no particular
reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump
little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they
had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon,
mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing
morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked
a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with
it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I
stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.
An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached,
with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life
had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity
illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has
of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not
in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental,
mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was
conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that
it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the
same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How
could I seize upon and define it?

I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the
first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time
to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object
of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has
called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat
indefinitely with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which
I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon
the tea for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my
disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my
own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss
of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed
beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region
through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it
nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something
which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and
substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

And I begin again to ask my