ore our eyes,
whereas we were uncertain, till then, whether we were not looking merely
at a projection of limelight from a lantern.

Meanwhile I was endeavouring to apply to this image, which the prominent
nose, the piercing eyes pinned down and fixed in my field of vision
(perhaps because it was they that had first struck it, that had made the
first impression on its surface, before I had had time to wonder
whether the woman who thus appeared before me might possibly be Mme. de
Guermantes), to this fresh and unchanging image the idea: "It is Mme. de
Guermantes"; but I succeeded only in making the idea pass between me and
the image, as though they were two discs moving in separate planes,
with a space between. But this Mme. de Guermantes of whom I had so often
dreamed, now that I could see that she had a real existence independent
of myself, acquired a fresh increase of power over my imagination,
which, paralysed for a moment by contact with a reality so different
from anything that it had expected, began to react and to say within me:
"Great and glorious before the days of Charlemagne, the Guermantes
had the right of life and death over their vassals; the Duchesse de
Guermantes descends from Genevieve de Brabant. She does not know, nor
would she consent to know, any of the people who are here to-day."

And then--oh, marvellous independence of the human gaze, tied to the
human face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray,
alone, as far as it may choose--while Mme. de Guermantes sat in the
chapel above the tombs of her dead ancestors, her gaze lingered here
and wandered there, rose to the capitals of the pillars, and even rested
upon myself, like a ray of sunlight straying down the nave, but a ray
of sunlight which, at the moment when I received its caress, appeared
conscious of where it fell. As for Mme. de Guermantes herself, since
she remained there motionless, sitting like a mother who affects not to
notice the rude or awkward conduct of her children who, in the course
of their play, are speaking to people whom she does not know, it was
impossible for me to determine whether she approved or condemned the
vagrancy of her eyes in the careless detachment of her heart.

I felt it to be important that she should not leave the church before
I had been able to look long enough upon her, reminding myself that for
years past I had regarded the sight of her as a thing eminently to be
desired, and I kept my