suggestion of infinity; afternoon or evening, it seemed to have set them
flowering in the heart of the sky.
After leaving this park the Vivonne began to flow again more swiftly.
How often have I watched, and longed to imitate, when I should be free
to live as I chose, a rower who had shipped his oars and lay stretched out
on his back, his head down, in the bottom of his boat, letting it drift with
the current, seeing nothing but the sky which slipped quietly above him,
shewing upon his features a foretaste of happiness and peace.
We would sit down among the irises at the water's edge. In the holi-
day sky a lazy cloud streamed out to its full length. Now and then,
crushed by the burden of idleness, a carp would heave up out of the wa-
ter, with an anxious gasp. It was time for us to feed. Before starting
homewards we would sit for a long time there, eating fruit and bread
and chocolate, on the grass, over which came to our ears, horizontal,
faint, but solid still and metallic, the sound of the bells of Saint-Hilaire,
which had melted not at all in the atmosphere it was so well accustomed
to traverse, but, broken piecemeal by the successive palpitation of all
their sonorous strokes, throbbed as it brushed the flowers at our feet.
Sometimes, at the water's edge and embedded in trees, we would
come upon a house of the kind called 'pleasure houses,' isolated and lost,
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seeing nothing of the world, save the river which bathed its feet. A
young woman, whose pensive face and fashionable veils did not suggest
a local origin, and who had doubtless come there, in the popular phrase,
'to bury herself,' to taste the bitter sweetness of feeling that her name,
and still more the name of him whose heart she had once held, but had
been unable to keep, were unknown there, stood framed in a window
from which she had no outlook beyond the boat that was moored beside
her door. She raised her eyes with an air of distraction when she heard,
through the trees that lined the bank, the voices of passers-by of whom,
before they came in sight, she might be certain that never had they
known, nor would they know, the faithless lover, that nothing in their
past lives bore his imprint, which nothing in their future would have oc-
casion to receive. One felt that in her renunciation of life she had will-
ingly abandoned those places in which she would at least have been able
to see him whom she loved, for others where he had never trod. And I
watched her, as she returned from some walk along a road where she
had known that he would not appear, drawing from her submissive fin-
gers long gloves of a precious, useless charm.
Never, in the course of our walks along the 'Guermantes way,' might
we penetrate as far as the source of the Vivonne, of which I had often
thought, which had in my mind so abstract, so ideal an existence, that I
had been as much surprised when some one told me that it was actually
to be found in the same department, and at a given number of miles
from Combray, as I had been on the day when I had learned that there
was another fixed point somewhere on the earth's surface, where, ac-
cording to the ancients, opened the jaws of Hell. Nor could we ever
reach that other goal, to which I longed so much to attain, Guermantes it-
self. I knew that it was the residence of its proprietors, the Duc and
Duchesse de Guermantes, I knew that they were real personages who
did actually exist, but whenever I thought about them I pictured them to
myself either in tapestry, as was the 'Coronation of Esther' which hung in
our church, or else in changing, rainbow colours, as was Gilbert the Bad
in his window, where he passed from cabbage green, when I was dip-
ping my fingers in the holy water stoup, to plum blue when I had
reached our row of chairs, or again altogether impalpable, like the image
of Geneviève de Brabant, ancestress of the Guermantes family, which the
magic lantern sent wandering over the curtains of my room or flung
aloft upon the ceiling—in short, always wrapped in the mystery of the
Merovingian age, and bathed, as in a sunset, in the orange light which
glowed from the resounding syllable 'antes.' And if, in spite of that, they
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were for me, in their capacity as a duke and a duchess, real people,
though of an unfamiliar kind, this ducal personality was in its turn
enormously distended, immaterialised, so as to encircle and contain that
Guermantes of which they were duke and duchess, all that sunlit
'Guermantes way' of our walks, the course of the Vivonne, its water-lilies
and its overshadowing trees, and an endless series of hot summer after-
noons. And I knew that they bore not only the titles of Duc and Duchesse
de Guermantes, but that since the fourteenth century, when, after vain
attempts to conquer its earlier lords in battle, they had allied themselves
by marriage, and so became Counts of Combray, the first citizens, con-
sequently, of the place, and yet the only ones among its citizens who did
not reside in it—Comtes de Combray, possessing Combray, threading it
on their string of names and titles, absorbing it in their personalities, and
illustrating, no doubt, in themselves that strange and pious melancholy
which was peculiar to Combray; proprietors of the town, though not of
any particular house there; dwelling, presumably, out of doors, in the
street, between heaven and earth, like that Gilbert de Guermantes, of
whom I could see, in the stained glass of the apse of Saint-Hilaire, only
the 'other side' in dull black lacquer, if I raised my eyes to look for him,
when I was going to Camus's for a packet of salt.
