Page 612 - swanns-way

struggled to discharge its light. A moment later the balcony
was as pale and luminous as a standing water at dawn, and
a thousand shadows from the iron-work of its balustrade
had come to rest on it. A breath of wind dispersed them;
the stone grew dark again, but, like tamed creatures, they
returned; they began, imperceptibly, to grow lighter, and by
one of those continuous crescendos, such as, in music, at
the end of an overture, carry a single note to the extreme
fortissimo, making it pass rapidly through all the interme-
diate stages, I saw it attain to that fixed, unalterable gold of
fine days, on which the sharply cut shadows of the wrought
iron of the balustrade were outlined in black like a capri-
cious vegetation, with a fineness in the delineation of their
smallest details which seemed to indicate a deliberate ap-
plication, an artist’s satisfaction, and with so much relief, so
velvety a bloom in the restfulness of their sombre and happy
mass that in truth those large and leafy shadows which lay
reflected on that lake of sunshine seemed aware that they
were pledges of happiness and peace of mind.
Brief, fading ivy, climbing, fugitive flora, the most
colourless, the most depressing, to many minds, of all that
creep on walls or decorate windows; to me the dearest of
them all, from the day when it appeared upon our balcony,
like the very shadow of the presence of Gilberte, who was
perhaps already in the Champs-Elysées, and as soon as I ar-
rived there would greet me with: ‘Let’s begin at once. You
are on my side.’ Frail, swept away by a breath, but at the
same time in harmony, not with the season, with the hour; a
promise of that immediate pleasure which the day will deny

612 Swann’s Way