eyes fixed on her, as though by gazing at her
I should be able to carry away and incorporate, to store up, for later
reference, in myself the memory of that prominent nose, those red
cheeks, of all those details which struck me as so much precious,
authentic, unparalleled information with regard to her face. And now
that, whenever I brought my mind to bear upon that face--and
especially, perhaps, in my determination, that form of the instinct
of self-preservation with which we guard everything that is best in
ourselves, not to admit that I had been in any way deceived--I found
only beauty there; setting her once again (since they were one and the
same person, this lady who sat before me and that Duchesse de Guermantes
whom, until then, I had been used to conjure into an imagined shape)
apart from and above that common run of humanity with which the sight,
pure and simple, of her in the flesh had made me for a moment confound
her, I grew indignant when I heard people saying, in the congregation
round me: "She is better looking than Mme. Sazerat" or "than Mlle.
Vinteuil," as though she had been in any way comparable with them. And
my gaze resting upon her fair hair, her blue eyes, the lines of her
neck, and overlooking the features which might have reminded me of
the faces of other women, I cried out within myself, as I admired this
deliberately unfinished sketch: "How lovely she is! What true nobility!
it is indeed a proud Guermantes, the descendant of Genevieve de Brabant,
that I have before me!" And the care which I took to focus all my
attention upon her face succeeded in isolating it so completely that
to-day, when I call that marriage ceremony to mind, I find it impossible
to visualise any single person who was present except her, and the
beadle who answered me in the affirmative when I inquired whether the
lady was, indeed, Mme. de Guermantes. But her, I can see her still quite
clearly, especially at the moment when the procession filed into the
sacristy, lighted by the intermittent, hot sunshine of a windy and rainy
day, where Mme. de Guermantes found herself in the midst of all
those Combray people whose names, even, she did not know, but whose
inferiority proclaimed her own supremacy so loud that she must, in
return, feel for them a genuine, pitying sympathy, and whom she might
count on impressing even more forcibly by virtue of her simplicity and
natural charm. And then, too, since she could not bring into play t