A FIELD GUIDE TO LOST THINGS

PETER JAEGER

A FIELD GUIDE TO LOST THINGS

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if p then q classics

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© Peter Jaeger 2015

ISBN 978-0-9571827-7-6

With a passion unknown to any writer before him, Proust took as his subject the fidelity of things that have crossed our path in life. Fidelity to an afternoon, to a tree, a spot of sun on the carpet . . . Walter Benjamin

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. Marcel Proust

Acacias I walked towards don’t stay here all day; you the Allée des Acacias. On can go up to your room if certain days when I had you are too hot outside, but missed her in the Allée des get a little fresh air first; Acacias I would be so don’t start reading fortunate as to meet her in immediately after your the Allée de la Reine food.” The fresh air made Marguerite, where women one hungry. Then after went who wished to be patterning everywhere the alone, or to appear to be violet velvet of the evening wishing to be alone. air, abruptly soothed, they would return and be Afternoon Sky Sometimes absorbed in the tower. in the afternoon sky a white “You’ll come away more ‘up moon would creep up like a in the air’ than I am!” little cloud, furtive, without display. All Manner of Birds All the hats now were immense; Agate Marble I kissed the covered with fruits and agate marble, which was the flowers and all manner of better part of my love’s birds. heart, the part that was not frivolous but faithful. I read Almonds I felt suddenly, as over again a page which, I rose again, a bitter-sweet although it had not been fragrance of almonds steal written to me by Gilberte, towards me from the came to me, none the less, hawthorn-blossom. I from her, that page by imagined that this fragrance Bergotte upon the beauty of must lie concealed, as the the old myths from which taste of an almond cake lay Racine drew his inspiration, in the burned parts, or the which (with the agate sweetness of Mlle. Vinteuil’s marble) I always kept within cheeks beneath their reach. freckles.

Air Her hand, at the same American Eye “Upon my time, sketched in the air an word and soul, you can see indelicate gesture. “Now, at a glance she’s got the

9 American eye, that girl has.” take everywhere. It’s a most engaging animal. It’s not Ampelopsis Elsewhere, often you see an animal so again, might be seen the well-behaved at that age. first awakening of this The very words which the Maytime of the leaves, and last convulsions of an those of an ampelopsis, a inoffensive animal in its smiling miracle, like a red death agony wring from the hawthorn flowering in peasant who is engaged in winter, had that very taking its life. morning all ‘come out,’ so to speak, in blossom. Animal’s Consciousness I had only the most Ancient Trees I aspired rudimentary sense of already to be an author, and existence, such as may lurk truly nothing can be finer, and flicker in the depths of sweeter, more refreshing for an animal’s consciousness. a writer than the sight of this sombre mass of foliage Animals He now noticed, formed by the ancient trees for the first time, roused by of the garden. the unexpected arrival of so belated a guest, the Animal But all the things scattered pack of splendid in life that have once existed effortless animals. tend to recur, and, like a dying animal that is once Ankle Ah! if he could only more stirred by the throes of manage to prevent it, if she a convulsion which was, could sprain her ankle apparently, ended, upon before starting, if the driver Swann’s heart, spared for a of the carriage which was to moment only, the same take her to the station would agony returned of its own consent (no matter how accord to trace the same great the bribe) to smuggle cross again. He knew that her to some place where she this thought had jumped in could be kept for a time in after him and had settled seclusion, that perfidious down upon his knee, like a woman. pet animal which he might

10 Ant Hill Words present to arm to Spartacus, to let him us little pictures of things, take one down! Mamma lucid and normal, like the pinched my arm sharply and pictures that are hung on said in a loud voice: “Good the walls of schoolrooms to morning, Françoise.” M. give children an illustration Swann seized my of what is meant by a grandfather by the arm and carpenter’s bench, a bird, an cried, “Oh, my dear old ant hill. friend, how fortunate we are to be walking here together Apple Trees It was while on such a charming day!” going the ‘Méséglise way’ When he proposed to take that I first noticed the leave of Odette, and to circular shadow which apple return home, she begged trees cast upon the sunlit him to stay a little longer, ground, and also those and even detained him impalpable threads of forcibly, seizing him by the golden silk which the setting arm as he was opening the sun weaves slantingly door to go. downwards from beneath their leaves. Arms Custom came to take me in her arms, carried me Apricots Apricots, because all the way up to my bed, they were still hard to get. and laid me down there like a little child. “Elevated...to Aquatic Gardening But the height of an Institute!” farther on the current interrupted Cottard, raising slackened, where the stream his arms with mock ran through a property solemnity. How readily thrown open to the public would I have sacrificed by its owner, who had made them all, just to be able to a hobby of aquatic cry, all night long, in the gardening. arms of Mamma! I would fall into the arms of my Arm I touch your arm. It’s mother. In my new-found often quite boring enough to confidence and joy I wept have to give a dinner-party, upon his printed page, as in but if one had to offer one’s the arms of a long-lost

11 father. “Most fortunate for past with some asparagus France!” he recited twice the size of what wickedly, shooting up both mother Callot has.” “It’s a arms with great vigour. She regular disease of asparagus had entered the room with you have got this year: you her arms pressed close to will make our Parisians sick her sides, even when there of it.” “I’ve still to dress the was no crowd to be asparagus.” Many years squeezed through. She later we discovered that, if might perhaps be seized by we had been fed on the whim (which, it was asparagus day after day possible, had never yet throughout that whole seized her) of falling into the season, it was because the arms of Forcheville. She smell of the plants gave the would jump in beside him, poor kitchen-maid, who had and hold him in her arms to prepare them, such until the carriage drew up at violent attacks of asthma the Verdurins’. She would that she was finally obliged procure an invitation for to leave my aunt’s service. him also, and to lull to rest The light crowns of azure in her arms the anguish that which capped the asparagus still tormented him. Yet he shoots above their pink would have wished to live jackets would be finely and until the time came when he separately outlined, star by no longer loved her, when star, as in Giotto’s fresco are she would have no reason the flowers banded about for lying to him, when at the brows. What fascinated length he might learn from me would be the asparagus, her whether, on the day tinged with ultramarine and when he had gone to see her rosy pink which ran from in the afternoon, she had or their heads, finely stippled had not been in the arms of in mauve and azure, Forcheville. through a series of imperceptible changes to Asparagus “Françoise, if their white feet, still stained you had come in five a little by the soil of their minutes ago, you would garden bed: a rainbow- have seen Mme. Imbert go loveliness that was not of

12 this world. “What, provoke in me that Françoise, more asparagus!” modulation, without there “You know quite well that being any need for me to he can never grow anything await the return of a season. but wretched little twigs of asparagus, not asparagus at Atom I could not discover all.” in them one atom of pleasure. Astral Body It was now an astral body. Autumn I formed the habit of going out by myself on Atmosphere And yet he such days, and walking was inclined to suspect that towards Méséglise-la- the state for which he so Vineuse, during that much longed was a calm, a autumn when we had to peace, which would not come to Combray to settle have created an atmosphere the division of my aunt favourable to his love. What Léonie’s estate. My sense of agony he suffered as he exaltation was due not only watched that light, in whose to admiration of the autumn golden atmosphere were tints but to a bodily desire. moving, behind the closed My walks, that autumn, sash, the unseen and were all the more delightful detested pair. because I used to take them after long hours spent over a Atmospheric book. The beauty for which Disturbances “I never the firs and acacias of the allow myself to be Bois de Boulogne made me influenced in the smallest long, more disquieting in degree either by that respect than the atmospheric disturbances or chestnuts and lilacs of by the arbitrary divisions of Trianon which I was going what is known as Time.” to see, was not fixed somewhere outside myself Atmospheric Variation in the relics of an historical Thus it came about that a period, in works of art, in a mere atmospheric variation little temple of love at whose would be sufficient to door was piled an oblation

13 of autumn leaves ribbed love, in the Balzacian flora, with gold. We used to see come with that flower of the passing up and down, Resurrection morning, the obliquely raised towards the Easter daisy, come with the heavens, her handsome face snowballs of the guelder- with its brown and wrinkled rose, which begin to cheeks, which with age had embalm with their fragrance acquired almost the purple the alleys of your great- hue of tilled fields in aunt’s garden ere the last autumn. When in Paris, if snows of Lent are melted we stay indoors, being so from its soil. near and yet prevented from witnessing the Banks We met him transformation scene of strolling on the banks. autumn, which is drawing so rapidly to a close without Beach My grandmother, our assistance, we feel a who held that, when one regret for the fallen leaves went to the seaside, one that becomes a fever, and ought to be on the beach may even keep us awake at from morning to night, to night. taste the salt breezes, and that one should not know Avalanche An avalanche of anyone in the place, because miseries and maladies calls and parties and coming, one after another, excursions were so much without interruption into time stolen from what the bosom of a family, will belonged, by rights, to the not make it lose faith in sea air. either the clemency of its God or the capacity of its Beak Its beak, as it physician. disappeared below the rim, conferred the part. Balzacian Flora Come with the primrose, with the Bear I did not understand canon’s beard, with the very clearly why, in order to gold-cup; come with the refrain from going to the stone-crop, whereof are houses of people whom one posies made, pledges of did not know, it should be

14 necessary to cling to one’s answered it, as from a independence, nor how that neighbouring tree. I could could give one the hear the whistling of trains, appearance of a savage or a which, now nearer and now bear. I make myself seem farther off, punctuating the ill-bred, uncivilized, an old distance like the note of a bear. bird in a forest. Mme. Verdurin, perched on her Beard “When his beard high seat like a cage-bird comes he’ll be Mahomet whose biscuit has been himself.” steeped in mulled wine, would sit aloft and sob with Beast of the Field “He fellow-feeling. Offering to regards, or so they tell me, the bird in abundance the its author, one Bergotte, fruit or grain at which it Esquire, as a subtle scribe, appeared to be pecking. Was more subtle, indeed, than it a bird, was it the soul, not any beast of the field.” yet made perfect, of the little phrase, was it a fairy, Beautiful Features invisibly somewhere Certainly my mother’s lamenting, whose plaint the beautiful features seemed to piano heard and tenderly shine again with youth that repeated? You may see a evening, as she sat gently bird flying across the pink; holding my hands and it draws near the border- trying to check my tears. line, touches it, enters and is lost upon the black. Belly And even in the case of the poor kitchen-maid, Bird-Like Eyes She would was not our attention utter a shrill cry, shut tight incessantly drawn to her her little bird-like eyes, belly by the load which filled which were beginning to be it? clouded over by a cataract, and quickly, as though she Bird At first the piano had only just time to avoid complained alone, like a some indecent sight or to bird deserted by its mate; parry a mortal blow, the violin heard and burying her face in her

15 hands, which completely Black Cloud Just look at engulfed it, and prevented that black cloud behind the her from seeing anything at steeple, and how poor the all, she would appear to be light is on the slates, you struggling to suppress, to may be certain it will rain eradicate a laugh which, before the day is out. were she to give way to it, must inevitably leave her Black Eyes Her black eyes inanimate. gleamed.

Birds I would contrive, Black Night What little with the infinite patience of daylight yet remained was birds building their nests. failing, and it seemed as Its drops, like migrating though a black night was birds which fly off in a body immediately to fall on them. at a given moment, would come down out of the sky in Black Sun I saw these, in close marching order. the hot light of a summer Swann watched them as morning, blaze like a black they listened to the sun. pianoforte intermezzo (Liszt’s ‘Saint Francis Blemish She should incline preaching to the birds’) towards me that face on which came after the flute, which there was, beneath and followed the virtuoso in her eye, something that was, his dizzy flight. The cries of it appears, a blemish, and the birds wheeling to and which I loved as much as all fro about it seemed to the rest. intensify its silence, to elongate its spire still Block of Ice A single word further, and to invest it with from Odette sufficed to some quality beyond the penetrate through all power of words. The three Swann’s defences, and like a steeples were always a long block of ice immobilized it, way ahead of us, like three congealed its fluidity, made birds perched upon the it freeze altogether. plain, motionless and conspicuous in the sunlight. Blood By keeping the blood

16 there in circulation it would blue eyes. make less frequent the chokings and other pains to Blue Moustache “I can which she was liable. quite see the good points there are in his portrait of Bloom “Besides, she my husband; oh, dear me, doesn’t care for him in that yes; and it’s certainly less way, she says; it’s an ideal odd than most of what he love, ‘Platonic,’ you know; does, but even then he had she’s afraid of rubbing the to give the poor man a blue bloom off—oh, I don’t know moustache!” half the things she says, how should I?” Blue Sky “May you always see a blue sky overhead, my Blossom For a long time young friend; and then, afterwards it was not even when the time comes, against a wall gay with which is coming now for me, spikes of purple blossom, when the woods are all but on a wholly different black, when night is fast background, the porch of a falling, you will be able to gothic cathedral, that I console yourself, as I am would see outlined the doing, by looking up to the figure of one of the women sky.” of whom I dreamed. In that moist and gentle Body Already it had passed atmosphere these heavenly into his soul, already the flower-beds will break into little phrase which it evoked blossom, in a few moments, shook like a medium’s the in the evenings, body of the violinist. incomparably lovely, and Françoise never went out of often lasting for hours her room for an instant, before they fade. never took off her clothes, allowed no one else to do Blue Eyes “I’ll leave you in anything for my aunt, and peace now, I know when I’m did not leave her body until not wanted,” she ended it was actually in its grave. discreetly, and left Swann He had intended to leave with the girl who had the time for her mind to

17 overtake her body’s her head, and drew her body movements. He should not to one side of the sofa. be present when the body Mme. Verdurin’s whole was laid in its coffin. He body stiffened. My body had slipped his arm round her turned about for the last shoulder, supporting her time. My body lay stretched body against his own. Her out in bed, my eyes staring frail and disordered body upwards, my ears straining, was still able to endure. If my nostrils sniffing from those dreams the uneasily, and my heart memory of her could no beating. My body, conscious longer be eliminated, then that its own warmth was her bodily imperfections permeating hers, would would no longer be of the strive to become one with least importance, nor would her, and I would awake. My the conformity of her body, body, still too heavy with more or less than any other, sleep to move, would make to the requirements of an effort to construe the Swann’s taste; since, having form which its tiredness become the body of her took as an orientation of its whom he loved, it must various members, so as to henceforth be the only one induce from that where the capable of causing him joy wall lay and the furniture or anguish. Like a solid body stood, to piece together and surprised at some unknown to give a name to the house point in its revolution. Like in which it must be living. the idealist philosopher My body, the side upon whose body takes account of which I was lying, loyally the external world in the preserving from the past an reality of which his intellect impression which my mind declines to believe, the same should never have forgotten. self which had made me My cheek was still warm salute her before I had with her kiss, my body bent identified her now urged me beneath the weight of hers. to catch the ball that she No sooner had the warm tossed to me. Mlle. Vinteuil liquid, and the crumbs with greeted her without rising, it, touched my palate than a clasping her hands behind shudder ran through my

18 whole body, and I stopped, quick relief of its slender, intent upon the allegorical body. The extraordinary changes that stiffened side underneath were taking place. “Oh, you my body would, for do make me so miserable,” instance, in trying to fix its she cried, with a jerk of her position, imagine itself to be body as though to shake lying, face to the wall, in a herself free of the constraint big bed with a canopy. of his question. She was screened from me by the Bois A month after the stooping body of her friend. evening on which he had Some tiny trace of intercepted and read contrariety in his mind, or Odette’s letter to of weakness in his body—by Forcheville, Swann went to inciting him to regard the a dinner which the present as an exceptional Verdurins were giving in the moment, one not to be Bois. After dinner, if he had governed by the rules, one an early appointment in the in which prudence itself Bois or at Saint-Cloud, he would allow him to take would rise from table and advantage of the soothing leave the house so effects of a pleasure. The abruptly—especially if it attraction which her body threatened to rain, and so to held for him had aroused a scatter the ‘faithful’ before painful longing to secure the their normal time. Gone to absolute mastery of even the dine upon the Island in the tiniest particles of her heart. Bois. He had long since The body of Golo himself, emerged from the paths and being of the same avenues of the Bois, he had supernatural substance as almost reached his own his steed’s, overcame all house, and still, for he had material obstacles. The not yet thrown off the constant iteration had intoxication of grief, or his gradually remoulded her whim of insincerity, but was body. The figure of this girl ever more and more had been enlarged by the exhilarated by the false additional symbol which she intonation, the artificial carried in her body. The sonority of his own voice, he

19 continued to perorate aloud him, though he had no in the silence of the night. desire to go out, to He hoped that, some day, he accompany her, carrying her might be able to hear the cloak when she was too Island in the Bois, or the warm. In the evening, when Princesse des Laumes he did not stay at home until mentioned without feeling it was time to meet Odette any twinge of that old at the Verdurins’, or rather rending pain. He preferred at one of the open-air to walk, and it was on foot, restaurants which they liked through the Bois, that he to frequent in the Bois and came home. He would especially at Saint-Cloud, he imagine that Odette was would go to dine in one of Forcheville’s mistress, and those fashionable houses in that, when they had both sat which, at one time, he had watching him from the been a constant guest. It is depths of the Verdurins’ an admirable street to live in landau, in the Bois, on the because it’s only a few evening before the party at minutes’ walk from the Bois. Chatou to which he had not Nature began again to reign been invited. I could feel over the Bois, from which that the Bois was not really had vanished all trace of the a wood, that it existed for a idea that it was the Elysian purpose alien to the life of Garden of Woman. One its trees. I had risen and left evening, when, irritated by the house to go to Trianon, the thought of that passing through the Bois de inevitable dark drive Boulogne. I think it was in together, he had taken his the Bois, one evening when other ‘little girl’ all the way you came to meet us on the to the Bois. Swann had left Island. I would guide before the coffee came in, to Françoise in the direction of join the Verdurins on the the Bois de Boulogne. If, Island in the Bois. That when Odette wished to go sense of the complexity of for a walk, in the morning, the Bois de Boulogne which along the Avenue du Bois- made it an artificial place de-Boulogne, his duty as a and, in the zoological or good husband had obliged mythological sense of the

20 word, a Garden, I captured worlds, distinct and again, this year, as I crossed separate—placing a stage set it on my way to Trianon, on with red trees, American one of those mornings, early oaks, like an experimental in November. That won’t forest in Virginia, next to a bore you, will it, a quiet little fir-wood by the edge of the dinner, now and then, in the lake, or to a forest grove Bois? The Bois had the from which would suddenly temporary, unfinished, emerge, in her lissome artificial look of a nursery covering of furs, with the garden or a park in which, large, appealing eyes of a either for some botanic dumb animal, a hastening purpose or in preparation walker—was the Garden of for a festival, there have Woman. been embedded among the trees of commoner growth, Bone “As if it weren’t ‘just which have not yet been the andante’ that breaks uprooted and transplanted every bone in my body.” elsewhere, a few rare specimens, with fantastic Bones She would hold out foliage, which seem to be for me to kiss her sad brow, clearing all round pale and lifeless, on which themselves an empty space, at this early hour she would making room, giving air, not yet have arranged the diffusing light. The different false hair and through parts of the Bois, so easily which the bones shone like confounded in summer in the points of a crown of the density and monotony thorns. What a lazy-bones! of their universal green, were now clearly divided. Bookworm “What fun it Then it befell the Maison would be to become a Dorée, as it had befallen the regular bookworm, to bury Island in the Bois, that my nose in a lot of old gradually its name ceased to papers!” trouble him. They walked the Bois bare-headed. This, Bosom His jealousy was the Bois, equally complex, not satisfied that he had yet uniting a multitude of little suffered enough, and sought

21 to expose his bosom to an which he had agreed, it was even deeper wound. with pleasure that he would Pointing to her bosom. She consider the idea that he received him, wearing a would see Odette again on wrapper of mauve crêpe de her return; but it was also Chine, which draped her with so little impatience that bosom, like a mantle, with a he began to ask himself richly embroidered web. whether he would not readily consent to the Boughs I would hasten doubling of the period of so eagerly to the spots where easy an abstinence. From masterpieces of female what I had been told of elegance would be incarnate them I would arrange them for a few moments beneath in the order of their talent in the unconscious, lists which I used to accommodating boughs. murmur to myself all day long: lists which in the end Brain As soon as I asked became petrified in my myself the question, and brain and were a source of tried to discover some annoyance to it, being subjects to which I could irremovable. He could not impart a philosophical explore the idea further, for significance of infinite a sudden access of that value, my mind would stop mental lethargy which was, like a clock, I would see with him, congenital, before me vacuity, nothing, intermittent and would feel either that I was providential, happened, at wholly devoid of talent, or that moment, to extinguish that, perhaps, a malady of every particle of light in his the brain was hindering its brain, as instantaneously as, development. At odd at a later period, when moments, no doubt, in the electric lighting had been furthest recesses of his everywhere installed, it brain, where his became possible, merely by determination had thrust it fingering a switch, to cut off away, and thanks to the all the supply of light from a length of the interval, the house. I imagined, like three weeks’ separation to everyone else, that the

22 brains of other people were he tries to be paradoxical, lifeless and submissive still he has one of the finest receptacles with no power of brains that I have ever come specific reaction to any across. Stimulate and stimulus which might be fertilize my brain with a applied to them. I set sense of bradding and between them, far more blossoming life. The distinctly than the mere intelligence of the distance in miles and yards Professor’s vigorous and and inches which separated well-nourished brain might one from the other, the easily have been envied by distance that there was many of the people in between the two parts of my society who seemed witty brain in which I used to enough to Swann. think of them, one of those distances of the mind which Breast The broad ribbon of time serves only to the Legion of Honour across lengthen, which separate his breast, had made Swann things irremediably from give that name. But one another, keeping them unfortunately the talker was for ever upon different now subordinated to planes. I wished only to another Legrandin, whom keep in reserve in my brain he kept carefully hidden in those converging lines, his breast, whom he would moving in the sunshine, never consciously exhibit, and, for the time being, to because this other could tell think of them no more. I stories about our own would read, or rather sing Legrandin and about his his sentences in my brain, snobbishness which would with rather more dolce, have ruined his reputation rather more lento than he for ever. himself had, perhaps, intended, and his simplest Breezes And a spotted phrase would strike my ears necktie, stirred by the with something peculiarly breezes of the Square, gentle and loving in its continued to float in front of intonation. If he is rather Legrandin, like the standard unpleasantly affected when of his proud isolation, of his

23 noble independence. feigned, perhaps, but akin in their base and vicious mode Brightly-Coloured Cloud of expression to those which He seemed to have would have been discernible penetrated my father’s skull, on the face of a creature as if it had been a ball of formed not out of kindness glass, and to be seeing, at and long-suffering, but out the moment, a long way of self-indulgence and beyond and behind it, a cruelty. “There, now,” went brightly coloured cloud. on my aunt, beating her brow, “that reminds me that Brill A brill, because the I never heard if she got to fish-woman had guaranteed church this morning before its freshness. the Elevation.” We would enter what he called his Brow Any of us who ‘study,’ a room whose walls happened to intrude upon were hung with prints which her at one of these moments showed, against a dark would find her bathed in background, a plump and perspiration, her eyes rosy goddess driving a car, blazing, her false hair or standing upon a globe, or pushed awry and exposing wearing a star on her brow. the baldness of her brows. He passed his hands two or Bubble It was still there, three times across his brow. like an iridescent bubble Her friend took the girl’s that floats for a while head in her hands and unbroken. The scent of placed a kiss on her brow hawthorn which strays with a docility prompted by plundering along the hedge the real affection she had for from which, in a little while, Mlle. Vinteuil, as well as by the dog-roses will have the desire to bring what banished it, a sound of distraction she could into footsteps followed by no the dull and melancholy life echo, upon a gravel path, a of an orphan. She had the bubble formed at the side of pleasure of receiving those a waterplant by the current, kisses on her brow, those and formed only to burst— smiles, those glances; all my exaltation of mind has

24 borne them with it, and has rustling sound among the succeeded in making them bushes, she would have traverse all these successive heard me, and might have years. thought that I had been hiding there in order to spy Buds High up on the upon her. branches, like so many of those tiny rose trees, their Bust The inner bodice pots concealed in jackets of follow, in complete paper lace, whose slender independence, controlled stems rise in a forest from only by the fancy of their the altar on the greater designer or the rigidity of festivals, a thousand buds their material, the line were swelling and opening, which led them to the knots paler in colour, but each of ribbon, falls of lace, disclosing as it burst, as at fringes of vertically hanging the bottom of a cup of pink jet, or carried them along marble, its blood-red stain, the bust, but nowhere and suggesting even more attached themselves to the strongly than the full-blown living creature, who, flowers the special, according as the irresistible quality of the architecture of their hawthorn tree, which, fripperies drew them wherever it budded, towards or away from her wherever it was about to own, found herself either blossom, could bud and strait-laced to suffocation or blossom in pink flowers else completely buried. alone. Buttercup “Why, my little Burning Hot Day It was a buttercup, my little canary burning hot day, and she boy, he’s going to make had come home so unwell Mamma as silly as himself if that the doctor had warned this goes on.” my mother not to allow her again to tire herself in that Buttercups For the way. buttercups grew past numbering on this spot Bushes I must have made a which they had chosen for

25 their games among the broad surface of the fields, grass, standing singly, in hardly visible, broken couples, in whole battlements over which, in companies, yellow as the their day, the bowmen had yolk of eggs, and glowing hurled down stones, the with an added lustre, I felt, watchmen had gazed out because, being powerless to over Novepont, consummate with my palate Clairefontaine, Martinville- the pleasure which the sight le-Sec, Bailleau-l’Exempt, of them never failed to give fiefs all of them of me, I would let it Guermantes, a ring in which accumulate as my eyes Combray was locked; but ranged over their gilded fallen among the grass now, expanse, until it had levelled with the ground, acquired the strength to climbed and commanded by create in my mind a fresh boys from the Christian example of absolute, Brothers’ school, who came unproductive beauty; and so there in their playtime, or it had been from my earliest with lesson-books to be childhood, when from the conned; emblems of a past tow-path I had stretched out that had sunk down and my arms towards them, well-nigh vanished under before even I could the earth, that lay by the pronounce their charming water’s edge now, like an name—a name fit for the idler taking the air, yet Prince in some French fairy- giving me strong food for tale; colonists, perhaps, in thought, making the name some far distant century of Combray connote to me from Asia, but naturalized not the little town of to-day now forever in the village, only, but an historic city well satisfied with their vastly different, seizing and modest horizon, rejoicing in holding my imagination by the sunshine and the water’s the remote, edge, faithful to their little incomprehensible features glimpse of the railway which it half-concealed station. Nothing was left beneath a spangled veil of now but a few stumps of buttercups. towers, hummocks upon the

26 Canal I have seen a bit of a wild vine, the light had canal in one place, and then grafted and brought to I have turned a corner and blossom, too dazzling to be seen another, but when I clearly distinguished, an saw the second I could no enormous posy, of red longer see the first. It must flowers apparently, perhaps be pretty cold, still, on the of a new variety of Grand Canal. The snowy, carnation. rosy flight of the wing of a lightly poised coif, Carnation or Hydrangea tremulously reflected in the “That little pink cloud there, greenish waters of a canal. has it not just the tint of some flower, a carnation or Canals To take another hydrangea?” example, there are all the canals at Jouy-le-Vicomte, Carnation Petals He no which is Gaudiacus longer based his estimate of vicecomitis, as of course you the merit of Odette’s face on know. the more or less good quality of her cheeks, and Carcass When it was dead the softness and Françoise mopped up its sweetness—as of carnation streaming blood, in which, petals—which, he supposed, however, she did not let her would greet his lips there, rancour drown, for she gave should he ever hazard an vent to another burst of embrace. rage, and, gazing down at the carcass of her enemy, Carnations I noticed uttered a final “Filthy before his door a carriage creature!” and pair, with red carnations on the horses’ Cardoons Cardoons with blinkers and in the marrow, because she had coachman’s buttonhole. never done them for us in that way before. Carp Now and then, crushed by the burden of Carnation Half-way up the idleness, a carp would heave trunk of a tree draped with up out of the water, with an

27 anxious gasp. accompany her home, to do a cattleya. Cat If she had seen a cat at midnight, or if the furniture Cattleyas And long had creaked. afterwards, when the arrangement (or, rather, the Cat and Dog Life As ritual presence of an regards figures of speech, he arrangement) of her was insatiable in his thirst cattleyas had quite fallen for knowledge, for often into desuetude, the imagining them to have a metaphor Do a cattleya, more definite meaning than transmuted into a simple was actually the case, he verb which they would would want to know what, employ without a thought of exactly, was intended by its original meaning when those which he most they wished to refer to the frequently heard used: act of physical possession ‘devilish pretty,’ ‘blue (in which, paradoxically, the blood,’ ‘a cat and dog life,’ ‘a possessor possesses day of reckoning,’ ‘a queen nothing), survived to of fashion,’ ‘to give a free commemorate in their hand,’ ‘to be at a deadlock,’ vocabulary the long and so forth; and in what forgotten custom from particular circumstances he which it sprang. But he was himself might make use of so shy in approaching her them in conversation. that, after this evening which had begun by his Cattleya Besides that arranging her cattleyas and moment (that first evening had ended in her complete on which they had done a surrender, whether from cattleya) when she had told fear of chilling her, or from him that she was coming reluctance to appear, even from the Maison Dorée, how retrospectively, to have lied, many others must there or perhaps because he have been, each of them lacked the audacity to covering a falsehood of formulate a more urgent which Swann had had no requirement than this suspicion. He must instantly (which could always be

28 repeated, since it had not sometime else, the smile annoyed her on the first which had been her answer, occasion), he resorted to the in the carriage that night, same pretext on the when he had asked her following days. However whether she objected to his disillusioned we may be rearranging her cattleyas. about women, however we She found something may regard the possession ‘quaint’ in the shape of each of even the most divergent of her Chinese ornaments, types as an invariable and and also in her orchids, the monotonous experience, cattleyas especially (these every detail of which is being, with known and can be described chrysanthemums, her in advance, it still becomes a favourite flowers), because fresh and stimulating they had the supreme merit pleasure if the women of not looking in the least concerned be—or be like other flowers, but of thought to be—so difficult as being made, apparently, out to oblige us to base our of scraps of silk or satin. attack upon some unrehearsed incident in our Cave It seemed not so relations with them, as was much the cave of Françoise originally for Swann the as a little temple of Venus. arrangement of the Virgil depicts him as being cattleyas. If she had any received with open arms; cattleyas pinned to her or—to be content with an bodice, he would say: “It is image more likely to have most unfortunate; the occurred to her, for she had cattleyas don’t need tucking seen it painted on the plates in this evening; they’ve not we used for biscuits at been disturbed as they were Combray—as the thought of the other night; I think, having had to dinner Ali though, that this one isn’t Baba, who, as soon as he quite straight.” Once he was found himself alone and left alone he would see again unobserved, would make his that smile, and her smile of way into the cave, the day before, another with resplendent with its which she had greeted him unsuspected treasures.

