Page 147 - swanns-way

denly revealed to me that my own humble existence and the
Realms of Truth were less widely separated than I had sup-
posed, that at certain points they were actually in contact;
and in my new-found confidence and joy I wept upon his
printed page, as in the arms of a long-lost father.
>From his books I had formed an impression of Ber-
gotte as a frail and disappointed old man, who had lost his
children, and had never found any consolation. And so I
would read, or rather sing his sentences in my brain, with
rather more dolce, rather more lento than he himself had,
perhaps, intended, and his simplest phrase would strike my
ears with something peculiarly gentle and loving in its in-
tonation. More than anything else in the world I cherished
his philosophy, and had pledged myself to it in lifelong de-
votion. It made me impatient to reach the age when I should
be eligible to attend the class at school called ‘Philosophy.’ I
did not wish to learn or do anything else there, but simply
to exist and be guided entirely by the mind of Bergotte, and,
if I had been told then that the metaphysicians whom I was
actually to follow there resembled him in nothing, I should
have been struck down by the despair a young lover feels
who has sworn lifelong fidelity, when a friend speaks to him
of the other mistresses he will have in time to come.
One Sunday, while I was reading in the garden, I was
interrupted by Swann, who had come to call upon my par-
ents.
‘What are you reading? May I look? Why, it’s Bergotte!
Who has been telling you about him?’
I replied that Bloch was responsible.

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