Page 219 - swanns-way

that lived and walked and travelled in her company; unfold-
ing through the arch of the pink hawthorn, which opened
at the height of my shoulder, the quintessence of their fa-
miliarity—so exquisitely painful to myself—with her, and
with all that unknown world of her existence, into which I
should never penetrate.
For a moment (while we moved away, and my grandfa-
ther murmured: ‘Poor Swann, what a life they are leading
him; fancy sending him away so that she can be left alone
with her Charlus—for that was Charlus: I recognised him
at once! And the child, too; at her age, to be mixed up in
all that!’) the impression left on me by the despotic tone
in which Gilberte’s mother had spoken to her, without her
replying, by exhibiting her to me as being obliged to yield
obedience to some one else, as not being indeed superior to
the whole world, calmed my sufferings somewhat, revived
some hope in me, and cooled the ardour of my love. But
very soon that love surged up again in me like a reaction
by which my humiliated heart was endeavouring to rise to
Gilberte’s level, or to draw her down to its own. I loved her;
I was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to
insult her, to do her some injury, to force her to keep some
memory of me. I knew her to be so beautiful that I should
have liked to be able to retrace my steps so as to shake my fist
at her and shout, ‘I think you are hideous, grotesque; you are
utterly disgusting!’ However, I walked away, carrying with
me, then and for ever afterwards, as the first illustration of
a type of happiness rendered inaccessible to a little boy of
my kind by certain laws of nature which it was impossible

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