Page 240 - swanns-way

The wind pulled out sideways the wild grass that grew in
the wall, and the chicken’s downy feathers, both of which
things let themselves float upon the wind’s breath to their
full extent, with the unresisting submissiveness of light and
lifeless matter. The tiled roof cast upon the pond, whose re-
flections were now clear again in the sunlight, a square of
pink marble, the like of which I had never observed before.
And, seeing upon the water, where it reflected the wall, a
pallid smile responding to the smiling sky, I cried aloud in
my enthusiasm, brandishing my furled umbrella: ‘Damn,
damn, damn, damn!’ But at the same time I felt that I was
in duty bound not to content myself with these unillumi-
nating words, but to endeavour to see more clearly into the
sources of my enjoyment.
And it was at that moment, too—thanks to a peasant who
went past, apparently in a bad enough humour already, but
more so when he nearly received my umbrella in his face,
and who replied without any cordiality to my ‘Fine day,
what! good to be out walking!’—that I learned that identical
emotions do not spring up in the hearts of all men simul-
taneously, by a pre-established order. Later on I discovered
that, whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood
for conversation, the friend to whom I would be burning
to say something would at that moment have finished in-
dulging himself in the delights of conversation, and wanted
nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed. And if I had
been thinking with affection of my parents, and forming
the most sensible and proper plans for giving them plea-
sure, they would have been using the same interval of time

240 Swann’s Way