobly sweeping arches of their muslin curtains,
+to any other windows in the world than to Gilberte's glancing eyes. On
+other days we would go along the boulevards, and I would post myself at
+the corner of the Rue Duphot; I had heard that Swann was often to be seen
+passing there, on his way to the dentist's; and my imagination so far
+differentiated Gilberte's father from the rest of humanity, his presence
+in the midst of a crowd of real people introduced among them so miraculous
+an element, that even before we reached the Madeleine I would be trembling
+with emotion at the thought that I was approaching a street from which
+that supernatural apparition might at any moment burst upon me unawares.
+
+But most often of all, on days when I was not to see Gilberte, as I had
+heard that Mme. Swann walked almost every day along the All�e des Acacias,
+round the big lake, and in the All�e de la Reine Marguerite, I would guide
+Fran�oise in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne. It was to me like one
+of those zoological gardens in which one sees assembled together a variety
+of flora, and contrasted effects in landscape; where from a hill one
+passes to a grotto, a meadow, rocks, a stream, a trench, another hill, a
+marsh, but knows that they are there only to enable the hippopotamus,
+zebra, crocodile, rabbit, bear and heron to disport themselves in a
+natural or a picturesque setting; this, the Bois, equally complex, uniting
+a multitude of little worlds, distinct and separate--placing a stage set
+with red trees, American oaks, like an experimental forest in Virginia,
+next to a fir-wood by the edge of the lake, or to a forest grove from
+which would suddenly emerge, in her lissom covering of furs, with the
+large, appealing eyes of a dumb animal, a hastening walker--was the Garden
+of Woman; and like the myrtle-alley in the Aeneid, planted for their
+delight with trees of one kind only, the All�e des Acacias was thronged by
+the famous Beauties of the day. As, from a long way off, the sight of the
+jutting crag from which it dives into the pool thrills with joy the
+children who know that they are going to behold the seal, long before I
+reached the acacia-alley, their fragrance, scattered abroad, would make me
+feel that I was approaching the incomparable presence of a vegetable
+personality, strong and tender; then, as I drew near, the sight of their
+topmost branches, their lightly tossing foliage, in its easy grace, its
+coquettish outline, its delicate fabric, over which hundreds of flowers
+were laid, like winged and throbbing colonies of precious insects; and
+finally their name itself, feminine, indolent and seductive, made my heart
+beat, but with a social longing, like those waltzes which remind us only
+of the names of the fair dancers, called aloud as they entered the
+ball-room. I had been told that I should see in the alley certain women of
+fashion, who, in spite of their not all having husbands, were constantly
+mentioned in conjunction with Mme. Swann, but most often by their
+professional names;--their new names, when they had any, being but a sort
+of incognito, a veil which those who would speak of them were careful to
+draw aside, so as to make themselves understood. Thinking that Beauty--in
+the order of feminine elegance--was governed by occult laws into the
+knowledge of which they had been initiated, and that they had the power to
+realise it, I accepted before seeing them, like the truth of a coming
+revelation, the appearance of their clothes, of their carriages and
+horses, of a thousand details among which I placed my faith as in an inner
+soul which gave the cohesion of a work of art to that ephemeral and
+changing pageant. But it was Mme. Swann whom I wished to see, and I waited
+for her to go past, as deeply moved as though she were Gilberte, whose
+parents, saturated, like everything in her environment, with her own
+special charm, excited in me as keen a passion as she did herself, indeed
+a still more painful disturbance (since their point of contact with her
+was that intimate, that internal part of her life which was hidden from
+me), and furthermore, for I very soon learned, as we shall see in due
+course, that they did not like my playing with her, that feeling of
+veneration which we always have for those who hold, and exercise without
+restraint, the power to do us an injury.
+
+I assigned the first place, in the order of aesthetic merit and of social
+grandeur, to simplicity, when I saw Mme. Swann on foot, in a 'polonaise'
+of plain cloth, a little toque on her head trimmed with a pheasant's wing,
+a bunch of violets in her bosom, hastening along the All�e des Acacias as
+if it had been merely the shortest way back to her own house, and
+acknowledging with a rapid glance the courtesy of the gentlemen in
+carriages, who, recognising her figure at a distance, were raising their
+hats to her and saying to one another that there was never anyone so well
+turned out as she. But instead of simplicity it was to ostentation that I
+must assign the first place if, after I had compelled Fran�oise, who could
+hold out no longer, and complained that her legs were 'giving' beneath
+her, to stroll up and down with me for another hour, I saw at length,
+emerging from the Porte Dauphine, figuring for me a royal dignity, the
+passage of a sovereign, an impression such as no real Queen has ever since
+been able to give me, because my notion of their power has been less
+vague, and more founded upon experience--borne along by the flight of a
+pair of fiery horses, slender and shapely as one sees them in the drawings
+of Constantin Guys, carrying on its box an enormous coachman, furred like
+a cossack, and by his side a diminutive groom, like Toby, "the late
+Beaudenord's tiger," I saw--or rather I felt its outlines engraved upon my
+heart by a clean and killing stab--a matchless victoria, built rather
+high, and hinting, through the extreme modernity of its appointments, at
+the forms of an earlier day, deep down in which lay negligently back Mme.