29 Celestial Geography Like terms with a person in that scholarly swindler who whose house one might find devoted to the fabrication of oneself, any day, cheek by forged palimpsests a wealth jowl. of skill and knowledge and industry the hundredth part Cheekbones The of which would have necessity, if he was to find sufficed to establish him in a any beauty in her face, of more lucrative—but an fixing his eyes on the fresh honourable occupation, M. and rosy protuberance of Legrandin, had we insisted her cheekbones, and of further, would in the end shutting out all the rest of have constructed a whole those cheeks which were so system of ethics, and a often languorous and celestial geography of Lower sallow, except when they Normandy. were punctuated with little fiery spots, plunged him in Chasm In the midst of acute depression, as proving them parted, suddenly, a that one’s ideal is always gaping chasm, that moment unattainable, and one’s in the Bois. actual happiness mediocre.

Cheek He slipped his other Cheeks A bright flush hand upwards along animated my aunt’s cheeks. Odette’s cheek. I might be An infirmity of the skin had able, thanks to these mental stained part of her cheeks preliminaries, to consecrate and her crooked nose the the whole of the minute bright red colour of balsam. Mamma would allow me to He would fling himself upon the sensation of her cheek this Botticelli maiden and against my lips. She stood kiss and bite her cheeks. I there beside him, brushing covered my old uncle’s his cheek. The exact spot on tobacco-stained cheeks with her cheek where I would passionate kisses. I would imprint it. lay my cheeks gently against the comfortable cheeks of Cheek by Jowl She had no my pillow, as plump and desire to remain on friendly blooming as the cheeks of

30 babyhood. In the end they from our chestnut trees. come to fill out so completely the curve of his Chestnuts At one spot the cheeks. Pregnancy had light grew solid as a brick swelled and stoutened every wall, and like a piece of part of her, even to her face, yellow Persian masonry, and the vertical, squared patterned in blue, daubed outlines of her cheeks. coarsely upon the sky the leaves of the chestnuts; at Cherries Cherries, the first another, it cut them off from to come from the cherry- the sky towards which they tree, which had yielded stretched out their curling, none for the last two years. golden fingers. Even in the unwooded parts, where the Chestnut Tree I knew at horizon is large, here and that time, as though one’s there against the life were a series of galleries background of a dark and in which all the portraits of distant mass of trees, now any one period had a leafless or still keeping their marked family likeness, the summer foliage unchanged, same (so to speak) a double row of orange-red tonality—this early Swann chestnuts seemed, as in a abounding in leisure, picture just begun, to be the fragrant with the scent of only thing painted, so far, by the great chestnut tree, of an artist who had not yet baskets of raspberries and laid any colour on the rest, of a sprig of tarragon. We and to be offering their sat in front of the house cloister, in full daylight, for beneath the big chestnut the casual exercise of the tree. What had to move—a human figures that would leaf of the chestnut tree, for be added to the picture later instance—moved. on. “Why, you’re quite right; it is copied from...what shall Chestnut Trees Sitting in I say, not chestnuts, no—oh, the little parlour, where I it’s a delightful idea?” would pass the time until dinner with a book, I might Chicken A fiery glow hear the water dripping which, accompanied often

31 by a cold that burned and me such chickens? stung, would associate itself in my mind with the glow of Christmas Tree “I should the fire over which, at that miss the Christmas tree very moment, was roasting here.” the chicken that was to furnish me, in place of the Chrysalis The process poetic pleasure I had found which had begun in her— in my walk, with the sensual and in her a little earlier pleasures of good feeding, only than it must come to all warmth and rest. Like of us—was the great and Françoise at Combray when general renunciation which the chicken refused to die. old age makes in preparation for death, the Chickens And, meanwhile, chrysalis stage of life. Françoise would be turning on the spit one of those Chrysanthemum He chickens, such as she alone could see it all; the snowy, knew how to roast, chickens curled petals of the which had wafted far abroad chrysanthemum which she from Combray the sweet had tossed after him into his savour of her merits, and carriage, which he had kept which, while she was pressed to his lips. He had serving them to us at table, in his study a cupboard at would make the quality of which he contrived never to kindness predominate for look, which he turned aside the moment in my private to avoid passing whenever conception of her character; he entered or left the room, the aroma of that cooked because in one of its flesh, which she knew how drawers he had locked away to make so unctuous and so the chrysanthemum which tender, seeming to me no she had given him on one of more than the proper those first evenings when he perfume of one of her many had taken her home in his virtues. But who would have carriage. He was jealous of baked me such hot rolls, those men of whom he had boiled me such fragrant so often said, without much coffee, and even—roasted suffering: perhaps she’s in

32 love with them, now that he liked to be able to pass the had exchanged the vague rest of the day with one of idea of loving, in which those women, over a cup of there is no love, for the tea, in a little house with petals of the dark-painted walls (as Mme. chrysanthemum and the Swann’s were still in the ‘letter-heading’ of the year after that in which the Maison d’Or; for they were first part of this story ends) full of love. She turned against which would glow impulsively from him, the orange flame, the red plucked a last lingering combustion, the pink and chrysanthemum in the tiny white flickering of her garden which flanked the chrysanthemums. pathway from the street to her house, and as he went Clear Day On a clear day back to his carriage thrust it you can see as far as into his hand. These letters Verneuil. he had kept in the same drawer as the withered Cliff Perhaps it is a castle chrysanthemum. which you encounter upon the cliff’s edge; standing Chrysanthemums But to there by the roadside, where suppose that she went to it has halted to contemplate bad houses, that she its sorrows before an abandoned herself to orgies evening sky, still rosy, with other women, that she through which a golden led the crapulous existence moon is climbing. They of the most abject, the most must have agreed to meet at contemptible of mortals— the foot of the cliff, but they would be an insane wouldn’t say good-bye wandering of the mind, for together; it might have the realization of which, looked odd. thank heaven, the chrysanthemums that he Cliffs of Death I tried to could imagine, the daily form a picture in my mind cups of tea, the virtuous of how those fishermen had indignation left neither time lived, the timid and nor place. I should have unsuspected essay towards

33 social intercourse which already faded by the sun. they had attempted there, clustered upon a Cloud She poured out promontory of the shores of Swann’s tea, inquired Hell, at the foot of the cliffs “Lemon or cream?” and, on of death. his answering “Cream, please,” went on, smiling, “A Climate Since the cloud!” ‘Twas itself that ‘Méséglise way’ was the projected towards him that shorter of the two that we truth whose glorious rays used to take for our walks melted and scattered like round Combray, and for the cloud of a dream the that reason was reserved for sense of loneliness which days of uncertain weather, it had lowered over him. followed that the climate of Méséglise showed an unduly Clouded Over When we high rainfall, and we would had decided to go the never lose sight of the fringe ‘Méséglise way’ we would of Roussainville wood, so start (without undue haste, that we could, at any and even if the sky were moment, run for shelter clouded over, since the walk beneath its dense thatch of was not very long, and did leaves. not take us too far from home). Climates “Climates that breathe amorous secrets Clouded Surface It and futile regrets may agree presented to the mind’s eye with an old and a clouded surface. disillusioned man like myself; but they must Clouds Reality must, always prove fatal to a therefore, be something temperament which is still which bears no relation to unformed.” possibilities, any more than the stab of a knife in one’s Close-Cropped Grass body bears to the gradual While I waited for her I was movement of the clouds pacing the broad lawn, of overhead. “There are tints in meagre close-cropped grass the clouds this evening,

34 violets and blues, which are Coal I understood that by very beautiful, are they not, making one’s way, after my friend?” Very soon, the luncheon, into the coal- clouds gathering in his grimed laboratory, the brain, he could see nothing. wizard’s cell that undertook to contrive a complete Clouds of Gold We made transmutation of its our way towards the surroundings, one could Champs-Elysées through awaken, next morning, in streets decorated with the city of marble and gold, sunlight, dense with people, in which the building of the over which the balconies, wall was of jasper and the detached by the sun and foundation of the wall an made vaporous, seemed to emerald. float in front of the houses like clouds of gold. Coast He was walking with Mme. Verdurin, Dr. Cottard, Cloudy Halo How small a a young man in a fez whom thing the actual charm of he failed to identify, the Odette was now in painter, Odette, Napoleon comparison with that III and my grandfather, formidable terror which along a path which followed extended it like a cloudy the line of the coast, and halo all around her. overhung the sea, now at a great height, now by a few Clover and Sainfoin On feet only, so that they were hot afternoons, I would see continually going up and a breath of wind emerge down. One day when, at from the farthest horizon, Combray, I had spoken of bowing the heads of the this coast, this Balbec, corn in distant fields, before M. Swann, hoping to pouring like a flood over all learn from him whether it that vast expanse, and was the best point to select finally settling down, warm for seeing the most violent and rustling, among the storms, he had replied: “I clover and sainfoin at my should think I did know feet. Balbec!”

35 Cobwebs Quimperlé, more feeling of languor swept firmly attached, this, and over him, would give way to since the Middle Ages, a slight shuddering among the rivulets with movement which contracted which it babbled, threading his throat and nostrils—a their pearls upon a grey new experience, this—as he background, like the pattern fastened the bunch of made, through the cobwebs columbines in his upon a window, by rays of buttonhole. sunlight changed into blunt points of tarnished silver. Common Ground The hedge with the pink Codfish “Codfish!” hawthorn which my aunt Léonie wished to visit was Cold I could no longer on common ground. contain my joy when my father, in the intervals of Community of Blood She tapping the barometer and had for those invisible complaining of the cold, bonds by which community began to look out which of blood unites the members were the best trains. “It of a family as much respect must be pretty cold, still, on as any Greek tragedian. the Grand Canal; whatever you do, don’t forget to pack Complexion When he your winter greatcoat and sought to measure it, it your thick suit.” The old happened sometimes that lady herself, having folded he found it diminished, up her Débats, asked a shrunken almost to nothing; passing nursemaid the time, for instance, the very thanking her with “How moderate liking, amounting very good of you!” then almost to dislike, which, in begged the road-sweeper to the days before he was in tell her grandchildren to love with Odette, he had felt come, as she felt cold. for her expressive features, her faded complexion, Columbines He would returned on certain days. stroke and fondle it, warm Whenever I thought of her, himself with it, and, as a the memory of those bright

36 eyes would at once present made up the daily round on itself to me as a vivid azure, the Côte d’Azur in those since her complexion was days, if it could have helped fair. him to understand something that still baffled Coral She would merely him in the smile or in the straighten her shoulder- eyes of Odette. straps or feel in her golden hair for the little balls of Countenance He would go coral or of pink enamel, in search of her, and, when frosted with tiny diamonds, he opened the door, on which formed its simple but Odette’s blushing effective ornament. countenance, as soon as she caught sight of Swann, Cornfields As soon as a would appear—changing the breath of wind gets up, and curve of her lips, the look in the cornfields begin to stir, I her eyes, the moulding of feel that someone is going to her cheeks—an all- appear suddenly. absorbing smile. When she reached her cousin, Mme. Cornflowers A few de Gallardon, with a stern cornflowers that had fallen countenance and one hand lazily behind, and decorated thrust out as though she the ground here and there were trying to ‘force’ a card, with their flowers like the began with: “How is your border of a tapestry. husband?” in the same anxious tone that she would Corpses in a River His have used if the Prince had spirit carried them along, been seriously ill. cast them aside, then cradled them again in its Country “Are you also her bosom, like corpses in a neighbour in the country?” river. Dr. Cottard, who, having been summoned to attend a Côte d’Azur He would serious case in the country, have devoted to the had not seen the Verdurins reconstruction of all the for some days, and had been insignificant details that prevented from appearing at

37 Chateaux. He could see a property close to Odette, in a dress far too Combray, and all that smart for the country. He country which he so dearly told himself that he would loved and had ceased to do better to rest for a little, visit, so as not to be that there would be time separated from Odette. The enough later on, and settled association in his memory back into his corner with as of her young and charming little curiosity, with as much face with a place in the torpor as the drowsy country which he had not traveller who pulls his cap visited for so long, offered down over his eyes so as to him a combined attraction get some sleep in the which had made him decide railway-carriage that is at last to leave Paris for a drawing him, he feels, faster while. This reminded me and faster, out of the that he had constantly seen country in which he has me in the country. Wishing lived for so long. He would also to express in words, for have liked to go away for a his own satisfaction, the while to rest in the country. longing that he felt for the It’s a country to be happy in. country. Méséglise was to me something as inaccessible as Countryside But, from the the horizon, which top of Saint-Hilaire, it’s remained hidden from sight, quite another matter; the however far one went, by whole countryside is spread the folds of a country which out before you like a map. no longer bore the least resemblance to the country Creature And that round Combray. Mme. condition is fulfilled so soon Swann would have written as—in the moment when to me, from a country she has failed to meet us— house, that she would not be for the pleasure which we in town before February. were on the point of Swann was extremely fond enjoying in her charming of the Princesse des company is abruptly Laumes, and the sight of her substituted an anxious recalled to him Guermantes, torturing desire, whose

38 object is the creature normal relations were herself, an irrational, absurd established between them desire, which the laws of which would put an end to civilized society make it his melancholy madness; impossible to satisfy and then, no doubt, the actions difficult to assuage—the of Odette’s daily life would insensate, agonizing desire appear to him as being of to possess her. For then the but little intrinsic interest. creature in whose company we are seeking amusement Creatures “Why, they at the moment, her lot is must have ‘countries’ cast, her fate and ours everywhere, those decided, that is the creature creatures!” whom we shall henceforward love. It was Cruel, Greenish Eyes He not very long since, from the seemed determined to idea that she was an remain unconcerned in the excellent creature, scene, which he followed comparable to the best vaguely with his cruel, women that he had known, greenish eyes. he had passed to that of her being ‘kept.’ “No, but, don’t Currant Until passion you see, the filthy creature... spent itself and left me Oh, if you only knew the shuddering among the creature as I know him; isn’t sprays of flowering currant that so, my love, there’s no which, creeping in through one that really knows you, is the window, tumbled all there, except me?” When about my body. Odette ceased to be for him a creature always absent, Currant Bush Scented regretted, imagined; when also by a wild currant bush the feeling that he had for which had climbed up her was no longer the same between the stones of the mysterious disturbance that outer wall and thrust a was wrought in him by the flowering branch in through phrase from the sonata, but the half-opened window. constant affection and gratitude, when those Damp Climate Swann

39 deemed it wise to make darkness. allowance in his life for the suffering which he derived Dawn This radiance of from not knowing what earliest dawn. Odette had done, just as he made allowance for the Day Put to flight by that impetus which a damp pale sign traced above my climate always gave to his window-curtains by the eczema. uplifted forefinger of day. We would still be found Dark But the day grew seated in front of our dark. It remained dark. It Arabian Nights plates, was almost dark when I weighed down by the heat of awoke. the day, and even more by our heavy meal. Dark Leaves They were made more lovely still by Daylight And even before the scalloped outline of the my brain, lingering in dark leaves, over which consideration of when were scattered in profusion, things had happened and of as over a bridal train, little what they had looked like, clusters of buds of a had collected sufficient dazzling whiteness. impressions to enable it to identify the room, it, my Darkness But so long as body, would recall from we are alive, we can no more each room in succession bring ourselves to a state in what the bed was like, which we shall not have where the doors were, how known them than we can daylight came in at the with regard to any material windows, whether there was object, than we can, for a passage outside, what I example, doubt the had had in my mind when I luminosity of a lamp that went to sleep, and had has just been lighted, in found there when I awoke. view of the changed aspect But scarcely had daylight of everything in the room, itself—and no longer the from which has vanished gleam from a last, dying even the memory of the ember on a brass curtain-

40 rod, which I had mistaken Dew There are even some for daylight—traced across drops of dew upon them the darkness, as with a still, a little of the hoar-frost stroke of chalk across a which must be making the blackboard, its first white Duchess, down there, correcting ray, when the shiver. window, with its curtains, would leave the frame of the Diamond How often had doorway, in which I had his credit with a duchess, erroneously placed it, while, built up of the yearly to make room for it, the accumulation of her desire writing-table, which my to do him some favour for memory had clumsily fixed which she had never found where the window ought to an opportunity, been be, would hurry off at full squandered in a moment by speed, thrusting before it his calling upon her, in an the mantelpiece, and indiscreetly worded sweeping aside the wall of message, for a the passage. Is it common recommendation by sense, I ask you, to leave up telegraph which would put windows which shut out all him in touch at once with the daylight, and even one of her agents whose confuse the eyes by daughter he had noticed in throwing patches of colour, the country, just as a to which I should be hard starving man might barter a put to it to give a name, on a diamond for a crust of floor in which there are not bread. Her diamond two slabs on the same level? earrings caught in the The hour when an invalid, trimming of her bodice. If who has been obliged to he refrained from offering start on a journey and to her a diamond necklace for sleep in a strange hotel, which she longed, he would awakens in a moment of be allowing her admiration illness and sees with glad for his generosity to decline, relief a streak of daylight that gratitude which had showing under his bedroom made him so happy, and door. would even be running the risk of her imagining that

41 his love for her (as she saw Sometimes, however, when its visible manifestations she had looked back to call grow fewer) had itself her dog to her, she would diminished. cast, almost imperceptibly, a sweeping glance round Ditches You can see at the about. same time places which you are in the habit of seeing Dog or a Horse For, since one without the other, as, a purely musical work for instance, the course of contains none of those the Vivonne and the ditches logical sequences, the at Saint-Assise-lès- interruption or confusion of Combray, which are which, in spoken or written separated, really, by a language, is a proof of screen of tall trees. insanity, so insanity diagnosed in a sonata Ditch-Water “As dull as seemed to him as ditch-water.” mysterious a thing as the insanity of a dog or a horse, Dog “As if I didn’t know although instances may be Mme. Sazerat’s dog.” I was observed of these. so madly in love with Gilberte that if, on our way, Dog Roses How simple I caught sight of their old and rustic, in comparison butler taking the dog out, with these, would seem the my emotion would bring me dog roses which, in a few to a standstill, I would weeks’ time, would be fasten on his white whiskers climbing the same hillside eyes that melted with path in the heat of the sun, passion. If my aunt had dressed in the smooth silk of happened to see a dog go by their blushing pink bodices, which she ‘didn’t know at which would be undone and all’ she would think about it scattered by the first breath incessantly, devoting to the of wind. solution of the incomprehensible problem Dogfish “You would say all her inductive talent and they were nothing more nor her leisure hours. less than a lot of dogfish

42 swimming about and condescending to sticking up their snouts!” promiscuous intercourse with such infamy, such Dogs For, after all, the dung.” time-table, and the trains themselves, were not meant Dust All of them were so for dogs. This will let you in, old that you could see, here and anyone you take with and there, their silvery you, he explained, but dogs antiquity sparkling with the are not admitted. dust of centuries. Meanwhile the scenery of Dove And its roof was his dream stage scattered in always surmounted by the dust. Perhaps they will be cooing of a dove. obliterated, if we return to nothing in the dust. The Ducal Park It was with servants would take their that story-book land, with places again outside the gate its imagined soil intersected to watch the dust settle on by a hundred bubbling the pavement. When a man watercourses, that had told her at dinner that Guermantes, changing its he loved to wander about form in my mind, became and get his hands all identified, after I heard Dr. covered with dust in the old Percepied speak of the furniture shops, that he flowers and the charming would never be really rivulets and fountains that appreciated in this were to be seen there in the commercial age, since he ducal park. was not concerned about the things that interested it, and Ducks She did not know that he belonged to another my name, but I was for generation altogether, she her—like one of the keepers would come home saying: in the Bois, like the “Why, he’s an adorable boatman, or the ducks on creature; so sensitive!” the lake. Ear Anyone with an ear at Dung “Thank God, it was all delicate for music would high time that I stopped at once have detected the

43 imposture. She murmured philosophy, new to me, by in Mlle. Vinteuil’s ear the use of marvellous something that I could not imagery, to the inspiration distinguish. of which I would naturally have ascribed that sound of Ears A man’s voice—he harping which began to strained his ears to chime and echo in my ears, distinguish whose, among an accompaniment to which such of Odette’s friends as that imagery added he knew, the voice could something ethereal and be—asked: “Who’s that?” All sublime. One of my the old subscribers, and my grandmother’s sisters, in grandmother’s sisters too, whose ears the question when Swann had given echoed like a solemn but them his seats, used to untimely silence which her strain their ears as if they natural politeness bade her had caught the distant interrupt. The fascination of approach of an army on the my book, a magic as potent march. And so was wafted as the deepest slumber, had to my ears the name of stopped my enchanted ears Gilberte, bestowed on me and had obliterated the like a talisman which might, sound of that golden bell perhaps, enable me some from the azure surface of day to rediscover her whom the enveloping silence. The its syllables had just path that he followed being endowed with a definite fixed for ever in his memory personality, whereas, a by the general excitement moment earlier, she had due to being in a strange been only something place, to doing unusual vaguely seen. He went things, to the last words of farther; agonized by the conversation, to farewells reflection, at the moment exchanged beneath an when it passed by him, so unfamiliar lamp which near and yet so infinitely echoed still in his ears amid remote, that, while it was the silence of the night. addressed to their ears, it “Your ears must have been knew them not. He would burning,” she ventured, express a whole system of “while we were on the yacht

44 with Mme. Verdurin. the Verdurins, as opposed to that of the La Trémoïlles or Earth And between the Laumes, whose equals (if earth and its creatures I not, indeed, their betters) made no distinction. For at they were, and the equals that time everything which and betters of all other was not myself, the earth ‘bores’ upon the face of the and the creatures upon it, earth, had managed to seemed to me more invest with a majesty that precious, more important, was almost Papal the endowed with a more real whiteness and rigidity of his existence than they appear stone. to full-grown men. How on earth can I tell? How on Earth’s Skeleton Hotels earth could I have are now being forgotten? I asked you, in superimposed upon it, case anything should without power, however, to happen to my mother-in- modify that oldest bone in law and she wanted to feel the earth’s skeleton. that she was not all alone down there, at the ends of Earth’s Surface I wished the earth, whether you knew to see them, at their any of the people. It was one appointed place on the of those names in which, as earth’s surface, and at no on an old piece of Norman other. Instinctively, when he pottery that still keeps the awakes, he looks to these, colour of the earth from and in an instant reads off which it was fashioned, one his own position on the sees depicted still the earth’s surface. They representation of some magnified the idea that I long-abolished custom. “My formed of certain points on dear fellow, what on earth the earth’s surface, making are you doing here?” The them more special, and in public would most certainly consequence more real. gather in front of it and marvel to see how the Egg As though I myself sculptor, in expressing the were a hen and had just laid unchallengeable dignity of an egg, I began to sing at the

45 top of my voice. He ate an Odette—Odette in her egg today and seemed quite activities, her environment, to enjoy it. her projects, and her past.

Elements Doubtless the Ermine “This snow (I form in which it had know, you’ll laugh at me), it codified those graces could makes me think of ermine!” not be analyzed into any logical elements. Their Estranged Forest Large elements had been birds passed swiftly over the determined by the writer’s Bois, as over a real wood, talent, or by geological laws, and with shrill cries before ever Gilberte had perched, one after another, known me. on the great oaks which, beneath their Druidical Environment If, since he crown, and with Dodonic had fallen in love, things majesty, seemed to proclaim had recovered a little of the the unpeopled vacancy of delicate attraction that they this estranged forest. had had for him long ago— though only when a light Every Fold of the Sky My was shed upon them by a father caught sight of it, as it thought, a memory of slipped into every fold of the Odette—now it was another sky. of the faculties, prominent in the studious days of his Excrement The word youth, that Odette had excrement, which had made quickened with new life, the Forcheville throw a passion for truth, but for a sweeping glance round the truth which, too, was table to see whether it was interposed between himself ‘all right,’ before he allowed and his mistress, receiving his lips to curve in a prudish its light from her alone, a and conciliatory smile. private and personal truth the sole object of which (an Eye A recent bride, who had infinitely precious object, been told that a young and one almost impersonal woman ought never to in its absolute beauty) was appear bored, was smiling

46 vigorously, trying to catch up in his own rooms and her hostess’s eye so as to looked at ‘views’ of Paris. flash a token of her Occasionally the name, if it gratitude for the other’s caught his eye in a having ‘thought of her’ in newspaper, of one of the connection with so men whom he supposed to delightful an entertainment. have been Odette’s lovers, He knew any number of reawakened his jealousy. women whom he could ask Odette answered, “Nothing to keep an eye on Odette. I is impossible to the eye of a had seen M. Vinteuil run to friend.” Perhaps even more the piano and lay out a sheet delightful, more of music so as to catch the harmonious when it was eye. I must catch his eye. If thus veiled from the eye, on his travels he met a when the reader could give family whom it would have no precise indication of been more correct for him where the murmur of the to make no attempt to current began, or of where it know, but among whom a died away. Seeing him close woman caught his eye, one eye with an ambiguous adorned with a special smile, before they had yet charm that was new to him, spoken to one another (a to remain on his ‘high horse’ grimace which Cottard and to cheat the desire that styled “letting ‘em all she had kindled in him, to come”), Swann supposed substitute a pleasure that the Doctor recognized different from that which he him from having met him might have tasted in her already somewhere, company by writing to invite probably in some house of one of his former mistresses ‘ill-fame.’ She had kept an to come and join him, would eye sharply fixed on the have seemed to him as servant. She would peep out cowardly an abdication in of the corner of her eye, over the face of life, as stupid a her glasses, at the other renunciation of a new form visitors. That look of wild of happiness as if, instead of abandonment in her eye. visiting the country where The first time that she saw it he was, he had shut himself in his eye, she could not

47 contain herself for joy. The The slanting eyebrows. Marquis de Forestelle’s monocle was minute and Eyelids He mingled the rimless, and, by enforcing cadence of her neck with the an incessant and painful spring of her hair and the contraction of the eye over droop of her eyelids. which it was incrusted like a superfluous cartilage, the Eyes A feeling stimulated presence of which there was by the desire to see rise up inexplicable and its before my eyes a peasant substance unimaginable, it girl whom I might clasp in gave to his face a my arms. A fresh turn was melancholy refinement, and given to the screw when led women to suppose him Swann recalled a sudden capable of suffering terribly expression which he had when in love. intercepted, a few days earlier, and for the first Eyebrow and Cheek A time, in Odette’s eyes. A ‘society novelist’ had just gentleman in a suit of linen fitted into the angle of ‘ducks,’ whom I did not eyebrow and cheek his own know either, stared at me monocle, the sole with eyes which seemed to instrument that he used in be starting from his head. A his psychological look of disillusionment in investigations. his blue eyes. A momentary spark in the jaded eyes of Eyebrows Dr. Percepied, old gentlemen in clubs. A whose loud voice and bushy skein of subtle and lovely eyebrows enabled him to silken threads, which his play to his heart’s content gazing eyes collected and the part of ‘double-dealer.’ wound together. All the It’s an astonishing likeness; terrible and disturbing ideas he has the same arched which he had formed of eyebrows. The frowning Odette melted away and contraction of her eyebrows vanished in the charming when she said pleadingly: creature who stood there “You won’t let it be very long before his eyes. An hour or before you send for me?” so later he received a note

48 from Odette, and at once outside the caste in which recognized that florid he had been born and bred, handwriting, in which an outside his ‘proper station,’ affectation of British was condemned to utter stiffness imposed an degradation in her eyes. As I apparent discipline upon its was still completely shapeless characters, ignorant of the different significant, perhaps, to less grades in the social intimate eyes than his, of an hierarchy, the fact that my untidiness of mind, a father found it impossible fragmentary education, a for us to see anything of want of sincerity and Swann’s wife and daughter decision. And so, hardly had had, for a long time, had the the delicious sensation, contrary effect of making which Swann had me imagine them as experienced, died away, separated from us by an before his memory had enormous gulf, which furnished him with an greatly enhanced their immediate transcript, dignity and importance in summary, it is true, and my eyes. Before my eyes the provisional, but one on glimmering flame of the which he had kept his eyes night-light in its bowl of fixed while the playing Bohemian glass. Bloch had continued, so effectively attuned my eyes and mind that, when the same to more subtle harmonies. impression suddenly Bodily passion, which has returned, it was no longer been so unjustly decried, uncapturable. And this compels its victims to delight in being a lover, in display every vestige that is living by love alone, of the in them of unselfishness and reality of which he was generosity, and so inclined to be doubtful, the effectively that they shine price which, in the long run, resplendent in the eyes of all he must pay for it, as a beholders. But she was dilettante in immaterial never that for very long; sensations, enhanced its after a few days the shining, value in his eyes. Anyone crafty eyes lost their who chose his associates brightness and their

