n its limpid and disillusioned intonation,
to-night he found there rather the charm of a resignation that was
almost gay. Of those sorrows, of which the little phrase had spoken
to him then, which he had seen it--without his being touched by them
himself--carry past him, smiling, on its sinuous and rapid course, of
those sorrows which were now become his own, without his having any hope
of being, ever, delivered from them, it seemed to say to him, as once
it had said of his happiness: "What does all that matter; it is all
nothing." And Swann's thoughts were borne for the first time on a wave
of pity and tenderness towards that Vinteuil, towards that unknown,
exalted brother who also must have suffered so greatly; what could his
life have been? From the depths of what well of sorrow could he have
drawn that god-like strength, that unlimited power of creation?

When it was the little phrase that spoke to him of the vanity of his
sufferings, Swann found a sweetness in that very wisdom which, but a
little while back, had seemed to him intolerable when he thought that
he could read it on the faces of indifferent strangers, who would regard
his love as a digression that was without importance. 'Twas because the
little phrase, unlike them, whatever opinion it might hold on the short
duration of these states of the soul, saw in them something not, as
everyone else saw, less serious than the events of everyday life, but,
on the contrary, so far superior to everyday life as to be alone worthy
of the trouble of expressing it. Those graces of an intimate sorrow,
'twas them that the phrase endeavoured to imitate, to create anew; and
even their essence, for all that it consists in being incommunicable and
in appearing trivial to everyone save him who has experience of them,
the little phrase had captured, had rendered visible. So much so that it
made their value be confessed, their divine sweetness be tasted by
all those same onlookers--provided only that they were in any sense
musical--who, the next moment, would ignore, would disown them in real
life, in every individual love that came into being beneath their eyes.
Doubtless the form in which it had codified those graces could not be
analysed into any logical elements. But ever since, more than a year
before, discovering to him many of the riches of his own soul, the love
of music had been born, and for a time at least had dwelt in him, Swann
had regarded musical _motifs_ as actual