And then it happened that, going the 'Guermantes way,' I passed occa-
sionally by a row of well-watered little gardens, over whose hedges rose
clusters of dark blossom. I would stop before them, hoping to gain some
precious addition to my experience, for I seemed to have before my eyes
a fragment of that riverside country which I had longed so much to see
and know since coming upon a description of it by one of my favourite
authors. And it was with that story-book land, with its imagined soil in-
tersected by a hundred bubbling watercourses, that Guermantes, chan-
ging its form in my mind, became identified, after I heard Dr. Percepied
speak of the flowers and the charming rivulets and fountains that were
to be seen there in the ducal park. I used to dream that Mme. de Guer-
mantes, taking a sudden capricious fancy for myself, invited me there,
that all day long she stood fishing for trout by my side. And when even-
ing came, holding my hand in her own, as we passed by the little gar-
dens of her vassals, she would point out to me the flowers that leaned
their red and purple spikes along the tops of the low walls, and would
teach me all their names. She would make me tell her, too, all about the
poems that I meant to compose. And these dreams reminded me that,
since I wished, some day, to become a writer, it was high time to decide
what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the
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question, and tried to discover some subjects to which I could impart a
philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a
clock, I would see before me vacuity, nothing, would feel either that I
was wholly devoid of talent, or that, perhaps, a malady of the brain was
hindering its development. Sometimes I would depend upon my father's
arranging everything for me. He was so powerful, in such favour with
the people who 'really counted,' that he made it possible for us to trans-
gress laws which Françoise had taught me to regard as more ineluctable
than the laws of life and death, as when we were allowed to postpone for
a year the compulsory repainting of the walls of our house, alone among
all the houses in that part of Paris, or when he obtained permission from
the Minister for Mme. Sazerat's son, who had been ordered to some
watering-place, to take his degree two months before the proper time,
among the candidates whose surnames began with 'A,' instead of having
to wait his turn as an 'S.' If I had fallen seriously ill, if I had been cap-
tured by brigands, convinced that my father's understanding with the
supreme powers was too complete, that his letters of introduction to the
Almighty were too irresistible for my illness or captivity to turn out any-
thing but vain illusions, in which there was no danger actually threaten-
ing me, I should have awaited with perfect composure the inevitable
hour of my return to comfortable realities, of my deliverance from bond-
age or restoration to health. Perhaps this want of talent, this black cavity
which gaped in my mind when I ransacked it for the theme of my future
writings, was itself no more, either, than an unsubstantial illusion, and
would be brought to an end by the intervention of my father, who would
arrange with the Government and with Providence that I should be the
first writer of my day. But at other times, while my parents were grow-
ing impatient at seeing me loiter behind instead of following them, my
actual life, instead of seeming an artificial creation by my father, and one
which he could modify as he chose, appeared, on the contrary, to be
comprised in a larger reality which had not been created for my benefit,
from whose judgments there was no appeal, in the heart of which I was
bound, helpless, without friend or ally, and beyond which no further
possibilities lay concealed. It was evident to me then that I existed in the
same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die like
them, and that among them I was to be distinguished merely as one of
those who have no aptitude for writing. And so, utterly despondent, I re-
nounced literature for ever, despite the encouragements that had been
given me by Bloch. This intimate, spontaneous feeling, this sense of the
nullity of my intellect, prevailed against all the flattering speeches that
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might be lavished upon me, as a wicked man, when everyone is loud in
the praise of his good deeds, is gnawed by the secret remorse of
conscience.
One day my mother said: "You are always talking about Mme. de
Guermantes. Well, Dr. Percepied did a great deal for her when she was
ill, four years ago, and so she is coming to Combray for his daughter's
wedding. You will be able to see her in church." It was from Dr. Per-
cepied, as it happened, that I had heard most about Mme. de Guer-
mantes, and he had even shewn us the number of an illustrated paper in
which she was depicted in the costume which she had worn at a fancy
dress ball given by the Princesse de Léon.