+Swann, her hair, now quite pale with one grey lock, girt with a narrow
+band of flowers, usually violets, from which floated down long veils, a
+lilac parasol in her hand, on her lips an ambiguous smile in which I read
+only the benign condescension of Majesty, though it was pre-eminently the
+enticing smile of the courtesan, which she graciously bestowed upon the
+men who bowed to her. That smile was, in reality, saying to one: "Oh yes,
+I do remember, quite well; it was wonderful!" to another: "How I should
+have loved to! We were unfortunate!", to a third: "Yes, if you like! I
+must just keep in the line for a minute, then as soon as I can I will
+break away." When strangers passed she still allowed to linger about her
+lips a lazy smile, as though she expected or remembered some friend, which
+made them say: "What a lovely woman!". 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 a viper, that you can't keep quiet for a
+moment. But do you suppose that I care what you say?" Coquelin passed,
+talking, in a group of listening friends, and with a sweeping wave of his
+hand bade a theatrical good day to the people in the carriages. But I
+thought only of Mme. Swann, and pretended to have not yet seen her, for I
+knew that, when she reached the pigeon-shooting ground, she would tell her
+coachman to 'break away' and to stop the carriage, so that she might come
+back on foot. And on days when I felt that I had the courage to pass close
+by her I would drag Fran�oise off in that direction; until the moment came
+when I saw Mme. Swann, letting trail behind her the long train of her
+lilac skirt, dressed, as the populace imagine queens to be dressed, in
+rich attire such as no other woman might wear, lowering her eyes now and
+then to study the handle of her parasol, paying scant attention to the
+passers-by, as though the important thing for her, her one object in being
+there, was to take exercise, without thinking that she was seen, and that
+every head was turned towards her. Sometimes, however, when she had looked
+back to call her dog to her, she would cast, almost imperceptibly, a
+sweeping glance round about.
+
+Those even who did not know her were warned by something exceptional,
+something beyond the normal in her--or perhaps by a telepathic suggestion
+such as would move an ignorant audience to a frenzy of applause when Berma
+was 'sublime'--that she must be some one well-known. They would ask one
+another, "Who is she?", or sometimes would interrogate a passing stranger,
+or would make a mental note of how she was dressed so as to fix her
+identity, later, in the mind of a friend better informed than themselves,
+who would at once enlighten them. Another pair, half-stopping in their
+walk, would exchange:
+
+"You know who that is? Mme. Swann! That conveys nothing to you?  Odette de
+Cr�cy, then?"
+
+"Odette de Cr�cy! Why, I thought as much. Those great, sad eyes...  But I
+say, you know, she can't be as young as she was once, eh? I remember, I
+had her on the day that MacMahon went."
+
+"I shouldn't remind her of it, if I were you. She is now Mme. Swann, the
+wife of a gentleman in the Jockey Club, a friend of the Prince of Wales.
+Apart from that, though, she is wonderful still."
+
+"Oh, but you ought to have known her then; Gad, she was lovely! She lived
+in a very odd little house with a lot of Chinese stuff. I remember, we
+were bothered all the time by the newsboys, shouting outside; in the end
+she made me get up and go."
+
+Without listening to these memories, I could feel all about her the
+indistinct murmur of fame. My heart leaped with impatience when I thought
+that a few seconds must still elapse before all these people, among whom I
+was dismayed not to find a certain mulatto banker who (or so I felt) had a
+contempt for me, were to see the unknown youth, to whom they had not, so
+far, been paying the slightest attention, salute (without knowing her, it
+was true, but I thought that I had sufficient authority since my parents
+knew her husband and I was her daughter's playmate) this woman whose
+reputation for beauty, for misconduct, and for elegance was universal.
+But I was now close to Mme. Swann; I pulled off my hat 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, like 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 a theatre, of her daily walks abroad.