49 duplicity. But these his forehead. He had, of ornaments I alone had eyes course, a number of musical to see. Colours, inasmuch as friends, but, vividly as he they make plain the reason could recall the exquisite for their superiority, are and inexpressible pleasure those whose beauty is most which the little phrase had evident to the eyes of given him, and could see, children. “Do you realize still, before his eyes the that your answer will have forms that it had traced in the effect—I do not say of outline, he was quite making me cease from that incapable of humming over moment to love you, that to them the air. He passed goes without saying, but of his hand across his making you less attractive to forehead, dried his eyes, and my eyes when I realize that wiped his glasses. He you are not a person, that pictured her to himself as you are beneath everything full of tenderness, with a in the world and have not look of consent in her eyes. the intelligence to raise He was making progress in yourself one inch higher?” that direction when he Even the man Racine, did, constructed a pedigree that each of them, once in his traced his own descent from life, compose a line which is some historic family, or not only fairly rhythmical, when he engaged in but has also what is in my correspondence with one of eyes the supreme merit of the reigning Sovereigns of meaning absolutely nothing. Europe, and so would shut For in her eyes distinction his eyes to the mistake he was a thing wholly was making in seeking to independent of social establish a similarity by an position. He did not wish to exact and therefore lifeless know why, but dried his copy of mere outward eyes, saying with a smile: forms. He went on, trying “This is delightful.” He desperately to cut out doesn’t nearly so often do everything that seemed to that trick of his, so like his show off his relations with father, of wiping his eyes the President in a light too and passing his hand across dazzling for the Doctor’s

50 eyes. He would secure he had loved so dearly, have invitations for her to the torn the blood into those most exclusive drawing- lifeless cheeks. His mind rooms, to those houses fumbled, for a moment, in where he himself went the darkness, he took off his regularly, for weekly dinners spectacles, wiped the or for poker; every evening, glasses, passed his hands after a slight ‘wave’ over his eyes, but saw no imparted to his stiffly light until he found himself brushed red locks had face to face with a wholly tempered with a certain different idea, the softness the ardour of his realization that he must bold green eyes. Her eyes endeavour, in the coming grew serious, troubled, month, to send Odette six or petulant. Her eyes had seven thousand-franc notes sparkled with a malicious instead of five, simply as a smile of congratulation surprise for her and to give upon his audacity. Her eyes her pleasure. His mother’s stared blankly as though she blue eyes which he had had suddenly been turned handed down to her, like into a statue. Her eyes were some trinket to be kept in fine, but so large that they the family. His own value in seemed to be bending Odette’s eyes. His relations beneath their own weight. with the Comte de Paris, His eyes met hers, sobered which, when I heard them in a moment from the discussed at Combray, anger, or pretended anger seemed to me unimportant, with which he was still became now in my eyes flushed. His eyes sparkled something marvellous, as if suddenly with such radiant no one else had ever known happiness. His eyes still the House of Orleans. I can seemed full of pain, like the see again today, above her eyes of a good-looking mauve scarf, silky and martyr whose body bristles buoyant, the gentle with arrows. He felt that he astonishment in her eyes. I now hated Odette, he would felt it to be important that gladly have crushed those she should not leave the eyes which, a moment ago, church before I had been

51 able to look long enough appear, as though they had upon her, reminding myself been stabbed by some that for years past I had invisible pin-point, while regarded the sight of her as the rest of his pupils, a thing eminently to be reacting from the shock, desired, and I kept my eyes received and secreted the fixed on her. I gazed at her, azure overflow. I used to sit at first with that gaze which and feel that I was hidden is not merely a messenger from the eyes of anyone who from the eyes, but in whose might be coming to call window all the senses upon the family. I would assemble and lean out, abandon myself altogether petrified and anxious, that to the sole quest of her, like gaze which would fain people who set out on a reach, touch, capture, bear journey to see with their off in triumph the body at own eyes some city that they which it is aimed, and the have always longed to visit. I soul with the body. I had a would be astonished to find suspicion that, in her eyes, myself in a state of to carry a message to my darkness, pleasant and mother when there was a restful enough for the eyes. I stranger in the room would would fall asleep, and often appear flatly inconceivable. I would be awake again for I had retained in my short snatches only, just memory overnight two fiery long enough to hear the eyes above plump and rosy regular creaking of the cheeks. I never took my eyes wainscot, or to open my off my mother. I recaptured eyes to settle the shifting the years in which, in the kaleidoscope of the eyes of this same Swann darkness. If her eyes had who was at this moment not been quite so black— before me in the Champs- which was what struck one Elysées, and to whom, most forcibly on first fortunately, Gilberte had meeting her—I should not perhaps not mentioned my have been, as I was, name. I saw in the middle of especially enamoured of each of our friend’s blue their imagined blue. In eyes a little brown dimple matters such as this ‘tis best

52 to close one’s eyes. Instead, characteristic of people who it would set his imagination do not wish to be agreeable, to make that duchess and who from the suddenly appear, in Legrandin’s eyes, receding depths of their eyes endowed with all the graces. seem to have caught sight of It is in ourselves that they you at the far end of an are happening, that they are interminably straight road, holding in thrall, while we and at so great a distance turn over, feverishly, the that they content pages of the book, our themselves with directing quickened breath and towards you an almost staring eyes. It lay like imperceptible movement of scales upon my eyes and the head, in proportion to prevented them from your doll-like dimensions. registering the fact that the Mamma sat down by my candle was no longer bed; she had chosen burning. Kisses seemed to François le Champi, whose spring from her eyes, which reddish cover and could not look upon those incomprehensible title gave she loved without yearning it a distinct personality in to bestow upon them my eyes and a mysterious passionate caresses. attraction. Mme. Verdurin, Lowering her eyes now and seeing that Swann was then to study the handle of within earshot, assumed her parasol, paying scant that expression in which the attention to the passers-by, two-fold desire to make the as though the important speaker be quiet and to thing for her, her one object preserve, oneself, an in being there, was to take appearance of guilelessness exercise, without thinking in the eyes of the listener, is that she was seen, and that neutralized in an intense every head was turned vacuity. My aunt answered towards her. M. Legrandin her not a word, breathing a had barely acknowledged sigh so faint that it seemed the courtesy, and then with it must prove her last, and an air of surprise, as though lying there with closed eyes, he had not recognized us, as though already dead. My and with that distant look aunt had by degrees erased

53 every other visitor’s name projected before my eyes, of from her list, because they the country in which the all committed the fatal action of the story was error, in her eyes, of falling taking place, which made a into one or other of the two far stronger impression on categories of people she my mind than the other, the most detested. My great- actual landscape which aunt had actually ceased to would meet my eyes when I ‘see’ the son of a lawyer we raised them from my book. had known because he had Often had it passed, in print, married a ‘Highness’ and beneath his eyes. Often she had thereby stepped down— would come out again in her in her eyes—from the dressing-gown, and escort respectable position of a him to his carriage, and lawyer’s son to that of those would kiss him before the adventurers, upstart eyes of his coachman. Once footmen or stable-boys. he was in Odette’s company, Never had he supposed it to once he had begun to cast have been so recent an furtive glances at her affair, hidden from his eyes changing countenance, and that had been too innocent instantly to withdraw his to discern it, not in a past eyes lest she should read in which he had never known, them the first symbols of but in evenings which he so desire and believe no more well remembered, which he in his indifference, he would had lived through with cease to be able even to Odette, of which he had think of her, so busy would supposed himself to have he be in the search for such an intimate, such an pretexts which would enable exhaustive knowledge, and him not to leave her which now assumed, immediately, and to assure retrospectively, an aspect of himself, without betraying cunning and deceit and his concern, that he would cruelty. Next to, but find her again, next evening. distinctly less intimate a One raises one’s eyes; one part of myself than this sees only the wooden case, human element, would magical as a Chinese box; come the view, more or less but, at moments, one is still

54 tricked by the deceiving dreamy expression. She had appeal of the Siren. One’s the street beneath her eyes. eyes followed the line where She was gazing, with bended it ran low again beyond the head, out of those great farther, descending slope. eyes. Shuddering with Piercing blue eyes. emotion, I could not take Presumably the notes which my agonized eyes from my we hear at such moments mother’s face, which was tend to spread out before not to appear that evening our eyes, over surfaces in the bedroom where I greater or smaller according could see myself already to their pitch and volume. lying, in imagination; and Set in it the gem of a glance wished only that I were from her own eyes. She lying dead. Since she could allowed her eyes to wander, not bring into play the over the space that lay deliberate glances, charged between us, in my direction, with a definite meaning, without any particular which one directs, in a expression, without crowd, towards people appearing to have seen me, whom one knows, but must but with an intensity, a half- allow her vague thoughts to hidden smile which I was escape continually from her unable to interpret, eyes in a flood of blue light according to the instruction which she was powerless to I had received in the ways of control, she was anxious not good breeding, save as a to distress in any way, not to mark of infinite disgust. She seem to be despising those closed her eyes and began to humbler mortals over whom yawn, so as to indicate that that current flowed, by it was a desire to sleep, and whom it was everywhere that alone, which had made arrested. So effective was her lie down there. She this that the whole room coquettishly enhanced the had the appearance of one charm of the smile which of those model bedrooms the idea had brought to her which you see nowadays in lips, by giving to her blue Housing Exhibitions, eyes, which were fixed on decorated with works of art the General, a gentle, which are calculated by

55 their designer to refresh the say “I’m going to sleep.” eyes of whoever may Still, I pointed out one that ultimately have to sleep in had the same colour as her the rooms. So great and eyes. Suddenly I stood still, glorious a figure was the unable to move, as happens President of the French when something appears Republic in the eyes of Dr. that requires not only our Cottard that neither the eyes to take it in, but modesty of Swann nor the involves a deeper kind of spite of Mme. Verdurin perception and takes could ever wholly efface that possession of the whole of first impression. So he and our being. Swann could read Mme. Verdurin (who, at the in her eyes that terror lest other side of the room, he should ask her not to go. where the painter was Swann endeavoured to telling her a story, was console him. “After all, she shutting her eyes is quite right,” he said to the preparatory to flinging her young man, drying his eyes face into her hands) for him and taking off the resembled two masks in a fez to make him feel more at theatre, each representing ease. “Take care, Master Comedy, but in a different Biche,” she reminded the way. So much so that it painter, whom it was a time- made their value be honoured pleasantry to confessed, their divine address as ‘Master,’ to catch sweetness be tasted by all that nice look in his eyes, those same onlookers— that witty little twinkle. That provided only that they were perfidious woman, her eyes in any sense musical—who, tinselled with a smile of the next moment, would complicity for Forcheville, ignore, would disown them which was what Odette had in real life, in every become for Swann in the individual love that came last forty-eight hours. The into being beneath their absence of Mlle. Swann, eyes. Sometimes, when I which—since it preserved had put out my candle, my me from the terrible risk of eyes would close so quickly seeing her appear on one of that I had not even time to the paths, and of being

56 identified and scorned by presence of a living actress this so privileged little girl before our eyes. The who had Bergotte for a pleasure which the music friend and used to go with gave him, which was shortly him to visit cathedrals— to create in him a real made the exploration of longing, was in fact closely Tansonville, now for the akin, at such moments, to first time permitted me, a the pleasure which he would matter of indifference to have derived from myself, seemed however to experimenting with invest the property, in my perfumes, from entering grandfather’s and father’s into contract with a world eyes, with a fresh and for which we men were not transient charm. The created, which appears to courage of one’s opinions is lack form because our eyes always a form of calculating cannot perceive it, to lack cowardice in the eyes of the significance because it ‘other side.’ The creature escapes our intelligence, to who might have been led which we may attain by way astray was a woman with of one sense only. The frank eyes. The different Princess, breaking into a changes and chances that laugh which was one of her bring us into the company characteristics, and was of certain other people in intended at once to show this life do not coincide with the rest of an assembly that the periods in which we are she was making fun of in love with those people, someone and also to but, overlapping them, may enhance her own beauty by occur before love has begun, concentrating her features and may be repeated after around her animated lips love is ended, the earliest and sparkling eyes, appearances, in our life, of a answered: “Why; he’s never creature who is destined to been better in his life!” The afford us pleasure later on, time had long passed when, assume retrospectively in on our first coming to spend our eyes a certain value as our holidays at Combray, we an indication, a warning, a had been of equal presage. The material importance, in Franchise’s

57 eyes, with my aunt. The eyes on him again. Thus his torment which had forced jealousy did even more than him to leave his own house the happy, passionate desire had lost its sharpness when which he had originally felt it lost its uncertainty, now for Odette had done to alter that Odette’s other life, of Swann’s character, which he had had, at that completely changing, in the first moment, a sudden eyes of the world, even the helpless suspicion, was outward signs by which that definitely there, almost character had been within his grasp, before his intelligible. To dream eyes. They passed in a together, to gaze in each scattered sequence before other’s eyes. To have left me, at random, without even the tiniest morsel in reality, containing in the dish would have shown themselves no beauty that as much discourtesy as to my eyes might have rise and leave a concert hall endeavoured as in the old while the ‘piece’ was still days, to extract from them being played, and under the and to compose in a picture. composer’s-very eyes. To They took shape and grew plant in the depths of its solid before his eyes. This unvalued eyes a lingering contrivance would make me sense, uncertain but not ridiculous in Swann’s eyes. unpleasing, half-memory This smile rested upon and half-oblivion. To the myself, who had never one who was in search of a ceased to follow her with my friend he said, with a smile: eyes. This young gentleman “But how nice of you, you’ve has her beautiful eyes. put on blue eyes, to go with Those great, sad eyes... your sash.” With eyes Those were youthful starting from his head. acquaintances on whom the Without daring to lift his old friends of the family, eyes to the newspaper, he like my relatives, shut their opened it, turned the page eyes all the more good- so as not to see again the naturedly. Though he did words, Filles de Marbre, not die until many years and began to read later, not one of us ever set mechanically the news from

58 the provinces. “You must had inspired love in him and tell me all about him”; he jealousy, to that Odette who went on, fastening a pair of had caused him so to suffer, goggle eyes on the celebrity. and whom now he would never see again. And Swann Face A few months later, if it was who, before she my grandfather asked allowed her face, as though Swann’s new friend “What despite her efforts, to fall about Swann? Do you still upon his lips, held it back see as much of him as ever?” for a moment longer, at a the other’s face would little distance between his lengthen: “Never mention hands. And the care which I his name to me again!” A took to focus all my fine, thoughtful face. A attention upon her face smile of joy, a pious act of succeeded in isolating it so thanksgiving to God, Who is completely that to-day, pleased to grant that life when I call that marriage shall be less cruel than our ceremony to mind, I find it dreams, feebly illumined impossible to visualize any her face. Although I could single person who was not see her face clearly present except her. enough, I am sure that the “Besides, what good has it expression must have ever done when I have set appeared on it which my my face against them?” grandmother had once Brichot appealed to Mme. found so delightful. And just Verdurin, who, swooning as, before kissing Odette for with merriment, her eyes the first time, he had sought tightly closed, had buried to imprint upon his memory her face in her two hands, the face that for so long had from between which, now been familiar, before it was and then, escaped a muffled altered by the additional scream. But now I found memory of their kiss, so he myself slightly shocked by could have wished—in this attitude which Swann thought at least—to have invariably adopted when been in a position to bid face to face with farewell, while she still generalities. But while each existed, to that Odette who of these attachments, each

59 of these flirtations had been despair on his face which the realization, more or less even his coachman had complete, of a dream born noticed, to come home with of the sight of a face or a him, and then turned away, form which Swann had solitary, crushed. He saw spontaneously, and without her face change its shape. effort on his part, found He wielded the supreme charming, it was quite power with all the arrogance another matter when, one of a man who has not been day at the theatre, he was subjected to discipline in his introduced to Odette de youth, so much so that, Crécy by an old friend of his whenever he saw a man in a own, who had spoken of her town whose face he did not to him as a ravishing remember, he would creature with whom he massacre the whole place, to might very possibly come to the last inhabitant. He an understanding; but had wished her to come to him, made her out to be harder of and, before she came, he conquest than she actually wished to have already was, so as to appear to be procured for her some conferring a special favour pleasure, so as to watch her by the introduction. “Did gratitude taking shape in you notice the face he pulled her face and moulding her when he saw that she wasn’t smile. Her face lighted up here?” Each time we see the and she jumped for joy. Her face or hear the voice it is face was exceedingly red, as our own ideas of him which it always was for some time we recognize and to which after a meal. Her whole face we listen. Each visit revived would seem to grow larger. the sense of disappointment His pale face, never losing which he felt at the sight of its nobility or its a face whose details he had melancholy, never showing somewhat forgotten in the any sign of trouble at such a interval. Françoise was transubstantiation. His amused by the look of personality was now so consternation on my aunt’s divided that the strain of face. He implored her in waiting for the imminent vain, with that look of moment when he would

60 find himself face to face, meet with, in convents for once more, with the phrase, instance, literally saintly convulsed him in one of examples of practical those sobs which a fine line charity, they have generally of poetry or a piece of had the brisk, decided, alarming news will wring undisturbed, and slightly from us. I brought my mind brutal air of a busy surgeon, to bear upon that face. In the face in which one can my cowardice I became at discern no commiseration, once a man, and did what all no tenderness at the sight of we grown men do when face suffering humanity, and no to face with suffering and fear of hurting it, the face injustice; I preferred not to devoid of gentleness or see them. Indeed, one could sympathy, the sublime face tell him only by his voice, of true goodness. for it was difficult to make Legrandin’s face showed an out his face with its arched extraordinary zeal and nose and green eyes. It animation. M. Vinteuil, flitted across the face of his turning out of another mistress. It seems street, found himself so impossible, that any thought suddenly face to face with us of charity can ever have all that he had not time to found expression in her escape. Mme. Verdurin, so vulgar and energetic face. It that her silence should have sometimes happened, again, the appearance, not of that, when, after meeting consent but of the Swann, she saw some man unconscious silence which approaching whom he did inanimate objects preserve, not know, he could had suddenly emptied her distinguish upon Odette’s face of all life, of all face that look of sorrow mobility. “My dears, laugh which she had worn on the at me if you like; it is not day when he had come to conventionally beautiful, her while Forcheville was but there is something in its there. I’ve nothing to set my quaint old face which face against! Later on, pleases me.” “Neuralgia all when, in the course of my down my face, like last life, I have had occasion to time.” Odette had looked

61 on, impassive, at this scene; those terrible last years. She but when the door had turned away with an closed behind Saniette, she indifferent and had forced the normal contemptuous air, withdrew expression of her face down, herself so as to spare her as the saying is, by several face the indignity of pegs. Odette’s face appeared remaining within their field thinner and more of vision. The air of prominent than it actually jubilation with which she was, because her forehead felt bound to illuminate her and the upper part of her face whenever she had to cheeks, a single and almost announce his arrival, did plane surface, were covered not altogether correspond to by the masses of hair which what was felt by her invalid. women wore at that period, The Doctor, who had come drawn forward in a fringe, into the box with a smile raised in crimped waves and which waited before settling falling in stray locks over upon or vanishing from his her ears. On hearing these face until someone in words Cottard exhibited an authority should enlighten intense astonishment him as to the merits of the blended with entire spectacle. The face he submission, as though in the pulled? “The face of a face of a scientific truth woman who, I would think, which contradicted was perhaps an actress.” everything that he had The General greeted Swann previously believed, but was and, noticing the look of supported by an irresistible strain on his face and weight of evidence. Other concluding that it was people, when they met him, perhaps a serious illness saw all the Graces that had kept him away, enthroned in his face. She went on, “You’re looking awoke, and half turned her well, old man!” The face, which I could see for General’s monocle, stuck the first time. She could see like a shell-splinter in his the tortured expression common, scarred, which was never absent victorious, overbearing face. from the old man’s face in The ‘Invidia,’ again, should

62 have had some look on her evidence of our own senses, face of envy. The next day and we ask ourselves, in the he had seen her, face to face face of this detached and with Mme. Verdurin. The incoherent fragment of rest of her face. The surface recollection, whether indeed of her face, which was red, our senses have not been as though she had been very the victims of a warm. Then gradually hallucination. What she reappeared and rose before really desecrated, what she him, softly radiant, the face corrupted into ministering of the other Odette. Then to her pleasures, but what her face assumed an remained between them and expression of anger. There her and prevented her from she was, often tired, her face any direct enjoyment of left blank. They contrived them, was the likeness also to put into a face from between her face and his. which its distinction had When she had uttered her been evicted, a face vacant request, she would watch and roomy as an untenanted my aunt covertly, trying to house. To see her look guess from the expression displeased destroyed all the on her face what she sense of tranquillity she had thought of it, and how she brought me a moment would reply. before, when she bent her loving face down over my Faces He had watched the bed, and held it out to me passage of the same like a Host, for an act of expressions of pity for a Communion in which my sufferer, resentment of an lips might drink deeply the act of injustice, gratitude for sense of her real presence, an act of kindness, which he and with it the power to had seen, in earlier days, on sleep. Watching Swann’s his own mother’s face, and face while he listened to the on the faces of friends. She phrase, one would have said reminded him, even more that he was inhaling an than was usual, of the faces anaesthetic which allowed of some of the women him to breathe more deeply. created by the painter of the We are reduced to the Primavera. She would go

63 out again sad and whose heights were buried discouraged, but still in a cloudy darkness shone smiling, for she was so out like little boats which humble and so sweet that had folded their sails and her gentleness towards would ride at anchor, all others, and her continual night, upon the sea. subordination of herself and of her own troubles, Fair Hair The beadle, by appeared on her face moving to one side, enabled blended in a smile which, me to see, sitting in a unlike those seen on the chapel, a lady with fair hair. majority of human faces, had no trace in it of irony. Fair, Reddish Hair A The faces of the passers-by little girl, with fair, reddish were strange. When it was hair, who appeared to be the little phrase that spoke returning from a walk, and to him of the vanity of his held a trowel in her hand, sufferings, Swann found a was looking at us, raising sweetness in that very towards us a face powdered wisdom which, but a little with pinkish freckles. while back, had seemed to him intolerable when he Fallen Leaves A roof, the thought that he could read it sound of a bell, the smell of on the faces of indifferent fallen leaves, a confused strangers, who would regard mass of different images. his love as a digression that was without importance. Feather Against the opening horizon, I had just Failing Light and seen, like a miraculous sign, Saturated Atmosphere Mademoiselle’s blue feather. Here and there, in the I remarked for the first time distance, in a landscape how common her speech which, what with the failing was, and that she had, alas, light and saturated no blue feather in her hat. I atmosphere, resembled a tried to persuade my mother seascape rather, a few to get for Françoise a solitary houses clinging to waterproof coat and a hat the lower slopes of a hill with a blue feather.

64 Features A Justice whose might decipher the question greyish and meanly regular that he never dared to ask: features were the very same “Do you really mean that?” as those which adorned the But even this ugliness of faces of certain good and faces, which of course were pious and slightly withered mostly familiar to him, ladies. A shade of good seemed something new and humour or of arrogance on uncanny, now that their her features, would provide features—instead of being to Françoise with matter for a him symbols of practical mental commentary. And utility in the identification my gaze resting upon her of this or that man, who fair hair, her blue eyes, the until then had represented lines of her neck, and merely so many pleasures to overlooking the features be sought after, boredoms which might have reminded to be avoided, or courtesies me of the faces of other to be acknowledged—were women, I cried out within at rest, measurable by myself. And then, as soon as aesthetic co-ordinates alone, he had left the house, not in the autonomy of their without returning to kiss curves and angles. But were her once again, because he he to learn more of them, he had forgotten to take away feared lest her past, now with him, in memory, some colourless, fluid and detail of her fragrance or of supportable, might assume her features, while he drove a tangible, an obscene form, home in his victoria, with individual and blessing the name of Odette diabolical features. Finally who allowed him to pay her the phrase withdrew and these daily visits. But as he vanished, pointing, must also be prepared to directing, diligent among face the alternative, he the wandering currents of never dared to allow this its fragrance, leaving upon smile a definite expression Swann’s features a on his features, and you reflection of its smile. He would see there a had always found a peculiar perpetually flickering fascination in tracing in the uncertainty, in which you paintings of the Old

65 Masters, not merely the retained enough of the general characteristics of artistic temperament to be the people whom he able to find a genuine encountered in his daily life, satisfaction in watching but rather what seems least these individual features susceptible of take on a more general generalization, the significance when he saw individual features of men them, uprooted and and women whom he knew. disembodied, in the abstract Her cheekbones too idea of similarity between prominent, her features too an historic portrait and a tightly drawn. I felt that, to modern original, whom it her, we must be an object of was not intended to scorn, which distressed me represent. She would detect particularly on account of the most furtive movement the daughter, such a pretty of Françoise’s features. little girl, as I had heard, Showing upon his features a and one of whom I used foretaste of happiness and often to dream, always peace. The particular imagining her with the same features which I remarked features and appearance, in this lady, if I attempted to which I bestowed upon her catalogue them, formulated quite arbitrarily, but with a themselves in precisely the charming effect. Perhaps, same terms. This woman, moreover, Swann himself the play of whose features, was fixing upon these the intonations of whose features of an Odette not yet voice, like so many others I possessed, not even kissed already knew, made me by him, on whom he was regard her, in spite of looking now for the last myself, as a young lady of time, that comprehensive good family, her who was no gaze with which, on the day longer of a family at all. of his departure, a traveler Tradition would have it that strives to bear away with the weaver had given to him in memory the view of a Ahasuerus the features of country to which he may one of the kings of France never return. Perhaps, on and to Esther those of a lady the other hand, he had of Guermantes whose lover

66 he had been. mind on thoughts of the future which would carry Feet A strange and pitiless me, as on a bridge, across mirror with square feet, the terrifying abyss that which stood across one yawned at my feet. It was all corner of the room, cleared he could do to keep on his for itself a site I had not feet. Like fresh rungs of the looked to find tenanted in ladder on which I might set the quiet surroundings of my feet, which were going to my normal field of vision. allow me to advance a step By a fine stroke of the further and finally to attain painter’s invention she is the happiness which I had tumbling all the treasures of not yet encountered. Mlle. the earth at her feet, but Vinteuil shuddered and rose exactly as if she were to her feet. Swann passed by treading grapes in a wine- an office in which the press to extract their juice, lackeys, seated like notaries or, still more, as if she had before their massive climbed on a heap of sacks registers, rose solemnly to to raise herself higher. “Do their feet and inscribed his you hither guide the feet of name. The pianist rose to this timid Israelite?” his feet. Doubtless it makes in us an imperceptible progress, and Fern A fern which I had the truths which have never found among the changed for us its meaning woods. and its aspect, which have opened new paths before Field She was in fact our feet, we had for long summoning me to cross the been preparing for their snowy lawn to her camp, to discovery; but that ‘take the field,’ which the preparation was sun, by casting over it a rosy unconscious. I tried to gleam, the metallic lustre of convince myself that they old and worn brocades, had were of no importance, turned into a Field of the really, since I should have Cloth of Gold. forgotten them next morning, and to fix my Fields It would be

67 overflowing with the branches as she passed offerings of the milkman, beneath them, and obliged the fruiterer, the to acknowledge, as they greengrocer, come themselves acknowledged, sometimes from distant the power of the season. I villages to dedicate here the now no longer had the first-fruits of their fields. My impression of being eyes followed up the slope confronted by a particular which, outside the hedge, passage in one of Bergotte’s rose steeply to the fields. works, which traced a purely bi-dimensional figure in Figure Acknowledging with outline upon the surface of a rapid glance the courtesy my mind, but rather of the of the gentlemen in ‘ideal passage’ of Bergotte, carriages, who, recognizing common to every one of his her figure at a distance, books, and to which all the were raising their hats to earlier, similar passages, her and saying to one now becoming merged in it, another that there was had added a kind of density never anyone so well turned and volume, by which my out as she. As we drew near own understanding seemed the house, we would make to be enlarged. She would out a figure standing upon look at him sulkily, and he the doorstep, and Mamma would see once again a face would say to me: “Good worthy to figure in heavens! There is Françoise Botticelli’s ‘Life of Moses.’ looking out for us; your aunt Tall, with a good figure. must be anxious; that means we are late.” But, Fine Days I saw it attain to forced for so many years that fixed, unalterable gold now, by a sort of grafting of fine days. process, to share the life of feminine humanity, they Fine Weather This more called to my mind the figure than ever from the day on of the dryad, the fair which fine weather worldling, swiftly walking, definitely set in. Wearing brightly coloured, whom these badges of rank, she they sheltered with their would, in fine weather, go

68 on foot from one house to been concealed below another in the same among the crowd of human neighbourhood. bodies without fear of my confounding It, for that Finer Air The walls of reason, with them. Swann which, washed with ripolin, had begun, out of contained, like the polished politeness, to finger the sides of a basin in which the bronzes, and did not like to water glows with a blue, stop. Then, on reaching lurking fire, a finer air, pure, Odette’s gate, he had begged azure-tinted, saline. to be allowed to come in too, she had replied, with a Finger As for Swann, in my finger pointed at Swann: attempts to resemble him, I “Ah! That depends on this spent the whole time, when gentleman.” I was at table, in drawing my finger along my nose Finger and Thumb He and in rubbing my eyes. A took a firm hold of the card, quivering of her tiny finger. which was sliding to and fro, He would pass a finger over the envelope being too large his tired eyelids, in the same for it and then, by moving it way as he might have wiped with his finger and thumb, his eyeglass, and would brought one line after cease altogether to think. I another beneath the part of felt that I had with an the envelope where the impious and secret finger paper was not doubled, traced a first wrinkle upon through which alone it was her soul and made the first possible to read. white hair show upon her head. It was always to the Fingers A docile body steeple that one must which he had pressed tightly return, always it which in his arms and explored dominated everything else, with his fingers. A profound summing up the houses sagacity in refusing to know with an unexpected them, or even to dirty the pinnacle, raised before me tips of their fingers with like the Finger of God, them. But her method, an Whose Body might have echo of her charming touch,

69 came to life now and then in swelling in the depths of his the fingers of her pupils. It abyss of sleep into the was true that Odette played clangour of an alarum, had vilely, but often the fairest engendered the episode of impression that remains in the fire. A young footman, our minds of a favourite air his body slightly bent is one which has arisen out forward, rearing above his of a jumble of wrong notes crimson gorget an even struck by unskillful fingers more crimson face, from upon a tuneless piano. Just which seemed to burst forth as if the gentle grazing touch torrents of fire, timidity and of the cloaks of peasant zeal. Coming at a moment women going into the when she felt ‘well’ and was church, and of their fingers not in a perspiration, the dipping into the water, had news that the house was managed by age-long being destroyed by a fire, in repetition to acquire a which all the rest of us had destructive force. My fingers already perished, a fire parted and I let fall the coin, which, in a little while, which found a receptacle in would not leave one stone a confused but outstretched standing upon another, but hand. She returned from from which she herself some walk along a road would still have plenty of where she had known that time to escape without he would not appear, undue haste, provided that drawing from her she rose at once from her submissive fingers long bed. “I am just going to see gloves of a precious, useless that my fire hasn’t gone charm. So that for some out.” It was they that time there was no change started the fire. Now, alas, it from the procedure which still happened at times that he had followed on that first she wrote to him from a evening, when he had restaurant or hotel, on started by touching her paper which bore a printed throat with his fingers. address, but printed in letters of fire that seared his Fire A moment earlier, the heart. “We’re not in any sound of the door-bell, hurry; you’re dashing round

70 as if the house was on fire.” mystery that lay hidden in a form or a perfume, quite at Firewood He had quite ease in my mind, since I was forgotten, and would have taking it home with me, continued to discuss his protected by its visible and supply of firewood, so as to tangible covering, beneath hide from his servant the which I should find it still emotion that he had felt, alive, like the fish which, on and to give himself time to days when I had been break away from the allowed to go out fishing, I thralldom of his anxieties used to carry back in my and abandon himself to basket, buried in a couch of pleasure. The coachman grass which kept them cool returned; but, as he drew up and fresh. I decided that I opposite him, Swann asked, would come there again not “Did you find the lady?” with a line and catch fish. I but “Remind me, to- would always be just on the morrow, to order in some point of asking his name, more firewood. when someone would make a sign to me to be quiet, or I Firmament Human as it would frighten the fish. It was from this point of view, was not actually my duty to it belonged, none the less, to warn Mlle. Swann that the an order of supernatural fish was biting. creatures whom we have never seen, but whom, in Fish or Fowl “Not like the spite of that, we recognize other fellow, who’s never and acclaim with rapture definitely fish or fowl.” when some explorer of the unseen contrives to coax Fishing In her mind’s eye, one forth, to bring it down she could see his sister, from that divine world to Mme. de Cambremer, which he has access to shine alighting from her carriage for a brief moment in the at the door of our hotel just firmament of ours. as we were on the point of going out fishing, and Fish And so I concerned obliging us to remain myself no longer with the indoors all afternoon to

71 entertain her. and all sorts of creatures!”