Suddenly, during the nuptial mass, the beadle, by moving to one side,
enabled me to see, sitting in a chapel, a lady with fair hair and a large
nose, piercing blue eyes, a billowy scarf of mauve silk, glossy and new
and brilliant, and a little spot at the corner of her nose. And because on
the surface of her face, which was red, as though she had been very
warm, I could make out, diluted and barely perceptible, details which re-
sembled the portrait that had been shewn to me; because, more espe-
cially, the particular features which I remarked in this lady, if I attemp-
ted to catalogue them, formulated themselves in precisely the same
terms:— a large nose, blue eyes, as Dr. Percepied had used when describing in my presence the Duchesse de Guermantes, I said to myself: "This lady
is like the Duchesse de Guermantes." Now the chapel from which she
was following the service was that of Gilbert the Bad; beneath its flat
tombstones, yellowed and bulging like cells of honey in a comb, rested
the bones of the old Counts of Brabant; and I remembered having heard
it said that this chapel was reserved for the Guermantes family, whenev-
er any of its members came to attend a ceremony at Combray; there was,
indeed, but one woman resembling the portrait of Mme. de Guermantes
who on that day, the very day on which she was expected to come there,
could be sitting in that chapel: it was she! My disappointment was im-
mense. It arose from my not having borne in mind, when I thought of
Mme. de Guermantes, that I was picturing her to myself in the colours of
a tapestry or a painted window, as living in another century, as being of
another substance than the rest of the human race. Never had I taken in-
to account that she might have a red face, a mauve scarf like Mme. Sazer-
at; and the oval curve of her cheeks reminded me so strongly of people
whom I had seen at home that the suspicion brushed against my mind
(though it was immediately banished) that this lady in her creative prin-
ciple, in the molecules of her physical composition, was perhaps not
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substantially the Duchesse de Guermantes, but that her body, in ignor-
ance of the name that people had given it, belonged to a certain type of
femininity which included, also, the wives of doctors and tradesmen. "It
is, it must be Mme. de Guermantes, and no one else!" were the words un-
derlying the attentive and astonished expression with which I was gaz-
ing upon this image, which, naturally enough, bore no resemblance to
those that had so often, under the same title of 'Mme. de Guermantes,'
appeared to me in dreams, since this one had not been, like the others,
formed arbitrarily by myself, but had sprung into sight for the first time,
only a moment ago, here in church; an image which was not of the same
nature, was not colourable at will, like those others that allowed them-
selves to imbibe the orange tint of a sonorous syllable, but which was so
real that everything, even to the fiery little spot at the corner of her nose,
gave an assurance of her subjection to the laws of life, as in a transforma-
tion scene on the stage a crease in the dress of a fairy, a quivering of her
tiny finger, indicate the material presence of a living actress before our
eyes, whereas we were uncertain, till then, whether we were not looking
merely at a projection of limelight from a lantern.
Meanwhile I was endeavouring to apply to this image, which the
prominent nose, the piercing eyes pinned down and fixed in my field of
vision (perhaps because it was they that had first struck it, that had made
the first impression on its surface, before I had had time to wonder
whether the woman who thus appeared before me might possibly be
Mme. de Guermantes), to this fresh and unchanging image the idea: "It is
Mme. de Guermantes"; but I succeeded only in making the idea pass
between me and the image, as though they were two discs moving in
separate planes, with a space between. But this Mme. de Guermantes of
whom I had so often dreamed, now that I could see that she had a real
existence independent of myself, acquired a fresh increase of power over
my imagination, which, paralysed for a moment by contact with a reality
so different from anything that it had expected, began to react and to say
within me: "Great and glorious before the days of Charlemagne, the
Guermantes had the right of life and death over their vassals; the
Duchesse de Guermantes descends from Geneviève de Brabant. She does
not know, nor would she consent to know, any of the people who are
here to-day."
And then—oh, marvellous independence of the human gaze, tied to
the human face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray,
alone, as far as it may choose—while Mme. de Guermantes sat in the
chapel above the tombs of her dead ancestors, her gaze lingered here and
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wandered there, rose to the capitals of the pillars, and even rested upon
myself, like a ray of sunlight straying down the nave, but a ray of sun-
light which, at the moment when I received its caress, appeared con-
scious of where it fell. As for Mme. de Guermantes herself, since she re-
mained there motionless, sitting like a mother who affects not to notice
the rude or awkward conduct of her children who, in the course of their
play, are speaking to people whom she does not know, it was impossible
for me to determine whether she approved or condemned the vagrancy
of her eyes in the careless detachment of her heart.
I felt it to be important that she should not leave the church before I
had been able to look long enough upon her, reminding myself that for
years past I had regarded the sight of her as a thing eminently to be de-
sired, and I kept my eyes fixed on her, as though by gazing at her I
should be able to carry away and incorporate, to store up, for later refer-
ence, in myself the memory of that prominent nose, those red cheeks, of
all those details which struck me as so much precious, authentic, unpar-
alleled information with regard to her face. And now that, whenever I
brought my mind to bear upon that face—and especially, perhaps, in my
determination, that form of the instinct of self-preservation with which
we guard everything that is best in ourselves, not to admit that I had
been in any way deceived—I found only beauty there; setting her once
again (since they were one and the same person, this lady who sat before
me and that Duchesse de Guermantes whom, until then, I had been used
to conjure into an imagined shape) apart from and above that common
run of humanity with which the sight, pure and simple, of her in the
flesh had made me for a moment confound her, I grew indignant when I
heard people saying, in the congregation round me: "She is better look-
ing than Mme. Sazerat" or "than Mlle. Vinteuil," as though she had been in any way comparable with them. And my gaze resting upon her fair
hair, her blue eyes, the lines of her neck, and overlooking the features
which might have reminded me of the faces of other women, I cried out
within myself, as I admired this deliberately unfinished sketch: "How
lovely she is! What true nobility! it is indeed a proud Guermantes, the
descendant of Geneviève de Brabant, that I have before me!" And the
care which I took to focus all my attention upon her face succeeded in
isolating it so completely that to-day, when I call that marriage ceremony
to mind, I find it impossible to visualise any single person who was
present except her, and the beadle who answered me in the affirmative
when I inquired whether the lady was, indeed, Mme. de Guermantes.