+
+On certain days when I had missed her in the All�e des Acacias I would be
+so fortunate as to meet her in the All�e de la Reine Marguerite, where
+women went who wished to be alone, or to appear to be wishing to be alone;
+she would not be alone for long, being soon overtaken by some man or
+other, often in a grey 'tile' hat, whom I did not know, and who would talk
+to her for some time, while their two carriages crawled behind.
+
+
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+That sense of the complexity of the Bois de Boulogne which made it an
+artificial place and, in the zoological or mythological sense of the word,
+a Garden, I captured again, this year, as I crossed it on my way to
+Trianon, on one of those mornings, early in November, when in Paris, if we
+stay indoors, being so near and yet prevented from witnessing the
+transformation scene of autumn, which is drawing so rapidly to a close
+without our assistance, we feel a regret for the fallen leaves that
+becomes a fever, and may even keep us awake at night. Into my closed room
+they had been drifting already for a month, summoned there by my desire to
+see them, slipping between my thoughts and the object, whatever it might
+be, upon which I was trying to concentrate them, whirling in front of me
+like those brown spots that sometimes, whatever we may be looking at, will
+seem to be dancing or swimming before our eyes. And on that morning, not
+hearing the splash of the rain as on the previous days, seeing the smile
+of fine weather at the corners of my drawn curtains, as from the corners
+of closed lips may escape the secret of their happiness, I had felt that I
+could actually see those yellow leaves, with the light shining through
+them, in their supreme beauty; and being no more able to restrain myself
+from going to look at the trees than, in my childhood's days, when the
+wind howled in the chimney, I had been able to resist the longing to visit
+the sea, I had risen and left the house to go to Trianon, passing through
+the Bois de Boulogne.  It was the hour and the season in which the Bois
+seems, perhaps, most multiform, not only because it is then most divided,
+but because it is divided in a different way. Even in the unwooded parts,
+where the horizon is large, here and there against the background of a
+dark and distant mass of trees, now leafless or still keeping their summer
+foliage unchanged, a double row of orange-red chestnuts seemed, as in a
+picture just begun, to be the only thing painted, so far, by an artist who
+had not yet laid any colour on the rest, and to be offering their
+cloister, in full daylight, for the casual exercise of the human figures
+that would be added to the picture later on.
+
+Farther off, at a place where the trees were still all green, one alone,
+small, stunted, lopped, but stubborn in its resistance, was tossing in the
+breeze an ugly mane of red. Elsewhere, again, might be seen the first
+awakening of this Maytime of the leaves, and those of an ampelopsis, a
+smiling miracle, like a red hawthorn flowering in winter, had that very
+morning all 'come out,' so to speak, in blossom. And the Bois had the
+temporary, unfinished, artificial look of a nursery garden or a park in
+which, either for some botanic purpose or in preparation for a festival,
+there have been embedded among the trees of commoner growth, which have
+not yet been uprooted and transplanted elsewhere, a few rare specimens,
+with fantastic foliage, which seem to be clearing all round themselves an
+empty space, making room, giving air, diffusing light. Thus it was the
+time of year at which the Bois de Boulogne displays more separate
+characteristics, assembles more distinct elements in a composite whole
+than at any other.  It was also the time of day. In places where the trees
+still kept their leaves, they seemed to have undergone an alteration of
+their substance from the point at which they were touched by the sun's
+light, still, at this hour in the morning, almost horizontal, as it would
+be again, a few hours later, at the moment when, just as dusk began, it
+would flame up like a lamp, project afar over the leaves a warm and
+artificial glow, and set ablaze the few topmost boughs of a tree that
+would itself remain unchanged, a sombre incombustible candelabrum beneath
+its flaming crest.  At one spot the light grew solid as a brick wall, and
+like a piece of yellow Persian masonry, patterned in blue, daubed coarsely
+upon the sky the leaves of the chestnuts; at another, it cut them off from
+the sky towards which they stretched out their curling, golden fingers.
