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it’s got a worm in it!’ I purchased two ha’penny marbles.
With admiring eyes I saw, luminous and imprisoned in a
bowl by themselves, the agate marbles which seemed pre-
cious to me because they were as fair and smiling as little
girls, and because they cost five-pence each. Gilberte, who
was given a great deal more pocket money than I ever had,
asked me which I thought the prettiest. They were as trans-
parent, as liquid-seeming as life itself. I would not have had
her sacrifice a single one of them. I should have liked her
to be able to buy them, to liberate them all. Still, I pointed
out one that had the same colour as her eyes. Gilberte took
it, turned it about until it shone with a ray of gold, fondled
it, paid its ransom, but at once handed me her captive, say-
ing: ‘Take it; it is for you, I give it to you, keep it to remind
yourself of me.’
Another time, being still obsessed by the desire to hear
Berma in classic drama, I had asked her whether she had
not a copy of a pamphlet in which Bergotte spoke of Racine,
and which was now out of print. She had told me to let her
know the exact title of it, and that evening I had sent her a
little telegram, writing on its envelope the name, Gilberte
Swann, which I had so often, traced in my exercise-books.
Next day she brought me in a parcel tied with pink bows
and sealed with white wax, the pamphlet, a copy of which
she had managed to find. ‘You see, it is what you asked me
for,’ she said, taking from her muff the telegram that I had
sent her. But in the address on the pneumatic message—
which, only yesterday, was nothing, was merely a ‘little blue’
that I had written, and, after a messenger had delivered it

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