Page 245 - swanns-way

lightness of heart, but with sullen anger that I aimed blows
at the trees of Roussainville wood, from among which no
more living creatures made their appearance than if they
had been trees painted on the stretched canvas background
of a panorama, when, unable to resign myself to having to
return home without having held in my arms the woman I
so greatly desired, I was yet obliged to retrace my steps to-
wards Combray, and to admit to myself that the chance of
her appearing in my path grew smaller every moment. And
if she had appeared, would I have dared to speak to her? I
felt that she would have regarded me as mad, for I no longer
thought of those desires which came to me on my walks, but
were never realized, as being shared by others, or as having
any existence apart from myself. They seemed nothing more
now than the purely subjective, impotent, illusory creatures
of my temperament. They were in no way connected now
with nature, with the world of real things, which from now
onwards lost all its charm and significance, and meant no
more to my life than a purely conventional framework, just
as the action of a novel is framed in the railway carriage, on
a seat of which a traveller is reading it to pass the time.
And it is perhaps from another impression which I re-
ceived at Mont-jouvain, some years later, an impression
which at that time was without meaning, that there arose,
long afterwards, my idea of that cruel side of human passion
called ‘sadism.’ We shall see, in due course, that for quite
another reason the memory of this impression was to play
an important part in my life. It was during a spell of very
hot weather; my parents, who had been obliged to go away

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