Flame As soon as she Flesh Apart from and found herself face to face above that common run of with the man to whom she humanity with which the was obliged to lie, she sight, pure and simple, of became uneasy, all her ideas her in the flesh had made melted like wax before a me for a moment confound flame. But their faces—a her, I grew indignant. Depth collective and formless of character, or a mass—escaped the grasp of melancholy expression on a his imagination, and so woman’s face would freeze failed to feed the flame of his senses, which would, his jealousy. I would sleep however, immediately melt wrapped up, as it were, in a at the sight of healthy, great cloak of snug and abundant, rosy human flesh. savoury air, shot with the “He takes most after his glow of the logs which father,” muttered my uncle, would break out again in who was no more anxious to flame. There was in his soul effect an introduction by that want of adaptability proxy, in repeating which can be seen in the Mamma’s name aloud, than bodies of certain people to bring the two together in who, when the moment the flesh. The sereness, the comes to avoid a collision, depression of the preceding to snatch their clothes out of years had been followed by reach of a flame, or to a sort of spiritual perform any other such superabundance, without necessary movement, take his knowing to what he their time (as the saying is), owed this unlooked-for begin by remaining for a enrichment of his life, any moment in their original more than a person in position, as though seeking delicate health who from a to find in it a starting-point, certain moment grows a source of strength and stronger, puts on flesh, and motion. seems for a time to be on the road to a complete Fleas “To be eaten by fleas recovery. There is no flesh

72 in the world as soft. When Flints Its great wall was his eyes fell upon the thrust upwards from a photograph of Odette on his basement of unfaced ashlar, table, or when she came to jagged with flints. see him, he had difficulty in identifying her face, either Flood But since Swann had in the flesh or on the become so melancholy, and pasteboard, with the painful was always in that trembling and continuous anxiety condition which precedes a which dwelt in his mind. flood of tears, he had the Whereas the mere sight of same need to speak about her in the flesh, by his grief that a murderer has perpetually reviving his to tell someone about his misgivings as to the quality crime. of her face, her figure, the whole of her beauty, used to Flow The Vivonne began to cool the ardour of his love, flow again more swiftly. those misgivings were swept away and that love Flower He always has a confirmed now that he flower in his buttonhole. He could re-erect his estimate held it pressed to his lips of her on the sure during the drive home, and foundations of his aesthetic when, in due course, the principles. flower withered, locked it away, like something very Flesh and Blood The precious, in a secret drawer vague feeling of sympathy of his desk. He would select which attracts a spectator to a flower for his buttonhole. a work of art, now that he Higher up on the altar, a knew the type, in warm flower had opened here and flesh and blood. there with a careless grace, holding so unconcernedly, Flies The flies’ music is like a final, almost vaporous bound to the season by a bedizening, its bunch of closer, a more vital tie— stamens, slender as born of sunny days, and not gossamer, which clouded to be reborn but with them. the flower itself in a white mist, that in following these

73 with my eyes, in trying to was drugged by the imitate, somewhere inside unfamiliar scent of myself, the action of their flowering grasses. blossoming, I imagined it as a swift and thoughtless Flowers As it might have movement of the head with seemed to the first man an enticing glance from her when he enjoyed it amid the contracted pupils, by a flowers of the earthly young girl in white, careless paradise—a pleasure which and alive. Its only had never before existed, companions a clump of which he was striving now daffodils, come out before to create. Between the their time, a few primroses, flowers and the blackened the first in flower, while stones towards which they here and there burned the leaned, if my eyes could blue flame of a violet, its discern no interval, my stem bent beneath the mind preserved the weight of the drop of impression of an abyss. perfume stored in its tiny “But, don’t you see, I really horn. She murmured “How had to fasten the flowers.” charming it is!” with a stress How closely, in their on the opening consonants abundance, are they pressed of the adjective, a token of one against another; until her refinement by which she lovers would find it as hard felt her lips so romantically to count the kisses compressed, like the petals exchanged in an hour, as to of a beautiful, budding count the flowers in a flower, that she instinctively meadow in May. I had felt at brought her eyes into once, as I had felt before the harmony, illuminating them white blossom, but now still for a moment with a vague more marvelling, that it was and sentimental gaze. She in no artificial manner, by passed him, light, soothing, no device of human as softly murmured as the construction, that the festal perfume of a flower. intention of these flowers was revealed. In that Flowering Grasses From moment all the flowers in the first moment my mind our garden and in M.

74 Swann’s park, and the opened, as though a painter water-lilies on the Vivonne had arranged them there, and the good folk of the grouping them in the most village and their little decorative poses. The dwellings and the parish flowers that looked out church and the whole of through closed windows at Combray and of its the falling snow. The surroundings, taking their flowers that people show me proper shapes and growing nowadays for the first time solid, sprang into being, never seem to me to be true town and gardens alike, flowers. The flowers which from my cup of tea. It was clung to its branches, one filled like a distant heaven above another, so thickly as with the roseate dreams of to leave no part of the tree the setting sun, incessantly undecorated, like the tassels changing and ever wreathed about the crook of remaining in harmony, a rococo shepherdess, were about the more permanent every one of them ‘in colour of the flowers colour.’ The flowers, themselves, with the utmost themselves adorned also, profundity, evanescence, held out each its little bunch and mystery—with a quiet of glittering stamens with an suggestion of infinity. She air of inattention, fine, had in her hand a bunch of radiating ‘nerves’ in the cattleyas, and Swann could flamboyant style of see, beneath the film of lace architecture, like those that covered her head, more which, in church, framed of the same flowers fastened the stair to the rood-loft or to a swans-down plume. She closed the perpendicular would point out to me the tracery of the windows, but flowers that leaned their red here spread out into pools of and purple spikes along the fleshy white, like strawberry tops of the low walls, and beds in spring. They would teach me all their themselves offered me no names. The drying of the enlightenment, and I could stems had twisted them into not call upon any other a fantastic trellis, in whose flowers to satisfy this intervals the pale flowers mysterious longing. “You

75 won’t mind if I put the resistance offered by their flowers straight on your real and lasting happiness. bodice.” Foot As soon as I was in the Flowers of Spring “Like presence of that Gilberte the nosegay which a Swann on the sight of whom traveller sends us from I had counted to revive the some land to which we shall images that my tired never go again, come and let memory had lost and could me breathe from the far not find again, of that country of your adolescence Gilberte Swann with whom I the scent of those flowers of had been playing the day spring among which I also before, and whom I had just used to wander, many years been prompted to greet, and ago.” then to recognize, by a blind instinct like that which, Fly The rumble and buzz, in when we are walking, sets the silence of its village one foot before the other, street, of the fly on the without giving us time to wheel of the coach. think what we are doing, then at once it became as Flying Foam Swathed, for though she and the little girl six months in the year, in a who had inspired my shroud of fog and flying dreams had been two foam from the waves. different people. Her desire to establish the future Foam As dawn spread greatness of her house on a westward over the raging solid foundation reacted, in sea, from whose driven her policy with regard to the foam I would seek shelter in other servants, in one that church in the Persian unvarying maxim, which manner. was never to let any of them set foot in my aunt’s room. Foliage It has taken solid On which Swann now set form in dense masses of foot, saddened by the foliage over which the rain thought that Odette had may pour in torrents never climbed it. She would without weakening the be off at night, even if she

76 were ill also, instead of behind him than he going to bed, to see whether suddenly struck his he had everything that he forehead, and, making his wanted, covering ten miles servant open the door again, on foot before daybreak so dashed out into the street as to be in time to begin her shouting, in a voice which, work. “You’d need to pay me this time, was quite natural: a lot of money before I’d let “I believe I have found a any of that lot set foot inside way of getting invited to the my house.” dinner at Chatou to- morrow!” Under a high Forces of Nature forehead. Françoise, a colonel with all the forces of nature for her Forest I passed through subalterns, as in the fairy- forest groves in which the tales where giants hire morning light, breaking themselves out as scullions, them into new sections, would be stirring the coals, lopped and trimmed the putting the potatoes to trees, united different steam, and, at the right trunks in marriage, made moment, finishing over the nosegays of their branches. fire those culinary Sometimes she would be masterpieces. absent for several days on end, when the Verdurins Forehead And then, his took her to see the tombs at anguish becoming too keen, Dreux, or to Compiègne, on he passed his hand over his the painter’s advice, to forehead, let the monocle watch the sun setting drop from his eye, and through the forest. wiped its glass. Her rounded forehead was nothing, now, Forget-Me-Nots It would but an exquisite study in console me for the blackness high relief. In the middle of and bareness of the earth a forehead which it left half- outside by making burst blinded, like the single-eyed into blossom, as in some flashing front of the springtime in old history Cyclops. No sooner had he among the heirs of Saint closed the front-door Louis, this dazzling and

77 gilded carpet of forget-me- Freckles My grandmother nots in glass. had drawn our attention to the gentle, delicate, almost Formless Water “You are timid expression which a formless water that will might often be caught trickle down any slope that flitting across the face, it may come upon, a fish dusted all over with freckles, devoid of memory, of this otherwise stolid incapable of thought, which child. all its lifelong in its aquarium will continue to Fresh Air and Country dash itself, a hundred times Breezes She did not reflect a day, against a wall of glass, that the strong breath of always mistaking it for genius must have upon the water.” very soul of a child an influence at once more Fowls The Doctor’s dangerous and less coachman was in the habit quickening than those of of placing, in a hamper, the fresh air and country fowls. They began to chase breezes upon his body. one another about the room, scrambling over the Fringed Eyelids His furniture, their wide sleeves fringed eyelids darkened, fluttering like wings, and drooped. clucking and crowing like a pair of amorous fowls. Fruit Every fruit visited and examined, one by one, Fragrant Petals It had by myself. He had decided pleased him, on this to send her a basket of fruit, occasion, to see the gloom of and was not quite sure the little lobby shot with where or how to order it. He rays of pink and gold and had entrusted the task to a white by the fragrant petals cousin of his mother who, of these ephemeral stars, delighted to be doing a which kindle their cold fires commission for him, had in the murky atmosphere of written to him, laying stress winter afternoons. on the fact that she had not chosen all the fruit at the

78 same place, but the grapes branches trail at all times from Crapote, whose and in all directions, head specialty they were, the downwards, and whose straw berries from Jauret, flowers had no more the pears from Chevet, who important business, when always had the best. It still they were big enough to dreams—fruit of the taste the joys of life, than to impregnation of a classical go and cool their purple, statue. Like a fruit hidden congested cheeks against among its leaves, which has the dark front of the church. grown and ripened To me such conduct unobserved by man, until it sanctified the fuchsias not at falls of its own accord, there all. came upon us one night the kitchen maid’s confinement. Fur Gilberte was running at Like a ripe fruit which full speed towards me, bursts through its skin. My sparkling and rosy beneath husband makes out that I a cap trimmed with fur. am not fond of fruit, because I eat less than he Garden And for all that he does. Who would not was driving through a city of unexpectedly send me a stone to immure himself in basket of fruit because they a house without grass or happened, that morning, to garden. As I did not wish to have thought of me with leave off my book, I would affection? go on with it in the garden, under the chestnut-tree. But Fruitless He presently— after dinner, alas, I was after a fruitless search— soon obliged to leave found himself waiting at the Mamma, who stayed talking spot where the carriage was with the others, in the to meet him. garden if it was fine, or in the little parlour where Fuchsias In vain might everyone took shelter when Mme. Loiseau deck her it was wet. He would be window-sills with fuchsias, welcomed by the little which developed the bad phrase from the sonata, habit of letting their played in the garden on the

79 restaurant piano. I had so Immediately the old grey often, in the evenings, made house upon the street, myself ridiculous by sending where her room was, rose to ask Mamma to come up like the scenery of a upstairs to my room to say theatre to attach itself to the good-night to me, while she little pavilion, opening on to was drinking coffee with the garden, which had been him and my father and my built out behind it for my grandparents at the table in parents. In the shade of a the garden. I thought that lilac tree, in that little corner Françoise had seen us go of the garden. One looks up out by the little gate, at them from a fine garden through the kitchen garden. which descends in terraces I would leap out of bed to to the river. One Sunday, run down at once into the while I was reading in the garden, with no thought of garden, I was interrupted by the fact that evening must Swann, who had come to return, and with it the hour call upon my parents. The when I must leave my nymphs of spring would mother. If he arrived after have seemed coarse and the hour at which Odette vulgar in comparison with sent her servants to bed, these young houris, who before ringing the bell at the retained, in this French gate of her little garden, he garden, the pure and vivid would go round first into colouring of a Persian the other street, over which, miniature. The Rue du at the ground-level, among Saint-Esprit, on to which the windows (all exactly the little garden gate alike, but darkened) of the opened. Upon the sort of adjoining houses, shone the screen, patterned with solitary lighted window of different states and her room. If there was none impressions, which my in the garden, the Verdurins consciousness would quietly would have taken immense unfold while I was reading, pains to have a piano and which ranged from the brought out either from a most deeply hidden private room or from the aspirations of my heart to restaurant itself. the wholly external view of

80 the horizon spread out Gardens In each of their before my eyes at the foot of gardens the moonlight, the garden, what was from copying the art of Hubert the first the most Robert, had scattered its permanent and the most broken staircases of white intimate part of me, the marble. My grandmother lever whose incessant had returned from the call movements controlled all full of praise for the house, the rest, was my belief in the which overlooked some philosophic richness and gardens. “The light of the beauty of the book I was moon when the fresh breeze reading, and my desire to of youth (such as yours) appropriate these to myself, wafts to my nostrils the whatever the book might be. scent of gardens whose We heard, from the far end flowers my old eyes are not of the garden, not the large sharp enough, now, to and noisy rattle which distinguish.” heralded and deafened as he approached with its Garlands I wished to hold ferruginous, interminable, before my bodily eyes, that I frozen sound any member of might know whether they the household who had put were indeed as charming as it out of action by coming in they appeared to the eyes of ‘without ringing,’ but the memory, little hats, so low- double peal—timid, oval, crowned as to seem no more gilded—of the visitors’ bell. than garlands about the We were all in the garden brows of women. when the double peal of the gate bell sounded shyly. You Gentle Lips All the would see my grandmother consonants which he did not pacing the deserted garden, manage to pronounce lashed by the storm, seemed like harsh pushing back her grey hair utterances of which his in disorder so that her gentle lips were incapable. brows might be more free to imbibe the life-giving Geological Skeleton “The draughts of wind and rain. oldest bone in the geological skeleton that underlies our

81 soil, the true Armor, the sea, thirst to know anything save the land’s end, the accursed what I believed to be more region which Anatole genuine than myself, what France—an enchanter had for me the supreme whose works our young merit of showing me a friend ought to read—has so fragment of the mind of a well depicted, beneath its great genius, or of the force eternal fogs, as though it or the grace of nature as she were indeed the land of the appeared when left entirely Cimmerians in the to herself, without human Odyssey.” interference.

Glancing Eyes I was one Grapes Ask the Doctor; he of those whose natural will tell you that those unworthiness would forever grapes act on me like a prevent them from regular purge. She was penetrating into the obliged to put straight the mysteries of the life inside, bunch of black grapes which which it was his duty to she had in her hair. guard, and over which the ground-floor windows Grass I found an additional appeared conscious of being merit in everything that was protectingly closed, with far in my mind at the moment, less resemblance, between in the pink reflection of the the nobly sweeping arches tiled roof, the wild grass in of their muslin curtains, to the wall, the village of any other windows in the Roussainville into which I world than to Gilberte’s had long desired to glancing eyes. penetrate, the trees of its wood and the steeple of its Goat “Yes, you old goat!” church, created in them by this fresh emotion which Gooseberries made them appear more Gooseberries, because in desirable only because I another fortnight there thought it was they that had would be none left. provoked it. I suddenly noticed a straw basket lying Grace of Nature I did not forgotten on the grass by the

82 side of a line whose float matter with you, sitting was bobbing in the water. there gaping like a great Only, near the grass, was animal?” sitting a lady of uncertain age who came in all Great Brow “Can I see any weathers. There were days of his things in Paris, so as when she had been to have some idea of what is prevented from coming by going on behind that great her lessons, by her brow which works so hard, catechism, by a luncheon- that head which I feel sure is party, by the whole of that always puzzling away about life, separated from my own, things?” which twice only, condensed into the name of Gilberte, I Great Medley of Trees It had felt pass so painfully is probable that, had I done close to me, in the hawthorn so, those two steeples would lane near Combray and on have vanished forever, in a the grass of the Champs- great medley of trees and Elysées. roofs and scents and sounds which I had noticed and set Gravitation The interval of apart on account of the space separating her from obscure sense of pleasure him was one which he must which they gave me, but as inevitably traverse as he without ever exploring them must descend, by an more fully. irresistible gravitation, the steep slope of life itself. Great Spaces Traversed I can hear the echo of great Gravity But that of M. de spaces traversed. Saint-Candé, girdled, like Saturn, with an enormous Green Buds And as each ring, was the centre of new character is merely a gravity of a face which metamorphosis from composed itself afresh every something older, in these moment in relation to the little grey balls I recognized glass. green buds plucked before their time. Great Animal “What’s the

83 Green Space Her own with a sparkling moisture, room looked out over the to have emerged alone from Rue Saint-Jacques, which the liquid, emerald-green ran a long way further to atmosphere in which the end in the Grand-Pré (as whole grove was plunged as distinct from the Petit-Pré, a though beneath the sea. green space in the centre of the town where three streets Groves I did see some of met). them again, grown old, no more now than grim Greyhound Pointing their spectres of what once they noble greyhound profiles, had been, wandering to and they towered upon their feet fro, in desperate search of and gathered in a circle heaven knew what, through round about him. the Virgilian groves.

Ground Erect upon her Hair A little girl with pedestal as upon a footstool, reddish hair was playing which had been placed there with a shuttlecock. A to save her feet from contact mother might run her hand with the wet ground. The through her boy’s hair, after ground moved forward the barber had smoothed it under my feet in that garden down, to make it stick out where, for so long, my properly round his head. A actions had ceased to woman’s hair was not, require any control, or even ordinarily, purple. But attention, from my will. The while, an hour after his keys over which his fingers awakening, he was giving skipped with such agility instructions to the barber, were a series of trapezes, so that his stiffly brushed from any one of which he hair should not become might come crashing, a disarranged on the journey, hundred feet, to the ground. he thought once again of his dream. Fringed with fair, Grove When a ray of almost red hair. Going into sunshine gilded the highest the drawing-room in the branches, they seemed, morning to kiss Mamma, soaked and still dripping who was already dressed to

84 go out, the coils of her black continuous growth being hair elaborately built up, imperceptible by himself) and her beautiful hands, have gradually segregated plump and white, fragrant him from the normal ways still with soap. I was sorry of life. As his hand stole out that my mother did not dye towards the shutters he felt her hair and redden her lips, a pang of shame at the as I had heard our thought that Odette would neighbour, Mme. Sazerat, now know that he had say that Mme. Swann did. suspected her, that he had She would push back her returned, that he had posted hair with both hands. The himself outside her window. loosened tresses of her hair. But scarcely had her hand The marvellous locks of hair come within reach of it that fell along her tired when, on a final chord, the cheeks. piece finished. Coquelin passed, talking, in a group Hairs “We don’t waste time of listening friends, and splitting hairs in this with a sweeping wave of his house.” hand bade a theatrical good day to the people in the Hand A cream of chocolate, carriages. He could wait for inspired in the mind, a quarter of an hour; and, created by the hand of sitting down, just like Françoise, would be laid anyone else, on an iron before us, light and fleeting chair, paid for his ticket as an ‘occasional piece’ of with that hand which music, into which she had Philippe VII had so often poured the whole of her held in his own. He wished talent. A vicious person, to give his hand to my always affecting the same children. I could scarcely air of virtue before people resist a desire to kiss the whom he is anxious to keep hand of the lady in pink, but from having any suspicion I felt that to do so would of his vices, has no register, require as much audacity as no gauge at hand from a forcible abduction of her. I which he may ascertain bow might at last have laid my far those vices (their hand upon the

85 indispensable, escaped idea, ‘rummaging’ in second- and from uttering the words hand shops, hunting for which might have made that ‘bric-à-brac,’ and things of definite progress in the the ‘right date.’ She saw course of our love. Mamma sitting by my side, Maulevrier had had the holding my hand and letting audacity to offer his hand to me cry unchecked. She his sons. “My dear, my hand stretched out a hand trembles so that I can towards her rosary. She scarcely write.” My great- would hold out her hand aunt, who had in her hand a with an air of hesitation copy of the Figaro in which which was meant as a proof to the name of a picture at once of the inculcated then on view in a Corot reserve which she had to exhibition were added the overcome and of the words, “from the collection spontaneous friendliness of M. Charles Swann,” which successfully overcame asked: “Did you see that it. Swann felt that the Swann is ‘mentioned’ in the composer had been content Figaro?” My mother put a (with the musical five-franc piece in my hand instruments at his disposal) and said: “Now, be careful.” to draw aside its veil, to “No, no, not with your make it visible, following whole hand like that; feel and respecting its outlines them properly!” On his left- with a hand so loving, so hand side. On the other prudent, so delicate and so hand the Verdurins were sure, that the sound altered extremely touched by at every moment, blunting Swann’s next request, for he itself to indicate a shadow, felt that he must ask to be springing back into life introduced to the pianist’s when it must follow the aunt. One of the minor curve of some more bold personages, familiar, projection. The simple and nameless, as devoid of elementary gestures used by individual character as a a man of the world when he stage-hand in a theatre. She courteously holds out his confessed how she loved to hand to the unknown youth spend the whole day who is being introduced to

86 him, and when he bows that I had placed myself in a discreetly before the position than which none Ambassador to whom he is could be counted upon to being introduced, had involve me in graver gradually pervaded, without consequences at my parents’ his being conscious of it, the hands. I would try to put whole of Swann’s social away the book which, I deportment. imagined, was still in my hands. “If a sick person Hand and Foot “He is tied prefers to die at the hands of hand and foot; there must one of the Princes of certainly be a woman Science…it is far more smart somewhere who insists on to be able to say, ‘Yes, I have his going to her at all Potain.’” In those other hours.” women’s hands the noble task would have seemed to Hands He continued to Swann nothing more than shake hands with all the an indiscreet and intolerable friends whom he had usurpation of his freedom of suspected, with the purely action. My aunt continued formal reservation that each to do exactly as she pleased, one of them had, possibly, and to fling money away been seeking to drive him to with both hands. “Oh, you despair. “He had a fine way do make me laugh!” she of bringing up his children, screamed, suddenly, your Saint-Simon, if he burying her face in her didn’t teach them to shake hands. Our hands do not hands with all honest men.” tremble except for He refused to shake hands ourselves, or for those with him when they met whom we love. Playing her again. History reveals to us own and her adversary’s that the reigns of the kings hands at once. She had gone and queens who are on, with that self-satisfied portrayed as kneeling with air which a smart woman clasped hands in the adopts when she insists that windows of churches, were her one desire is to give stained by oppression and herself up, without fear of bloodshed. I was well aware soiling her fingers, to some

87 unclean task, such as set them once again upon cooking the dinner, with her their feet. To feel for each “hands right in the dish other’s hands. To know a itself.” She was the sister of thing does not enable us, a reigning monarch, in always, to prevent its whose hands were gathered, happening, but after all the at that moment, all the things that we know we do threads of European hold, if not in our hands, at politics. Suppose that, every any rate in our minds, morning, when we tore the where we can dispose of wrapper off our paper with them as we choose, which fevered hands, a gives us the illusion of a sort transmutation were to take of power to control them. place, and we were to find Who, having made inside it—oh! I don’t know; everything ready for shall we say Pascal’s shutting up, had just gone Pensées? The old lady who into the back shop to put on read the Débats was sitting his Sunday coat and to wash on her chair, in her his hands, which it was his invariable place, and had habit, every few minutes just accosted a park-keeper, and even on the saddest with a friendly wave of her occasions, to rub one hands. The will, which has against the other with an air with such difficulty brought of enterprise, cunning, and itself to subdue its impulse, success. to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own Hands and Knees It is uncontrolled desires, and quite tiring enough for the consequent sufferings, most active person, would fain cast its guiding especially as you have to go reins into the hands of on your hands and knees. circumstances. They place themselves in the hands of a Hawthorn If I had had the higher authority which, courage I would have cut without putting them to the you a branch of that pink least inconvenience, can and hawthorn you used to like so will, by uttering a word or much. In vain did I shape by administering a tabloid, my fingers into a frame, so

88 as to have nothing but the fragrance of hawthorn hawthorns before my eyes; blossom. It was in these the sentiment which they ‘Month of Mary’ services aroused in me remained that I can remember having obscure and vague, first fallen in love with struggling and failing to free hawthorn blossom. itself, to float across and become one with the Hawthorn Trees in flowers. It was indeed a Bloom On fine spring days, hawthorn, but one whose instead of paying calls and flowers were pink, and listening to silly talk, I lovelier even than the white. would make excursions into My aunt did not go to see the country to see the first the pink hawthorn in the hawthorn trees in bloom. hedge. The hawthorn was not merely in the church, for Hawthorns But it was in there, holy ground as it was, vain that I lingered before we had all of us a right of the hawthorns, to breathe entry; but, arranged upon in, to marshal! before my the altar itself, inseparable mind (which knew not what from the mysteries in whose to make of it), to lose in celebration it was playing a order to rediscover their part, it thrust in among the invisible and unchanging tapers and the sacred odour, to absorb myself in vessels its rows of branches, the rhythm which disposed tied to one another their flowers here and there horizontally in a stiff, festal with the light-heartedness scheme of decoration. of youth, and at intervals as Unfolding through the arch unexpected as certain of the pink hawthorn, which intervals of music. For often opened with her, and with I have wished to see a all that unknown world of person again without her existence, into which I realizing that it was simply should never penetrate. because that person recalled to me a hedge of hawthorns Hawthorn Blossom I in blossom. I returned to my found the whole path hawthorns, and stood before throbbing with the them as one stands before

