Swann's Way
address it to anyone in particular, but so that everyone might enjoy his
share of it, the almost timid smile of a sovereign lady who seems to
be making an apology for her presence among the vassals whom she loves.
This smile rested upon myself, who had never ceased to follow her with
my eyes. And I, remembering the glance which she had let fall upon me
during the service, blue as a ray of sunlight that had penetrated the
window of Gilbert the Bad, said to myself, "Of course, she is thinking
about me." I fancied that I had found favour in her sight, that she
would continue to think of me after she had left the church, and would,
perhaps, grow pensive again, that evening, at Guermantes, on my account.
And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to
make us love a woman that she looks on us with contempt, as I supposed
Mlle. Swann to have done, while we imagine that she cannot ever be ours,
it is enough, also, sometimes that she looks on us kindly, as Mme. de
Guermantes did then, while we think of her as almost ours already. Her
eyes waxed blue as a periwinkle flower, wholly beyond my reach, yet
dedicated by her to me; and the sun, bursting out again from behind
a threatening cloud and darting the full force of its rays on to the
Square and into the sacristy, shed a geranium glow over the red carpet
laid down for the wedding, along which Mme. de Guermantes smilingly
advanced, and covered its woollen texture with a nap of rosy velvet, a
bloom of light, giving it that sort of tenderness, of solemn sweetness
in the pomp of a joyful celebration, which characterises certain pages
of _Lohengrin_, certain paintings by Carpaccio, and makes us understand
how Baudelaire was able to apply to the sound of the trumpet the epithet
'delicious.'
How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the
'Guermantes way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect
on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must
abandon all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I
felt for this, while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself,
made me suffer so acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of
its own accord, by a sort of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased
entirely to think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on
which my want of talent precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart
from all those literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment
to anything, suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a
stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the
special pleasure that each of them gave me, and also because they
appeared to be concealing, beneath what my eyes could see, something
which they invited me to approach and seize from them, but which,
despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As I felt that the
mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand there in front
of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavouring to penetrate with
my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And if I had then to hasten
after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still seek to
recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concentrate upon
recalling exactly the line of the roof, the colour of the stone, which,
without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to be teeming,
ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which they were
themselves no more than the outer coverings. It was certainly not any
impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had lost
of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of them
was associated with some material object devoid of any intellectual
value, and suggesting no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an
unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and
in that way distracted me from the tedium, from the sense of my own
impotence which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme
for some great literary work. So urgent was the task imposed on my
conscience by these impressions of form or perfume or colour--to strive
for a perception of what lay hidden beneath them, that I was never
long in seeking an excuse which would allow me to relax so strenuous an
effort and to spare myself the fatigue that it involved. As good luck
would have it, my parents called me; I felt that I had not, for the
moment, the calm environment necessary for a successful pursuit of my
researches, and that it would be better to think no more of the matter
until I reached home, and not to exhaust myself in the meantime to no
purpose. And so I concerned myself no longer with the mystery that lay
hidden in a form or a perfume, quite at ease in my mind, since I was
taking it home with me, protected by its visible and tangible covering,
beneath which I should find it still alive, like the fish which, on days
when I had been allowed to go out fishing, I used to carry back in my
basket, buried in a couch of grass which kept them cool and fresh. Once
in the house again I would begin to think of something else, and so my
mind would become littered (as my room was with the flowers that I had
gathered on my walks, or the odds and ends that people had given me)
with a stone from the surface of which the sunlight was reflected, a
roof, the sound of a bell, the smell of fallen leaves, a confused mass
of different images, under which must have perished long ago the reality
of which I used to have some foreboding, but which I never had the
energy to discover and bring to light. Once, however, when we had
prolonged our walk far beyond its ordinary limits, and so had been very
glad to encounter, half way home, as afternoon darkened into evening,
Dr. Percepied, who drove past us at full speed in his carriage, saw and
recognised us, stopped, and made us jump in beside him, I received an
impression of this sort which I did not abandon without having first
subjected it to an examination a little more thorough. I had been set
on the box beside the coachman, we were going like the wind because
the Doctor had still, before returning to Combray, to call at
Martinville-le-Sec, at the house of a patient, at whose door he asked
us to wait for him. At a bend in the road I experienced, suddenly, that
special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other, when I caught
sight of the twin steeples of Martinville, on which the setting sun was
playing, while the movement of the carriage and the windings of the road
seemed to keep them continually changing their position; and then of a
third steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, which, although separated from them
by a hill and a valley, and rising from rather higher ground in the
distance, appeared none the less to be standing by their side.
