Page 244 - swanns-way

by the happiness that she showers upon us.
Alas, it was in vain that I implored the dungeon-keep of
Roussainville, that I begged it to send out to meet me some
daughter of its village, appealing to it as to the sole confidant
to whom I had disclosed my earliest desire when, from the
top floor of our house at Combray, from the little room that
smelt of orris-root, I had peered out and seen nothing but
its tower, framed in the square of the half-opened window,
while, with the heroic scruples of a traveller setting forth
for unknown climes, or of a desperate wretch hesitating on
the verge of self-destruction, faint with emotion, I explored,
across the bounds of my own experience, an untrodden
path which, I believed, might lead me to my death, even—
until passion spent itself and left me shuddering among the
sprays of flowering currant which, creeping in through the
window, tumbled all about my body. In vain I called upon it
now. In vain I compressed the whole landscape into my field
of vision, draining it with an exhaustive gaze which sought
to extract from it a female creature. I might go alone as far
as the porch of Saint-André-des-Champs: never did I find
there the girl whom I should inevitably have met, had I been
with my grandfather, and so unable to engage her in conver-
sation. I would fix my eyes, without limit of time, upon the
trunk of a distant tree, from behind which she must appear
and spring towards me; my closest scrutiny left the horizon
barren as before; night was falling; without any hope now
would I concentrate my attention, as though to force up out
of it the creatures which it must conceal, upon that sterile
soil, that stale and outworn land; and it was no longer in

244 Swann’s Way