89 those masterpieces of this shake of the head, painting which, one which is thus commonly imagines, one will be better used to decline participation able to ‘take in’ when one in an event that has yet to has looked away, for a come, imparts for that moment, at something else. reason an element of My grandfather called me to uncertainty to the denial of him, and, pointing to the participation in an event hedge of Tansonville, said: that is past. For the first few “You are fond of hawthorns; days, like a tune which will just look at this pink one; be running in one’s head isn’t it pretty?” and maddening one soon enough, but of which one Hazel The Pont-Vieux led has not for the moment ‘got to a tow-path which, at this hold,’ the things I was to point, would be overhung in love so passionately in summer by the bluish Bergotte’s style had not yet foliage of a hazel. caught my eye. Having opened his newspaper to Head A movement of Mme. find out what was being Franquetot’s head disclosed played, the sight of the the Princess. Anyone would title—Les Filles de Marbre, say that you were positively by Théodore Barrière,— trying to put those ideas struck him so cruel a blow into my head again. But that he recoiled instinctively then, at once, his jealousy, from it and turned his head as it had been the shadow of away. He does not appear to his love, presented him with have managed to win the the complement, with the affection of the people of converse of that new smile Combray, for they fell upon with which she had greeted him as he was coming out him that very evening,— from mass, and cut off his with which, now, perversely, head. He recalled the gravity she was mocking Swann of her head which she while she tendered her love seemed to have lifted from to another—of that lowering its axis to let it droop and of her head, but lowered fall, as though against her now to fall on other lips. But will, upon his lips, as she

90 had done on that first abstain from so inadequate evening in the carriage. He a gesture, and turned my recited it with a separate head away. “I do wish I stress upon each word, could find out what there is leaning forward, bowing his in that head of yours!” I head, with at once the don’t know what has vehemence which a man become of my head since I gives, so as to be believed, to lost my poor Octave. I had a highly improbable been taught to place at the statement. He was still head of the list (doubtless confronting us, an immense because there was no other figure in his white class of faults from which I nightshirt, crowned with the needed to be more carefully pink and violet scarf of protected) those in which I Indian cashmere in which, can now distinguish the since he had begun to suffer common feature that one from neuralgia, he used to succumbs to them by tie up his head. Her yielding to a nervous grandson had a slight cold impulse. I had forgotten in his head. Her head ached, that event during my sleep; and she warned him that I remembered it again she would not let him stay immediately I had longer than half an hour, succeeded in making myself that at midnight she would wake up to escape my great- send him away. Her head, uncle’s fingers; still, as a which lay almost measure of precaution, I horizontally upon them, would bury the whole of my made one think of the head in the pillow before ‘stuck-on’ head of a returning to the world of pheasant which is brought dreams. “I have not met his to the table regally adorned father, dear,” said the lady with its feathers. His page in pink, bowing her head had the appearance of a slightly. I turned my head collection of mottoes for me and caught sight of them to set at the head of my again. If he had caught sight letters. I climbed up again to of himself at that moment, my place, turning my head he would have added to the to look back. I decided to collection of the monocles

91 which he had already great-aunt herself would lay identified, this one which he aside her work, and raise removed, like an her head and look on at us importunate, worrying over her glasses. “No, no, thought, from his head, no, not my sonata!” she while from its misty surface, screamed, “I don’t want to with his handkerchief, he be made to cry until I get a sought to obliterate his cold in the head.” “Oh, I do cares. In my schooldays, wish I could change you; put whenever I ventured in some sense into that head of class, when the master’s yours.” On going to bed I head was turned, to would at once bury my head communicate with some in a nest. On the head of the new friend, I would always statue. Or, perhaps, while I begin by asking him was asleep I had returned whether he had begun yet to without the least effort to an go to theatre. “It is most earlier stage in my life, now provoking,” said my aunt, for ever outgrown; and had shaking her head. “It smells come under the thrall of one all right; it makes your head of my childish terrors, such go round; it catches your as that old terror of my breath; you feel ticklish all great-uncle’s pulling my over—and not the faintest curls, which was effectually clue to how it’s done.” It dispelled on the day—the split my head. Mme. de dawn of a new era to me— Cambremer, as a woman on which they were finally who had received a sound cropped from my head. musical education, beating Realizing in their time with her head— imagination, fed by transformed for the nonce suggestion, the invisible into the pendulum of a boundary which divides, at a metronome. Mme. des few months’ interval, the Laumes could let her head head of an ardent lover from sway to and fro, fully aware a cuckold’s. She never spoke of the cause, with a perfect save in low tones, because appreciation of the manner she believed that there was in which the pianist was something broken in her rendering this Prelude. My head and floating loose

92 there, which she might indeed my love for her that I displace by talking too loud. was gradually making grow, She would gaze at his head, as a book grows when one is which was hardly aged at all writing it, she threw me a by his recent anxieties. Then ball. With a titter of stopping, solemnly raising laughter, the complacency his head, pitching his voice of which implied that some on a double-bass note which little invention of her own he struggled to bring into was being brought into play, harmony, he concluded, she had installed behind his “And it’s so loyal!” This head and beneath his feet code, if one could judge it by great cushions of Japanese the sudden obstinacy which silk. With timorous emotion she would put into her he bowed his head over his refusal to carry out certain plate, and merely replied: of our instructions, seemed “Oh—oh—oh—oh—oh!” to have foreseen such social Without moving his head. complications and refinements of fashion as Heads He attempted, in nothing in Françoise’s order to question them, to surroundings or in her get into touch again with career as a servant in a certain men of that stamp; village household could but these were aware that he have put into her head. knew Odette, and, besides, While I was making myself he was afraid of putting the ready to take advantage of thought of her into their this long expected moment, heads, of setting them once and to surrender myself to more upon her track. On the the impression of Gilberte heads of the gentlemen who which I had prepared might have been eligible to beforehand but could no stroll with Mme. Swann in longer find in my head, to the Allée de la Reine an extent which would Marguerite, I found not the enable me, during the long grey ‘tile’ hats of old, nor hours which I must spend any other kind. alone, to be certain that it was indeed herself whom I Heart A heart full of pity had in mind, that it was for the sufferings of others.

93 A strange thing, indeed, that heart. For my own part I those words, two or three knew all of them by heart. times, nothing more than a From the bottom of her few words, words uttered in heart. From the depths of the air, at a distance, could her tortured heart. He could so lacerate a man’s heart, as not, in the last resort, if they had actually pierced answer for any but men it. As he drew towards him whose natures were the photograph of Zipporah analogous to his own, as he would imagine that he was, so far as the heart was holding Odette against went, that of M. de Charlus. his heart. At heart her friend He could see no reason why was not altogether bad. At that infamy should lurk in the heart of all their the depths—which no entertainments, dinners, strange eye might explore— musical evenings, games, of the warm heart. He had a suppers in fancy dress, heart of gold. He had always excursions to the country, regretted, in his heart, that theatre parties, even the he had confined his infrequent ‘big evenings’ attention to the social side when they entertained of life. He hoped that, when ‘bores,’ there were the the fear of losing him presence of Odette, the sight clutched at her heart, it of Odette, conversation with would force from her words Odette. At this time of life a such as he had never yet man has already been heard her utter. He says that wounded more than once by she is a most superior the darts of love; it no woman, with a heart of gold. longer evolves by itself, He was gradually dying of a obeying its own broken heart. He would gaze incomprehensible and fatal curiously at the revelation in laws, before his passive and her face and speech of what astonished heart. But she had hitherto kept suddenly it was as though concealed from him of her she had entered, and this heart. Her sensitive heart apparition tore him with took fright. His happy, such anguish that his hand vagabond and divided heart. rose impulsively to his “I can assure you that she

94 has given me proofs of a used to receive, in her kiss, nobility of heart, of a the heart of my mother, loftiness of soul, to which no complete, without scruple or one could possibly attain— reservation. “I will seek my how could they?—without a way again, I will turn a corresponding loftiness of corner...but...the goal is in mind.” His heart was my heart.” If she had been frantically beating. I do forced to obey it would have thank you, with all my been with the same despair heart, for all the good that in her heart that I felt on the you have done me. “I have days when I did not see her. always made a point of In her sensitive and preserving complete scrupulous heart she was independence; at heart, as ignorant what words ought you know, I am a bit of a to flow, spontaneously, from Radical.” I must set forth her lips. In my heart of without viaticum; must hearts. Indeed, her presence climb each step of the gave the house what none staircase ‘against my heart,’ other of the houses that he as the saying is, climbing in visited seemed to possess: a opposition to my heart’s sort of tactual sense, a desire, which was to return nervous system which to my mother, since she had ramified into each of its not, by her kiss, given my rooms and sent a constant heart leave to accompany stimulus to his heart. It had me forth. I should have shot its arrow into my heart. liked to take, the very next It must depend on the state day, the good, the generous of the heart. It seems to us, train at one twenty-two, of more than anything else, a which never without a sort of transport of gratitude palpitating heart could I for the kindness of heart of read, in the railway our companion and for her company’s bills or in touching predilection of advertisements of circular ourselves, which we tours, the hour of departure. measure by the benefits, by I think myself that in his the happiness that she heart of hearts he doesn’t showers upon us. It was love his wife anymore. I impossible for me to

95 determine whether she My aunt seemed to find a approved or condemned the cruel satisfaction in driving vagrancy of her eyes in the into her unhappy servant’s careless detachment of her heart. My heart beat loud heart. It was true that, when while I counted out to Odette had just done myself “Shall I do it, shall I something which she did not?” and then I ceased to not wish to disclose, she ask myself what I ought to would take pains to conceal do so as at least to do it in a secret place in her something. My heart began heart. It was with a light to beat more and more heart, buoyed with the painfully as I increased my anticipation of going to see agitation by ordering myself some favourite work of art to keep calm and to on the morrow, that he acquiesce in my ill fortune. jumped into bed and turned My heart leaped with out the light. “It’s easy to see impatience. My heart was that you’re a musician heart beating so violently that I and soul, Madame.” “It’s could hardly move, but at just shocking to think of, least it was throbbing no she would go on,” laying a longer with anxiety, but hand over her heart, where with terror and with joy. My presumably she had felt the heart would swell with shock. My actual life, gratitude and pride as instead of seeming an though some deity had, in artificial creation by my his infinite bounty, restored father, and one which he it to me, had pronounced it could modify as he chose, to be beautiful and right. appeared, on the contrary, Nor the fixed heart which to be comprised in a larger alone could have known the reality which had not been value of a happiness for created for my benefit, from which it alone had longed. whose judgments there was No doubt they regarded no appeal, in the heart of aesthetic values as material which I was bound, helpless, objects which an unclouded without friend or ally, and vision could not fail to beyond which no further discern, without needing to possibilities lay concealed. have their equivalent in

96 experience of life stored up always on the look-out for and slowly ripening in one’s ‘copy.’ The effort which the heart. On a crystal bowl steeple made to hurl its which, if you strike it, will spire point into the heart of ring and throb until you cry heaven. The feeling that he aloud in anguish—to clutch possesses the heart of a at one’s heart. Once the woman may be enough to pulsations to which my make him fall in love with heart had been excited by her. The name of him whose the appearance of his grey heart she had once held, but hat and hooded cape had had been unable to keep. subsided, the sight of him The presence of Odette still impressed me as might continued to sow in Swann’s that of an historic heart alternate seeds of love personage, upon whom one and suspicion. The had just been studying a remembered glimpse of an series of books, and the empty milk can upon a smallest details of whose life doormat wrung his heart. one learned with There was a place in his enthusiasm. People ‘in heart to which he would society’ know this index by never allow his thoughts to heart. Seeing the room bare trespass too near, forcing of her, Swann felt his heart them, if need be, to evade it wrung by sudden anguish. by a long course of She is holding out her reasoning so that they flaming heart to God. should not have to pass Swann, in his heart of within reach of it; the place hearts, turned to it, spoke to in which lingered his it as to a confidant in the memories of happy days. secret of his love, as to a They kiss and believe that friend of Odette who would beneath the crushing assure him that he need pay breastplate there beats a no attention to this heart different from the rest, Forcheville. She knew it by more gallant, more heart. She pitied the girl adventurous, more tender. from the depths of her They would have forgiven heart. She was a thorough his going to the houses of journalist at heart, and ‘bores’ (to whom, as it

97 happened, in his heart of Hearts I was as wretched hearts he infinitely as though I had ravished preferred the Verdurins and and corrupted the all their little ‘nucleus’). This innocence of their hearts. time it was not so much—as One has doubts of them at it ordinarily was—in the moment when one Swann’s brain that the believes in them, and never slackening of tension due to can possess their hearts. exhaustion took effect, it Since we possess its hymn, was rather in his heart. engraved on our hearts in its Those thoughts lasted for no entirety, there is no need of more than a second, the any woman to repeat the time that it took him to raise opening lines, potent with his hand to his heart, to the admiration which her draw breath again and to beauty inspires, for us to contrive to smile, so as to remember all that follows. dissemble his torment. The time of life, tinged Those words two or three already with times carved, as it were, disenchantment, which across the living tissues of Swann was approaching, his heart. To have a good when a man can content heart was everything. We himself with being in love could discern in her features for the pleasure of loving a disinterested love of all without expecting too much humanity, blended with a in return, this linking of tender respect for the ‘upper hearts, if it is no longer, as classes’ which raised to the in early youth, the goal most honourable quarter of towards which love, of her heart the hope of necessity, tends, still is receiving her due reward. bound to love by so strong When the heart is one-and- an association of ideas that twenty. it may well become the cause of love if it presents Heart of the Sky itself first. Afternoon or evening, it seemed to have set them Heart-Shaped Leaves flowering in the heart of the There would surge and flow, sky. numerous as ever, a sea of

98 little heart-shaped leaves. which, although separated from them by a hill and a Heaven The effort valley, and rising from exhausted Swann’s brain, rather higher ground in the until, passing his hand over distance, appeared none the his eyes, he cried out: less to be standing by their “Heaven help me!” as side. people, after lashing themselves into an Hills and Valleys intellectual frenzy in their Invariably the charm of all endeavours to master the the fancies which the problem of the reality of the thought of cathedrals used external world, or that of the to inspire in me, the charm immortality of the soul, of the hills and valleys of the afford relief to their weary Ille de France and of the brains by an unreasoning plains of Normandy, would act of faith. radiate brightness and beauty over the picture I Hedge “That hedge is part had formed in my mind. of Swann’s park.” Hips and Haws She has Hedge, Trees, Bushes come up on purpose from The Tansonville hedge, the Guermantes to hear Saint trees of Roussainville wood, Francis preach to the birds, the bushes against which and has only just had time, Montjouvain leaned its like a dear little tit mouse, to back, all must bear the go and pick a few little hips blows of my walking-stick or and haws and put them in umbrella. her hair.

Hedges I passed Honey Beneath its flat occasionally by a row of tombstones, yellowed and well-watered little gardens, bulging like cells of honey in over whose hedges rose a comb, rested the bones of clusters of dark blossom. the old Counts of Brabant. Its memorial stones, Higher Ground A third beneath which the noble steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, dust of the Abbots of

99 Combray, who were buried body as they appear upon a there, furnished the choir bioscope. Like some of with a sort of spiritual Giotto’s paintings pavement, were themselves themselves which show us no longer hard and lifeless at two separate moments matter, for time had the same person engaged in softened and sweetened different actions, here lying them, and had made them on his bed, there just about melt like honey and flow to mount his horse, the beyond their proper name of Florence was margins. divided into two compartments. She had Horizon He fixed his eyes, scarcely recovered from the which had suddenly shock which the sight of changed to those of a seer, Swann had given her, when lost in the profundity of his some obstacle made the vision, on so distant a point horse start to one side. of the horizon that he could not see us, and so had not to Horses My notion of their acknowledge our presence. power has been less vague, He took a cigarette from his and more founded upon pocket and stood for a long experience—borne along by time, his eyes fixed on the the flight of a pair of fiery horizon. His horizon was horses. The raking thinness bounded by two ladies of of those horses. ‘uncertain’ age, seated side by side. Hortensias Alas! there was nothing now but flats Horse It often happened decorated in the Louis XVI that, in my spell of style, all white paint, with uncertainty as to where I hortensias in blue enamel. was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of Hot Summer which that uncertainty was Afternoons Its water-lilies composed any more than, and its overshadowing trees, when we watch a horse and an endless series of hot running, we isolate the summer afternoons. successive positions of its

100 Human Being “It isn’t by which my humiliated possible, I would never have heart was endeavouring to believed that a human being rise to Gilberte’s level, or to could do all that.” draw her down to its own.

Human Body He Hymenoptera There is a marvelled at the strength, at species of hymenoptera, the suppleness of the observed by Fabre, the human body, which was burrowing wasp, which in able continually to hold in order to provide a supply of check, to outwit all the fresh meat for her offspring perils that environed it. after her own decease, calls in the science of anatomy to Human Race She amplify the resources of her belonged to that one of the instinctive cruelty, and, two divisions of the human having made a collection of race in which the untiring weevils and spiders, curiosity which the other proceeds with marvellous half feels about the people knowledge and skill to whom it does not know is pierce the nerve-centre on replaced by an unfailing which their power of interest in the people whom locomotion (but none of it does. their other vital functions) depends, so that the Human Thought Some paralyzed insect, beside ordinary human thought, which her egg is laid, will some worthy sentiment furnish the larva, when it is such as is to be found in all hatched, with a tamed and creatures when, in a inoffensive quarry, moment of rest or incapable either of flight or meditation, they are free to of resistance, but perfectly express themselves, would fresh for the larder. flash out from her eyes like a ray of gold. Ice He notices the time, to put some customer’s wine Humiliated Heart Very on the ice. Lighting up for soon that love surged up us, and for us alone, with a again in me like a reaction secret and languid flame

101 invisible by the great lady manner. upon his other side, an enamoured pupil in a Immense Plain The countenance of ice. Shortly narrow road emerged before she reached me, she suddenly on to an immense slipped on a piece of ice. The plain, closed at the horizon ice itself—with burned nuts by strips of forest. in it—and the finger-bowls seemed to me to be In an Animal, In a Plant concealing pleasures that I feel that there is much to were mischievous and of a be said for the Celtic belief mortal sadness. The ice once that the souls of those broken, every evening, when whom we have lost are held he had taken her home, he captive in some inferior must follow her into the being, in an animal, in a house. plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost Icicle I was growing sick to us until the day (which to with misery between the many never comes) when motionless wooden horses we happen to pass by the and the white lawn, caught tree or to obtain possession in a net of black paths from of the object which forms which the snow had been their prison. cleared, while the statue that surmounted it held in Innumerable Elements its hand a long pendent And so, dimly realizing that icicle which seemed to the universe contained explain its gesture. innumerable elements which my feeble senses Icy No sooner had he made would be powerless to himself ready to sleep, discern, did he not bring relaxing a self-control of them within my reach, I which he was not even wished that I might have his conscious, so habitual had it opinion, some metaphor of become, than an icy shudder his, upon everything in the convulsed his body and he world. burst into sobs. Swann assumed his most icy

102 Innumerable Petals making a stage in its height, Others shed their leaves at an invisible bird, once, and then it is more desperately attempting to beautiful still to see the sky make the day seem shorter, strewn with the scattering of was exploring with a long, their innumerable petals, continuous note the solitude sulphurous yellow and rosy that pressed it on every side, red. but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so Innumerable Spears powerful a repercussion of and Arrows of the silence and of immobility Storm Roussainville was that, one would have said, it now, when the rain had had arrested for all eternity ceased for us, still being the moment which it had chastised, like a village in been trying to make pass the Old Testament, by all more quickly. the innumerable spears and arrows of the storm, which Invisible Force Although beat down obliquely upon her attitude was, doubtless, the dwellings of its habitual and instinctive, one inhabitants. which she knew to be appropriate to such Insects As I drew near, the moments, and was careful sight of their topmost not to forget to assume, she branches, their lightly seemed to need all her tossing foliage, in its easy strength to hold her face grace, its coquettish outline, back, as though some its delicate fabric, over invisible force were drawing which hundreds of flowers it down towards Swann’s. were laid, like winged and throbbing colonies of Invisible Message It is in precious insects. the air, at large, like a pure and supernatural creature Intoxicated Heart My that reveals to the ear, as it intoxicated heart. passes, its invisible message. Invisible Bird Somewhere in one of the tall trees, Invisible Sun Nurtured by

103 the invisible sun which, here power of the cold might and there, kindled to a hinder but could not flame the point of a blade of succeed in restraining. grass. Ivy Brief, fading ivy, Iris How can the people climbing, fugitive flora, the who watch these dreadful most colourless, the most creatures hobble by, depressing, to many minds, beneath hats on which have of all that creep on walls or been heaped the spoils of decorate windows, to me the aviary or garden bed—how dearest of them all. can they imagine the charm that there was in the sight of Jackdaws It let fall at Mme. Swann, crowned with regular intervals flights of a close-fitting lilac bonnet, jackdaws which for a little or with a tiny hat from while would wheel and caw. which rose stiffly above her head a single iris? Jaw Dr. Cottard, who was then just starting in general Irises We would sit down practice, would “really have among the irises at the to come one day and set her water’s edge. jaw, which she had dislocated with laughing too Irrepressible Verdure much.” Since the accident to Seeing upon the boulevards her jaw, she had abandoned that the chestnut trees, the effort involved in real though plunged in a glacial hilarity, and had substituted atmosphere that soaked a kind of symbolical dumb- through them like a stream show. of water, were none the less beginning, punctual guests, Jaws Jaws that parted as arrayed already for the though to devour her. party, and admitting no discouragement, to shape Jonquils, Narcissi and and chisel and curve in its Anemones I moved frozen lumps the swiftly—so as to arrive, as irrepressible verdure whose soon as might be, at the steady growth the abortive table that was spread for

104 me, with fruit and a flask of away from an evening party, Chianti—across a Ponte jump into his victoria, Vecchio heaped with spread a rug over his knees, jonquils, narcissi and tell the friends who were anemones. leaving at the same time, and who insisted on his Keen Frost In a keen frost, going home with them, that I would feel the satisfaction he could not, that he was of being shut in from the not going in their direction. outer world. I’ve seen him, don’t you know, when he’s been with Kingdom of the Lake At me, simply dazzling; you’d the foot of the path which want to go on your knees to led down to this artificial him. She sprang on to the lake, there might be seen, in knees of her friend and held its two tiers woven of out a chaste brow to be trailing forget-me-nots kissed. below and of periwinkle flowers above, the natural, Lagoon The idea which I delicate, blue garland which formed of Venice, from a binds the luminous, drawing by Titian which is shadowed brows of water- supposed to have the lagoon nymphs; while the iris, its in the background, was swords sweeping every way certainly far less accurate in regal profusion, stretched than what I have since out over agrimony and derived from ordinary water-growing king-cups photographs. the lilied sceptres, tattered glories of yellow and purple, Lake “Anyhow they’ve got a of the kingdom of the lake. lake in Pomerania that’s ten times the size of the Place de Knee Bending one knee in la Concorde.” I had heard what was almost a dancer’s that Mme. Swann walked pose, so that she could lean almost every day along the without tiring herself over Allée des Acacias, round the the picture. big lake, and in the Allée de la Reine Marguerite. I Knees He would come reached the shore of the

105 lake. The wind wrinkled the the apple-trees which I may surface of the Grand Lac in happen, when I go walking, little wavelets, like a real to encounter in the fields. lake. Landscape And Land “That land of infinite immediately the whole of fiction makes bad reading her face would light up like for any boy; and is certainly a grey landscape, swathed in not what I should choose or clouds which, suddenly, are recommend for my young swept away and the dull friend here, who is already scene transfigured, at the so much inclined to moment of the sun’s setting. melancholy, for a heart He would have looked back already predisposed to to distinguish, as it might be receive its impressions.” The a landscape that was about ‘Méséglise way’ with its to disappear, that love from lilacs, its hawthorns, its which he had departed. In cornflowers, its poppies, its vain I compressed the whole apple-trees, the landscape into my field of ‘Guermantes way’ with its vision, draining it with an river full of tadpoles, its exhaustive gaze which water-lilies, and its sought to extract from it a buttercups have constituted female creature. for me for all time the picture of the land in which Large and Leafy I fain would pass my life, in Shadows Those large and which my only requirements leafy shadows which lay are that I may go out reflected on that lake of fishing, drift idly in a boat, sunshine seemed aware that see the ruins of a gothic they were pledges of fortress in the grass, and happiness and peace of find hidden among the mind. cornfields—as Saint-André- des-Champs lay hidden—an Large and Richly old church, monumental, Coloured Petals It was rustic, and yellow like a the possession of this mill-stone; and the woman that would emerge cornflowers, the hawthorns, for him from their large

106 and richly coloured petals. profane. At once a scrap of withered lawn and a Large Chrysanthemums moment in the afternoon of These were entered through the fair player, who a narrow lobby, the wall of continued to beat up and which, checkered with the catch her shuttlecock until a lozenges of a wooden trellis governess, with a blue such as you see on garden feather in her hat, had walls, only gilded, was lined called her away. from end to end by a long rectangular box in which Laws of Nature A type of bloomed, as though in a happiness rendered hothouse, a row of large inaccessible to a little boy of chrysanthemums, at that my kind by certain laws of time still uncommon, nature which it was though by no means so large impossible to transgress. as the mammoth blossoms Feeling that his love, also, which horticulturists have was obedient to these since succeeded in making immutable laws of nature, grow. he asked himself whether this period, upon which he Large Eyes He would gaze had entered, was to last in admiration at the large much longer. eyes. Lazy Cloud In the holiday Laurels She had gone away sky a lazy cloud streamed to lay down her things on a out to its full length. chair that stood with its back to a shrubbery of Leafy Bough M. de laurels. Palancy, who with his huge carp’s head and goggling Lawn A marvellous little eyes moved slowly up and band of light, of the colour down the stream of festive of heliotrope, spread over gatherings, unlocking his the lawn like a carpet on great mandibles at every which I could not tire of moment as though in search treading to and fro with of his orientation, had the lingering feet, nostalgic and air of carrying about upon

107 his person only an Leg of Mutton “Your nice accidental and perhaps leg of mutton will be quite purely symbolical fragment dried up now, after all the of the glass wall of his hours it’s been waiting.” aquarium, a part intended to suggest the whole which Level Ground But to our recalled to Swann, a fervent right the park stretched admirer of Giotto’s Vices away into the distance, on and Virtues at Padua, that level ground. injustice by whose side a leafy bough evokes the idea Lifeless Matter The wind of the forests that enshroud pulled out sideways the wild his secret lair. grass that grew in the wall, and the chicken’s downy Leaves of a Climbing feathers, both of which Plant This similarity, things let themselves float which imparted to the upon the wind’s breath to statue itself a kindliness that their full extent, with the I had not looked to find in it, unresisting submissiveness was corroborated often by of light and lifeless matter. the arrival of some girl from the fields, come, like Light I find again the same ourselves, for shelter state, illumined by no fresh beneath the porch, whose light. It is face to face with presence there—as when the something which does not leaves of a climbing plant so far exist, to which it alone have grown up beside leaves can give reality and carved in stone—seemed substance, which it alone intended by fate to allow us, can bring into the light of by confronting it with its day. He drove through a type in nature, to form a deserted Paris by the light of critical estimate of the truth the moon: noticing as he of the work of art. drove home that the satellite had now changed its Leg “Here was I, poor thing, position, relatively to his talking quite seriously, and own, and was almost never seeing that you were touching the horizon. The pulling my leg.” steeples of Martinville

108 remained alone, gilded by now spent and shrivelled the light of the setting sun, and discoloured, a hollow which, even at that distance, scum, dry and scentless. I could see playing and smiling upon their sloped Lilies Even on a stormy day sides. They veered in the the name of Florence or of light like three golden Venice would awaken the pivots, and vanished from desire for sunshine, for my gaze. lilies. It sparkled beneath the lilies in the kaleidoscope Lilac Before reaching it we of a happiness silent, would be met on our way by restless, and alert. So that it the scent of his lilac trees, and the City of the Lilies come out to welcome were not just artificial strangers. I saw Mme. scenes which I could set up Swann, letting trail behind at my pleasure in front of her the long train of her lilac my imagination. When I skirt, dressed, as the thought of Florence, it was populace imagine queens to of a town miraculously be dressed, in rich attire embalmed, and flower-like, such as no other woman since it was called the City might wear. Without the of the Lilies, and its least anxiety I could hear, at Cathedral, Our Lady of the the far end of the garden, Flower. the last peals of thunder growling among our lilac Lilies in their Hands trees. With lilies in their hands.

