Page 144 - swanns-way

everywhere throughout Europe and America, and even in
the tiniest villages, rare still in its refinement, but in that
alone. What my mother’s friend, and, it would seem, what
Dr. du Boulbon liked above all in the writings of Bergotte
was just what I liked, the same flow of melody, the same
old-fashioned phrases, and certain others, quite simple and
familiar, but so placed by him, in such prominence, as to
hint at a particular quality of taste on his part; and also, in
the sad parts of his books, a sort of roughness, a tone that
was almost harsh. And he himself, no doubt, realised that
these were his principal attractions. For in his later books,
if he had hit upon some great truth, or upon the name of an
historic cathedral, he would break off his narrative, and in
an invocation, an apostrophe, a lengthy prayer, would give
a free outlet to that effluence which, in the earlier volumes,
remained buried beneath the form of his prose, discern-
ible only in a rippling of its surface, and perhaps even more
delightful, more harmonious when it was thus veiled from
the eye, when the reader could give no precise indication of
where the murmur of the current began, or of where it died
away. These passages in which he delighted were our favou-
rites also. For my own part I knew all of them by heart. I felt
even disappointed when he resumed the thread of his nar-
rative. Whenever he spoke of something whose beauty had
until then remained hidden from me, of pine-forests or of
hailstorms, of Notre-Dame de Paris, of Athalie, or of Phè-
dre, by some piece of imagery he would make their beauty
explode and drench me with its essence. And so, dimly re-
alising that the universe contained innumerable elements

144 Swann’s Way