+Half-way up the trunk of a tree draped with wild vine, the light had
+grafted and brought to blossom, too dazzling to be clearly distinguished,
+an enormous posy, of red flowers apparently, perhaps of a new variety of
+carnation.  The different parts of the Bois, so easily confounded in
+summer in the density and monotony of their universal green, were now
+clearly divided. A patch of brightness indicated the approach to almost
+every one of them, or else a splendid mass of foliage stood out before it
+like an oriflamme. I could make out, as on a coloured map, Armenonville,
+the Pr� Catalan, Madrid, the Race Course and the shore of the lake. Here
+and there would appear some meaningless erection, a sham grotto, a mill,
+for which the trees made room by drawing away from it, or which was borne
+upon the soft green platform of a grassy lawn.  I could feel that the Bois
+was not really a wood, that it existed for a purpose alien to the life of
+its trees; my sense of exaltation was due not only to admiration of the
+autumn tints but to a bodily desire. Ample source of a joy which the heart
+feels at first without being conscious of its cause, without understanding
+that it results from no external impulse! Thus I gazed at the trees with
+an unsatisfied longing which went beyond them and, without my knowledge,
+directed itself towards that masterpiece of beautiful strolling women
+which the trees enframed for a few hours every day. I walked towards the
+All�e des Acacias. I passed through forest groves in which the morning
+light, breaking them into new sections, lopped and trimmed the trees,
+united different trunks in marriage, made nosegays of their branches. It
+would skilfully draw towards it a pair of trees; making deft use of the
+sharp chisel of light and shade, it would cut away from each of them half
+of its trunk and branches, and, weaving together the two halves that
+remained, would make of them either a single pillar of shade, defined by
+the surrounding light, or a single luminous phantom whose artificial,
+quivering contour was encompassed in a network of inky shadows.  When a
+ray of sunshine gilded the highest branches, they seemed, soaked and still
+dripping with a sparkling moisture, to have emerged alone from the liquid,
+emerald-green atmosphere in which the whole grove was plunged as though
+beneath the sea. For the trees continued to live by their own vitality,
+and when they had no longer any leaves, that vitality gleamed more
+brightly still from the nap of green velvet that carpeted their trunks, or
+in the white enamel of the globes of mistletoe that were scattered all the
+way up to the topmost branches of the poplars, rounded as are the sun and
+moon in Michelangelo's 'Creation.' But, forced for so many years now, by a
+sort of grafting process, to share the life of feminine humanity, they
+called to my mind the figure of the dryad, the fair worldling, swiftly
+walking, brightly coloured, whom they sheltered with their branches as
+she passed beneath them, and obliged to acknowledge, as they themselves
+acknowledged, the power of the season; they recalled to me the happy days
+when I was young and had faith, when I would hasten eagerly to the spots
+where masterpieces of female elegance would be incarnate for a few moments
+beneath the unconscious, accommodating boughs. But the beauty for which
+the firs and acacias of the Bois de Boulogne made me long, more
+disquieting in that respect than the chestnuts and lilacs of Trianon which
+I was going to see, was not fixed somewhere outside myself in the relics
+of an historical period, in works of art, in a little temple of love at
+whose door was piled an oblation of autumn leaves ribbed with gold. I
+reached the shore of the lake; I walked on as far as the pigeon-shooting
+ground.  The idea of perfection which I had within me I had bestowed, in
+that other time, upon the height of a victoria, upon the raking thinness
+of those horses, frenzied and light as wasps upon the wing, with bloodshot
+eyes like the cruel steeds of Diomed, which now, smitten by a desire to
+sea again what I had once loved, as ardent as the desire that had driven
+me, many years before, along the same paths, I wished to see renewed
+before my eyes at the moment when Mme. Swann's enormous coachman,
+supervised by a groom no bigger than his fist, and as infantile as Saint
+George in the picture, endeavoured to curb the ardour of the flying,
+steel-tipped pinions with which they thundered along the ground. Alas!
+there was nothing now but motor-cars driven each by a moustached mechanic,
+with a tall footman towering by his side. I wished to hold before my
+bodily eyes, that I might know whether they were indeed as charming as
+they appeared to the eyes of memory, little hats, so low-crowned as to
+seem no more than garlands about the brows of women. All the hats now were
+immense; covered with fruits and flowers and all manner of birds. In place
+of the lovely gowns in which Mme. Swann walked like a Queen, appeared
+Greco-Saxon tunics, with Tanagra folds, or sometimes, in the Directoire
+style, 'Liberty chiffons' sprinkled with flowers like sheets of wallpaper.
+On the heads of the gentlemen who might have been eligible to stroll with
+Mme. Swann in the All�e de la Reine Marguerite, I found not the grey
+'tile' hats of old, nor any other kind. They walked the Bois bare-headed.
+And seeing all these new elements of the spectacle, I had no longer the
+faith which, applied to them, would have given them consistency, unity,
+life; they passed in a scattered sequence before me, at random, without
+reality, containing in themselves no beauty that my eyes might have
+endeavoured as in the old days, to extract from them and to compose in a
+picture. They were just women, in whose elegance I had no belief, and
+whose clothes seemed to me unimportant. But when a belief vanishes, there
+survives it--more and more ardently, so as to cloak the absence of the
+power, now lost to us, of imparting reality to new phenomena--an
+idolatrous attachment to the old things which our belief in them did once
+animate, as if it was in that belief and not in ourselves that the divine
+spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent
+cause--the death of the gods.