Lilac-Time Lilac-time was Lily At first they appeared nearly over; some of the singly, a lily, for instance, trees still thrust aloft, in tall which the current, across purple chandeliers, their whose path it had tiny balls of blossom, but in unfortunately grown, would many places among their never leave at rest for a foliage where, only a week moment, so that, like a before, they had still been ferry-boat mechanically breaking in waves of propelled, it would drift fragrant foam, these were over to one bank only to

109 return to the other, eternally Lime Blossoms These repeating its double were indeed real lime journey. Here and there, on blossoms, like those I had the surface, floated, seen, when coming from the blushing like a strawberry, train, in the Avenue de la the scarlet heart of a lily set Gare, altered, but only in a ring of white petals. because they were not imitations but the very same Limb And when, in blossoms, which had grown conversation with his old. friends, he forgot his sufferings, suddenly a word Lime Trees I can see it casually uttered would make again with all its lime trees, him change countenance as and its pavement glistening a wounded man does when beneath the moon. The a clumsy hand has touched balmy scent of the lime trees his aching limb. seemed a consolation which I could obtain only at the Limbs He stood gazing at price of great suffering and her; traces of the old fresco exhaustion, and not worthy were apparent in her face of the effort. and limbs, and these he tried incessantly, Limes One spent the winter afterwards, to recapture, on the Promenade des both when he was with Anglais, the summer Odette, and when he was beneath the limes of Baden. only thinking of her in her absence. Lion For by her way of thinking, to compare a man Lime Blossom If my aunt with a lion, which she used were feeling ‘upset,’ she to pronounce ‘lie-on,’ was would ask instead for her not at all complimentary to ‘tisane,’ and it would be my the man. duty to shake out of the chemist’s little package on Lions They’re not men any to a plate the amount of more, they’re lions.” lime blossom required for infusion in boiling water. Lips A respect which I

110 should perhaps have found detail—insignificant but touching in a book, but true—which he had which never failed to irritate accidentally learned, as me on her lips. A touch of though it were the sole red over the lips of Esther fragment which he would had strayed beyond their allow, in spite of himself, to outline. Blindly, hotly, pass his lips, out of the madly, flinging aside all the numberless other fragments reasons I had just found to of that complete support such action, I seized reconstruction of her daily and raised to my lips the life which he carried secretly hand she held out to me. He in his mind, he led her to could not refrain from suppose that he was moving his lips towards her, perfectly informed upon as though she had actually matters, which, in reality, he been in the room for him to neither knew nor suspected. kiss. He gathered up, with She hastily outlined upon an eager and sorrowful her lips the smile of joy and piety, the words that fell surprise with which she from her lips. He let the would have greeted him. words slip delicately from She shook her head, pursing his lips. He made her lips together; a sign involuntarily with his lips which people commonly the motion of kissing. employ to signify that they Mechanically, weary after a are not going, because it dull day with the prospect of would bore them to go. That a depressing morrow, I frail and precious kiss which raised to my lips a spoonful Mamma used always to of the tea in which I had leave upon my lips when I soaked a morsel of the cake. was in bed and just going to On her lips an ambiguous sleep I had to take with me smile. Only, now and again, from the dining-room to my he gave Odette to own, and to keep inviolate understand that people all the time that it took me maliciously kept him to undress, without letting informed of everything that its sweet charm be broken, she did; and making without letting its volatile opportune use of some essence diffuse itself and

111 evaporate. The closing notes special value—had the air of of the phrase that he had stripping, of divesting me. begun sounded already on When strangers passed she her lips. The serpent hissing still allowed to linger about between the lips of Envy is her lips a lazy smile, as so huge, and so completely though she expected or fills her wide-opened mouth remembered some friend, that the muscles of her face which made them say: are strained and contorted, “What a lovely woman!” like a child’s who is filling a With his lips. “You compel balloon with his breath, and me to sully my lips with so that Envy, and we ourselves abject a name.” You would for that matter, when we have said that her half- look at her, since all her opened lips were just about attention and ours are to speak. concentrated on the action of her lips, have no time, Little Apples “Think of almost, to spare for envious listening to Wagner for a thoughts. Then he would fortnight on end with her, become annoyed, and she who takes about as much would burst out with a laugh interest in music as a fish which, was transformed, as does in little apples.” it left her lips, and descended upon him in a Little Breeze “Don’t you shower of kisses. There we feel this little breeze?” would all stay, hanging on the words which would fall Little Cloud Forming, on from my grandmother’s lips its celestial passage through when she brought us back the midst of the children her report of the enemy. and their nursemaids, a When she used my little cloud, exquisitely surname, to my parents, coloured, like the cloud that, accessories of which her curling over one of Poussin’s lips—by the effort that she gardens, reflects minutely, made, a little after her like a cloud in the opera, father’s manner, to teeming with chariots and articulate the words to horses, some apparition of which she wished to give a the life of the gods.

112 Little Girls I saw, having a most entertaining luminous and imprisoned in conversation; I cannot think a bowl by themselves, the why we climb to these lofty agate marbles which seemed summits.” precious to me because they were as fair and smiling as Lovely Day “What a lovely little girls. day!”

Little Spots I then noticed Lovely Sun “What a lovely that on the flowers sun!” themselves were little spots of a creamier colour. Lowest Water He saw himself and her in ‘low,’ in Little Sunshine They took the very ‘lowest water,’ a turn or two in the park, inextricably stranded. where there was a little sunshine. Maelstrom It dreamed, no doubt, of some imaginary Little White Cloud maelstrom. Françoise, in desperation that not a drop was falling Maggots Yet I’m not really upon the ‘poor crops,’ angry, he assured himself, gazing up at the sky and when I see how she longs to seeing there only a little run away and scratch from white cloud floating here maggots in that dunghill of and there upon its calm, cacophony. azure surface, groaned aloud. Magnanimous Creatures They are Liver “You know, my magnanimous creatures, husband isn’t at all well; it’s and magnanimity is, after his liver.” all, the one thing that matters, the one thing that Lobster Mamma was gives us distinction here on asking my father if he had earth. thought the lobster good. Marble Illuminated, as Lofty Summits “We are though by a row of

113 footlights, in the new Meadows Suddenly, surroundings in which it effacing them, taking away now appeared, that word all their charm, excluding ‘marble.’ “You’re not made them because they were its of marble.” opposite and could only have weakened its effect, Marine Atmosphere By a was substituted in me the supreme muscular effort, a converse dream of the most long way in excess of my variegated of springs, not real strength, stripping the spring of Combray, still myself, as of a shell that pricking with all the needle- served no purpose, of the air points of the winter’s frost, in my own room which but that which already surrounded me, I replaced it covered with lilies and by an equal quantity of anemones the meadows. Venetian air, that marine The ground on the other atmosphere, indescribable side was lower, and and peculiar as the stretched in a series of atmosphere of the dreams broad meadows as far as the which my imagination had village and even to the secreted in the name of distant railway station. Venice. Those meadows upon whose surface, when it is polished Marvellous Bird by the sun to the mirroring “Marvellous bird!” radiance of a lake, are outlined the leaves of the Mass of Foliage A patch apple-trees. of brightness indicated the approach to almost every Mind’s Eye A shroud from one of them, or else a the constant image of which splendid mass of foliage in her mind’s eye she drew a stood out before it like an certain satisfactory sense, if oriflamme. not actually of wealth and prosperity, at any rate of Meadow “Poor boys, to be self-esteem. His mind’s eye mown down like grass in a would cease to behold that meadow.” dear countenance, save as occupying a distant and

114 diminished position, and on allowing herself merely to the verge of ceasing to shed smile at the expense of a on him the radiance of its fellow-creature who has charm. loyally held out his hand to her, she is casting herself Minnows I would amuse into a mire from which it myself by watching the glass will be impossible, with the jars which the boys used to best will in the world, ever lower into the Vivonne, to to rescue her. catch minnows, and which, filled by the current of the Molecules This lady in her stream, in which they creative principle, in the themselves also were molecules of her physical enclosed, at once composition, was perhaps ‘containers’ whose not substantially the transparent sides were like Duchesse de Guermantes, solidified water and but that her body, in ‘contents’ plunged into a ignorance of the name that still larger container of people had given it, liquid, flowing crystal, belonged to a certain type of suggested an image of femininity which included, coolness more delicious and also, the wives of doctors more provoking than the and tradesmen. same water in the same jars would have done, standing Monkey “D’you think he’d upon a table laid for dinner, pack you out of the house if by showing it as perpetually he could see you now, with in flight between the the window open, the ugly impalpable water, in which old monkey?” my hands could not arrest it, and the insoluble glass, in Moon He would think of which my palate could not that other face, gleaming enjoy it. and faintly roseate like the moon’s, which had, one day, Mire It is really impossible risen on the horizon of his to believe that any human mind and since then had being is incapable of shed upon the world that understanding that, in mysterious light in which he

115 saw it bathed. The moon terrace of his house, by seems fair to me to-day. moonlight. It is a very different kind of existence at Moonbeams He looked up Tansonville now with Mme. from his victoria on those de Saint-Loup, and a fine and frosty nights of different kind of pleasure early spring, and saw the that I now derive from dazzling moonbeams fall taking walks only in the between his eyes and the evenings, from visiting by deserted streets. moonlight the roads on which I used to play, as a Moonlight But she saw child, in the sunshine. She that his eyes remained fixed swore there’d never been upon the things that he did anything like it in the way of not know, and on that past moonlight. There comes in era of their love, all lives a time, towards monotonous and soothing which you still have far to in his memory because it go, when the weary eyes can was vague, and now rent, as endure but one kind of light, with a sword-wound, by the the light which a fine news of that minute on the evening like this prepares Island in the Bois, by for us in the stillroom of moonlight, while he was darkness, when the ears can dining with the Princesse listen to no music save what des Laumes. He could see the moonlight breathes the pianist sitting down to through the flute of silence. play the Moonlight Sonata. There must be no lights of He could smell the heated any sort, and he must play iron of the barber whom he the Moonlight Sonata in the used to have in to singe his dark, for us to see by. hair while Loredan went to fetch the little working girl; Moonlight on the Water could feel the torrents of “Come along round behind rain which fell so often that the rock, there, and look at spring, the ice-cold the moonlight on the homeward drive in his water!” victoria, by moonlight. I dined with Legrandin on the Moonlit Evenings He

116 remembered those moonlit mosquitoes. evenings. Moss More soft, more Moonlit Night If it was a warm upon the stone than moonlit night and warm, even moss is; alive. then, instead of taking us home at once, my father, in Moss Roses Beyond these his thirst for personal the flowers were more distinction, would lead us frequent, but paler, less on a long walk round by the glossy, more thickly seeded, Calvary. more tightly folded, and disposed, by accident, in Moor In front of it festoons so graceful that I stretched a moor on which would fancy I saw floating Geneviève stood, lost in upon the stream, as though contemplation, wearing a after the dreary stripping of blue girdle. The castle and the decorations used in the moor were yellow, but I some Watteau festival, moss could tell their colour roses in loosened garlands. without waiting to see them. Mountainous There are Morning to Night mountainous, Sometimes he hoped that uncomfortable days. she would die, painlessly, in some accident, she who was Mountains and Rivers I out of doors in the streets, used to sit in the heat of our crossing busy Combray garden, sick with a thoroughfares, from longing inspired by the book morning to night. I was then reading for a land of mountains and rivers. Mosquito A last mosquito proves that Italy and Mountains of Flowers summer are still not too The hedge resembled a remote. series of chapels, whose walls were no longer visible Mosquitoes In the garden under the mountains of we used as little light as flowers that were heaped possible, so as not to attract upon their altars.

117 Mouse In the hope that was the first to recover, and Swann would catch sight of smiled. I could distinguish her, the Princess could do the impression of having nothing but (like a tame been held, for a moment, in white mouse when a lump her mouth, myself, naked, of sugar is put down before without, any longer, any of its nose and then taken the social qualifications away) turn her face. which belonged equally to her other companions. I Moustache Beneath it have no need to fill my there sprouted a heavy mouth with them when I moustache. But if one took can feed on them with my the trouble to imagine eyes. M. Verdurin had been Swann’s utterances divested wiser than he knew in not of the sonority that taking his pipe out of his enwrapped them, of the mouth. Mme. Cottard, who moustache from under was a shy woman and spoke which they emerged, one but seldom, was not lacking, found that they were the for all that, in self-assurance same phrases. when a happy inspiration put the right word in her Moustached Alas! there mouth. She reached out as was nothing now but motor far as she could across the cars driven each by a limitations of her true moustached mechanic, with character to find the a tall footman towering by language appropriate to a his side. vicious young woman such as she longed to be thought, Moustaches Drooping fair but the words which, she moustaches. imagined, such a young woman might have uttered Mouth By keeping the pipe with sincerity sounded firmly in his mouth he could unreal in her own mouth. prolong indefinitely the “Take your pipe out of your dumb-show of suffocation mouth.” “We are speaking of and hilarity. His mouth, Mme. de Crécy,” he which had been stiffened explained, as M. Verdurin and seared with bitter lines, joined them, his pipe in his

118 mouth. “What a fetid form Nasturtiums In front of us of humour!” he exclaimed, a path bordered with twisting his mouth into an nasturtiums rose in the full expression of disgust. glare of the sun towards the house. The gardener might Mouthful I drink a second lean his ladder, against the mouthful, in which I find wall overgrown with nothing more than in the nasturtiums, which first, a third, which gives me clambered up it as far as my rather less than the second. window sill.

Mud He had upset the Natural He would then whole household when he understand that it was his arrived an hour and a half jealousy alone which had led late for luncheon, covered him to find something with mud from head to foot, atrocious, unpardonable, in and made not the least this desire (after all, so apology. natural a desire, springing from a childlike Muscles He could feel the ingenuousness and also muscles of his throat stiffen from a certain delicacy in against his collar. her nature). It appeared to her to be quite natural. My Mystic Blossom Once my grandmother would be sent mother, while she was out as a scout, always happy telling us, as she did every to find an excuse for an evening at dinner, where additional turn in the she had been and what she garden, which she would had done that afternoon, utilize to remove merely by the words: “By surreptitiously, as she the way, guess whom I saw passed, the stakes of a rose- at the Trois Quartiers—at tree or two, so as to make the umbrella counter— the roses look a little more Swann!” caused to burst natural. Without being open in the midst of her intelligent, Odette had the narrative (an arid desert to charm of being natural. me) a mystic blossom.

119 Natural Behaviour moment, by an inspiration Enraptured, as all of us are, of jealousy, analogous to the at times, by the natural inspiration which reveals to behaviour of a child. a poet or a philosopher, who has nothing, so far, but an Natural Charm Mme. de odd pair of rhymes or a Guermantes found herself detached observation, the in the midst of all those idea or the natural law Combray people whose which will give power, names, even, she did not mastery to his work, Swann know, but whose inferiority recalled for the first time a proclaimed her own remark which Odette had supremacy so loud that she made to him. must, in return, feel for them a genuine, pitying Natural Phenomena But sympathy, and whom she soon it happened that, like might count on impressing those natural phenomena even more forcibly by virtue from which our comfort or of her simplicity and natural our health can derive but an charm. accidental and all too modest benefit, until the Natural Foundation day when science takes Happily for Swann, beneath control of them, and, the mass of suffering which producing them at will, had invaded his soul like a places in our hands the conquering horde of power to order their barbarians, there lay a appearance, withdrawn natural foundation, older, from the tutelage and more placid, and silently independent of the consent laborious, like the cells of an of chance; similarly the injured organ which at once production of these dreams set to work to repair the of the Atlantic and of Italy damaged tissues, or the ceased to depend entirely muscles of a paralyzed limb upon the changes of the which tend to recover their seasons and of the weather. former movements. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is Natural Law But at that our worst misfortune; but

120 we learn of it only from Natural Shore I required reading or by imagination; also, if the storm was to be for in reality its alteration, absolutely genuine, that the like that of certain natural shore from which I watched phenomena, is so gradual it should be a natural shore, that, even if we are able to not an embankment distinguish, successively, recently constructed by a each of its different states, municipality. we are still spared the actual sensation of change. Naturalist Gilberte pointed out to me with a Natural or Picturesque laugh two little boys who Setting It was to me like were like the little artist and one of those zoological the little naturalist in the gardens in which one sees children’s storybooks. assembled together a variety of flora, and contrasted Nature And then, in a effects in landscape; where moment of illumination, from a hill one passes to a like a man in a fever who grotto, a meadow, rocks, a awakes from sleep and is stream, a trench, another conscious of the absurdity of hill, a marsh, but knows that the dream-shapes among they are there only to enable which his mind has been the hippopotamus, zebra, wandering without any clear crocodile, rabbit, bear and distinction between himself heron to disport themselves and them, Swann suddenly in a natural or a picturesque perceived how foreign to his setting. nature were the thoughts which he had been revolving Natural Resistance By its in his mind. Because of the desperate and quite natural selection that the author resistance, which Françoise, had made of them, because beside herself with rage as of the spirit of faith in which she attempted to slit its my mind would exceed and throat beneath the ear, anticipate his printed word, accompanied with shrill as it might be interpreting a cries of “Filthy creature! revelation, these scenes Filthy creature!” used to give me the

121 impression—one which I capacity whatsoever for hardly ever derived from becoming passionately any place in which I might interested in the co- happen to be, and never operative movement among from our garden, that the ladies of Sweden. undistinguished product of Nature, by all the feelings the strictly conventional that she aroused in me, fantasy of the gardener seemed to me the most whom my grandmother so opposite thing in the world despised—of their being to the mechanical actually part of Nature inventions of mankind. herself, and worthy to be ‘Sadists’ of Mlle. Vinteuil’s studied and explored. In sort are creatures so purely moments of musing sentimental, so virtuous by contemplation of nature, the nature, that even sensual normal actions of the mind pleasure appears to them as being suspended, and our something bad, a privilege abstract ideas of things set reserved for the wicked. She on one side, we believe with would say, “At last one can the profoundest faith in the breathe!” and would run up originality, in the individual and down the soaking existence of the place in paths—too straight and which we may happen to be. symmetrical for her liking, Indeed, when it was too late, owing to the want of any he would laugh at himself feeling for nature in the new for it, for there was in his gardener, whom my father nature, redeemed by many had been asking all morning rare refinements, an if the weather were going to element of clownishness. improve. So curious was he My grandmother found in to learn the nature and the steeple of Saint-Hilaire attributes. That sense of that absence of vulgarity, quiet and comfort which is pretension, and meanness an indispensable which made her love—and background to the deem rich in beneficent impressions that we derive influences—nature itself. from nature. The Bavarian Nature had unfortunately upholsterer who had been forgotten to include any entrusted with the

122 furnishing of this hotel had bed of hyacinths and a varied his scheme of serpent’s writhing back. The decoration in different photographer had been rooms, and in that which I prevented from reproducing found myself occupying had directly the masterpieces or set against the walls, on the beauties of nature. The three sides of it, a series of public cannot recognize the low book-cases with glass charm, the beauty, even the fronts, in which, according outlines of nature save in to where they stood, by a the stereotyped impressions law of nature which he had, of an art which they have perhaps, forgotten to take gradually assimilated. They into account, was reflected are produced whenever this or that section of the there needs to establish ever-changing view of the itself in the security sea. The locks of his reddish necessary to its hair, crinkled by nature, but development a vice which glued to his head by Nature herself has planted brilliantine, were treated in the soul of a child. They broadly as they are in that were in no way connected Greek sculpture which the now with nature, with the Mantuan painter never world of real things, which ceased to study, and which, from now onwards lost all if in its creator’s purpose it its charm and significance, represents but man, and meant no more to my manages at least to extract life than a purely from man’s simple outlines conventional framework, such a variety of richness, just as the action of a novel borrowed, as it were, from is framed in the railway the whole of animated carriage, on a seat of which nature, a head of hair, by a traveller is reading it to the glossy undulation and pass the time. This desire beak-like points of its curls, that a woman should appear or in the overlaying of the added for me something florid triple diadem of its more exalting than the brushed tresses, can suggest charms of nature. Though I at once a bunch of seaweed, dared not look at them save a brood of fledgling doves, a through my fingers, I could

123 feel that the formal scheme Nerves “It is his nerves.” In was composed of living a state of nerves. things, and that it was Nature herself who, by New Dog “Ah, but that will trimming the shape of the be the new dog M. Galopin foliage, and by adding the has brought her from crowning ornament of those Lisieux.” snowy buds, had made the decorations worthy of what Night I let myself be borne was at once a public upon the current of this rejoicing and a solemn gentle night on which I had mystery. To this face, the my mother by my side. expression on which was so often gentle, to this nature No Cattleyas “Oh! no so eminently human. cattleyas this evening; then there’s nothing for me to Natures Natures that are arrange.” slightly nervous, as mine was, make use, like motor- Nobler and Purer Air cars, of different ‘speeds.’ “God knows that I have honestly attempted to pull Neck He would place it Odette out of that sewer, there, giving to Odette’s and to teach her to breathe a neck the necessary nobler and a purer air.” inclination. She bent her neck, as all their necks may North Pole or the be seen to bend, in the Equator The Guermantes, pagan scenes as well as in on the other hand, meant no the scriptural. When she more than the ultimate goal, had found it, she performed ideal rather than real, of the a circular movement with ‘Guermantes way,’ a sort of her neck. abstract geographical term like the North Pole or the Neck and Arms Odette Equator. had received him in a tea- gown of pink silk, which left Nose A large nose. A little her neck and arms bare. spot at the corner of her nose. Everything, even to

124 the fiery little spot at the bordered on one side by a corner of her nose, gave an series of orchard-closes, assurance of her subjection each one planted at regular to the laws of life. Her nose. intervals with apple-trees Her nose, just perceptibly which cast upon the ground, wrinkled in a frown, when they were lighted by exposed to view two dark the setting sun, the cavities that were, surely, Japanese stencil of their modelled from life. Stopping shadows. at the line of his arched nose as at a natural frontier. The Ocean As remote from broken nose, the human history as the Ocean penetrating stare. The least itself, or the Great Bear, sensitive nose must be with its wild race of driven away in horror from fishermen for whom, no such stale exhalations. The more than for their whales, nose of M. de Palancy; in a had there been any Middle portrait by Tintoretto. To Ages. follow so exactly the line of his nose. Octopus His jealousy, like an octopus which throws Nothing But now, albeit out a first, then a second, they had led to nothing, and finally a third tentacle, those moments struck me as fastened itself irremovably having been charming first to that moment, five enough in themselves. o’clock in the afternoon, then to another, then to Oak I want to see again is another again. the ‘Guermantes way’ as I knew it, with the farm that Oil A word of scandal stood a little apart from the spreads like a spot of oil. two neighbouring farms, Yes, don’t you see, it’s like a pressed so close together, at spot of oil; people are so the entrance to the oak horrid. avenue. One Burst of Sunshine Oaks We need only turn My mother said that it down an avenue of oaks, might clear again, that one

125 burst of sunshine would be Orange Tree Sometimes I enough, but that more would be torn from my probably it would rain; and book, in the middle of the if it rained, of what use afternoon, by the gardener’s would it be to go to the daughter, who came Champs-Elysées? running like a mad thing, overturning an orange tree One Finger She went on, in its tub, cutting a finger, tracing a line with one breaking a tooth, and finger across the lower part screaming out “They’re of her forehead. coming, they’re coming!” so that Françoise and I should One Perfect Blossom run too and not miss Japanese gardeners who, to anything of the show. obtain one perfect blossom, will sacrifice the rest. Orbit For her sake he would return to it, but only Open Country Alone, to the particular orbit in rising from the level of the which she moved or into plain, and seemingly lost in which he had drawn her. Or that expanse of open suppose that he gets drowsy country, climbed to the sky in some even more the twin steeples. abnormal position; sitting in an armchair, say, after Open Plain Sheltering dinner: then the world will from the wind, on the open fall topsy-turvy from its plain, as a shepherd gathers orbit, the magic chair will his sheep. carry him at full speed through time and space, and Open Sky The only thing when he opens his eyes wanting is the necessary again he will imagine that thing, a great patch of open he went to sleep months sky like this. earlier and in some far distant country. Open-Mouthed Dr. Cottard gazed at her with Orchid “It looks just as open-mouthed admiration. though it had been cut out of the lining of my cloak,”

126 she said to Swann, pointing organisms. to an orchid, with a shade of respect in her voice for so Organs Without my paying ‘smart’ a flower, for this any heed to the distinguished, unexpected contradiction that there was sister whom nature had in my wishing to look at and suddenly bestowed upon to touch with my organs of her. sense what had been elaborated by the spell of Orchids As she drew his my dreams and not attention, now to the fiery- perceived by my senses at tongued dragons painted all—though all the more upon a bowl or stitched tempting to them, in upon a fire-screen, now to a consequence, more different fleshy cluster of orchids, from anything that they now to a dromedary of knew—it was that which inlaid silver-work with ruby recalled to me the reality of eyes, which kept company, these visions, which upon her mantelpiece, with inflamed my desire all the a toad carved in jade, she more by seeming to hint a would pretend now to be promise that my desire shrinking from the ferocity should be satisfied. of the monsters or laughing at their absurdity, now Orris Root From the little blushing at the indecency of room that smelt of orris- the flowers, now carried root, I had peered out and away by an irresistible seen nothing. I ran up to the desire to run across and kiss top of the house to cry by the toad and dromedary, myself in a little room calling them ‘darlings.’ beside the schoolroom and beneath the roof, which Organisms Swann in his smelt of orris root. sleep drew false deductions, enjoying, at the same time, Otter Skin I met Mme. such creative power that he Swann on foot, in an otter- was able to reproduce skin coat. himself by a simple act of division, like certain lower Out of Doors Dwelling,

127 presumably, out of doors, in was not yet conscious, he the street, between heaven brought about sudden and earth. “She won’t even vicissitudes which, by a allow me to meet her out of chain of logical sequences, doors, at the theatre.” would produce, at definite points in his dream, the Outside But my person required to receive grandmother, even if the his love or to startle him weather, after growing too awake. hot, had broken, and a storm, or just a shower, had Pansies He remembered burst over us, would come the anxious, timid way in up and beg me to go outside. which she had once begged him that it might not be very Owl She would never think long, and the way in which of starting on a journey if she had looked at him then, she had heard an owl hoot, fixing upon him her fearful or the death-watch in the and imploring gaze, which wall. gave her a touching air beneath the bunches of Palm Trees She had made artificial pansies fastened in him sit down beside her in the front of her round one of the many mysterious bonnet of white straw, tied little retreats which had with strings of black velvet. been contrived in the various recesses of the Park Certain spots will room, sheltered by persist in remaining enormous palm trees surrounded by the vassals of growing out of pots of their own especial Chinese porcelain. sovereignty, and will raise their immemorial standards Palm With the warmth that among all the ‘laid-out’ he felt in his own palm he scenery of a park. So as not modelled the hollow of a to appear to be looking into strange hand which he his park, we would, instead thought that he was of taking the road which ran clasping, and out of feelings beside its boundary and and impressions of which he then climbed straight up to

128 the open fields, choose slipped, with his latchkey, another way, which led in from his waistcoat pocket, the same direction, but he would point out to us, circuitously, and brought us when it stood before our out rather too far from eyes, the back-gate of our home. The hedge allowed us own garden, which had a glimpse, inside the park, come hand-in-hand with the of an alley bordered with familiar corner of the Rue jasmine, pansies, and du Saint-Esprit, to await us, verbenas, among which the to greet us at the end of our stocks held open their fresh wanderings over paths plump purses, of a pink as unknown. fragrant and as faded as old Spanish leather, while on Peach “She’s a regular little the gravel-path a long peach, though,” said the watering-pipe, painted General. green, coiling across the ground, poured, where its Peaches or Raspberries holes were, over the flowers She thought it only right whose perfume those holes and proper that he should inhaled, a vertical and never come to see us in prismatic fan of summer without a basket of infinitesimal, rainbow- peaches or raspberries from coloured drops. We might his garden. go along by the park, since the ladies are not at home; Peacock’s Tail The next that will make it a little instant it had taken on all shorter. What was the iridescence of a incessantly before his eyes peacock’s tail, then shook was a park which he owned. and wavered in a flaming and fantastic shower, Partridge Feathers A distilled and dropping from woolen cap from which the groin of the dark and stuck out two blade-like rocky vault down the moist partridge feathers. walls, as though it were along the bed of some Paths Unknown And rainbow grotto of sinuous then, as though it had stalactites.

129 Pears The ripeness of the winter. pears. Petals Beyond all else the Pebbles A part of two rosy, moony, tender glow pretty pebbles lying side by which lit up the blossoms side. among the frail forest of stems from which they hung Pepsin “But, Mme. Octave, like little golden roses— it is not time for your marking, as the radiance pepsin,” Françoise would upon an old wall still marks begin. Françoise, having the place of a vanished seen that my parents had fresco, the difference everything they required, between those parts of the first went upstairs again to tree which had and those give my aunt her pepsin. Its which had not been ‘in meaning being slightly bloom’—showed me that clouded in her brain by the these were petals which, uncertainty whether the before their flowering-time, pepsin, when taken so long the chemist’s package had after the Vichy, would still embalmed on warm be able to overtake it and to evenings of spring. “send it down.” Petrified Excretions “To Periwinkle Her eyes think that she could visit waxed blue as a periwinkle really historic buildings with flower, wholly beyond my me, who have spent ten reach, yet dedicated by her years in the study of to me. architecture, who am constantly bombarded, by Permanent, Underlying people who really count, to Fine Weather In summer, take them over Beauvais or bad weather is no more than Saint-Loup-de-Naud, and a passing fit of superficial refuse to take anyone but ill-temper expressed by the her; and instead of that she permanent, underlying fine trundles off with the lowest, weather; a very different the most brutally degraded thing from the fluid and of creatures, to go into unstable ‘fine weather’ of ecstasies over the petrified

130 excretions of Louis-Philippe Pigeon-Shooting and Viollet-le-Duc!” Ground I knew that, when she reached the pigeon- Pheasant Not that she in shooting ground, she would the least degree resembled a tell her coachman to ‘break pheasant, having been away’ and to stop the endowed by nature with a carriage, so that she might short and squat and come back on foot. I walked masculine figure. on as far as the pigeon- shooting ground. Pheasant’s Wing I saw Mme. Swann on foot, in a Pigtail He had been ‘polonaise’ of plain cloth, a followed by a servant with a little toque on her head pallid countenance and a trimmed with a pheasant’s small pigtail clubbed at the wing. back of his head.