In ascertaining and noting the shape of their spires, the changes
of aspect, the sunny warmth of their surfaces, I felt that I was not
penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay
behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at
once to contain and to conceal.
The steeples appeared so distant, and we ourselves seemed to come so
little nearer them, that I was astonished when, a few minutes later, we
drew up outside the church of Martinville. I did not know the reason for
the pleasure which I had found in seeing them upon the horizon, and
the business of trying to find out what that reason was seemed to me
irksome; I wished only to keep in reserve in my brain those converging
lines, moving in the sunshine, and, for the time being, to think of
them no more. And it is probable that, had I done so, those two steeples
would have vanished for ever, in a great medley of trees and roofs and
scents and sounds which I had noticed and set apart on account of the
obscure sense of pleasure which they gave me, but without ever exploring
them more fully. I got down from the box to talk to my parents while we
were waiting for the Doctor to reappear. Then it was time to start; I
climbed up again to my place, turning my head to look back, once more,
at my steeples, of which, a little later, I caught a farewell glimpse
at a turn in the road. The coachman, who seemed little inclined for
conversation, having barely acknowledged my remarks, I was obliged,
in default of other society, to fall back on my own, and to attempt to
recapture the vision of my steeples. And presently their outlines and
their sunlit surface, as though they had been a sort of rind, were
stripped apart; a little of what they had concealed from me became
apparent; an idea came into my mind which had not existed for me a
moment earlier, framed itself in words in my head; and the pleasure
with which the first sight of them, just now, had filled me was so much
enhanced that, overpowered by a sort of intoxication, I could no longer
think of anything but them. At this point, although we had now travelled
a long way from Martinville, I turned my head and caught sight of them
again, quite black this time, for the sun had meanwhile set. Every few
minutes a turn in the road would sweep them out of sight; then they
shewed themselves for the last time, and so I saw them no more.
Without admitting to myself that what lay buried within the steeples of
Martinville must be something analogous to a charming phrase, since it
was in the form of words which gave me pleasure that it had appeared to
me, I borrowed a pencil and some paper from the Doctor, and composed,
in spite of the jolting of the carriage, to appease my conscience and to
satisfy my enthusiasm, the following little fragment, which I have since
discovered, and now reproduce, with only a slight revision here and
there.
Alone, rising from the level of the plain, and seemingly lost in
that expanse of open country, climbed to the sky the twin steeples of
Martinville. Presently we saw three: springing into position confronting
them by a daring volt, a third, a dilatory steeple, that of Vieuxvicq,
was come to join them. The minutes passed, we were moving rapidly, and
yet the three steeples were always a long way ahead of us, like
three birds perched upon the plain, motionless and conspicuous in
the sunlight. Then the steeple of Vieuxvicq withdrew, took its proper
distance, and the steeples of Martinville remained alone, gilded by
the light of the setting sun, which, even at that distance, I could
see playing and smiling upon their sloped sides. We had been so long in
approaching them that I was thinking of the time that must still elapse
before we could reach them when, of a sudden, the carriage, having
turned a corner, set us down at their feet; and they had flung
themselves so abruptly in our path that we had barely time to stop
before being dashed against the porch of the church.
We resumed our course; we had left Martinville some little time, and
the village, after accompanying us for a few seconds, had already
disappeared, when, lingering alone on the horizon to watch our flight,
its steeples and that of Vieuxvicq waved once again, in token of
farewell, their sun-bathed pinnacles. Sometimes one would withdraw,
so that the other two might watch us for a moment still; then the road
changed direction, they veered in the light like three golden pivots,
and vanished from my gaze. But, a little later, when we were already
close to Combray, the sun having set meanwhile, I caught sight of them
for the last time, far away, and seeming no more now than three flowers
painted upon the sky above the low line of fields. They made me think,
too, of three maidens in a legend, abandoned in a solitary place over
which night had begun to fall; and while we drew away from them at a
gallop, I could see them timidly seeking their way, and, after some