Page 634 - swanns-way

would have been with the same despair in her heart that I
felt on the days when I did not see her. It shewed me further,
this new arrangement, that I ought, after all, to know what
it was to love, since I loved Gilberte; it drew my attention
to the constant anxiety that I had to ‘shew off’ before her,
by reason of which I tried to persuade my mother to get for
Françoise a waterproof coat and a hat with a blue feather, or,
better still, to stop sending with me to the Champs-Elysées
an attendant with whom I blushed to be seen (to all of which
my mother replied that I was not fair to Françoise, that she
was an excellent woman and devoted to us all) and also
that sole, exclusive need to see Gilberte, the result of which
was that, months in advance, I could think of nothing but
how to find out at what date she would be leaving Paris and
where she was going, feeling that the most attractive coun-
try in the world would be but a place of exile if she were not
to be there, and asking only to be allowed to stay for ever in
Paris, so long as I might see her in the Champs-Elysées; and
it had little difficulty in making me see that neither my anx-
iety nor my need could be justified by anything in Gilberte’s
conduct. She, on the contrary, was genuinely fond of her gov-
erness, without troubling herself over what I might choose
to think about it. It seemed quite natural to her not to come
to the Champs-Elysées if she had to go shopping with Ma-
demoiselle, delightful if she had to go out somewhere with
her mother. And even supposing that she would ever have
allowed me to spend my holidays in the same place as her-
self, when it came to choosing that place she considered her
parents’ wishes, a thousand different amusements of which

634 Swann’s Way