Picturesque Spots “I have Pine Forests Whenever he a horror of ‘picturesque spoke of something whose spots.’” beauty had until then remained hidden from me, Pigeons The pigeons that of pine forests or of had alighted upon it had the hailstorms, of Notre-Dame appearance of ancient de Paris, of Athalie, or of sculptures which the Phèdre, by some piece of gardener’s pick had heaved imagery he would make to the surface of a hallowed their beauty explode and soil. We began our game drench me with its essence. upon the lawn, scattering the pigeons, whose Pine Trees She had beautiful, iridescent bodies fuddled her mind, in the (shaped like hearts and, solitude of her old manor- surely, the lilacs of the house, over setting the pace, feathered kingdom) took now crawling-slow, now refuge as in so many passionate, whirling, sanctuaries. breathless, for all those imaginary waltzing couples, gathering them like flowers,

131 leaving the ball-room for a appearance of the place was moment to listen, where the still the same. wind sighed among the pine trees, on the shore of the Places But, down there, the lake. places themselves seem to me just like people, rare and Pineapple It seemed quite wonderful people, of a natural, therefore, to send to delicate quality which would him whenever we wanted a have been corrupted and recipe for some special ruined by the gift of life. sauce or for a pineapple salad for one of our big Places I Know “Places I dinner parties. know well, people very slightly.” Pink Hawthorn The charm with which her name, Plain “You must admit, like a cloud of incense, had certainly, that the view from filled that archway in the up there is like a fairy-tale, pink hawthorn through with what you might call which she and I had, vistas along the plain, which together, heard its sound, have quite a special charm was beginning to conquer, of their own.” to cover, to embalm, to beautify everything with Plain, River At definite which it had any points on which they were association. set down as the ideal view over a plain and the ideal Pink Marble The tiled roof scenery of a river. My father cast upon the pond, whose used always to speak of the reflections were now clear ‘Méséglise way’ as again in the sunlight, a comprising the finest view square of pink marble, the of a plain that he knew like of which I had never anywhere and of the observed before. ‘Guermantes way’ as typical of river scenery. Place My grandfather pointed out to my father in Plant If, in a florist’s or a what respects the jeweller’s window, a plant or

132 an ornament caught his eye, case, the little number inked he would at once think of inside each of her gloves by sending them to Odette. the cleaner, and the difficulty of speaking to Plant of Local Growth Swann about the Verdurins, That girl whom I never saw Mme. Cottard, seeing that save dappled with the they had still a long way to shadows of their leaves, was go before they would reach to me herself a plant of local the corner of the Rue growth, only taller than the Bonaparte, where the rest, and one whose conductor was to set her structure would enable me down, listened to the to approach more closely promptings of her heart, than in them to the intimate which counselled other savour of the land from words than these. He which she had sprung. followed her with loving eyes, as she gallantly Plants She followed the threaded her way along the man’s clumsy movements, Rue Bonaparte, her plume scolding him severely when erect. Swann, seeing an he passed too close to a pair omnibus approach him, of beaupots, which she labelled ‘Luxembourg,’ and made a point of always having some business there, tidying herself, in case the had jumped on to it and had plants should be knocked found himself sitting over—and went across to opposite Mme. Cottard, who them now to make sure that was paying a round of visits he had not broken off any of to people whose ‘day’ it was, the flowers. in full review order, with a plume in her hat. “Will you Plum “I want the other be so very kind as to tell me plum.” whether my plume is straight? “ Plume Having exhausted this topic, to which she had Plumes of White or been inspired by the Purple Blossom Out of loftiness of her plume, the the fresh little green hearts monogram on her card- of their foliage the lilacs

133 raised inquisitively over the instinct with piety, than my fence of the park their room in the Grand Hôtel de plumes of white or purple la Plage, at Balbec. blossom, which glowed, even in the shade, with the Pond Before coming to the sunlight in which they had asparagus-bed, thanks to been bathed. the breeze that was wafted across the fields from Poetic Spots Those well- Méséglise, he could enjoy watered and poetic spots. the fragrant coolness of the air as well beneath an Polar Regions The gothic arbour of hornbeams in the trefoil had come to diversify garden as by the bank of the those wild rocks also, at the pond, fringed with forget- appointed hour, like those me-not and iris; and where, frail but hardy plants which, when he sat down to dinner, in the Polar regions, when trained and twined by the the spring returns, scatter gardener’s skilful hand, their stars about the eternal there ran all about his table snows. currant-bush and rose. “Don’t you see how pretty Pollen “Look, there is a they are, all these trees—my little—I think it must be hawthorns, and my new pollen, spilt over your pond, on which you have dress—may I brush it off never congratulated me?” with my hand?” Having gone as far as the Montjouvain pond, where I Pollenous Among the enjoyed seeing again the rooms which used most reflection of the tiled roof of commonly to take shape in the hut, I had lain down in my mind during my long the shade and gone to sleep nights of sleeplessness, among the bushes on the there was none that differed steep slope that rose up more utterly from the rooms behind the house. It was at Combray, thickly along the ‘Méséglise way,’ at powdered with the motes of Montjouvain, a house built an atmosphere granular, on the edge of a large pond, pollenous, edible and and overlooked by a steep,

134 shrub-grown hill, that M. low-lying ground, an old Vinteuil lived. The pond and broken boat which is beneath the Calvary would being caulked and made have lost its fiery glow, seaworthy, and cries out, sometimes indeed had although he has not yet changed already to an caught sight of it, “The Sea!” opalescent pallor. Potatoes And I have no Ponds The little ponds into doubt that then—just as a which the Vivonne was here desire to have her potatoes diverted were aflower with served with béchamel sauce, water-lilies. for a change, would be formed, ultimately, from the Poor Little Hawthorns pleasure she found in the “Oh, my poor little daily reappearance of those hawthorns,” I was assuring mashed potatoes of which them through my sobs, “it is she was never ‘tired.’ not you that want to make me unhappy, to force me to Precipice I am reminded leave you.” that it was in that same autumn, on one of those Poplar Without the least walks, near the bushy anxiety I could watch the precipice which guarded poplar in the Rue des Montjouvain from the rear, Perchamps praying for that I was struck for the first mercy. time by this lack of harmony between our impressions Poppy A poppy that had and their normal forms of strayed and been lost by its expression. fellows. The sight of a single poppy hoisting upon its Propitious Breeze It slender rigging and holding filled my sails with a potent, against the breeze its scarlet unknown, and propitious ensign, over the buoy of rich breeze. black earth from which it sprang, made my heart beat Protozoa They were rooms as does a wayfarer’s when of that country order which he perceives, upon some (just as in certain climes

135 whole tracts of air or ocean snails and puppy dogs’ are illuminated or scented tails.” by myriads of protozoa which we cannot see) Pure Matter He opened fascinate our sense of smell his eyes, heard for the last with the countless odours time the boom of a wave in springing from their own the sea, grown very distant. special virtues, wisdom, I cannot say why, but this habits, a whole secret undulation of pure matter, system of life, invisible, this wholly carnal fluency, superabundant and with not the least hint in it profoundly moral, which of spiritual significance, this their atmosphere holds in wave lashed to a fury by the solution; smells natural wind of an assiduity, an enough indeed, and obsequiousness of the coloured by circumstances basest sort, awoke my mind. as are those of the neighbouring countryside, Purple Flowers and Red but already humanized, Purple flowers and red domesticated, confined, an would at once spring up on exquisite, skilful, limpid either side of her like jelly, blending all the fruits complementary colours. of the season which have left Rambling and clustering the orchard for the store- along low walls, purple room, smells changing with flowers and red. the year, but plenishing, domestic smells, which Rain A friend offered to compensate for the take him home in a closed sharpness of hoar frost with carriage, and as Odette, by the sweet savour of warm the fact of her having bread, smells lazy and invited him to come, had punctual as a village clock, given him an assurance that roving smells, pious smells. she was expecting no one else, he could, with a quiet Puddles “I dwell so many mind and an untroubled miles above the puddles.” heart, rather than set off thus in the rain, have gone Puppy Dogs “Snaps and home and to bed. “Ah, they

136 never think of making it rain Rain or Storm But what a little for the poor mattered rain or storm? labourers!” But on other days would begin to fall the Rainbow A rainbow, when rain, of which we had had its brightness fades, seems due warning from the little to subside, then soars again barometer-figure which the and, before it is spectacle-maker hung out in extinguished, is glorified his doorway. It might rain with greater splendour than as it pleased. It was pouring it has ever shown. No, it was rain, and he had nothing but because my dreams of travel his victoria. It was the rain. and of love were only The rain was coming down moments—which I isolate in torrents and Françoise artificially to-day as though had rushed indoors with the I were cutting sections, at precious wicker armchairs, different heights, in a jet of so that they should not get water, rainbow-flashing but soaked. The rain was seemingly without flow or playing a game, now, among motion—were only drops in the branches, and, even a single, undeviating, when it was almost dry irresistible outrush of all the again underfoot, a stray forces of my life. These drop or two, lingering in the hinted rainbows. hollow of a leaf, would run down and hang glistening Rained “Sir, I am from the point of it until absolutely incapable of suddenly it splashed plump telling you whether it has upon our upturned faces rained.” from the whole height of the tree. There were also the Raining “It’s raining hard, days of bad weather on all the same.” which her governess, afraid, on her own account, of the Raining or Snowing One rain, would not bring sits hoping that in the world Gilberte to the Champs- outside it is raining or Elysées. Wrapped up in a snowing, hoping almost for huge Highland plaid which a catastrophic deluge to add protected me from the rain. the romance of shelter and

137 security to the comfort of a away and incorporate, to snug retreat. store up, for later reference, in myself the memory of Rains And you know that that prominent nose, those when it rains in the Square red cheeks, of all those there’s none too much details which struck me as shelter. so much precious, authentic, unparalleled Rainy Night I would know information with regard to that the shower would only her face. glaze and brighten the greenness of their thick, Reef Like a reef in the crumpled leaves, and that Indian Ocean. they themselves had undertaken to remain there, Rib Sometimes, too, just as like pledges of summer, all Eve was created from a rib through the rainy night, to of Adam, so a woman would assure me of the fine come into existence while I weather’s continuing. was sleeping, conceived from some strain in the Rare Growth It was from position of my limbs. his consulting room, and from a house in a park near Ribs Its memory, the Combray that some of the composite memory of its first seeds were scattered of ribs, knees, and shoulder- that taste for Bergotte, a blades offered it a whole rare growth in those days. series of rooms in which it had at one time or another Raspberries Raspberries, slept. which M. Swann had brought specially. Ripe Apples Glowing with the ruddy brilliance of ripe Ray of Light The ray of apples. light beneath his door is extinguished. Ripple A long ribbon of moonlight, bent and broken Red Cheeks By gazing at and broadened by every her I should be able to carry ripple upon the water’s

138 surface, would be lying Rocks No fissures, indeed, across it, from end to end. no geological faults, but at least those veins, those River The river flowing streaks of colour which in past, sky-blue already certain rocks, in certain between banks still black marbles, point to differences and bare. Their jostling of origin, age, and horses scraped against the formation. walls of the houses, covering and drowning the Rocks of Amethyst I felt pavements like banks which myself to be penetrating present too narrow a indeed between those rocks channel to a river in flood. of amethyst. When I am seized with a desire to see again the Rook A gust of wind blew ‘Guermantes way,’ it would from its perch a rook, which not be satisfied were I led to floated away and settled in the banks of a river in which the distance. were lilies as fair, or even fairer than those in the Root I could see how, in a Vivonne, any more than on particular instance, upon a my return home in the reef of savage rocks, it had evening, at the hour when taken root and grown. there awakened in me that anguish which, later on in Rose He infinitely life, transfers itself to the preferred to Odette’s style of passion of love, and may beauty that of a little even become its inseparable working girl, as fresh and companion, I should have plump as a rose. wished for any strange mother to come in and say Roses Mme. Verdurin, good night to me, though pointing to the roses which she were far more beautiful he had sent her that and more intelligent than morning, said: “I am furious my own. with you!” Sweeter than roses in young men’s noses. Rock The rock there. The fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the

139 moist air of evening, has the running water. power of dilating our nostrils. The hair over her Rustling Leaves forehead was abloom with Sometimes a light breeze roses. makes the pale light tremble in the rustling leaves, which Roses! “You see, I’m then seem to awaken, to wearing your roses!” live, and breathe of love and pleasure. Rosettes It was Nature herself who had Sacred Grove In earlier spontaneously expressed it days I would not have (with the simplicity of a lingered in the sacred grove woman from a village shop, which surrounded this labouring at the decoration temple. of a street altar for some procession) by burying the Sacred Soil We had bush in these little rosettes, reached the sacred soil of almost too ravishing in one or the other. colour. Sad Hours of Darkness Rosy Snow A mountain of The strongest desire I had in rosy snow, at whose foot a the world, namely, to keep battle was being fought, my mother in my room seemed to have frozen the through the sad hours of window. darkness, ran too much counter to general Run with the Hare and requirements and to the Hunt with the Hounds wishes of others. “He’s always trying to run with the hare and hunt with Salt Fog I could scarcely the hounds.” breathe for joy at the thought that I might myself, Running Water That one day, see them take a dream in those two solid form against their summers used to be eternal background of salt quickened with the fog. freshness and coolness of

140 Salt It had forgotten to One sees people who are endow my grandmother’s doubtful whether the sight two sisters with a grain of of the sea and the sound of that precious salt. I was its waves are really going to Camus’s for a enjoyable. The sea itself has packet of salt. retreated.

Sapphires The little Sea Fogs And it is the lozenge windows had put on ultimate encampment of the the deep transparence, the fishermen, precisely like the unbreakable hardness of fishermen who have lived sapphires. since the world’s beginning, facing the everlasting Scenery The scenes in the kingdom of the sea fogs and books I read were to me not shadows of the night. merely scenery more vividly portrayed by my Sea Shell It had been imagination. washed on the beach, the purple, crinkled spire of Scent on the Air I some sea shell spun out into discover pleasures of a turret and gay with glossy another kind, those of being colour. comfortably seated, of tasting the good scent on Sea Swallow Like the sea the air, of not being swallow which builds at the disturbed by any visitor. end of a dark tunnel and is kept warm by the Scrap of Nature That surrounding earth. scrap of nature, that corner of a garden could never Seagull A seagull perches, suppose that it would be with an angler’s immobility, thanks to him that they on the crest of a wave. would be elected to survive in all their most ephemeral Seal From a long way off, details. the sight of the jutting crag from which it dives into the Sea Dr. Cottard pool thrills with joy the recommended a sea voyage. children who know that they

141 are going to behold the seal. drawn and ringed with shadows. It would skilfully Season For often we find a draw towards it a pair of day, in one, that has strayed trees; making deft use of the from another season, and sharp chisel of light and makes us live in that other. shade, it would cut away Frail, swept away by a from each of them half of its breath, but at the same time trunk and branches, and, in harmony, not with the weaving together the two season, with the hour. halves that remained, would make of them either a single Seaweeds A name scarcely pillar of shade, defined by moored that seemed to be the surrounding light, or a striving to draw the river single luminous phantom down into the tangle of its whose artificial, quivering seaweeds. contour was encompassed in a network of inky Serpent “The word isn’t shadows. Swann had serpent-à-sonates, it’s regarded musical motifs as serpent-à-sonnettes!” he actual ideas, of another explained in a tone at once world, of another order, zealous, impatient, and ideas veiled in shadows. The triumphant. alluring shadows of the path along which would come M. Shades These blue evening Swann, the unconscious shades. author of my sufferings.

Shadow For hearts that are Shadowy Background I wounded, as mine is, a saw no more of it than this novelist, whom you will read sort of luminous panel, in time to come, claims that sharply defined against a there is no remedy but vague and shadowy silence and shadow. background.

Shadows He turned away Sharp Branches Clasping to examine Odette; her their sharp branches to my cheeks were pale, with little bosom. fiery spots, her features

142 Shell To meet in Paris a shrugging his shoulders. It fisher girl from Balbec or a was hard to restrain a smile peasant girl from Méséglise when one saw the would have been like precautions her father used receiving the present of a to take for her health, with shell which I had never seen spare shawls always in upon the beach. readiness to wrap around her shoulders. Her father Shoulder Movements from would then arrange a cloak one shoulder to the other. over her shoulders. He would shrug his shoulders Shoulders Still smiling, and laugh. I would shrug my she shrugged her shoulders shoulders and say: “It is ever so slightly, as who really very good of me to should say, “You’re quite discuss the matter with an mad; you know very well illiterate old woman who that I like it.” My father cannot speak her own would shrug his shoulders language.” Scarcely had he and study the barometer, for begun the movement of he took an interest in head and shoulders of a meteorology, while my man who was ‘shaking with mother, keeping very quiet laughter’ than he would so as not to disturb him, begin also to cough, as looked at him with tender though, in laughing too respect, but not too hard, violently, he had swallowed not wishing to penetrate the a mouthful of smoke from mysteries of his superior his pipe. Odette watched his mind. She shrugged her departure with regret; she shoulders without raising dared not refuse to let her eyes from her knitting, Swann take her home, but serenely ironical. There’s no she was moody and irritable question of making him in the carriage, and, when accustomed,” said my he asked whether he might father, with a shrug of the come in, replied, “I suppose shoulders; “you can see so,” with an impatient shrug quite well that the child is of her shoulders. Her unhappy.” “No, no; it is languishing gaze at him impossible,” said my uncle, while she lay nestling in his

143 arms, her bended head Shrubs A site actually seeming to recede between hollowed out from a steep her shoulders, as though hill covered with shrubs, shrinking from the cold. among which I took cover. Fortified by these unspoken words she flung her Silent Evening Air I hear shoulders proudly back until them afresh, like those they seemed to part convent bells which are so company with her bust. she effectively drowned during would utter this reply in so the day by the noises of the icy a tone, with such a streets that one would hollow sound, that it was at suppose them to have been once quite clear that if she stopped for ever, until they did not know the celebrity sound out again through the personally that was because silent evening air. of all the obstinate, ineradicable principles Skeleton “It might be a against which her arching skeleton.” shoulders were stretched back to rest, as on one of Skin As one peels the skin those ladders on which from a fruit of which one is gymnastic instructors make going to put only the pulp us ‘extend’ so as to develop into one’s mouth. Her the expansion of our chests. profile was too sharp, her skin too delicate. The Shower A little tap at the delicate features in which window, as though some the imperfection of her skin missile had struck it, might be surmised. followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, Skull “Ah, poor girl, your though, as if a shower of skull must be very thick; you sand were being sprinkled may thank God for that.” from a window overhead; “You don’t wish to crack then the fall spread, took on your skull, and you collect an order, a rhythm, became all the cobwebs off the liquid, loud, drumming, staircase upon your musical, innumerable, clothes.” universal.

144 Skunks Some friend who letting it drift with the knew them both, and current, seeing nothing but suspecting that they were in the sky which slipped love, had not dared to tell quietly above him. “I’m not him anything about her that at all surprised,” said my was of the least importance, aunt, looking up towards would describe Odette’s the sky. Now are the woods figure, as he had seen her, all black, but still the sky is that very morning, going on blue. Seeing upon the water, foot up the Rue Abbattucci, where it reflected the wall, a in a cape trimmed with pallid smile responding to skunks. the smiling sky, I cried aloud in my enthusiasm. Sky Above the gimcrack She is cut out sharply windmill the real sky was against the sky, in the form grey. “Always try to keep a of a silver sickle. Suddenly patch of sky above your the sky was rent in two. life.” Especially a blue which “That is not quite what I is far more floral than meant,” interrupted my atmospheric, a cineraria father, obstinate as a tree blue, which it is surprising and merciless as the sky. to see in the sky. He would The little village of offer me a marchpane or a Roussainville carved in tangerine, and we would relief upon the sky the white cross a room in which no mass of its gables, with a one ever sat, whose fire was startling precision of detail. never lighted, whose walls The silence that followed were picked out with gilded seemed to herald the mouldings, its ceiling beginning, in the blue sky painted blue in imitation of above me. The sky would be the sky. How often have I as greatly darkened as by watched, and longed to the swallows flying south. imitate, when I should be Thrust into the pallid sky free to live as I chose, a which had yielded beneath rower who had shipped his its pressure. We would still oars and lay stretched out be able to see, as we turned on his back, his head down, into the Rue du Saint- in the bottom of his boat, Esprit, a reflection of the

145 western sky from the which was comprised windows of the house and a between their two golden band of purple at the foot of figures. the Calvary, which was mirrored further on in the Sleet It swelled and pond. distorted with its cloudy sleet, like a pane to which Sky and the Sea But snowflakes have drifted and names present to us—of clung, but flakes illumined persons and of towns which by a sunrise. they accustom us to regard as individual, as unique, like Slightly Bald Head She persons—a confused would gaze at his long, picture, which draws from slightly bald head, of which the names, from the people who know only of his brightness or darkness of successes used to think: their sound, the colour in “He’s not regularly good- which it is uniformly looking, if you like, but he is painted, like one of those smart; that tuft, that posters, entirely blue or eyeglass, that smile!” entirely red, in which, on account of the limitations Slope Those of the party imposed by the process used who had reached the in their reproduction, or by downward slope were no a whim on the designer’s longer visible to those who part, are blue or red not were still climbing. only the sky and the sea, but the ships and the church Slumbering Water The and the people in the slumbering water, whose streets. repose was perpetually being invaded by the insects Sky’s Surface The latest that swarmed above its would inscribe itself, close surface. to its predecessor, on the sky’s surface, and I would be Snake “Not the sonata- unable to believe that sixty snake, I hope!” minutes could be squeezed into the tiny arc of blue Snow On the mantle of

146 snow that swathed the Soft Green Platform of a balcony, the sun had Grassy Lawn Here and appeared and was stitching there would appear some seams of gold, with meaningless erection, a embroidered patches of sham grotto, a mill, for dark shadow. The fine which the trees made room jerkins of green leather by drawing away from it, or which covered the trunks of which was borne upon the the old trees were hidden soft green platform of a beneath the snow. The snow grassy lawn. I ought not to had ceased to fall, but when have strayed from the lawn. the sky was still too much overcast for me to hope that Soil Bay after bay, chapel Gilberte would venture out. after chapel, seemed to The snow which had lain on stretch across and hold the garden beds or clung to down and conquer not the branches of the trees, merely a few yards of soil, the careless disarray of the but each successive epoch season, the assertion, in this from which the whole man-made city, of a state of building had emerged nature, had all combined to triumphant. I was obliged to add an element of mystery call, standing still on the to the warmth, the flowers, spot, before that steeple, for the luxury which he had hours on end, motionless, found inside. The snow, a trying to remember, feeling symbol of the powers that deep within myself a tract of were able to deprive me of soil reclaimed from the the sight of Gilberte, waters of Lethe slowly imparted the sadness of a drying until the buildings day of separation. While she rise on it again. It set dropped pellets of snow beneath the flowers a soil of down my neck, I smiled a colour more precious, lovingly at what seemed to more moving than their me at once a predilection own. The passing figure that she showed for me in which my desire evoked thus tolerating me as her seemed to be not any one travelling companion in this example of the general type new, this wintry land. of ‘woman,’ but a necessary

147 and natural product of the someone told me that it was soil. They are building actually to be found in the hotels there now, same department, and at a superimposing them upon given number of miles from its ancient and charming Combray, as I had been on soil, which they are the day when I had learned powerless to alter. What a that there was another fixed joy it would be to set foot on point somewhere on the that soil where, not knowing earth’s surface, where, the exact spot in which, at according to the ancients, any moment, she was to be opened the jaws of Hell. found, he would feel all around him the thrilling Spark It was in that belief possibility of her suddenly and not in ourselves that the appearing. divine spark resided.

Sole “Give M. Biche some Sparrows Presently, one more sole, can’t you see his after another, like shyly has got cold?” bopping sparrows, her friends arrived, black Some Passing Insect against the snow. Perching here and there (not seeming to move, but Specimens “Oh, there’s snapping, perhaps, and something complete about swallowing some passing them, something almost fine insect) on the points of in their trueness to type.; turrets. they’re the most perfect specimens of their Source Never, in the disgusting class!” course of our walks along the ‘Guermantes way,’ Spinach Spinach, by way of might we penetrate as far as a change. the source of the Vivonne, of which I had often thought, Spray Yet he could feel the which had in my mind so sting of the cold spray, and abstract, so ideal an the taste of salt on his lips. existence, that I had been as much surprised when Spring Even in spring, to

148 come in a book upon the Jerusalem rose. name of Balbec sufficed to awaken in me the desire for Spring Sunshine I storms at sea and for the reflected that already the Norman gothic. He Ponte Vecchio was heaped persuaded himself that the high with an abundance of spring time charm, which he hyacinths and anemones, could not go down to and that the spring sunshine Combray to enjoy, he would was already tinging the find at least on the Ille des waves of the Grand Canal Cygnes or at Saint-Cloud. with so dusky an azure, with That inconceivable marvel, emeralds so splendid that a morning in spring. The when they washed and were season was spring, the broken against the foot of nights clear and frosty. The one of Titian’s paintings weather was warm; it was they could vie with it in the the finest part of the spring. richness of their colouring. The winter had received, until nightfall, an Stalagmites Sentences unexpected, radiant visit which dropped into his from a day of spring. “You heart and passed at once know you’ve been putting into a solid state, grew hard asparagus in all your sauces as stalagmites, and seared this spring.” and tore him as they lay there irremovable. Spring Breeze Come with the glorious silken raiment Stalk Thrust towards the of the lily, apparel fit for bank, its stalk would be Solomon, and with the straightened out, many-coloured enamel of lengthened, strained almost the pansies, but come, to breaking point until the above all, with the spring current again caught it. breeze, still cooled by the last frosts of winter, wafting Stamens Despite the apart, for the two heavy, motionless silence of butterflies’ sake, that have the hawthorns, these gusts waited outside all morning, of fragrance came to me like the closed portals of the first the murmuring of an

149 intense vitality, with which the fashion then prevailing, the whole altar was and in spite of her being one quivering like a roadside of the best-dressed women hedge explored by living in Paris) for the corset, antennae, of which I was jetting forwards in an arch, reminded by seeing some as though over an imaginary stamens, almost red in stomach, and ending in a colour, which seemed to sharp point, beneath which have kept the springtime bulged out the balloon of virulence, the irritant power her double skirts, gave a of stinging insects now woman, that year, the transmuted into flowers. appearance of being composed of different Standing Water The sections badly fitted balcony was as pale and together. This compulsion luminous as a standing to an activity without water at dawn. respite, without variety, without result, was so cruel Still Rosy Sky Showing a scourge that one day, nothing more, now, against noticing a swelling over his the still rosy sky than a stomach, he felt an actual single dusky form, charming joy in the idea that he had, and resigned, and so perhaps, a tumour which vanishing in the night. would prove fatal, that he need not concern himself Stomach The subversive with anything further, that doctrine that a sharp walk in it was his malady which was the sun and a good red going to govern his life, to beefsteak would do her make a plaything of him, more good (her, who had until the not-distant end. had two dreadful sips of Vichy water on her stomach Stone I leave not a stone of for fourteen hours!) than all the modern edifice standing. her medicine bottles and her I would begin to think of bed. As for her figure, and something else, and so my she was admirably built, it mind would become littered was impossible to make out (as my room was with the its continuity (on account of flowers that I had gathered

150 on my walks, or the odds Storming “Do look at him, and ends that people had storming!” given me) with a stone from the surface of which the Strawberries I set a sunlight was reflected. higher value on cream Nothing in book or stone cheese when it was pink, would have been different if when I had been allowed to Gilberte had not loved me. tinge it with crushed Shattering, stone by stone, strawberries. He had been the whole edifice of his past. able to judge of the flavour Suddenly, on its sullen of the strawberries. stone, I did not indeed see a less negative colour. The Stream We would follow beauty of that stone. the tow-path which ran along the top of a steep Storm Just as the lovely bank, several feet above the sound of her voice, stream. reproduced, all by itself, upon the phonograph, could Stream of Running never console a man for the Water Like a hand loss of his mother, so a reposing motionless in a mechanical imitation of a stream of running water. storm would have left me as cold as did the illuminated Streams Sweet Sunday fountains at the Exhibition. afternoons beneath the The storm had made her chestnut tree in our unwell. There had been a Combray garden, from storm in the Channel, and which I was careful to damage was reported from eliminate every Dieppe, Cabourg, Beuzeval. commonplace incident of my actual life, replacing Storm at Sea I longed for them by a career of strange nothing more than to adventures and ambitions in behold a storm at sea, less a land watered by living as a mighty spectacle than streams, you still recall as a momentary revelation those adventures and of the true life of nature. ambitions to my mind when I think of you, and you

151 embody and preserve them the sunbeam, that is to say, by virtue of having little by equally luminous, and little drawn round and presented to my enclosed them (while I went imagination the entire on with my book and the panorama of summer. To go heat of the day declined) in off and spend the summer the gradual crystallization, at her charming farm of slowly altering in form and Mirougrain. “Try to put out dappled with a pattern of a feeler, too, for the chestnut-leaves, of your summer; see if there’s silent, sonorous, fragrant, anything she wants to do.” limpid hours. Sun After an hour of rain Strong Breeze There’s a and wind, against which I strong breeze there, once had put up a brisk fight, as I you get to the top. came to the edge of the Montjouvain pond, and Summer But in summer, reached a little hut, roofed when we came back to the with tiles, in which M. house, the sun would not Vinteuil’s gardener kept his have set; and while we were tools, the sun shone out upstairs paying our visit to again, and its golden rays, aunt Léonie its rays, sinking washed clean by the shower, until they touched and lay blazed once more in the sky, along her windowsill, would on the trees, on the wall of there be caught and held by the hut, and on the still wet the large inner curtains and tiles of the roof, which had a the bands which tied them chicken perching upon its back to the wall, and split ridge. After luncheon the and scattered and filtered. sun, conscious that it was Mme. Verdurin was going to Saturday, would blaze an invite them both to spend hour longer in the zenith. the summer with her in the Beyond which could be country. The summer distinguished, dearer than holidays came. This dim all such treasures, a fleeting freshness of my room was to smile from the sun, which the broad daylight of the could be seen and felt as street what the shadow is to well here, in the blue and

152 gentle flood in which it return. The green of the washed the masonry, as on trees, which was still bright the pavement of the Square in Silk and wool among the or the straw of the market- lower parts of the panel, but place. But these words, as had quite ‘gone’ at the top, they dived down through separated in a paler scheme, the waves of sleep in which above the dark trunks, the Swann was submerged, did yellowing upper branches, not reach his consciousness tanned and half-obliterated without undergoing that by the sharp though refraction which turns a ray sidelong rays of an invisible of light, at the bottom of a sun. The sun had meanwhile bowl of water, into another set. The sun made me sick sun. He has only to lift his with impatience and arm to arrest the sun and boredom as it let fall a turn it back in its course. He golden stream that crept to was thirsty besides, with the the edge of my desk. The sun beating down upon his sun, bursting out again from head. I caught sight of the behind a threatening cloud twin steeples of Martinville, and darting the full force of on which the setting sun its rays on to the Square and was playing. Its opened into the sacristy, shed a windows let in the heat, if geranium glow over the red not actually the rays of the carpet. The sun’s face was sun. Its steeples and that of hidden. Vieuxvicq waved once again, in token of farewell, their Sunbeam By opening her sun-bathed pinnacles. Its window, the lady opposite windows were never so had sent packing, in the brilliant as on days when twinkling of an eye, from the sun scarcely shone, so beside my chair—to sweep that if it was dull outside in a single stride over the you might be certain of fine whole width of our dining- weather in church. Often the room—a sunbeam which sun would disappear behind had lain down there for its a cloud, which impinged on midday rest and returned to its roundness, but whose continue it there a moment edge the sun gilded in later.

