Nor, however, did they at all resemble those of that first year, whether because we were now in spring with its storms, or because even if I had come down at the same time as before, the different, more changeable weather might have discouraged from visiting this coast certain seas, indolent, vaporous and fragile, which I had seen throughout long, scorching days, asleep upon the beach, their bluish bosoms, only, faintly stirring, with a soft palpitation, or, as was most probable, because my eyes, taught by Elstir to retain precisely those elements that before I had deliberately rejected, would now gaze for hours at what in the former year they had been incapable of seeing. As in the former year, the seas, from one day to another, were rarely the same.
Do we not see, in the very room in which they have lost a child, its parents soon come together again to give the little angel a baby brother? I tried to distract my mind from this desire by going to the window to look at that day’s sea. From my bed, where I was made to spend hours every day resting, I longed for Albertine to come and resume our former amusements. But even in the midst of a grief that is still keen physical desire will revive. This sentiment recalled to me aspects of Albertine’s face, more gentle, less gay, quite different from those that would have been evoked by physical desire and as it was also less pressing than that desire I would gladly have postponed its realisation until the following winter, without seeking to see Albertine again at Balbec, before her departure. Certain dreams of shared affection, always floating on the surface of our minds, ally themselves readily by a sort of affinity with the memory (provided that this has already become slightly vague) of a woman with whom we have taken our pleasure. Her words were no more than a feeble, docile response, almost a mere echo of mine she was nothing more than the reflexion of my own thoughts Incapable as I still was of feeling any fresh physical desire, Albertine was beginning nevertheless to inspire in me a desire for happiness. Only, I no longer found in my grandmother the rich spontaneity of old times. I should have liked to call the sceptics to witness that death is indeed a malady from which one recovers. And if she made any allusion to what she had suffered, I stopped her mouth with my kisses and assured her that she was now permanently cured. I saw her an invalid still, but on the road to recovery, I found her in better health. DE CHARLUS DINES WITH THE VERDURINS In my fear lest the pleasure I found in this solitary excursion might weaken my memory of my grandmother, I sought to revive this by thinking of some great mental suffering that she had undergone in response to my appeal that suffering tried to build itself in my heart, threw up vast pillars there but my heart was doubtless too small for it, I had not the strength to bear so great a grief, my attention was distracted at the moment when it was approaching completion, and its arches collapsed before joining as, before they have perfected their curve, the waves of the sea totter and break And yet, if only from my dreams when I was asleep, I might have learned that my grief for my grandmother’s death was diminishing, for she appeared in them less crushed by the idea that I had formed of her non-existence. NISSIM BERNARD - OUTLINE OF THE STRANGE CHARACTER OF MOREL - M. CHAPTER TWO THE MYSTERIES OF ALBERTINE - THE GIRLS WHOM SHE SEES REFLECTED IN THE GLASS - THE OTHER WOMAN - THE LIFT-BOY - MADAME DE CAMBREMER - THE PLEASURES OF M.
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