e. de Guermantes, taking a sudden capricious fancy for myself,
invited me there, that all day long she stood fishing for trout by my
side. And when evening came, holding my hand in her own, as we passed by
the little gardens of her vassals, she would point out to me the flowers
that leaned their red and purple spikes along the tops of the low walls,
and would teach me all their names. She would make me tell her, too, all
about the poems that I meant to compose. And these dreams reminded me
that, since I wished, some day, to become a writer, it was high time to
decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked
myself the question, and tried to discover some subjects to which I
could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind
would stop like a clock, I would see before me vacuity, nothing, would
feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent, or that, perhaps, a
malady of the brain was hindering its development. Sometimes I would
depend upon my father's arranging everything for me. He was so powerful,
in such favour with the people who 'really counted,' that he made it
possible for us to transgress laws which Francoise had taught me to
regard as more ineluctable than the laws of life and death, as when we
were allowed to postpone for a year the compulsory repainting of the
walls of our house, alone among all the houses in that part of Paris,
or when he obtained permission from the Minister for Mme. Sazerat's
son, who had been ordered to some watering-place, to take his degree two
months before the proper time, among the candidates whose surnames began
with 'A,' instead of having to wait his turn as an 'S.' If I had fallen
seriously ill, if I had been captured by brigands, convinced that my
father's understanding with the supreme powers was too complete, that
his letters of introduction to the Almighty were too irresistible for my
illness or captivity to turn out anything but vain illusions, in which
there was no danger actually threatening me, I should have awaited
with perfect composure the inevitable hour of my return to comfortable
realities, of my deliverance from bondage or restoration to health.
Perhaps this want of talent, this black cavity which gaped in my mind
when I ransacked it for the theme of my future writings, was itself no
more, either, than an unsubstantial illusion, and would be brought to
an end by the intervention of my father, who would arrange with the
Governme