But her, I can see her still quite clearly, especially at the moment when
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the procession filed into the sacristy, lighted by the intermittent, hot sun-
shine of a windy and rainy day, where Mme. de Guermantes found her-
self in the midst of all those Combray people whose names, even, she did
not know, but whose inferiority proclaimed her own supremacy so loud
that she must, in return, feel for them a genuine, pitying sympathy, and
whom she might count on impressing even more forcibly by virtue of
her simplicity and natural charm. And then, too, since she could not
bring into play the deliberate glances, charged with a definite meaning,
which one directs, in a crowd, towards people whom one knows, but
must allow her vague thoughts to escape continually from her eyes in a
flood of blue light which she was powerless to control, she was anxious
not to distress in any way, not to seem to be despising those humbler
mortals over whom that current flowed, by whom it was everywhere ar-
rested. I can see again to-day, above her mauve scarf, silky and buoyant,
the gentle astonishment in her eyes, to which she had added, without
daring to address it to anyone in particular, but so that everyone might
enjoy his share of it, the almost timid smile of a sovereign lady who
seems to be making an apology for her presence among the vassals
whom she loves. This smile rested upon myself, who had never ceased to
follow her with my eyes. And I, remembering the glance which she had
let fall upon me during the service, blue as a ray of sunlight that had
penetrated the window of Gilbert the Bad, said to myself, "Of course, she
is thinking about me." I fancied that I had found favour in her sight, that she would continue to think of me after she had left the church, and
would, perhaps, grow pensive again, that evening, at Guermantes, on
my account. And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes
enough to make us love a woman that she looks on us with contempt, as
I supposed Mlle. Swann to have done, while we imagine that she cannot
ever be ours, it is enough, also, sometimes that she looks on us kindly, as
Mme. de Guermantes did then, while we think of her as almost ours
already. Her eyes waxed blue as a periwinkle flower, wholly beyond my
reach, yet dedicated by her to me; and the sun, bursting out again from
behind a threatening cloud and darting the full force of its rays on to the
Square and into the sacristy, shed a geranium glow over the red carpet
laid down for the wedding, along which Mme. de Guermantes smilingly
advanced, and covered its woollen texture with a nap of rosy velvet, a
bloom of light, giving it that sort of tenderness, of solemn sweetness in
the pomp of a joyful celebration, which characterises certain pages of Lo-
hengrin, certain paintings by Carpaccio, and makes us understand how
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Baudelaire was able to apply to the sound of the trumpet the epithet
'delicious.'
How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the
'Guermantes way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect
on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must abandon
all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I felt for this,
while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself, made me suffer so
acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of its own accord, by a sort
of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased entirely to think of verse-mak-
ing, of fiction, of the poetic future on which my want of talent precluded
me from counting. Then, quite apart from all those literary preoccupa-
tions, and without definite attachment to anything, suddenly a roof, a
gleam of sunlight reflected from a stone, the smell of a road would make
me stop still, to enjoy the special pleasure that each of them gave me, and
also because they appeared to be concealing, beneath what my eyes
could see, something which they invited me to approach and seize from
them, but which, despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As
I felt that the mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand
there in front of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavouring to
penetrate with my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And if I had
then to hasten after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still
seek to recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concen-
trate upon recalling exactly the line of the roof, the colour of the stone,
which, without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to
be teeming, ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which
they were themselves no more than the outer coverings. It was certainly
not any impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I
had lost of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each
of them was associated with some material object devoid of any intellec-
tual value, and suggesting no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an
unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and in
that way distracted me from the tedium, from the sense of my own im-
potence which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme for
some great literary work. So urgent was the task imposed on my con-
science by these impressions of form or perfume or colour—to strive for
a perception of what lay hidden beneath them, that I was never long in
seeking an excuse which would allow me to relax so strenuous an effort
and to spare myself the fatigue that it involved. As good luck would
have it, my parents called me; I felt that I had not, for the moment, the
calm environment necessary for a successful pursuit of my researches,
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and that it would be better to think no more of the matter until I reached
home, and not to exhaust myself in the meantime to no purpose. And so
I concerned myself no longer with the mystery that lay