Page 36 - swanns-way

I felt that in a few minutes I should have to leave her in the
dining-room and go up to my bed without the consoling
thought, as on ordinary evenings, that she would come up,
later, to kiss me.
‘Now, M. Swann,’ she said, ‘do tell me about your daugh-
ter; I am sure she shews a taste already for nice things, like
her papa.’
‘Come along and sit down here with us all on the veran-
dah,’ said my grandfather, coming up to him. My mother
had to abandon the quest, but managed to extract from the
restriction itself a further refinement of thought, as great
poets do when the tyranny of rhyme forces them into the
discovery of their finest lines.
‘We can talk about her again when we are by ourselves,’
she said, or rather whispered to Swann. ‘It is only a mother
who can understand. I am sure that hers would agree with
me.’
And so we all sat down round the iron table. I should have
liked not to think of the hours of anguish which I should
have to spend, that evening, alone in my room, without the
possibility of going to sleep: I tried to convince myself that
they were of no importance, really, since I should have for-
gotten them next morning, and to fix my mind on thoughts
of the future which would carry me, as on a bridge, across
the terrifying abyss that yawned at my feet. But my mind,
strained by this foreboding, distended like the look which I
shot at my mother, would not allow any other impression to
enter. Thoughts did, indeed, enter it, but only on the condi-
tion that they left behind them every element of beauty, or

36 Swann’s Way