Page 132 - swanns-way

motion—were only drops in a single, undeviat-ing, irresist-
ible outrush of all the forces of my life.
And then, as I continue to trace the outward course of
these impressions from their close-packed intimate source
in my consciousness, and before I come to the horizon of
reality which envelops them, I discover pleasures of another
kind, those of being comfortably seated, of tasting the good
scent on the air, of not being disturbed by any visitor; and,
when an hour chimed from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire, of
watching what was already spent of the afternoon fall drop
by drop until I heard the last stroke which enabled me to
add up the total sum, after which the silence that followed
seemed to herald the beginning, in the blue sky above me, of
that long part of the day still allowed me for reading, until
the good dinner which Françoise was even now preparing
should come to strengthen and refresh me after the strenu-
ous pursuit of its hero through the pages of my book. And,
as each hour struck, it would seem to me that a few seconds
only had passed since the hour before; the latest would in-
scribe itself, close to its predecessor, on the sky’s surface,
and I would be unable to believe that sixty minutes could
be squeezed into the tiny arc of blue which was comprised
between their two golden figures. Sometimes it would even
happen that this precocious hour would sound two strokes
more than the last; there must then have been an hour
which I had not heard strike; something which had tak-
en place had not taken place for me; the fascination of my
book, a magic as potent as the deepest slumber, had stopped
my enchanted ears and had obliterated the sound of that

132 Swann’s Way