g way off, the sight of the jutting crag from
which it dives into the pool thrills with joy the children who know
that they are going to behold the seal, long before I reached the
acacia-alley, their fragrance, scattered abroad, would make me feel that
I was approaching the incomparable presence of a vegetable personality,
strong and tender; then, as I drew near, the sight of their topmost
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 social 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 certain
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 realise 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 waited 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 painful disturbance (since their
point of contact with her was that intimate, that internal part of
her life which was hidden from me), and furthermore, for I very soon
learned, as we shall see in due course, that they did not like my
playing with her, that feeling of veneration which we always have for
those who hold, and exercise without restraint, the power to do us an
injury.

I assigned the first place, in the order of aesthetic merit and of
social grandeur, to simplicity, whe