izon barren as before; night was falling; without any hope
now would I concentrate my attention, as though to force up out of it
the creatures which it must conceal, upon that sterile soil, that stale
and outworn land; and it was no longer in lightness of heart, but with
sullen anger that I aimed blows at the trees of Roussainville wood, from
among which no more living creatures made their appearance than if they
had been trees painted on the stretched canvas background of a panorama,
when, unable to resign myself to having to return home without having
held in my arms the woman I so greatly desired, I was yet obliged to
retrace my steps towards Combray, and to admit to myself that the chance
of her appearing in my path grew smaller every moment. And if she had
appeared, would I have dared to speak to her? I felt that she would have
regarded me as mad, for I no longer thought of those desires which came
to me on my walks, but were never realized, as being shared by others,
or as having any existence apart from myself. They seemed nothing more
now than the purely subjective, impotent, illusory creatures of my
temperament. They were in no way connected now with nature, with the
world of real things, which from now onwards lost all its charm and
significance, and meant no more to my life than a purely conventional
framework, just as the action of a novel is framed in the railway
carriage, on a seat of which a traveller is reading it to pass the time.

And it is perhaps from another impression which I received at
Mont-jouvain, some years later, an impression which at that time was
without meaning, that there arose, long afterwards, my idea of that
cruel side of human passion called 'sadism.' We shall see, in due
course, that for quite another reason the memory of this impression was
to play an important part in my life. It was during a spell of very hot
weather; my parents, who had been obliged to go away for the whole day,
had told me that I might stay out as late as I pleased; and having
gone as far as the Montjouvain pond, where I enjoyed seeing again the
reflection of the tiled roof of the hut, I had lain down in the shade
and gone to sleep among the bushes on the steep slope that rose up
behind the house, just where I had waited for my parents, years before,
one day when they had gone to call on M. Vinteuil. It was almost dark
when I awoke, and I wished to rise and go away, but I saw Mile. Vinteuil
(or thought, at least