Page 644 - swanns-way

branches, their lightly tossing foliage, in its easy grace, its
coquettish outline, its delicate fabric, over which hundreds
of flowers were laid, like winged and throbbing colonies
of precious insects; and finally their name itself, feminine,
indolent and seductive, made my heart beat, but with a so-
cial longing, like those waltzes which remind us only of the
names of the fair dancers, called aloud as they entered the
ball-room. I had been told that I should see in the alley cer-
tain women of fashion, who, in spite of their not all having
husbands, were constantly mentioned in conjunction with
Mme. Swann, but most often by their professional names;—
their new names, when they had any, being but a sort of
incognito, a veil which those who would speak of them were
careful to draw aside, so as to make themselves understood.
Thinking that Beauty—in the order of feminine elegance—
was governed by occult laws into the knowledge of which
they had been initiated, and that they had the power to re-
alise it, I accepted before seeing them, like the truth of a
coming revelation, the appearance of their clothes, of their
carriages and horses, of a thousand details among which I
placed my faith as in an inner soul which gave the cohesion
of a work of art to that ephemeral and changing pageant.
But it was Mme. Swann whom I wished to see, and I wait-
ed for her to go past, as deeply moved as though she were
Gilberte, whose parents, saturated, like everything in her
environment, with her own special charm, excited in me as
keen a passion as she did herself, indeed a still more pain-
ful disturbance (since their point of contact with her was
that intimate, that internal part of her life which was hid-

644 Swann’s Way