+
+"Oh, horrible!" I exclaimed to myself: "Does anyone really imagine that
+these motor-cars are as smart as the old carriage-and-pair? I dare say.  I
+am too old now--but I was not intended for a world in which women shackle
+themselves in garments that are not even made of cloth. To what purpose
+shall I walk among these trees if there is nothing left now of the
+assembly that used to meet beneath the delicate tracery of reddening
+leaves, if vulgarity and fatuity have supplanted the exquisite thing that
+once their branches framed? Oh, horrible! My consolation is to think of
+the women whom I have known, in the past, now that there is no standard
+left of elegance. But how can the people who watch these dreadful
+creatures hobble by, beneath hats on which have been heaped the spoils of
+aviary or garden-bed,--how can they imagine the charm that there was in
+the sight of Mme. Swann, crowned with a close-fitting lilac bonnet, or
+with a tiny hat from which rose stiffly above her head a single
+iris?" Could I ever have made them understand the emotion that I used to
+feel on winter mornings, when I met Mme. Swann on foot, in an otter-skin
+coat, with a woollen cap from which stuck out two blade-like
+partridge-feathers, but enveloped also in the deliberate, artificial
+warmth of her own house, which was suggested by nothing more than the
+bunch of violets crushed into her bosom, whose flowering, vivid and blue
+against the grey sky, the freezing air, the naked boughs, had the same
+charming effect of using the season and the weather merely as a setting,
+and of living actually in a human atmosphere, in the atmosphere of this
+woman, as had in the vases and beaupots of her drawing-room, beside the
+blazing fire, in front of the silk-covered sofa, the flowers that looked
+out through closed windows at the falling snow? But it would not have
+sufficed me that the costumes alone should still have been the same as in
+those distant years.  Because of the solidarity that binds together the
+different parts of a general impression, parts that our memory keeps in a
+balanced whole, of which we are not permitted to subtract or to decline
+any fraction, I should have liked to be able to pass the rest of the day
+with one of those women, over a cup of tea, in a little house with
+dark-painted walls (as Mme.  Swann's were still in the year after that in
+which the first part of this story ends) against which would glow the
+orange flame, the red combustion, the pink and white flickering of her
+chrysanthemums in the twilight of a November evening, in moments similar
+to those in which (as we shall see) I had not managed to discover the
+pleasures for which I longed. But now, albeit they had led to nothing,
+those moments struck me as having been charming enough in themselves. I
+sought to find them again as I remembered them. Alas! there was nothing
+now but flats decorated in the Louis XVI style, all white paint, with
+hortensias in blue enamel. Moreover, people did not return to Paris, now,
+until much later. Mme. Swann would have written to me, from a country
+house, that she would not be in town before February, had I asked her to
+reconstruct for me the elements of that memory which I felt to belong to a
+distant era, to a date in time towards which it was forbidden me to ascend
+again the fatal slope, the elements of that longing which had become,
+itself, as inaccessible as the pleasure that it had once vainly pursued.
+And I should have required also that they be the same women, those whose
+costume interested me because, at a time when I still had faith, my
+imagination had individualised them and had provided each of them with a
+legend. Alas! in the acacia-avenue--the myrtle-alley--I did see some of
+them again, grown old, no more now than grim spectres of what once they
+had been, wandering to and fro, in desperate search of heaven knew what,
+through the Virgilian groves. They had long fled, and still I stood vainly
+questioning the deserted paths. The sun's face was hidden.  Nature began
+again to reign over the Bois, from which had vanished all trace of the
+idea that it was the Elysian Garden of Woman; above the gimcrack windmill
+the real sky was grey; the wind wrinkled the surface of the Grand Lac in
+little wavelets, like a real lake; large birds passed swiftly over the
+Bois, as over a real wood, and with shrill cries perched, one after
+another, on the great oaks which, beneath their Druidical crown, and with
+Dodonaic majesty, seemed to proclaim the unpeopled vacancy of this
+estranged forest, and helped me to understand how paradoxical it is to
+seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory, which
+must inevitably lose the charm that comes to them from memory itself and
+from their not being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had
+known no longer existed. It sufficed that Mme. Swann did not appear, in
+the same attire and at the same moment, for the whole avenue to be
+altered. The places that we have known belong now only to the little world
+of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was
+ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that
+composed our life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but
+regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as
+fugitive, alas, as the years.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWANN'S WAY ***
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