153 Sunlight And I, motionless, between glass remembering the glance and woodwork, in a corner, which she had let fall upon like a butterfly poised upon me during the service, blue a flower. I would know as a ray of sunlight that had exactly what was the colour penetrated the window of of the sunlight upon the Gilbert the Bad, said to Square. The steeple, with myself, “Of course, she is the indolent, painstaking thinking about me.” From exactitude of a person who that moment, only sunlight, has nothing else to do, had perfumes, colours, seemed simply, in order to squeeze to me to have any value. Her out and let fall the few gaze lingered here and golden drops which had wandered there, rose to the slowly and naturally capitals of the pillars, and accumulated in the hot even rested upon myself, sunlight, pressed, at a given like a ray of sunlight moment, the distended straying down the nave, but surface of the silence. The a ray of sunlight which, at sunlight fell so implacably the moment when I received from a fixed sky that one its caress, appeared was naturally inclined to conscious of where it fell. I slip away out of the reach of gazed upon a fresco over its attentions. Then, quite which was partly drawn a apart from all those literary curtain of morning sunlight, preoccupations, and without dusty, aslant, and gradually definite attachment to spreading. I would be lying anything, suddenly a roof, a stretched out on my bed, a gleam of sunlight reflected book in my hand, in my from a stone, the smell of a room which trembled with road would make me stop the effort to defend its frail, still, to enjoy the special transparent coolness against pleasure that each of them the afternoon sun, behind gave me, and also because its almost closed shutters they appeared to be through which, however, a concealing, beneath what reflection of the sunlight my eyes could see, had contrived to slip in on something which they its golden wings, remaining invited me to approach and

154 seize from them, but which, where the sunsets of the despite all my efforts, I Auge Valley, those red-and- never managed to discover. gold sunsets (which, all the We had in front of us the same, I am very far from steeple, which, baked and despising) seem brown itself like a larger loaf commonplace and still of ‘holy bread,’ with insignificant. flakes and sticky drops on it of sunlight, pricked its sharp Sunshine “Impossible to point into the blue sky. say whether it was done with glue, with soap, with Sunlit Surface Presently sealing-wax, with sunshine, their outlines and their with leaven, with excrem…” sunlit surface, as though But her, I can see her still they had been a sort of rind, quite clearly, especially at were stripped apart. the moment when the procession filed into the Sunny In ascertaining and sacristy, lighted by the noting the shape of their intermittent, hot sunshine spires, the changes of of a windy and rainy day. I aspect, the sunny warmth of returned home with their surfaces, I felt that I Françoise through streets was not penetrating to the that were still gay with full depth of my impression, sunshine, as on the evening that something more lay of a holiday when the behind that mobility, that merriment is over. She luminosity, something rallied him, with a rippling which they seemed at once flow of laughter, her to contain and to conceal. features concentrated, yoked to the service of her Sunset I would still be in animation, her eyes time to see the reflection of sparkling, blazing with a the sunset glowing in the radiant sunshine of gaiety panes of my bedroom which could be kindled only window. by such speeches. With the sunshine and the noise of Sunsets There is a little the outer world, something bay, charmingly quiet, else invaded the church.

155 Supple Limbs The grace Tadpoles I begged for and of movement of a trained obtained a morsel of bread gymnast each of whose from our luncheon basket; supple limbs will carry out and threw into the Vivonne precisely the movement that pellets which had the power, is required without any it seemed, to bring about a clumsy participation by the chemical precipitation, for rest of his body. the water at once grew solid round about them in oval Surrounding Coast The clusters of emaciated golden sands appear more tadpoles, which until then it charming still from being had, no doubt, been holding fastened, like fair in solution, invisible, but Andromeda, to those ready and alert to enter the terrible rocks of the stage of crystallization. surrounding coast. Tall Trees Overshadowed Swans’ Heads “I can think by the tall trees which stood of nothing more close around it, an devastating, more utterly ‘ornamental water’ had been smug than that hideous constructed by Swann’s style—cabinets covered all parents but, even in his over with swans’ heads, like most artificial creations, bath-taps!” nature is the material upon which man has to work. Swelling Plain One always had the wind for companion Tangerine Opposite to when one went the him, in a pink silk dress ‘Méséglise way,’ on that with a great necklace of swelling plain which pearls about her throat, sat stretched, mile beyond mile, a young woman who was without any disturbance of just finishing a tangerine. its gentle contour. Tawny Lion When, on a Swollen Eyelids The summer evening, the swollen eyelids of Dr. du resounding sky growls like a Boulbon. tawny lion, and everyone is complaining of the storm, it

156 is along the ‘Méséglise way’ complained of not feeling that my fancy strays alone in very well, he had stifled a ecstasy, inhaling, through sob and wiped the tears the noise of falling rain, the from his eyes. One would odour of invisible and see, in clear outline, as persistent lilac trees. though in a transparency, beneath the mannish face of Tears Already the charm the ‘good sort’ that she was, with which, by the mere act the finer features of a young of thinking, my mind was woman in tears. She fixed filled as soon as it thought her eyes on him with that of her, the privileged languishing and solemn air position, unique even if it which marks the women of were painful, in which I was the old Florentine’s inevitably placed in relation paintings, in whose faces he to Gilberte by the had found the type of hers; contraction of a scar in my swimming at the brink of mind, had begun to add to her fringed lids, her brilliant that very mark of her eyes, large and finely drawn indifference something as theirs, seemed on the romantic, and in the midst verge of breaking from her of my tears my lips would face and rolling down her shape themselves in a smile cheeks like two great tears. which was indeed the timid The other, with tears in his outline of a kiss. He must eyes, refused a plum which lower his head, lest anyone his nurse was buying for should observe that his eyes him. The poor creature, were filled with tears. I after asking Mme. Verdurin assured him, with tears in whether he should stay and my eyes, that his kindness receiving no answer, had had made so strong an left the house in impression upon me that stammering confusion and someday I would most with tears in his eyes. certainly find a way of expressing my gratitude. Tears of Merriment On Next, Bloch had displeased reaching this point in the my grandmother because, story, Françoise would after luncheon, when she pause to wipe the tears of

157 merriment from her eyes. exaggerated refinement, against “seething the kid in Tempests In place of those his mother’s milk,” or dreams of tempests, by “eating of the sinew which is which I had been entirely upon the hollow of the possessed, not wishing to thigh.” see anything but waves dashing in from all sides, Thing These flowers had mounting always higher, chosen precisely the colour upon the wildest of coasts, of some edible and delicious beside churches as rugged thing. and precipitous as cliffs, in whose towers the sea birds Things Outside Things would be wailing. outside seemed also fixed in mute expectation, so as not Tender Glow of Sunset to disturb the moonlight The forest, roseate with the which, duplicating each of deep and tender glow of them and throwing it back sunset. by the extension, forwards, of a shadow denser and There Swann thought that more concrete than its it might indeed have been substance, had made the there, perhaps, that he had whole landscape seem at first known Odette. once thinner and longer, like a map which, after Thigh For things which being folded up, is spread might or might not be done out upon the ground. she possessed a code at once imperious, abundant, Three Flowers I caught subtle, and sight of them for the last uncompromising on points time, far away, and seeming themselves imperceptible or no more now than three irrelevant, which gave it a flowers painted upon the resemblance to those sky above the low line of ancient laws which combine fields. such cruel ordinances as the massacre of infants at the Three-Cornered Forest breast with prohibitions, of Golo, his mind filled with an

158 infamous design, issued would merely straighten her from the little three- shoulder-straps or feel in cornered forest which dyed her golden hair for the little dark green the slope of a balls of coral or of pink convenient hill. enamel, frosted with tiny diamonds, which formed its Throat I could feel at work simple but effective within me a miraculous ornament. disincarnation; it was at once accompanied by that Tiny Streak of Daylight vague desire to vomit which “And here am I, obliged to one feels when one has a draw back the small very sore throat. She never curtains, just to get a tiny remained for long, even streak of daylight.” when alone, without saying something, because she Tired Eyes He saw once believed that it was good for again, as he had felt them her throat. close beside him, Odette’s pallid complexion, her too Tide Like the border of thin cheeks, her drawn shells and sea-weed which a features, her tired eyes. stronger tide than usual leaves on the beach, as Titmouse I would fall though trimming it with asleep, as it might be in the embroidered crape. open air, like a titmouse which the breeze keeps Tigers Swann was amused poised in the focus of a to discover the heirs and sunbeam. successors of Balzac’s ‘tigers’—now ‘grooms’—who Tongue That Charity normally followed their devoid of charity, that Envy mistress when she walked who looked like nothing so abroad, but now, hatted and much as a plate in some booted, were posted out of medical book, illustrating doors, in front of the house the compression of the on the graveled drive. glottis or uvula by a tumour in the tongue. Tiny Diamonds She

159 Torrent The prosperity of green velvet that carpeted wicked men runs like a their trunks, or in the white torrent past, and soon is enamel of the globes of spent. mistletoe that were scattered all the way up to Transparent Wings of the topmost branches of the Flies The leaves, which had poplars, rounded as are the lost or altered their own sun and moon in appearance, assumed those Michelangelo’s ‘Creation.’ I instead of the most aimed blows at the trees of incongruous things Roussainville wood, from imaginable, as though the among which no more living transparent wings of flies or creatures made their the blank sides of labels or appearance than if they had the petals of roses had been been trees painted on the collected and pounded, or stretched canvas interwoven as birds weave background of a panorama. the material for their nests. I gazed at the trees with an unsatisfied longing which Trees As though those went beyond them and, carved faces of stone, naked without my knowledge, and grey like trees in winter, directed itself towards that were, like them, asleep only, masterpiece of beautiful storing up life and waiting strolling women which the to flower again in countless trees enframed for a few plebeian faces. Farther off, hours every day. “I have at a place where the trees friends all the world over, were still all green, one wherever there are alone, small, stunted, companies of trees, stricken lopped, but stubborn in its but not defeated, which resistance, was tossing in have come together to offer the breeze an ugly mane of a common supplication, red. For the trees continued with pathetic obstinacy, to to live by their own vitality, an inclement sky which has and when they had no no mercy upon them.” longer any leaves, that Illuminating the room in vitality gleamed more their passage with the same brightly still from the nap of delicate, slanting, shadowed

160 beams that fall among the embedded in trees, we boles of forest trees. In would come upon a house of places where the trees still the kind called ‘pleasure kept their leaves, they houses,’ isolated and lost, seemed to have undergone seeing nothing of the world, an alteration of their save the river which bathed substance from the point at its feet. Successive which they were touched by mortifications had given her the sun’s light, still, at this a backward tilt, such as one hour in the morning, almost may observe in trees which horizontal, as it would be have taken root on the very again, a few hours later, at edge of a precipice and are the moment when, just as forced to grow backwards to dusk began, it would flame preserve their balance. “To up like a lamp, project afar what purpose shall I walk over the leaves a warm and among these trees if there is artificial glow, and set nothing left now of the ablaze the few topmost assembly that used to meet boughs of a tree that would beneath the delicate tracery itself remain unchanged, a of reddening leaves, if sombre incombustible vulgarity and fatuity have candelabrum beneath its supplanted the exquisite flaming crest. It seemed to thing that once their me that the beauty of the branches framed?” Under trees was hers also. Like the the trees of the boulevards myrtle-alley in the Aeneid, there were still a few people planted for their delight strolling to and fro, barely with trees of one kind only, distinguishable in the the Allée des Acacias was gathering darkness. We thronged by the famous would take refuge among Beauties of the day. Now the trees. and then he would remind himself that another fine Treetops We would come spring evening was drawing at length to the Mall, among to a close, and would force whose treetops I could himself to notice the trees distinguish the steeple of and the sky. Sometimes, at Saint-Hilaire. the water’s edge and

161 Troubled Heart They down to watch the turbulent soothed his troubled heart. sea, unchained.

Trout All day long, during Turkey A turkey, because these walks, I had been able she had seen a beauty in the to muse upon the pleasure market at Roussainville-le- that there would be in the Pin. friendship of the Duchesse de Guermantes, in fishing Twilight Rekindling in the for trout, in drifting by twilight, already almost myself in a boat on the nocturnal, of this winter Vivonne; and, greedy for afternoon, the glow of a happiness, I asked nothing sunset more lasting, more more from life, in such roseate, more human. moments, than that it should consist always of a Twilight of a Flower That series of joyous afternoons. rosy candlelight was still their colour, but half- Trunk I would fix my eyes, extinguished and deadened without limit of time, upon in the diminished life which the trunk of a distant tree, was now theirs, and which from behind which she must may be called the twilight of appear and spring towards a flower. me. Uncertain, Clouded Sky Tumult of the Sea He had From breakfast-time, my suddenly perceived, where it anxious eyes never left the was trying to surge upwards uncertain, clouded sky. in a flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, Unconscious or multiform, coherent, level, Unheeding Air The and breaking everywhere in flowers which played then melody like the deep blue among the grass, the water tumult of the sea, silvered which rippled past in the and charmed into a minor sunshine, the whole key by the moonlight. landscape which served as environment to their Turbulent Sea Taking me apparition lingers around

162 the memory of them still Watch,’ a blasphemy which with its unconscious or had called forth an instant unheeding air. protest from Mme. Verdurin, who regarded the Unexplored Tracts ‘Night Watch’ as the Separated by the gross supreme masterpiece of the darkness of its unexplored universe (conjointly with tracts, some few among the the ‘Ninth’ and the millions of keys, keys of ‘Samothrace’). Other people tenderness, of passion, of are, as a rule, so immaterial courage, of serenity. to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of Unhappy Plant Its green them the power to cause so moorings swung back over much suffering or happiness their anchorage and brought to ourselves, that person the unhappy plant to what seems at once to belong to a might fitly be called its different universe. The starting point, since it was world inhabited by Odette fated not to rest there a was not that other world, moment before moving off fearful and supernatural, in once again. which he spent his time in placing her—and which Unicorn To feel himself existed, perhaps, only in his transformed into a creature imagination, but the real foreign to humanity, universe, exhaling no blinded, deprived of his special atmosphere of logical faculty, almost a gloom, comprising that fantastic unicorn, a table at which he might sit chimaera-like creature down, presently, and write, conscious of the world and this drink which he was through his two ears alone. being permitted, now, to taste. Universe Each one differing from all the rest as Unopened, Blushing one universe differs from Buds Apple trees were another. Except at the exposing their broad petals moment when he had called of white satin, or hanging in it bigger than the ‘Night shy bunches their

163 unopened, blushing buds. amazement on a rock, a tree, a marsh, the tangible Untrodden Path I proofs of the little people’s explored, across the bounds supernatural passage. of my own experience, an untrodden path which, I Vaporous How freely they believed, might lead me to coursed through him, how my death. fluid they were, how vaporous, how easy to Up in the Air “I do so love breathe! him when he goes up in the air like that!” Vast Gulf “So-and-so” (a fashionable woman whom Vacant Sky On the banks he had known) “was far of the bright and ever- from being perfect, but, flowing stream, which even after all, one did find in her the angler had abandoned, a fundamental delicacy, a and so slipped loyalty in her conduct which unaccompanied into the made her, whatever vacant sky, where only a few happened, incapable of a loitering clouds remained. felony, which fixes a vast gulf between her and an old Vale “Sweet vale of Hebron, hag like Verdurin.” dear paternal fields.” Vegetable Form I felt that Valley As in a mountainous these celestial hues country, against the indicated the presence of seeming immobility of a exquisite creatures who had vertically falling torrent, one been pleased to assume may distinguish, two vegetable form. hundred feet below, the tiny form of a woman walking in Vegetable Kingdom in the valley. I used to go the Clouds Nowhere, forward into the church perhaps, except on the when we were making our shores of the English way to our chairs as into a Channel, where Normandy fairy-haunted valley, where merges into Brittany, have I the rustic sees with been able to find such

164 copious examples of what was of infinitely greater you might call a vegetable importance than her fear of kingdom in the clouds. seeing Mme. Goupil’s new dress ruined. Indeed she Vegetable Personality showed a sort of pride in not Long before I reached the allowing anyone else to acacia-alley, their fragrance, come near my aunt, scattered abroad, would preferring, when she herself make me feel that I was was ill, to get out of bed and approaching the to administer the Vichy incomparable presence of a water in person. Now I vegetable personality, know why that Vichy water strong and tender. has been lying on my stomach. She herself was Vegetation All other conspicuous and worthy to vegetation had disappeared. be praised throughout Combray, Jouy-le-Vicomte, Very Face of the Sky The and other cities of men, on very face of the sky account of my aunt’s many appeared to undergo a farms, her frequent and change. prolonged visits from the Curé, and the astonishing Very Wettest Days number of bottles of Vichy Everyone except my water which she consumed. grandmother, who held that “Until the storm breaks my it is a pity to shut oneself Vichy water won’t ‘go indoors in the country, and down.” used to carry on endless discussions with my father Vine “Doesn’t it make your on the very wettest days, mouth water, this vine? Just because he would send me look at the little border up to my room with a book around the edges; here, instead of letting me stay look, the little vine on a red out of doors. background in this one, the Bear and the Grapes.” Vichy Water In her mind, the desire to accelerate the Violets A bunch of violets digestion of her Vichy water in her bosom. Deep down in

165 which lay negligently back got a tongue like a viper, Mme. Swann, her hair, now that you can’t keep quiet for quite pale with one grey a moment.” lock, girt with a narrow band of flowers, usually Void His brain would violets, which floated down become a void. long veils, a lilac parasol in her hand. I could imagine it Warm Weather “Now only by the aid of that heavy that the warm weather’s syllable of the name of coming, we’re going to have Parma, in which no breath dinner out of doors of air stirred, and of all that whenever we can.” I had made it assume of Stendhalian sweetness and Wasps Dotted with grass the reflected hue of violets. plots over which two or Suggested by nothing more three wasps would spend than the bunch of violets the day botanizing. Frenzied crushed into her bosom, and light as wasps upon the whose flowering, vivid and wing. blue against the grey sky, the freezing air, the naked Water A gem of the first boughs, had the same water, blended of humility charming effect of using the and gratitude. As the banks season and the weather at this point were thickly merely as a setting. There wooded, the heavy shade of had been but a single the trees gave the water a incident apart from all those background which was smiles directed towards ordinarily dark green, himself; namely, her although sometimes, when walking abroad beneath a we were coming home on a Rembrandt hat, with a calm evening after a stormy bunch of violets in her afternoon, I have seen in its bosom. Wearing a depths a clear, crude blue Rembrandt hat, and a that was almost violet, bunch of violets in her suggesting a floor of bosom. Japanese cloisonné. Like a would-be swimmer who Viper “I know that you’ve jumps into the water, so as

166 to learn, but chooses a indicated.” moment when there are not too many people looking on. Watery Border Elsewhere “You cannot make out the a corner seemed to be water.” reserved for the commoner kinds of lily; of a neat pink Water Lily Such as these or white like rocket-flowers, was the water lily. washed clean like porcelain, with housewifely care; Water of a Stone In the while, a little farther again, letters written to us by a were others, pressed close woman with whom we are together in a floating in love, we find fault with garden-bed, as though the ‘water’ of a stone. pansies had flown out of a garden like butterflies and Water Plants Presently were hovering with blue and the course of the Vivonne burnished wings over the became choked with water transparent shadowiness of plants. this watery border.

Water’s Edge “Those little Waves He could hear the houses by the water’s edge.” thunder of the surging waves, and also of his own Watercress Beneath the heart, which, with equal limpid currents fragments violence, was anxiously of wood lay mouldering in beating in his breast. I could beds of watercress. distinguish waves surging round a church built in the Waterfall There was a Persian manner. Now and waterfall. then the waves dashed against the cliff, and Swann Waters “Believe me,” he could feel on his cheek a went on with emphasis, “the shower of freezing spray. waters of that bay—more Our memory, like a labourer Breton than Norman—may who toils at the laying down exert a sedative influence. of firm foundations beneath But at your age, my boy, the tumult of the waves, did those waters are contra- not, by fashioning for us

167 facsimiles of those fugitive having come, without letting phrases, enable us to herself be frightened away compare and to contrast by the weather. “It will be them with those that follow. the weather that’s frightened her away.” “It’s Weather “Go along and see not the right weather for the who can be outside in this time of year.” Our cousins weather.” It was during a had taken advantage of the spell of very hot weather; fine weather to come over my parents, who had been from Thiberzy for luncheon. obliged to go away for the She had come there solely to whole day, had told me that please me, and in such I might stay out as late as I weather. She invariably pleased. “I can’t understand protests that she does not it; the barometer has been need the extra gas which the ‘set fair.’” I stepped out porter offers to light for her, briskly on account of the and sits on there, hearing weather, which, after several nothing further, except an days of a precocious spring, occasional remark on the had relapsed into winter weather which the porter (like the weather that we exchanges with a messenger had invariably found whom he will send off awaiting us at Combray, in suddenly. So will a traveller, Holy Week). If the weather who has come down, on a was bad all morning, my day of glorious weather, to family would abandon the the Mediterranean shore, idea of a walk, and I would and is doubtful whether remain at home. If the they still exist, those lands weather was fine, they which he has left, let his would propose to remain eyes be dazzled, rather than there for the night, and not cast a backward glance, by go home until next day. “I’m the radiance streaming a hundred-and-one, a towards him from the woman of the old school,” luminous and unfading exclaimed the lady, uttering, azure at his feet. Sometimes on behalf of the voiceless a spell of fine weather made Champs-Elysées, their her a little more energetic, thanks to Gilberte for she would rise and put on

168 her clothes; but before she Western Sky There would had reached the outer room no longer, as we turned into she would be ‘tired’ again, the Rue du Saint-Esprit, be and would insist on any reflection from the returning to her bed. western sky burning along Sometimes, when the the line of window-panes. weather had completely broken, we were obliged to Whale Françoise found it go home and to remain shut too cold to stand about, so up indoors. “That lady is we walked to the Pont de la going out; it must, Concorde to see the Seine therefore, be weather in frozen over, on to which which one can go out.” The everyone, even children, weather being what it was, walked fearlessly, as though he felt an overwhelming upon an enormous whale, desire to spend the day stranded, defenceless, and roaming in the forest. They about to be cut up. had little time for walks which, as it happened, the Wheat I could see across weather made precarious. the cornfields the two “To-morrow, if the weather crocketed, rustic spires of holds, we might go the Saint-André-des-Champs, Guermantes way.” “Wait themselves as tapering, now, next Sunday, if the scaly, plated, honeycombed, weather holds, you will be yellowed, and roughened as sure to find a lot of people two ears of wheat. there, for Rogation-tide.” “We must make sure, first, Whisker The invasion of of the weather.” “Why, he the plumpness of the cheek couldn’t even tell me what by an outcrop of whisker. the weather was like.” “Why, M. Bloch, is there a change White Feathers and in the weather; has it been Yellow Beaks White raining?” “Yes, some day feathers and yellow beaks when the weather is fine I strewn along the road. shall go for a drive as far as the gate of the park.” Wild Animal Then he passed it to one of his

169 satellites, a novice and into my heart, which it timid, who was expressing shook no less violently than the panic that overpowered the chimney of my him by casting furious bedroom, the project of a glances in every direction, visit to Balbec—blended in and displayed all the dumb me the desire for gothic agitation of a wild animal in architecture with that for a the first hours of its storm upon the sea. They captivity. were perpetually crossed, as though by invisible streams Wild Vine On a misty of traffic, by the wind, which morning in autumn one was to me the tutelary would have called it, to see genius of Combray. When it rising above the violet the wind was so strong that thunder cloud of the Françoise, as she took me to vineyards, a ruin of purple, the Champs-Elysées, would almost the colour of the wild warn me not to walk too vine. near the side of the street, or I might have my head Wilderness The Doctor knocked off by a falling was unsparing in his slate. endeavours to cultivate the wilderness of his ignorance Wing All his memories of and uncertainty and so to the days when Odette had complete his education. been in love with him, which he had succeeded, up Wind A breath of wind till that evening, in keeping dispersed them. And so with invisible in the depths of his what joy would she welcome being, deceived by this us, with what sorrow sudden reflection of a complain that the weather season of love, whose sun, was still so bad for us, on they supposed, had dawned the day of our arrival, just again, had awakened from before Easter, when there their slumber, had taken was often an icy wind. wing, and risen to sing Thereafter, on dear, maddeningly in his ears, tempestuous February without pity for his present nights, the wind—breathing desolation, the forgotten

170 strains of happiness. must, it seemed, prove as Anyhow, I’ll take you all exquisite as they would be under my wing; she can put supernatural. the blame on me. Wood Pigeons In summer Winter A ray of sunshine the wood pigeons sport and sufficing for its birth, and frolic about the tall bough for the birth of joy, even in till twilight, when calm and the heart of winter. One day silence begin to reign in in winter, as I came home, their aerial abodes. my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some Woods Beneath a paling tea, a thing I did not sky the woods on the ordinarily take. horizon assumed a deeper tone of blue. But to wander Winter Mornings Could I thus among the woods of ever have made them Roussainville without a understand the emotion peasant-girl to embrace was that I used to feel on winter to see those woods and yet mornings? know nothing of their secret treasure, their deep-hidden Wintry Sun The sun, a beauty. wintry sun still, had crept in to warm itself before the Worm “It’s got a worm in fire. it!”

Withered Flesh and Wrist She showed her the Sluggish Blood The kiss, end of yellow paper that the bodily surrender which stuck out over her bare would have seemed natural wrist. Suddenly Odette and but moderately turned her wrist, glanced at attractive, had they been a tiny watch, and said: “I granted him by a creature of must go.” somewhat withered flesh and sluggish blood, coming, Yellow Leaves I had felt as now they came, to crown that I could actually see his adoration of a those yellow leaves, with the masterpiece in a gallery, light shining through them,

171 in their supreme beauty; preceded, itself, by a zone of and being no more able to evaporation. restrain myself from going to look at the trees than, in Zone of Heat A cave of my childhood’s days, when warmth dug out of the heart the wind howled in the of the room itself, a zone of chimney, I had been able to heat whose boundaries were resist the longing to visit the constantly shifting and sea. altering in temperature as gusts of air ran across them Young Leaves He would to strike freshly upon my return home not knowing face, from the corners of the even if he had tasted the room, or from parts near the fragrance of the young window or far from the leaves, or if the moon had fireplace which had been shining. therefore remained cold.

Your Heart “Why,” she Zone of Melancholy The wrote, “did you not forget zone of melancholy which I your heart also?” then entered was totally distinct from that other Zone of Evaporation zone, in which I had been When I saw any external bounding for joy a moment object, my consciousness earlier, just as sometimes in that I was seeing it would the sky a band of pink is remain between me and it, separated, as though by a enclosing it in a slender, line invisibly ruled, from a incorporeal outline which band of green or black. prevented me from ever coming directly in contact Zone of Pure Air So it with the material form; for came to me, uttered across it would volatilize itself in the heads of the stocks and some way before I could jasmines, pungent and cool touch it, just as an as the drops which fell from incandescent body which is the green watering-pipe; moved towards something impregnating and wet never actually touches irradiating the zone of pure moisture, since it is always air through which it had

172 passed, which it set apart old stones of which the and isolated from all other setting sun now illumined air, with the mystery of the no more than the topmost life of her. pinnacles, which, at the point where they entered Zone of Sunlight And that zone of sunlight and when she gazed on it, when were softened and her eyes followed the gentle sweetened by it, seemed to tension, the fervent have mounted suddenly far inclination of its stony higher, to have become truly slopes which drew together remote, like a song whose as they rose, like hands singer breaks into falsetto, joined in prayer, she would an octave above the absorb herself so utterly in accompanying air. 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

173

A Field Guide to Lost Things reconfigures every single image of a natural object in CKS Moncrieff’s 1922 English translation of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way—the first three novels of In Search of Lost Time. The guide includes images of nature encountered by Proust’s characters in rural landscapes, cities, towns and parks, as well as in the bodies of other characters.

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